Creative currency is a concept I created for myself to give these very abstract feelings a measure that I could explain—both to myself—and to others as I needed to.
It’s a similar thing to “having capacity” or “the bandwidth” as people say, but for some reason that never felt like it captured it for me.
There are at least 4 components or four types of “dollars” that make up this creative currency:
Creative dollars. (Obviously.)
Energy dollars.
Brave dollars. (Hardest to earn, easiest to lose.)
Emotional dollars.
Knowing how our creative stores are going, (what are we rich in, what are we poor in) then empowers us to “budget” so to speak for our projects.
Plus, it also helps us to pinpoint why we can’t take on a project we otherwise would love to. We might have the creativity for it, the energy etc, but our brave dollars are being required of us elsewhere in our lives.
And of course, knowing how to ‘earn’ back our dollars can help us know where we need to focus next.
Sudden depletion = unexpected expenses
It’s also important to know there are times that we can have massive payments withdrawn from our creativity, energy, emotional or brave accounts, sometimes unexpectedly, and it can bring our balance back to zero so easily.
Rejection or criticism can take a toll, for example. Bad news, sickness, stuff of life—(getting h**ked anyone?!)—can all put our creative currency into “debt”.
I can absolutely say I felt that immediate bankruptcy of my my brave, creative, energy and emotional dollars all in one in the last couple of weeks after being hacked online.
I’m now needing to spend some time earning my brave dollars back especially. But in other areas too.
This is why we need to know not just where our ‘bank accounts’ are at, but also how to earn those dollars back and refill our stores…
Which is exactly what we look at in this episode.
This concept has been so helpful to me, so I’d love to know if it helps you too?
Ep 3: Creative currency