How To Move Forwards When You Don’t Know What You Want
How do you move forwards when you don’t know what you want? This is one of the hardest places to be. Things have been going well, and then suddenly your art doesn’t feel exciting anymore. What used to work just doesn’t work the way it used to. You feel the pull to do something different, but you genuinely don’t have a clue what that something is.
If you’re sitting in that uncertainty right now, this is for you.
Spotting It Before You’re Ready To Admit It
I started noticing something different in myself a couple of years ago, long before I was ready to actually do anything about it.
I’d built United ArtSpace around big, two week events, sometimes with ten thousand people attending. I loved running them. Genuinely loved it. But over time I noticed people’s attention dropping. Sign ups not converting to attendance. A different energy in the room.
My mentor told me, a few years back now, that if I didn’t change, I’d eventually hit a wall. I didn’t listen, not because I was stubborn, but because I loved what I was doing too much to let it go.
I hit that wall last year.
The way people consume content online had shifted. I’d been doing this for ten years, and as my tenth anniversary approached, I started questioning everything. How had I spent the last decade? How did I want to spend the next one? And the honest answer was, not the same way. That was hard to admit out loud, especially after years of knowing exactly how my year would run.
Sitting In The Unknown
Once I admitted that, I didn’t have a replacement plan. I didn’t know what events to run, whether to keep The 7 Keys course going, what to let go of. I just sat in that uncertainty for a while.
So I did something simple. I sat down and made a list. What do I love doing? What am I actually good at? And just as importantly, what do I want to put down?
We call this delve and shelve inside our Creative Way process, deciding what we bring forward and what we let rest.
That exercise gave me real clarity. I realised I’m genuinely good at helping artists build confidence, understand why their work matters, and connect it to people in a world that’s craving real human connection more than ever. That realisation lit something back up in me.
Joy Before Vision
Here’s something important I had to do before any new vision could appear: I had to deliberately focus on joy.
When things aren’t working, confidence dips, and we start making decisions from scarcity and fear, which are rarely the right decisions. So I built a daily practice around joy. Walks after a few hours on screen. Sitting on a bench watching ducks. Visualising things going well. Journaling on gratitude.
It sounds insignificant, but it genuinely shifted my energy enough that I could start to see opportunities again, rather than just stress.
I also said some things out loud that didn’t make total sense yet. I want to be in-person more. I want to give back. I had no idea what that meant practically, but I kept saying it, kept journaling it, kept talking about it on podcasts and with family.
And then, almost like magic (though it isn’t really, it’s just how attention works), opportunities related to exactly that started showing up.
Two Unexpected Yeses
I started volunteering with my children at local charity events, supporting elderly people, the homeless, people who’ve left abusive relationships. It’s given me an enormous amount of joy and perspective.
Then an old contact asked if I’d like to start running in-person confidence seminars. My first instinct was hesitation, it felt completely unrelated to United ArtSpace. But when I checked it against my list, it was a clear yes. Confidence and self belief are exactly what I love working on.
What’s interesting is that being in those rooms, alongside TEDx speakers and high performance coaches, is now shaping how I show up in United ArtSpace too. Taking the opportunity that felt unrelated turned out to be the thing that’s bringing clarity to everything else.
A Phase Of Play, Not A Phase Of Panic
I’m currently in what I’d call the explore phase of the Creative Way cycle. Playing. Testing things with absolutely no expectation of where they’ll lead or whether they’ll make money. The retreat, the in-person seminars, the new local project, none of it has pressure attached. And that’s by design.
I know it’s not sustainable to keep all these plates spinning forever. At some point I’ll review, keep some things, let others go. But right now, play is exactly where I need to be.
If you’re in that same confused, uncertain place, here’s the process: write down what brings you joy, what you’re good at, what you love. Include things that don’t fully make sense yet. Talk to people about it, out loud, often. Then give yourself permission to play with it, without expectation, and trust the process.
I’d love to know where you’re at with this. Drop a comment on our social post and let me know what step you’re stuck on.
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Have a great week & take care,
Michelle xo
