Flow State Business

What To Do When You’ve Lost the Spark to Create (and Still Need to Sell)

• Ruby Lee

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Ever hit that wall where you feel like your creativity’s just… gone? That’s been me lately.

From temple tunnels in Kyoto to crowded trains in Tokyo, I share what this trip through Japan has shown me about creative rebirth, flow state, and why your spark never actually leaves - it just needs more oxygen.


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 Hello guys. Welcome to a new episode. I am actually recording this from my hotel room in Hiroshima, Japan. And I have just, I've got so much that I wanna share with you about. This trip away. I am so excited about our topic today because I think it's really gonna help you. I personally had a breakthrough here. In one of the Japanese temples about this very topic, so a lot to impart, but if you can hear that the volume or it kind of sounds like I'm whispering.

It sort of is. It's so weird because. I am in a hotel room. It is absolutely beautiful. We booked two rooms, so it's me, my husband, and my 9-year-old son traveling. At the moment, we've booked two adjoining hotel rooms because if you've ever been to Japan, you'll know that the hotel rooms literally are the size of a wardrobe.

So we knew that we needed more space and it feels really bougie. It's kind of like a little mini suite that we've got now, but I do have a neighbor on the other side of me, and in Japan, the culture is very much this expectation of quiet, you know, quietness. You have to stay somewhat silent in the indoor spaces, which I.

Oh, I find really difficult as an Australian, but anyhow, it's all good. We're respecting the culture. It's like as soon as you are in a taxi, in the train, in the bus, in a hotel, it's all hush hush and silence. So I will also add context to this. It is 7:00 AM in the morning, so I knew that I wanted to get up fresh and record something, but I'm guessing a lot of people were still potentially asleep.

So. Anyhow, explaining the sound quality here, but I do have so many fun things to talk to you all about today. And in particular, I wanna discuss this idea of what happens when you lose your creative spark, but your business absolutely still needs you to show up for it. This means you don't have a creative social media team, you don't have someone making content for you.

It's literally landing with you. And it's a very frustrating frequency to be on. You know, you might have burnt really bright at the start of this year, and as the year has continued on, you're starting to feel like everything is just the same. Same. You're starting to feel like you are recycling the same message.

You're starting to feel like, okay, you know, why did it work for me at the start of this year, but it's not working for me. Towards the end of this year, you feel like your content just isn't landing. And whatever you are saying, you are recycling, you know, old work that did really, really well, but for whatever reason, you are feeling so insanely invisible online.

Every single entrepreneur and personal brand has felt this energy. No matter what you're telling yourself that nobody else is feeling this. You know, it could be some entrepreneur that you're following online or maybe you are following my content. You are thinking, you know, why does it feel like everything Ruby puts out, it's so creative and it's so on point and she knows exactly what to say, guys.

No, that is not the truth. There are days where I literally have nothing to post. Now, in one sense, it's worked for me because I'm only posting three or four days to my feed a week and a little bit less now because I'm traveling for a few weeks. And that's totally cool. But at the same time, the reason why I've been posting less whilst traveling is because I need to reignite my creative spark, and we're gonna go there because.

Something really profound has happened to me in one of the temples in Kyoto, which I'll go into some, uh, detail about in just a second. But I wanna let you know first and foremost that I have been in this frequency of I need to make some stuff online. I need to. Hopefully help people feel inspired and connected to my content, but I'm not feeling inspired and connected to my own content.

So how is it supposed to reach others? How is it supposed to sell? You know, we're not talking about sales today, but I've had a lot of episodes talking about the energy of selling and the energy of sales. The fact of the matter is that you still need to show up for your company, for your brand, and for your business.

So I wanna share some aspects about how I found my own way back. And you know, funny enough, this entire few weeks where I've been away is where the breakthrough has happened. It's a timeless reminder for entrepreneurs and business owners that your breakthrough around content, creativity, creativity in general, being one of the major flow triggers, and I've studied flow state for the better part of almost four years now.

Creativity is one of the biggest flow triggers that the creator, or they call him the grandfather of flow talks about, which is often overlooked as this sort of like, oh, nice to have thing. Wouldn't it be great to have creative time and get your pencils out and get your paintbrushes out and just, you know, draw, draw, draw.

