Creative flow. Joyful productivity. Mindful motivation.

Usually, these are the topics I write about on my blog. But this week I’m mixing it up with a little storytelling. Focusing less on the science behind the peak performance state of creative flow. More on the art of cultivating a life that inspires you to wake up in the morning.

Why There’s a Feather in My Fig Tree

This year for my birthday, I carried my journal down to the riverside to watch one of my favorite things: geese.

Dozens of geese flock to the warm, shallows of the Ohio River. Spreading their wings in the sunshine, they rest their wings and transform into eating-and-pooping machines.

Their bodies pitch upwards just before landing in a wild flapping motion, hilariously honking the joy of their arrival.

If I were to get a tattoo, it would be a wild goose.

The effortless wayfinding in their homeward migration astounds me. For geese, belonging in a flock seems easy. Effortless. Together, they instinctively know where they are called home, and how to journey together.

“the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–”

Excerpt from Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

Sitting with the geese, I’ve recognized that I’m in the midst of a significant transition.

Since finishing my book, I’ve plunged into a creative vacuum.

Muse-Tracking

Us humans don’t usually hear a calling like geese, whose elders train the flock in migratory patterns. Humans are trackers.

We wayfind by tracking our Muse.

A “muse” refers to a source of inspiration that often feels like receiving inner guidance or wisdom.

While I usually write about performance psychology, cultivating a life that inspires you to wake up in the morning often includes “Muse-tracking,” described as spiritual creativity by writer Elizabeth Gilbert.

(The etymology of “Muse” is multifaceted, including to will, to meditate, to seek after. This ancient concept traces back to the opening invocation in the Iliad, where Homer asks the goddess muse to ‘sing’ the poem.)

To muse is sacred: a practice of seeking, listening, and ultimately receiving creative inspiration.

In between creative projects, anxiety and depression can creep into my being with the keen sense that my Muse has abandoned me. Projects and activities that used to be full of joy become barren.

Lack of food prompts geese to point their beaks upward and call their flock to migrate. My feeling of inner emptiness sans my muse called me to celebrate my birthday with geese. And start the process of reclaiming Creative Flow by tracking my muse.

Healing from Creative Burnout

One movie I can’t watch with dry eyes is My Octopus Teacher.

In the documentary, Filmmaker Craig Foster wonders, Is it possible to track an octopus on the floor of an Atlantic ocean kelp forest?

Accidentally, he frightens an octopus so much so that she abandons her habitual den altogether.

He knew she’d find a new den, but would he be able to track down “octopus tracks” on the Atlantic ocean floor?

He begins believing the task impossible. Octopi are mollusks without protection from a shell; they are master shapeshifters. Hiding is their evolutionary advantage. He didn’t even know what to look for, or where to start.

He watches for tiny clues imperceptible to the naked eye, like holes in shells of octopi prey and tentacle sucker marks on kelp leaves.

Once he started, it only took him about a week to track her new den. And then, the octopus appeared.

Healing from burnout is not linear. There isn’t one perfect routine or ‘prescription’ to follow.

It’s more like tracking through the Atlantic ocean to find an octopus that fits in the palm of your hand.

When you’re feeling burnout, stop forcing. Stop adding more, which is what hustle culture tells you to do. Stop filling your bucket to the brim.

Instead, track your muse. Listen to the days, months, and years you’ve just lived.

Look to your life for clues, even if it’s almost imperceptible:

• What does your heart dream of doing?
• What have been the most meaningful moments in your life to date?
• Is anything giving you the tiniest sense of joy, hope, peace or love?
• Where have you felt alive? Where did you deny yourself?

By writing quick reflections – no self-editing allowed – whatever is on your heart and mind, you can start to see the tracks of creative flow in your life.

A regular self-reflection process helps you to see tracks that are, otherwise hidden and imperceptible inside of your beautiful, creative brain.

Wayfinding My Creative Flow

2025 is a milestone year. Professionally, I’m in a liminal transition after publishing The Joyful Flow Formula. Personally, age is gently nudging the door closed on my lifelong dream of being a young mother to a large family.

