It’s supposed to be helpful, enticing, motivating, assuring…even reassuring…permissive…encouraging, but when I hear phrases flipped out to me like “Trust Your Gut” or “Go with your Instinct” or “Follow Your Bliss,” I sometimes feel more paralyzed and panicked than empowered.
Why?
When I listen for what my gut says, or try to contemplate my “bliss”…even ask what that might be, sometimes nothing comes back. It’s like calling down a well or into a canyon without reverb, echo or call back. Spooky. Quiet spooky. Anybody-home?-spooky. And that’s inside me. Feels like there’s nothing there. 

I get worried that I’m missing an important piece that everyone else has. That I’ll be left behind or that I am missing something or missing out on something….it’s a dramatic sort of panic, “This is my life and what I need to be DOING WITH MY LIFE, FOREVERMORE.”...and oh-BTW, I need to know and decide immediately, right now, instantly!~ (Can you hear the pitch and panic escalating?)
Does this ever happen to you?

Drama Be Damned...or Maybe It's Not How It Seems...or Feels
It’s easy to forget that not everyone is in the same season….that my path may be in a quiet stretch right now. That it’s not wrong, it’s just quiet. Worry comes when I begin to believe that quiet inside equals nothing inside. It doesn’t.

Quiet can also mean peaceful, resting…healing, a sort of passing through. It is a comfort to think of creativity and ideas and passion as just napping….or, for longer seasons, hibernating. 
 
And my biggest challenge when my gut isn’t singing out about what it wants or what is next or what is right, (and it seems like everyone else’s gut is rapturous and ON) is accepting it. Waking a sleeping bear can bring  severe consequences: a bear sleeps when it’s time to sleep and for however long it needs to, to get rested and ready for the next season of Spring.

Same goes for me and my bliss, instinct, gut – can’t force it out of quiet time. But I can check in and see if it’s still sleeping, and respect it’s need for quiet if it’s not speaking up.

PLUS! Maybe I don't need to believe everything I think. Every feeling of doubt or concern that may come up is not a hard, cold fact.

What do I DO about it? What are the actions I take?
I say, “Okay. You’re sleeping. You must really need it. When you wake up, creative instinct, I will be right over here.” And I get really gentle with myself in that acceptance. It's helpful to frequently repeat this belief....as feelings do tend to come up.

Then, I find something else to do. And trust that when my creativity-bliss-instinct wakes up, it’ll let me know, and it’ll know where to find me. This is exactly what's happened everytime I've experienced dormancy in my creative nature.