It's not that at all without creativity, you are literally without one of the major flow triggers that brings on all of that amazing, you know, inspired action, messy action, creative flow, that sort of zest that entrepreneurs have. So I wanna share something with you, which was really, really spiritually profound, but also incredibly tangible that I really just, oh, I have to put it somewhere on the internet, so bear with me as I share my little story.

So we've been traveling through Japan, uh, now as of this recording for just past a week. And I traveled through Tokyo, which don't come for me. I did not enjoy my time in Tokyo whatsoever. Could not wait to get out of that city. Um, and then we moved from Tokyo to Kyoto. Now Kyoto is so lovely. It's south of Tokyo, but it is still.

Incredibly packed. Like I have not seen crowds like this in any other country I've been to, and I've been to over 40 countries now. This is just new levels of Wow, like stampede, crowd levels. And yes, I did go to a lot of the tourist sites, as you would do, and one of the major tourist sites that I went to was a temple.

I'm gonna mess up the name, but it's called Zora. If you've been on Instagram, or even if you go onto, you know, I don't know, YouTube shorts and you type that in or you go to like it, it's called like the Temple of a Thousand Blessings. Or you know, basically you'll see like people running through these like red, orangey red gates called Torries.

That's that temple, and this experience was so. Incredibly beautiful. There was actually this experience there called the womb stone, and I didn't see it. My 9-year-old son saw it and he's like, mom, we need to go into the womb stone. And basically what it is, it's a tunnel under the temple that symbolizes rebirth.

Now he read the little English brochure. And was so convicted to his soul that he needed to go through this tunnel. And I said, why do you, why do you need to have a rebirth, Teddy? Like, your life is amazing. And he goes, no, it's about it getting better and it's about me letting go of some things that happen.

You know, he's so cute. Like in soccer this year, his confidence levels. And then I, my initial reaction was, no, no, we don't need to go into that. And Michael was out, like, he was just like, Nope, I don't wanna line up. I don't wanna go into that. Anyway, uh, Teddy was so into it that I'm like, how can I say no, let's do it.

And the experience basically is you step into total darkness. So for all of you guys who are claustrophobic, this is likely not gonna be the experience for you, although it really pushes you to the limit. Like, I'm not claustrophobic, why kind? Can't I say that word? I'm not claustrophobic. However, I felt it.

So as you're going into this tiny tunnel, which by the way is like you have to sort of crash down. And you know, you are holding onto like a, I don't know, like a little sort of barricade, no, that's not the right word. You're basically holding onto this thing that leads you through the tunnel and you are, there's no light, there's absolutely no sound.

You just have one hand tracing the wall until you finally find a glowing stone in the center. Now you are walking through this tunnel. It takes about two minutes, but it feels like. Forever. Forever. And as I was sort of crouching through that black pitch tunnel and then crawling at times because it gets, you know, smaller and smaller, it actually just this realization and this spiritual pull just hit me into my soul.

There was something so beautiful and I just started tearing up. I started to feel this beautiful, warm. Like warmth in my heart, it was this heart space energy. And you know, it was really beautiful because the way that the Japanese describe this experience is that you are going through your mother's room again, and you are twisting and turning your way through until you are reborn into the light.

And as I was crawling through the tunnel, I was like, this is what creative rebirth energy feels like. Think about it. You don't see where you are going as you are thinking about what to post or you're thinking about what to write or you're thinking about what to say like, I am now. I have no idea where this episode's gonna lead.

I'm just speaking for my soul here. But you trust something so much deeper that pulls you forward and there's no going back. It was actually one stage where I thought Teddy was sort of freaking out a bit and I said, mate, do you wanna go back? And he's like, no, we have to go forward. That's the only way out.

And isn't that so true for so much? But if you are in that creative stuckness, there's only the way forward. Stop looking back. Stop looking back at, oh, this used to work. Or stop looking back at, oh, in 2021, you know, that version of me was so much more alive, so much more inspired. It's not working for you.

You have to move forward even through the darkness. So as soon as I went to this certain part of the tunnel, I could see this beautiful stone. It was like this gray stone and it had inscription of it on the top of it, and there was a very subtle yellow glow over the top of the stone. And the idea is that you put your right hand on the stone and you make a wish.

