At the turn of the new year, you get to wipe the slate clean. The old year—with its joys and sorrows, failures and successes—has been written. Now you have a bright, shiny stretch of time, in which you can create your deepest dreams.

Of course, you have the ability to create something new every single day. But psychologically, the new year feels so fresh with possibility, that this is a great time to reflect on the past and set goals for the future.

This new year is a milestone for me. I published my book, The Creative Heroine’s Path—a labor of love for every soulful creative who fears that living a creative life is out of reach.

Your creative life isn’t out of reach. It shimmers in the world of possibility, waiting for you to bring it into the world.

This year, I will be posting blogs and vlogs about how to live your life to make your creative dream real.

Changing your life to support your dream is not simply about making a list of resolutions and checking them off as you flawlessly complete each one. If it was that easy, everyone would do it. Changing your life takes time. It takes effort.

And it begins with what you believe.

How Do You Want to Feel This Year?

That may seem like an odd question. After all, you will have many experiences that affect you in different ways. But I’m talking about your overall perspective, which colors everything—especially events outside your control.

The biggest challenge you may face as you make your dream real this year is believing you can do it. That’s often not only the first hurdle, but an ongoing one. Whatever your perspective this year, it must support your creative dream.

If that sounds daunting, remember you have a clean slate, or a blank piece of paper in front of you. This year is yours to write. You are the author of your life. What do you want to make of it?

Here is an example of a perspective I played with a great deal this past year: “Life is creative and abundant.”

There were times when I saw it clearly, and other times I didn’t believe it at all.

You see, life wasn’t conspiring against me to keep me from writing a book for all the years I didn’t do it. It was my own beliefs about life—how it really works, what I believed was possible, even what I thought I deserved.

I faced external challenges, to be sure. But when I began to see those challenges as opportunities, for me to push against to build my spiritual resilience, they shifted from roadblocks to bumps on the path.

When I looked at obstacles as life’s way of simply asking, “Do you mean it?” I began to realize that life is abundantly creative; I just had to answer that question with a “Yes!”

Dealing with difficulty is a necessary part of the process of life, and of living a creative life. The challenges you must work with are part of the material you use to co-create with the universe—like wet clay you mold with your fingers.

You have everything you need at this moment to begin to create a life that supports you.

What You Believe, You Create

Here’s another perspective that I experienced, profoundly, this past year. It could easily be rephrased as, “What you fear, you create.”

Beliefs are powerful. Recently, I had a big A-ha! moment while I was telling someone about why I left my creative path in my twenties. I told her that I compromised my gifts to make a living because I was afraid that if I followed my creative calling, I would become a “starving artist.”

Those words caught in my throat. Tears filled my eyes. I realized that I had become a starving artist anyway—the very thing I was afraid of becoming. For years, I made a living, but not a life. My soul was starving.

If your soul is starving, this is your year to nourish it.

Pick A Big, Bold Theme

This is the perfect time to look at the beliefs you take for granted. You may not even notice them, because they are the water you swim in. But a perspective such as “I cannot create the life I want” will hold you back. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What perspective do you want to look through in the coming year?

It could simply be, “The world wants my gifts.”

Get your rational mind out of this; let your soul pick your theme. Remember, this is about creating the life you want. This is big. This is wonderfully, incandescently real. Let your deepest wisdom speak to you.

Write it down. Keep it close to your consciousness. Put it somewhere you will see it every day, because there will be days you won’t believe it.

And remember, when you can’t see your theme, it’s still there, like a morning star, guiding you.

May the new year bring you the blessings of a more consciously creative life!