Your natal moon and your creative rhythm

There’s so much pressure in the content creation and entrepreneurship world to be consistent. But here’s the thing…most of us aren’t wired for it. So how can we succeed in a market that rewards consistency when we’re gloriously inconsistent? That’s what we explore in today’s episode. Your creative rhythm is baked into your astrology chart, and it’s super unique. Today we explore how your natal moon’s phase, zodiac sign and aspects describe your most efficient and natural creative flow. If you want to do this with me, apply to work with me in The Project Accelerator!

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Transcript

Hey, Astro Lover. Welcome back to Cosmically Inspired. This is Claire. Before we pop into the episode today, I just have a couple of really important announcements. I have completed my retrograde redo of the website. Check it out, astrology with claire.com. That's CAIR. E and I am ready to support creators finishing their big projects without burning out.

I have two opportunities for you. The first one is your aligned idea clarity call. So if you aren't sure what you wanna bring into the world, or maybe you have a bunch of ideas but aren't sure which one to go with, this is a perfect one hour astrology appointment where we'll use your chart to gut check your ideas so that you pick the right one for right now.

But maybe you already know what your big idea is. You just need help getting it off the ground. Well then the Project Accelerator is the appointment package that's right for you. So this is for creators who want to [00:01:00] finally finish their big project without burning out, and you get my brain for a whole week.

You get my undivided attention. For a week where we're gonna meet three times and create an astrologically aligned plan for honoring your energy and getting your work out into the world. You can book a clarity call or apply for the project accelerator@astrologywithclaire.com slash appointments that will have all the information for you.

I just wanted to pop on and let you know really quick about those 'cause they're shiny brand new, and if you've been enjoying these new cosmically inspired episodes, you're going to love these appointments. I hope to see you soon.

 Hey there. Welcome back to Cosmically Inspired, a podcast for creators who wanna enhance their project, planning, making, and launching with astrology. I am your host, Claire Gallagher. I'm a professional astrologer and chronic creator.

You can't stop me, and I'm so glad that you're [00:02:00] here. Today we're gonna talk about a hot topic, and that is consistency. And I'm gonna give you my take on consistency, which is a little bit oppositional to what you would probably hear elsewhere, and I just want you to keep an open mind. And if it doesn't resonate.

Just drop it. But if it does, I encourage you to follow along with me on this consistency rabbit hole, because I think I could do so many episodes on this. There's so much more that I could say about this topic. But today we're gonna just brush the tip of the iceberg, if you will. Within our talk about consistency, we're going to weave in where astrology fits in there and how you can look at your natal chart for clues as to how your creative rhythm and flow unfolds. 

So a little backstory.

First, I just spent the last two weeks talking to creators on free calls about their struggles and their needs, and when I [00:03:00] asked them what they felt they needed to do in order to be successful creators, almost all of them said that they needed to create consistently and. They implied and also expressed explicitly that they were unsatisfied with their current creative cadence, that they didn't think what they were doing currently was good enough or smooth enough, or just enough.

And I found this to be really curious and it also was. A little sad, you know, that we're so judgmental about our creative flow and our creative rhythm, and we really want it to be something other than it is. So I wanted to dig a little deeper into this idea of consistency. What is it? And. Is it really something that we need to subscribe to?

Because at least in my experience, and maybe my experience will change, but in my [00:04:00] experience of writing books, making courses, writing blogs, doing multiple podcasts, 'cause this is not my first podcast. Um. The creative process is not linear and it's not consistent, and so demanding that we be consistent and that our creativity be consistent, like something that shows up the same every day feels unkind.

So I wanna explore today what even is consistency. Does it really matter? Is it even necessary? And spoiler alert, I think consistency is overrated and that there's something a little bit more aligned and kind that we can do with our creative process. 

There is so much pressure, especially in the content creation world and in the entrepreneurship world to create consistently, and it's also rewarded by algorithms and you know, there's, to a degree, I agree that consistency is [00:05:00] helpful.

You know, if we don't email our people regularly or send out, uh, new content on Instagram, people forget that we exist and they forget that we have products and services that can help them. And so showing up regularly does help build a business, keep a business going. And so I'm not arguing against that.

I'm arguing against how we create that facade. So, um. ' Cause I think consistency really is an illusion that we are maintaining. It's not actually what we're doing to produce our content and more on that later.