One wish was the instruction and a wish I did. It was a very specific wish that I had and it was. So beautiful because by the time I got there, I was half relieved that we were almost the way out, but also half proud of myself for going through the darkness. You know, it was just this whole spiritual experience.

So cute. And then Teddy did his and oh my God. It was such a bonding experience. And one thing that really, really came to me was as soon as I touched that glowing stone, I realized that I had not lost my spark. I had just been trying to recreate old versions of it, and sometimes the thing that feels gone inverted, commas, air quotes, gone, isn't creativity, but it's your familiar pattern of creating something that's keeping you feeling really stuck.

Okay, so let me talk about this in a more science way. So, as you know, I've studied flow science for the last four years. There is science behind the dip of creativity. So in the science, it's in flow science in particular, it's actually called the struggle phase. So it's the part of your flow cycle, not your period cycle ladies, but your flow energetic cycle where your brain feels really foggy.

It really feels like all of your ideas have completely dried up and nothing is clicking. Put your hand up. I can't see you, but I can feel you if that's you right now. You know, foggy ideas, procrastination station ideas are just literally not there. You might get little sparks of it here and there, and then by the time you sit down to actually create it, it's gone.

So here's the good news. The struggle phase always precedes the release phase. So as I'm going through this. Little tunnel rebirth experience. I was struggling. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is, this is, I wanna get out of here. I don't wanna be in here. This is super scary. This is really dark. I don't feel safe.

All these things had come up, you know, energetically for me, as soon as I saw the little glow, a little glow represents a little bit of an idea, a little bit of a ping, a little bit of something to give you hope. You feel a sense of release. You feel a sense of relief, and then. After the release phase comes flow state.

Now the problem is, I'm gonna guess a lot of you right now are subconsciously or also very consciously quitting. Halfway through the struggle, you are quitting through the idea of remodeling your business. You're quitting through the idea of creating an Evergreen Instagram account. You're quitting through the idea of learning a new tech like ManyChat.

You're quitting through the idea. Of actually showing up more consistently, and that's a very real thing. I'm not calling you out per se, but I am because this is where you start doubting your divine path instead of leaning into recalibration. So when you are in this dip, you don't need to do nothing. You need to rest strategically.

Okay. If you are resting and doing nothing and numbing out scrolling on social media or whatever it is that you're doing, you know, watching three days worth of Netflix in a series that you didn't even know you needed in your life. Sure we have those days. I understand. But that is not strategic resting, that is numbing out.

That is literally pulling back from the main pathway because you've in some way told yourself, I'm over. It's over. The business is over. Nobody wants this. I want you to wake up and move your focus somewhere new, somewhere different, somewhere that's outside of your norm, somewhere that is pushing your limit, somewhere that is expansive without this emotional weight attached to it, around what it needs to become.

And this can be really simple things. They can be simple things. I've talked about this before inside of my flow State Masterminds, flow state business. If you've ever taken that course, I've talked about this so much, like I've given a ton of ideas. Even something like instead of reaching for your phone, go and buy yourself a paint by numbers and do a little paint by numbers section for three days.

I promise you it's going to help you. Refocus and calm your mind. It's gonna calm your nervous system. I wanna talk about what other things have actually really helped me reignite my own spark. And these are gonna be really tangible, so it's not just, oh, meditate and manifest and journal, which is all, everything that I do anyway.

Now that it's so habitual, I don't even realize I'm doing it. Like, you know, on all the speed trains and the bullet trains. Here, I'm pulling out my journal and I'm writing about, you know, all the things that I'm so grateful for. I'm writing about who I am, who I be, but I'm talking about things that spark creativity in your business that is spiritual health 1 0 1.

You need to still have your spiritual rituals and your practices, but this is now, how do you think outside of the box, how do you expand out of this creative slump that you've. You didn't even realize you were in, but you are in. So number one, I want you to get curious about creativity outside of your industry.

So do this is, this is the big piece of advice. And I see entrepreneurs who are super creative do this over and over again, and they do it really well. They do not scroll their own niche. They do not scroll their own industry because guess what that does? It gets you straight into the comparisonitis energy.

