Why Owning Your Style Is The Best Strategy
The other day, I shared how I had been struggling since my return to England, and it’s for a multitude of reasons, but I think it’s largely because of a shift in language.
Let me explain what I mean.
Before I left, I told people (including you all) that I’d packed up my house and was off on a trip with zero clue what I would do on my return. It felt exciting. And was met with a similar energy, too.
“That’s so fun!”
“You have so many options!”
“Who knows where you will end up?”
“Anything could happen!”
“You could meet your soulmate!!!!”
I was fully rooted in the expansion that the possibility of the unknown holds.
Now that I’m home, though, something has shifted. The questions have gone from future tense (filled with optimism and hope for what lies ahead) to the present day (with an undercurrent of fear, instead).
“So, what are you gonna do now?”
I feel like I’ve gone from a world of possibility to one where my options are limited to what makes most sense and is most likely to work. And I’d be lying if I said I haven’t spiralled with that. Because honestly? I have no clue how to answer that question. And it’s not just that question that is spinning me out.
I can see this reflected within my creative process, too.
When I was away, every idea I had was infused with hope. I got to be fully in the visionary energy, where nothing needed to make logistical sense; it could exist purely as potential. And that energy serves as a breeding ground for the best ideas, sky's-the-limit thinking, and those dreams that feel too big to be yours.
Coming “back to the real world”, that thinking tends to shrink, though.
(side note: I loathe this saying because if visiting places that enhance living a life in nature, with community and connected to the present isn’t “real”, then wtf is? Is this stimulation of a rat race supposed to be more “real”? Nope, sorry, don’t buy it).
When you’re back in your hometown, where the world feels a little smaller, a little more suffocating, suddenly those big ideas feel silly. Honestly, the doubt has crept into my bones and stifled the expressions that were begging to be brought to life in Costa Rica. The creative energy that encapsulated me there, feels like it's disappearing out of my grasp here.
And I needed to record this week's Podcast with Australian Artist Cass Deller to remind me what on earth I’m doing it all for.
From the moment Cass found her way to my screen, I was in awe of how she built a creative career by truly owning her style. And not the kind that arrived right away. But the one that found its place from following nudge after nudge of what lit her up, until that radiance shone so bright that people wanted to collaborate with it.
I wasn’t impressed by her shiny success (although that’s epic too), but the way she obtained that through following her joy. Something I think we need to hear a whole lot more of in creative industries, which often feel constricted and contorted until they don’t even feel creative anymore.
I didn't just enjoy listening to Cass speak on her creative career; I needed to hear it as a reminder of what is possible. That my art isn't separate from my income. That honouring the way I want to create isn't just a nice-to-do, but a necessity.
Because what it reminded me, and what I think so many of us forget the moment we step back into the familiar, is that the path was never supposed to be linear. It was never supposed to make sense from the outside. And it was certainly never supposed to be built from someone else's blueprint.
There's a version of creative success we're sold that goes something like this: find your niche, build your audience, reverse-engineer the income goal, then maybe, eventually, enjoy the process. Joy is the reward for getting it right. Not the fuel.
But what if that's completely backwards?
What if the joy is actually the thing that makes it work?
I think about how many creatives I know, myself included, who have contorted themselves into a shape that looked like a business but felt nothing like them. Who followed a strategy so thoroughly that they forgot why they started. Who got the enquiries, hit the numbers, and still felt quietly hollow because none of it had been built from the part of them that was actually alive.
The ones who seem to sustain it, really sustain it, not just white-knuckle their way through a launch cycle, tend to be doing something that looks almost irresponsible from the outside. They're following what genuinely excites them. They're saying yes to the projects that make them feel something. They're allowing their work to evolve when it stops feeling alive, rather than forcing themselves to stay in a lane they've outgrown.
And perhaps most radically of all: they trust that signal.
The problem is we've been taught to distrust that feeling. To see it as an inconsistency rather than intelligence. To keep going because we've built something here, because people expect this from us now, because pivoting feels like starting over.
But what if it's not starting over? What if it's just the next yes in a long line of them?
Because the other thing nobody tells you about following your creative joy is that your style, your actual, unmistakable essence, is already threaded through everything you make. You don't have to manufacture it. It's not something you arrive at after enough market research. It's present in the work you do when you're most yourself. And the more you honour that, the more magnetic it becomes.
Not because magnetism is a marketing strategy. But because people can feel the difference between something made of genuine aliveness and something assembled out of obligation. We always can.
So maybe the question isn't "what's my niche?" or "what's most likely to work?", but rather, "what's still lighting me up?" And then, quietly, stubbornly: do more of that.
Even when the world is asking you to be more practical. Or, you’re back in your hometown feeling the best ideas disappear from your grasp.
I needed this episode as my reminder to keep my creative fire alive… and maybe you do too.