So I think before we go any further, it's really important for you to define consistency for yourself. The first problem I notice when talking with these creators on these calls is that. They don't know what consistent means to them. And when I asked them what consistent meant to them, they didn't have an answer.

And this is an issue because [00:06:00] it makes us feel like failures. If we're trying to live up to consistency, but we don't know what consistency is, we're never going to meet our goal. It's just this undefined concept that makes us feel bad about ourselves. We're never gonna meet a goal that we've never defined.

So I want you to take a moment right now and close your eyes, wiggle your toes, take a breath, and ask yourself this question, what does creating consistently mean to me?

What does it look like practically? What's the output? For example, is it posting one new blog post per week? Is it sending a newsletter once per month? Is it posting on social three times per week? What's the actual channel and frequency of your consistency?

So once you've defined consistency for yourself, it's no longer this nebulous thing that's gonna haunt you and make you feel like you're behind because you know exactly what it is that you [00:07:00] expect of yourself. However, the second problem is that consistency, even if we've defined it, it only works for a little while because newsflash, most of us are not wired to be consistent.

We do not wake up the same day after day. Ready to put out the same effort. We do not have the same energy. We do not have the same motivation or interest. There are just times where we are not primed to create, and there's nothing wrong with that. My opinion is that consistency is not the answer, but sustainability is.

So instead of trying to create consistently, let's pivot and try to create sustainably, and sometimes that means. Not producing consistent stuff behind the scenes. So let me explain. When you force yourself onto a rigid content creation calendar, when you're a person with fluctuating energy, which is [00:08:00] most of the people listening to this podcast, it is actually not just unkind, but it's unproductive.

So have you ever said you're gonna do something every day and you're really motivated and you're really like interested in this new thing, this new habit you're gonna do every day And you do it for a while, like you can keep up the charade for a bit. You have that initial romance with the idea and you can keep it up for a few weeks, maybe even a month.

And if you're really stubborn, maybe even for a few months. But then you crash and burn and that thing that you wanted to do every day, you never do it again, or you take six months off before you do it again. That's what chasing consistency will do. So a little personal story. I'm an Aquarius Moon and. In my experience being an Aquarius Moon person, my flow, [00:09:00] you know, in the moon represents things that fluctuate, including creative flow and energy.

My creative rhythm is choppy, so I work best in high bursts of activity followed by lulls of low to no activity. And this used to really bother me because I didn't show up every day the same, but. I've come to embrace it and realize that there's nothing wrong with this, and it's actually in my best interest if I leverage my rhythm and learn to work within it instead of villainize it.

Because again, I can fight against my rhythm for a while and I can make myself create every day for maybe a few weeks, but then it all comes crashing down and I won't create anything for a whole quarter while I have to recover. And this is what we have to interrupt. This is the pattern that we have to stop.

So what do we do? How can we succeed in a market that demands and rewards consistency when we are gloriously and consistently inconsistent? [00:10:00] Okay. And we're circling back now to the idea that consistency is an illusion. So let me explain.

I like to create the illusion that I'm consistent externally while actually working within my choppy and inconsistent creative rhythm behind the scenes. Just because you wanna publish one blog post per week does not mean you have to write one blog post per week.

You can publish your content consistently and produce your content inconsistently. So we're separating publishing from producing one strategy that works for me is batch creating, and there's so many strategies, but for the sake of time, I'm just gonna talk about this one. When you have a surge of inspiration.

Do not limit yourself. Allow it to fully express. Allow that wave to get as big as it wants and ride the wave. Don't try to be [00:11:00] balanced. Don't try to tame your creativity. Write it and maybe you draft five blog posts or record three videos or create an outline for the whole quarter for your podcast, and you do it all at one time.

And maybe it's a few days in a row where you feel this crest. Don't try to ration your creativity and. F some for later. Creativity is not something that we can really control or ration or save for later. It's not balanced and that's okay. I think there's a lot of guilt when we feel this surge to work hard and we're like, oh, but I need to have boundaries and I need to be balanced, and I need to be healthy.

And yes, we do need those things and we do need to have boundaries, but when you have fluctuating energy and you have a big surge, I encourage you to allow yourself to take advantage of it. This way [00:12:00] when the wave recedes. You can give yourself permission to rest a hundred percent guilt free. And the reason this works is because you trust and you know that the wave will return.

