5 sure-fire signs you’re not being true to yourself and your creative call.

the advice ‘be true to yourself’ is bandied about, with an assumption that we already know what being true to ourselves actually means.

When we do know, sweet! That’s the bulk of the challenge sorted. Time to crack on with ‘being true’!

But how can we know what being true to ourselves is, when we don’t know? The chances are, when we’re pondering this kinda question, it’s BECAUSE we feel disconnected from ourselves. So how can we take steps to uncover how to be our ‘true’ selves, when we feel increasingly upside down, inside out and NOT ourselves, with each passing day?

Well that’s what this article is here to help you uncover :) the key signs to look out for that indicate you’re not being true to yourself, and what you can do to start changing that.

Sound good? Let’s cha-cha.

The signs you’re not being true to yourself

1. What used to bring you fulfilment in your work life, no longer does

I think that can be the most painful thing about this – try as you might, you can’t just ‘turn the enjoyment back on’.

When you’re an accomplished creative professional like yourself, it’s probably not about you having an unfulfilling, ‘dead end job’ that you want to break free from. You’ve worked your tail off to get where you are, doing what you’re great at, and in the most part, I’m guessing you’ve enjoyed it.

What it’s much more likely about, is you having a role or a business that met your needs for a time, maybe a long time, but you’ve developed an inescapable sense that you’ve just gone as far as you wanna go with it. Like the path’s just run out, and continuing on just doesn’t feel…*good*.

And here’s why:

Being the creative soul you are, what you do with your hands/your brain/your body/your whatever to make money – matters.

If you’re anything like me and the clients I work with, you’ve little to no interest in making money for making money’s sake. At least, not on a consistent basis. HOW you make your money and how GOOD you feel while making that money, is of utmost importance to you. So when your work life no longer delivers the fulfilment you need, when you no longer feel good about how you’re making money, that’s a klaxon-volume sign that you’re not being true to yourself.

2. You’re not up for doing the Things you used to enjoy outside of work

When you’re not being true to yourself and not allowing yourself to create what you know in your heart you want to create – it infiltrates! It doesn’t just let you compartmentalise and get off the hook from your creative call that easily – it’s heading straight to infiltrate the parts of your life you love most = your free time.

If it can disrupt those parts, it knows you might just listen up and pay attention to what needs to happen and what changes you need to make.

Whether these parts involve you hanging out with friends, spending time with family, spending quality time with yourself, practising your hobbies or taking trips and holidays; when none of them seem to scratch the happy-itch they used to, or you’ve zero motivation to follow through and do them, that’s a sure-fire sign you’re not being true to yourself.

3. You’re triggered by comparisonitis on the regular

When you’re creatively blocked or experiencing creative fatigue from not being true to yourself, comparisonitis can be a really prominent way for it to show up. And the simple reason for that is – you’re comparing yourself and feeling jealousy because you want what ‘they’ have. But you’ve either not allowed it for yourself, or you’ve not allowed it to be possible for you. AKA: Not being true to yourself

There’s no denying ‘creative blocks’ are part and parcel of leading a creative life. Experimenting and figuring out ways to encourage inspiration to strike (and strike consistently), is all part of the job.

But there’s a difference between a creative block on a particular project or challenge, and a persistent feeling of being creatively blocked, feeling creatively fatigued and feeling envy towards those who are creating what you’d truly love to create.

But I really don’t want you to frame this as a negative thing – your comparisonitis is doing you a favour! It’s highlighting with a neon highlighter pen what you DO want. It’s leaving you breadcrumbs, leading you towards a better understand of what being true to yourself looks like.

So yep, if comparisonitis is rife, that’s a sure-fire sign you’re not being true to yourself.

4. You’re taking your physical health for granted

One thing that I’ve learnt to be true, is that how you feel about yourself, is reflected in how you treat your body.

When you’re not being true to yourself, you unavoidably influence how you then feel about yourself. Because in the denial of your needs, what you’re demonstrating, is the belief that you’re not good enough, not worthy enough, not deserving enough to give yourself what you want or need. And when you hold those unaffectionate beliefs, it’s all too easy to treat your body with the same level of non-affection.

But when you’re in that place of feeling disconnected from yourself, you often don’t analyse things on that level, you just see and feel the outer effects. You see the opting for convenience and processed food, the choosing sofa time over workout time, and just generally putting your physical health at the bottom of your priorities.

So if you relate to feeling sluggish and sedentary far more than you can relate to feeling active and able, that’s a pretty sure-fire sign you’re not being true to yourself.

5. Your finances feel stretched

This is a kind of cumulative-effect of all of the above!

When you no longer enjoy the work that’s been able to make you money up until now – you’ll become less and less effective at getting out there to go make more of it, because energetically and instinctively, you don’t actually want it!

When you’re not enjoying your free time like you used to and you’re triggered by comparisonitis, it’s likely your spending habits will shift towards more ‘indulgent’ purchases for that endorphin hit to try and take the edge off the discomfort you’re feeling.

And when you’re taking your physical health for granted, the handiness of eating out and takeaways for convenience may be limiting how far your finances will go – all in all creating a delicious cocktail of financial contraction, which is a sure-fire sign that you’re not being true to yourself.

What you can do from here to create positive change

I firstly want to strongly urge you to not see any of these signs as inherently bad. In fact, they’re quite the opposite! They’re multiple manifestations and clues that are guiding you towards what your heart wants (and needs!) you to do. They’re all happening FOR you, not TO you.

While in the moment it may feel like a scary ‘unravelling’, I want to invite you to see them more as an exciting ‘unveiling’ instead. Because what is underneath it all, is the true you, and your true creative call ready to emerge – all eager and bursting to come out.

On a practical level, following your acknowledgment of these signs, what you can do from here to create positive change – is to mark yourself out of 10 for each sign. 1 being ‘This isn’t a problem for me’, through to 10 being ‘This is a huge problem for me’.

Once you have your five results, you will come away with a list of five different areas of focus (your work life, your personal life, your mindset, your health and your finances). Whichever scored the highest, wins! And that gets to be the area you work on first.

And by ‘work on’, I don’t necessarily mean do what you need to do to fix it and solve it overnight. I mean to work on bringing yourself down the scale; to take conscious action so these signs and symptoms become less of a problem for you, and by default, you being true to yourself becomes the natural, inevitable after effect.

If your lack of fulfilment in your work life has shown up as a huge problem for you, then you and I should defo hang out more ;) you can read more of my story and why I believe I’m the right person to help you, or you can find out more about how I might be able to help you recover your true creative potential, so you can go create what you wanted to create all along.

It’s time.