This article is an excerpt from a past monthly letter. If you enjoy this kind of grounding support, sign up to receive the monthly coaching package: it includes an article like this one, journaling prompts, creative practices, spiritual rituals and supportive tools to help you navigate your rebellious path as an artist or creative entrepreneur.

Is your desire for acceptance keepingyou from living your truth? If you're reading these lines, I can only assume you're free-spirited, nonconformist, atypical. Unconventional even. Maybe you've been rejected for what makes you different.

It may not have felt safe to be you before. Maybe you kept yourself small, maybe you hid. Squeezing yourself into a tiny box that left no room to breathe, becoming a diluted version of who you are. I did too. By doing your best trying to fit in, what you're actually doing is rejecting… yourself.

As artists, creatives and intuitives, we may be tempted to blend, when we’re meant to stand out. We’re meant to bring something new and different. If things stay the same, things stay the same… if we’re all the same, nothing changes, and nothing evolves. You have this beautiful opportunity to bring something new to the table and actually create change. This can be a gift when you stop letting it be a burden.

Often, our desire for acceptance is keeping us from living authentically, from creating the art we’re meant to create, from doing what we actually want to be doing… and ultimately, from making the impact we could make, if we were truly being ourselves. You may not fit in any box, and that's okay. Interesting conversations are held in the nuances, and art is created between the lines.

Guidance for you

Be patient with yourself as you go through this exercise, and bring extra compassion to this journaling session. Go slow. There are no rightor wrong answers, just the truth.

+ What is it about me that I don’t want other people to see?

+ What parts of myself do I believe other people will judge or reject?

+ If I had certainty that I’d be accepted for everything I am and everything I do, what would be different in my life right now?

+ Whose opinion do I want to consider and what kind of feedback is helpful?

+ What is it about that project or your business that I don’t want to change, and what parts of it am I open for feedback about?