Am I right? As soon as you start looking at, this person's doing what I wanna do, this person's saying what I should have said, it's just muddy, gross, yuck energy. So this is why my advice is when you're getting curious about creativity, it needs to be outside of your industry. I want you to look at, for example, and obviously a lot of these examples, it might be your industry, but let's throw some out there.

I want you to look at how music artists drop their launches and their albums. Obviously, it goes without saying, biggest artists of the last decade come for me, if you will. Taylor Swift has just dropped her brand new album, which I'm obsessed with and I've listened to over and over again. I'm watching how Taylor has created worlds around her work and how she is launching and dropping these Easter eggs and how she is putting herself out there.

And then what she does post-launch, you know, she's on all the talk shows, so our equivalent might be getting on podcasts, talking about, you know, this new offer that's out there, sharing your work with the world, watch how other artists do it. Or another aspect is, you know, how up and coming athletes might be building hype before a big match and what they're doing, what their teams are doing to promote themselves.

You know, you know, I'm a major tennis fan. I love it. True fan. And a lot of tennis players now have their own YouTube channels. I follow a lot of them and. Even, um, a sinner, for example, he's got his own YouTube channel and before a game he was cooking pasta and I was watching his little cooking show, but he's talking about preparation for his next big match.

Love it. I want you to look at how chefs, fashion designers, authors, how they express themselves when their art is out there in the world. Now, you are not copying, that's not the energy that I'm asking you to look for. I want you to remember how creativity moves universally. I'm surrounded by advertising here in Japan.

It is nonstop and it is quite literally an overload of sensory things right now. Can't even get my words out. I was sort of joking to someone who DMed me on Instagram that I feel like all three of us, we have to psych ourselves up and have a full blown mindset talk. To get out of our hotel and to step into the real world that is out there, whichever big city we're in.

Even Hiroshima at the moment is so packed and so busy, and I'm like, oh my God. But as soon as you step out, there's advertising, there's billboards, there's bright lights, there's stuff on taxis, there's stuff on the floor, there's stuff on the wall. Like you do not escape it. And that is like real life social media.

You're scrolling and you're scrolling. You're looking for something, and it's like you're searching for something more and you're searching for this creativity, you know, in your own little bubble, move outside of the bubble. Okay, the second thing I wanna go to here is we've talked about looking outside of yourself.

The second thing, which I will argue is more important by far, is looking inside of yourself. If you are constantly looking outwards. For creative expression, what's so and so doing to make their Instagram feed look so great? What did so and so do to go viral on YouTube? What are the trends? What's the data saying?

You know the drill, but you have not once today or even this week, sat with yourself in silence and allowed yourself to take three inhales and three exhales. Set the timer if you must, for three minutes and just be, listen to your breath, listen to your heartbeat. Connect to the miracle that is you. That is life, that is energy, that is presence, and that's it.

Nothing else. I don't want you to spend those three minutes trying to come up with your next post idea. That is all that it is. Finding your inner center, your sacred force field, reinforcing that sacred force field, I promise you, ideas come through clearer, faster, better, and more unique than ever. Number three, we need to switch up your environment.

I will say this again and again to my clients, and especially to those of you who are creatures of habit, which I definitely feel like I have become. Year on year. I do love just having a home office. There were, there was a time seven years ago where I would say quite openly, I don't believe in home offices Now, I love a home office.

I do. But you have to change your environment to change your brain. So change up your home office. Switch up where your desk is facing. If you look into Feng shui, have a look at, you know, where it's facing for creativity and ideas. Clean your crystals. Switch up where your books are. Sit at the dining table for this week alone.

That's it. Travel, and if you can't travel, walk a different pathway to your favorite coffee shop. Work from a new cafe, sit somewhere that makes you feel like a different version of you. That's how you can prime your mind for novelty. Novelty is creativity's love language. Novelty means something new and exciting and different, which is why even though you know, we've full on been struggle sounding with Japan and it is not an easy destination to come to.

I, I have had many discussions with a lot of you on Instagram who have said, thank you for showing the real side to traveling Japan. A lot of my clients and friends are very seasoned travelers, and we've all equally really struggled with navigating through Japan's tourism and just the way of traveling.

