Using creativity to enhance your professional life.

I smile as I write this post. I remember this time last year when  a new client contacted me. I thought it was strange that someone insisted on beginning coaching in the week between Christmas and New Year.

My client Isabel* (not her real name but she gave me permission to tell her story)  is a medical doctor and she had been practicing for a few years. She was in her mid thirties, loved being single and enjoyed all the perks her wonderful life offered her. She contacted me because she was very unhappy.

Her whole life she had pursued her educational goals. The entire time she was in school, she sacrificed and cut corners. She deprived herself of almost everything she wanted as she focused solely on her successful future. From the time she was a little girl, she wanted to be doctor and help women deliver babies. She had grown up on a farm in the Midwest and loved watching her grandfather’s horses and cows give birth.

Now, she ached for something but she did not know what it was.

When we first stared coaching, I asked a lot of questions to get to know her and allow her story to surface. Very soon, she started telling me how much she looked forward to her sessions with me. Then one day she confessed that she felt relaxed talking to me because I had no expectations of her but for her to go inside herself and discover herself. This was a new experience to her.

She said that she felt that her daily requirement was for her to live up to others expectations of her and that she no longer knew who she was or what she wanted.

We worked on reconnecting her to the beauty of her original dream of helping and being part of the birthing process. She recognized that this was her desire to connect with life and its initial process. When I asked her how she could duplicate this process in other areas of her life, she began to explore different ways of expressing the initial stages of life in other areas of her life. She picked up gardening and tried cooking new recipes.

As she made the effort to re-connect with the feelings of her original passion, she remembered that when she was in medical school, she loved drawing in anatomy class. She made the connection that she started drawing things before she could touch them or feel them in the human body. Drawing preceded exploration for her. Drawing ignited the spark of creativity that fueled her passion for the human birthing process.

Over the next few months, she started taking art classes again and now spends her free time drawing her perspective of the birthing process. She made the decision to work less hours to create more space in her life for this passion.

I got very emotional on one of our recent calls because she told me that she had been concerned about a client of hers who was having a difficult pregnancy. One night, when she could not sleep and she realized that the impending labor of her patient was on her mind and she could not shake it, she decided to draw the outcome of what she wanted.

She began to draw the image of the pregnant mom on her bed, legs in stirrup and as she drew the head of the baby coming out of the mom, she stopped drawing. She said she just stayed there with a lot of love in her heart and directed it towards the baby and the mother. She said she practiced a lot of deep breathing at this place of the intersection of her art and her patient care. In a few minutes, she felt her emotions and thoughts move from concern to acceptance of any outcome.

She never finished the painting.

She went off to bed and woke up the next morning and discovered her client was in labor. She delivered the baby in no time with no complications and with an ethereal smile on her face the entire time.

When she called me, she was ecstatic. Somewhere in her, she felt she influenced that birth in a positive way but she was not quite sure how. She was convinced she had added a new layer to her practice.

Science may not be able to prove that she did anything special but what I do know is that my client is a lot happier with this approach to her practice. She loves what she does as she reconnects with the birth of little ones. I believe that she aligned her professional and personal energy with a positive outcome and she got what she aligned with.

The bottom line is that she is experiencing more job satisfaction.

How can you connect with your original passions?

How can you include your own creative skill in your work in a unique way?

For me, I have always enjoyed writing. I did not get much of a chance to do that as a real estate attorney. Now, as a coach, I plot out all my research and teaching tools in writing before I ever use them. I love writing blog posts like this one.

I find that the more I write, the more sensitive I am to my intuition and inner knowing. I experience more feelings of contentment and happiness when I write.

What about you?