This year, for my birthday, I’m gifting myself time and space to track my muse.

Yes, I still spend time doing flow-focus work every day, like I teach in the Joyful Flow Formula. But I’m also looking ahead to the horizon, to uncover what the next 5-10 years might bring.

This is the same creative process I did back in…

2012, when I worked up the courage to take a night class at Julliard and audition for singing gigs nights and weekends.

2019, when sinus surgery irreparably stopped my singing and I heard a very small voice whisper that after 4 years of therapy, my marriage was irreparable. 2022, when I started writing poems to heal from my divorce, and then received the idea for The Joyful Flow Formula.

One week before my birthday, a girlfriend and I spent a day off-grid, where I started tracking my muse by returning to these spiritual creativity practices:

A 5-Year Life Vision: Before committing years to a goal, capture, doing the best you can with where you are now, your life vision. I’ve designed one, dedicated journal to collect and safeguard the mindsets, hopes, and dreams that I believe to be true in every area of my life. Regularly updating and reviewing my life vision gives me a litmus test for keeping important life decisions aligned with my deepest values and sense of purpose.

The Artists Way: For many entrepreneurs, innovators, and creators, this process is best captured in the process of 12-week reflection from The Artist’s Way. Author Julia Cameron encourages morning journaling as a way to heal burnout. Morning pages are, in essence, a way of tracking your own joy bursts. your sense of purpose. your creative flow.

Cameron also encourages ‘artist dates,’ aka solo mini-adventures outside your routine. (Take a peek at my recent artist dates here.)

Two-Way Prayer: Stemming from the Oxford Tradition, two-way prayer entail 1) asking a question to God, the Creator, Love, Inner Wisdom and 2) channeling a response as if your spiritual guide is speaking to you.

I discovered this tradition when leading an adult spiritual education forum in 2019, and realized that I’ve been practicing two-way prayer intuitively since childhood. It’s a beautiful muse-tracking method that’s been integrated into 12-step addiction recovery programs. Elizabeth Gilbert’s Letters from Love shares courageous real-life letters for inspiration and community.

Flow-Priming Prompts: The Present & Productive Planner Journal includes flow-priming prompts that support muse-tracking with a simplified reflection process (for those of us who don’t always have time and energy to linger in a focused journaling habit).

In 2-5 minutes daily, the prompts compassionately nudge you to jot down what’s on your heart. It’s perfectly normal to repeat the same answers, but over time ‘tracks’ will emerge: patterns, ideas that return over and over again, that want to bubble up to the surface from your subconscious.

I developed this muse-tracking method as a quick inner ‘check-in’ to do while crammed in between passer-byers on the subway, in between meetings, or other ‘nooks’ in a busy day.

Now that I have more spaciousness in my schedule, I love using it as part of my work wind-down ritual to mentally ‘close’ the workday and avoid workstress from running through my brain when I’m trying to fall asleep.

My Request for You

I’m quietly discerning ways to better support this community during the muse-tracking phase of finding Creative Flow.

Group support is an integral part of muse-tracking, because discerning a new purpose is itself a deeply creative act.

You might be in a season of creative burnout if you’re…

• Completely repelled by goal-setting
• Not sure what self-care means anymore
• Caretaking so much that you’re desperate for rest
• Repeatedly procrastinating worthy, life-giving projects on your to-do list

If you’re interested in learning more, let me know. Part of Creative Flow tracking is coming together with a group.

My book The Joyful Flow Formula is dedicated to helping freelancers, entrepreneurs, and busy professionals unlock creative flow.

But what if you’re SO burnt out that the thought of a goal makes you want to bury your head under the covers?

You’re not broken. There’s nothing wrong with you. And you don’t have to do it alone.

Muse-tracking is a very real, very ancient, very normal part of the process.

If you, dear friend, are approaching or in the middle of creative burnout, I’d love to have a conversation and listen to your experience.