Career Arcana, The Empress: Protecting your creativity in times of uncertainty
I am writing to you on the other end (maybe) of a creative block. Creative blocks come in many sizes and shapes, have any number of potential reasons for popping up and can stick around for an indefinite amount of time. As a person who chose a creative career, these periods where it’s difficult to come by inspiration can be extremely inconvenient and honestly pretty exhausting.
Not to go all Carrie Bradshaw on you, but the last few months of feeling creatively spent got me thinking: what are the conditions that best support a creative mind? Are there things to look out for and ways we can help ourselves when we feel overwhelmed or stuck in a rut? Completely coincidentally, The Empress is the next card in the Career Tarot series, and represents the act of creation and the fertile conditions from which we productively flourish.
In ‘Imagine: How Creativity Works’, Jonah Lehrer examines the neuroscience and brain conditions that precede a creative burst, an ‘ah-hah’ moment or period of inspired thinking:
“What is this predictive brain signal? The essential element is a steady rhythm of alpha waves emanating from the right hemisphere. While the precise function of alpha waves remains mysterious, they’re closely associated with relaxing activities such as taking a warm shower.”
Leher goes on to explain that when we are in an active, tense, or focused state, our attention is fixated externally on whatever it is we’re trying to accomplish, hindering our ability to make connections between disparate pieces of information. When we’re in a relaxed or meditative state, however, our attention focuses internally and gives our brains time to form connections between the information we’ve taken in and knit together pieces we may have overlooked before. Eureka.
Professionally, a lot of us are in a challenging moment where layoffs have either thrown us into the job hunt in an increasingly dicey market, or left us wondering how safe we are in our current roles. Hanging out on the bottom rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is, what I would imagine in our Empress’ estimation, not ideal for feeling inspired or finding the energy to solve problems creatively.
The natural urge and perhaps the most logical reaction in this climate might be to dig in and work harder than ever — after all, we have to prove our worth. Putting in long hours, writing long docs and being ever-available on Slack are ways to signal to higher ups that we’re here, we’re dedicated and we’re engaged. What happens if we take the Empress’ lesson as a challenge to approach this moment from the opposite direction: with compassion and understanding that we are most valuable to ourselves and those around us when we have the mental space to push ideas forward instead of ruminating in circles on what’s already in front of us.
In the Rider Waite Smith deck, our Empress is at ease. She is lounging. She is sitting near a forest in a field of wheat with a babbling brook at her feet. She is confident in her ability to produce, and open to inspiration for the moment it finds her. While there are very real circumstances that get in the way of finding this type of peace amidst crisis, the Empress is here to give you the license to carve out the time to nourish your body and brain. It may seem counterintuitive, but could make all the difference ✨