I think the burnout and the problem with batch creating and maybe overdoing it and burning out comes from mistrust, not believing that the wave of creativity will return, and that's when we overwork and overdo it and get into trouble.

Now the key to making batch creating work is that you're not batch publishing. I see you. I know that you're excited and you wanna post all of your shiny new Instagram reels at once.

But don't do it. Repeat, don't do it. If we wanna create the illusion of consistency. We've gotta hold our goodies back and drip out our creations on a consistent basis, even if we're not creating them consistently. We're [00:13:00] publishing consistently whatever your definition of consistent publishing is, whether that's weekly or biweekly, or monthly.

Let's transition to astrology for a little bit and talk about how astrology can help us not only identify our unique creative rhythm, but begin to build trust in our creative rhythm. So again, the biggest objection I hear to just resting when you feel depleted and not pressuring yourself to create is that fear of, what if my creative flow never returns?

What if inspiration never strikes again? But it always does. So I have a little activity for you, and I should probably do a whole podcast episode on this activity. So to be continued, but to build trust in your own creative flow, I encourage you to become a student of flow. So when you have a surge of creativity or when inspiration strikes you, I want you to [00:14:00] pause, maybe take a screenshot of.

Your, uh, clock on the phone and note the details surrounding it when you have time. So details including like what phase and zodiac sign was the moon in. If you have a menstrual cycle, what day were you on? And other personal variables like sleep and food and movement and mood, and if they played a part.

I suggest studying flow for about three months so that you have enough data to actually stand back and draw some patterns, and eventually, the point of this is that you'll be able to predict your creative flow and rhythm, which will allow you to trust yourself even more. That when it's you're in an ebb, when you're in a low flow time, you allow yourself to rest because you know that flow will come back.

All right, so we've decided it's time to decondition from the pressure of consistency. It's time to embrace the fact that you have fluctuating energy [00:15:00] and it's time to create systems that work within your fluctuations. Now, everyone's. Unique rhythm is different, and one way you can begin to explore your rhythm if you're unclear, is to use your astrology chart for clues.

Now, there are a ton of places we could look to in the astrology chart for information on energetic capacity and creative rhythm, but I think the one that we have time for is the most important one, and that is the natal moon. So in astrology, the moon represents the body. Its fluctuations and its innate rhythms.

So this includes motivation, energy, and the desire to create. Understanding your natal moon's phase and zodiac sign can help you not only logically understand the way your energy is designed to move, but it can help you develop compassion and then help you get strategic. So now that you know this, what systems can you design around it?[00:16:00] 

The first piece I want you to explore with your natal moon is its phase were, were you born during a new moon, a full moon, a last quarter moon, a gibbes moon. There are calculators online that will do this for you, but the moon phase is like a light dimmer. It turns energetic capacity up and down. And so the theory is, and this is just really rough, okay?

But the theory is if your natal moon was big and bright at birth, you may have a naturally greater bandwidth and capacity than those who are born during a dark moon. Alright? And just to be clear, when I say dark moon, I'm talking about the last quarter balsamic new and waxing crescent. And when I say bright moon, I'm talking about the first quarter.

Give us full and disseminating moon. If you have a dark moon natally, it is really important that you do not try to keep up with conventional definitions of consistency. So your assignment today is to fully embrace your energetic ebbs [00:17:00] and try not to reject yourself when you're in one building. Trust in your flow should be your number one priority.

Now you might think, oh, I wanna be a bright moon person. They have it easy, but that's not the case necessarily. They have issues too. They're equally as likely to burn out because their light is so bright. They tend to think they don't need rest, and they overdo it really easily.

They also tend to over publish content all at once instead of measuring it out and give all their goodies away at once. Of holding them back in publishing consistently. So Bright Moon, people have trouble knowing when enough is enough. The next thing I want you to explore with your natal moon is its zodiac sign.

Your Natal moon's zodiac sign helps describe its unique mode of operation. And so I'm gonna divide the Zodiac signs into three groups. And these are the modes. Cardinal fixed or mutable [00:18:00] cardinal moons are really good at getting things started. Fixed moons, once they get going, are very good at keeping things going, and mutable moons excel at ending things, completing things, and transforming things.

Now, there's potential pitfalls to each of these as well. Cardinal moons might struggle to finish projects or even work on them at all once they get out of the shiny object stage. Fixed moons might tinker on a project forever and try to perfect it and never let it see the light of day. And mutable moons are really good at destroying or dropping their projects prematurely when they have a new idea pop in or when things get hard.