Even the trains, even buying tickets, even all the things like, yes, there's Google Translate, but things move so fast and you are dealing with massive onslaught of crowds. That as you're moving through public spaces, you have to make decisions really quickly. You can't just stand there trying to find your Google Translate.

But part of this is novelty and it is challenging, but it is helping awaken a part of my spirit, my mind, my soul, my body to something so new and so exciting. That's the best. Okay, so I hope that this has really helped you think about ways that you can wake yourself up. I think the main problem that a lot of you are experiencing right now is within the creativity slump discussion that we're having is numbing yourself out, and whether that's with social media, whether that's with tv, whether that's just with blankness, whether that's just with overeating, things like that.

Give yourself the grace to see it for what it is, but change one aspect of it today. Any of the suggestions that I've left for you inside of this episode, pull inspiration from the unexpected corners of your mind. Pull inspiration from the unexpected corners of your town. Just drive somewhere different.

Pick somewhere 20 minutes away that you've not been to for some time, and go there. Catch a train to a new station and explore a cafe. Just let in new energy. Okay, let in new energy and play the game differently. That's all your soul and your spirit's asking for, because creativity isn't something that you can ever lose.

I really want you to know that it's something that evolves and it's something that if you don't evolve with it, it starts to feel really heavy and all it's doing is saying, Hey, come on over here. Come with us. It's a new version of you. You've evolved, you've changed. You know, that moment in the temple. It really reminded me that creation is never about forcing EV anything, even forcing consistency, which I bang on about a lot.

It's not about that, but it's about remembering how to be alive to the world again, like when was the last time you really felt alive? Some of the times that I really think about that's made me feel alive is. Swimming in a fucking cold ocean and just coming out of the water and just screaming 'cause it's so damn cold.

You know that feeling? I'm like, whoa, okay guys. I can't scream the hotel room. Oh my gosh. But you do not have to wait for inspiration to return. You can build your own amazing environment where it has literally no choice but to find you. And I can feel it like this current feeling that I have right now, I'm not planning on working so much, although this week I've got a couple of calls.

I've got my mastermind call. I'll still be in Japan. I'm actually going to Korea soon too, which is so exciting. I'm more excited about Korea than Japan, so I'll definitely have to report back on that. My next episode will be from Korea, but I'm just, I feel almost like I journaled on this yesterday that all of my creativity, if it's coming out in like.

Drips like golden drips from this creativity tap. And it's filling up and it's filling up and there's this sort of like damn door that's holding it all in. And I love that because when the timing's right, that door is just gonna open and it's just gonna flood into my world and I'm not rushing it. And I think I've just come to this place in this, an understanding of entrepreneurship and running a business that.

Anytime you try and force something into life, you are putting yourself into so much strife and you are leading yourself directly into the place that you don't wanna go, which is fear filled, which is just feeling extremely, you know that tightness in your chest, extremely uncomfortable, allow the flow to be the leader of your life.

And I just really hope that in some way, if you've been in the dark lately, wondering where your spark went. You are not lost, okay? Maybe you just need to do a little rebirth process too. And when you step out of it, you are gonna realize that the spark has never left you. You just needed to give it more oxygen because you are cramping your own creativity right now.

So my loves, I hope that this episode really spoke to you. I'm gonna go down and enjoy my lovely hotel breakfast and Japanese breakfast is. Very sweet. So hopefully I'll find something more savory. 'cause I'm definitely a more savory breakfast gal, but there's just a lot of cakes and a lot of sweet things.

Like even their steaks are sweet. But you know, if you go to a Wagyu, a restaurant, I'm going on a tangent here, but we've been to a Wagyu restaurant and they come out with like all the sauces, like little dip sauces, and every single sauce is sugary and sweet. So I'm just eating the Wagyu like raw dog.

Love it. Um. Anyhow, I'm going on a major tangent. I'm gonna enjoy the rest of my time in Japan. I hope you are having a wonderful, wonderful day, and if this did speak to you, I'd love for you to come on over to Instagram. My handle is Ruby Lee, and tell me what you're doing this week to reawaken your creativity.

Check out the show notes below for any of the options that might be speaking to you right now, and I will see you in the next episode. I'll be in Korea. Woo-hoo. Okay, big love. See you guys.