So I'm gonna go through these three groups one by one and talk about, uh, what consistency might look like for them in this new model. So the Cardinal moons are Aries, Libra, cancer, and Capricorn. Now, Cardinal Moons are really. [00:19:00] Designed to create in quick bursts, so don't force your cardinal moon to sit for marathon writing sessions and don't feel guilty that you only created or wrote for 20 minutes.

When a cardinal Moon is focused and they are distraction free, they can get an enormous amount of work done in a short amount of time. So I want you to think of this as like high intensity interval creating. So consistency for a cardinal moon looks like working in sprints and retreats. A really great strategy for a cardinal moon is to batch quickly.

So. This is a little bit different than what I was describing before. When you feel your surge of inspiration and you're in the flow, don't just pick one thing to work on. Pick a handful of topics that you want to develop, let's say three or so, and set a timer and sprint right on one of those topics for 20 minutes.

Get as much as you can out on the page. Take a short break. Important to take the break [00:20:00] or it's not a sprint, right? And then open a fresh document and do it again on the next topic. So I want you to leverage your moon's superpower of initiating to get started on as many podcasts or course outlines or blog posts as possible in one sitting.

Now the tricky part is finishing those things. So when it's time to finish an article or a project, you can use the same quick burst initiating strategy. You're just doing the opposite. You're just completing. So pick one task that you want to focus on and set a timer for 20 minutes. 20 minutes is just an arbitrary number.

Pick what feels like a sprint to you. It could be shorter and rapid fire. Work on editing or completing the task until the timer goes off. Then take a break and then. Go back into it again, right? So don't force yourself to be a completionist and finish the whole thing in one setting. It's okay to break the project up into [00:21:00] pieces.

All right. Let's talk about fixed moons. Those are Taurus, Scorpio, Leo, and Aquarius. Now, fixed moons tend to have a hard time getting started with things, but once they do get started, they have a really hard time stopping. It's like a boulder rolling down a hill. Fixed moons are classically stubborn and they often demand.

Long stretches of work from themselves beyond their stopping point. Now, I will say that it is true that fixed moons have the ability to sit for longer periods of time and work on a project for longer stretches than say, cardinal moons. But that doesn't mean eight hours. Okay? Right. Maybe it's two hours, maybe it's three hours.

Um, but going beyond the stopping point is not beneficial. So these are, uh, the moons that maybe fit most cleanly into classic productivity models. But just because they can play the part doesn't mean it's gonna support them long term. Now, a fixed moon knows it's been [00:22:00] overworking itself if it doesn't wanna create for days or weeks or months at a time.

Okay? An ideal fixed moon rhythm is either doing a little bit every day. Or they go for longer stretches on for a few days, stacked at a time and off for a few days, stacked at a time. It really depends on the rest of the chart. Consistency for a fixed moon also looks like embracing their desire to obsess over one thing at a time.

They are not great multitaskers and that is okay. So don't force yourself to juggle a bunch of projects or even a bunch of clients at one time. Maybe you pick one or two and you go really deep and intense with those one or two things. So for example, maybe you're a web designer and instead of juggling 10 clients at once, you have one client that you work with for two weeks and then you move to the next one.

Instead of seeing clients simultaneously for [00:23:00] many months at a time, that's just one example. I also, in my case, like writing, finishing this recent book, instead of forcing myself to multitask and write and finish and complete the book and see clients simultaneously. I shut down my calendar for the last month so I could just focus on writing.

Fixed moons are intense. They like to sink their teeth into one thing at a time. This is their superpower. Do not fight against it. Allow yourself to dig deep and just get the thing finished. And finally we have our mutable moons. These are Gemini, Sagittarius, Virgo, and Pisces. Now, mutable moons have the most variable energy of all of the moons.

They're kind of like bumblebees that jump from idea to idea, and they are in that way natural multitaskers. And this is when we don't wanna villainize the multitask. I want you to explore how you can juggle multiple projects at a time and still stay on track. 'cause here's [00:24:00] the thing, immutable moon will feel uninspired working on one thing.

It needs to have options. Alright? This is very different from a fixed moon. Immutable Moon needs to be able to juggle at least two projects simultaneously. Give yourself options, just not too many, or you won't do anything at all. Okay? So let's pretend you're a writer. What typically happens with Immutable Moon is that when the article or the book or whatever it is you're writing begins to feel hard, you abandon it and start a new one.

Instead of abandoning it, you can just task switch. So just expect this to happen and have a backup article to work on or a backup project. So when one project begins to feel crunchy and it isn't flowing, and it's not. Fun anymore, hop to the next project. So you're just kind of chasing flow and you're finding interest and you're chasing your interest.

This is okay. Allow yourself to do [00:25:00] this. The key here is just to limit your options to to two, maybe three at the most so that you're not diluting your effort too much. Consistency for Immutable Moon might look like doing a little bit of everything every day, but intentionally and with purpose. So this definitely goes against conventional productivity advice, but if it's not working for you, then try something different.

Right? Again, the key here is to simply cap your options so that you don't go into what I call the mutable infinity swirl. Okay. There's always more astrology where this came from, and I just kinda wanna wet your appetite with moon aspects. I'm not gonna go into them very deeply here, but I am gonna touch on them and just kinda have a couple sentences to say for each.

Now aspects are the relationships between your moon and the other planets, and most of you will have one aspect, maybe more. It's also possible that you have no aspects, and that's another [00:26:00] talk altogether. But these are relationships that augment and add nuance to the way your creative and physical energy flows.

So for example, you could have a bright moon, like a full moon, and therefore have this high capacity, but it could be in a tough aspect with Saturn that's gonna change things and you're gonna experience, even though you have a bright moon, a feeling of limited energy. Or maybe you have a dark moon, but it's an aspect with Jupiter and so it actually has way more capacity than we'd expect.

Okay. Again, there's, there's so much nuance, so it really is best to get your chart read by a professional. So here's a brief rundown of lunar aspects and how they might augment or change your creative rhythm. First, we have moon, sun aspects, and we've already talked about this. This is your natal moon phase, so we're gonna skip over this one.

Moon, mercury, moon, mercury, people need a lot of variety [00:27:00] in their creative routine. They are kind of like mutable moons in that they need options. They flutter from thing to thing, and they can leverage that for their own good. Their creative rhythm pivots and changes quickly. Again, similar to immutable Moon, they tend to have a lot of varying energy.

Moon Venus people tend to have a creative pace that is relaxed and a little bit slower. So using conventional productivity techniques, especially techniques that involve timing, could make a Moon Venus person hate life. They could feel very stifled. 

Moon Mars people have like a revving engine in them.

They have a pretty high capacity. Naturally they tend to push themselves and they tend to work most efficiently in short bursts. So it's important to understand that if you have [00:28:00] a Moon Mars, even though you think you can do it, you're not built for a marathon. You're typically built for a sprint. Moon Jupiter, people wanna say yes to every project, and they tend to do that in most cases.

Moon Jupiter people are really enthusiastic and they do have quite a lot of capacity, but their issue is biting off more than they can chew. So really only saying yes to the most strategic project is what's important here. Moon Saturn combinations really thrive on structure. Even if you resist the idea of it.

At First Moon Saturn, people without structure will report feeling blocked. Okay. So it's one of those funny moons where, uh, the blocking or the limitation is actually what creates freedom. So we wanna create a structure, albeit still a flexible and mindful structure so that a moon sat [00:29:00] person can feel supported.

Moon Uranus, people have a classically choppy and unpredictable creative rhythm. It strikes like lightning and then goes many days without a storm. So this is someone I would want to definitely start tracking their creative flow and their inspiration, um, because at first glance it feels unpredictable, but there usually is a pattern.

Moon Neptune people have a really swirly creative rhythm. That's how I would draw it on a piece of paper. This is one of the harder ones to pin down. Creativity seems to float in like a mist and then gradually disappear. Okay. Moon Pluto people, their creative flow tends to come in intense bursts or chunks.

A Moon Pluto person will grab onto a project like a dog with a bone and will not let go. Again, this is one of those kind of like fixed moons where you wanna allow yourself to have one [00:30:00] project to focus on at a time, but again, you're gonna have to create boundaries around how long you can work on it.

Because you would just go and go and go and go without stopping

All right, creators. I hope this was interesting and helpful for you. Again, consistency is something that I think we should reframe for ourselves. It's also something that is not the same for everyone, and so I encourage you to get out your astrology chart, start digging into your natal moon, and thinking about how your creative rhythm is unique and how you can create systems around that unique flow.

I'll talk to you next time. Much love.