This post is part of the Scarab Codes series — where ancient wisdom meets practical strategy for building something that actually feels like yours.
I got sick for three weeks straight after posting a video on YouTube about balancing being ambitious and chronically ill or unwell. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
I’d been so proud of showing up every Monday, building momentum, creating something real. Then life happened, and suddenly I felt like I was back to square one. Three weeks away from a solopreneurial project feels like a lifetime. I couldn’t remember what I was working on, what my priorities were, and looking at my notes felt like reading someone else’s.
That’s when I realized: my best ideas are dying because I’m treating them like passengers in the project instead of drivers of the project.
The Real Reason Your Ideas Never See Daylight
You know that rush when a brilliant idea lands? That moment when everything clicks and you can suddenly see exactly what needs to exist in the world?
That is not your logical brain at work. Neurologically, those moments actually light up the whole brain. It’s a moment where you’ve suddenly remixed everything you’ve learned, noticed, and lived until the pieces fall into place. It’s creative lightning.
And then we kill it.
Sometimes we kill ideas not because we doubt them, but because we can’t explain them.
The idea is alive in your body. You can feel it. But when you try to put it into words — for your website, for a pitch, for a simple answer to “so what are you working on?” — it comes out wrong. Scattered. Too big. Too weird.
So you shelve it. Not because the idea wasn’t good, but because you couldn’t find the language. And you mistook a language problem for a viability problem.
But how? What if it doesn’t work? Who am I to try this?
This is the identity-to-language gap. Your ideas aren’t dying from lack of merit. They’re dying from lack of articulation.
This is the hardest part about working as a go-to-market consultant for people in the spiritual and wellness space. Even armed with their grounding practices, self-love routines, and manifestation mantras, they can’t escape the very human flood of doubt that comes with the edge of execution.
And that’s also why I like to tap back into archetypes and ancient wisdom teachings. In this series, we focus on the Scarab. Because the Scarab doesn’t have time for doubt. It doesn’t ask those questions of, “Am I good enough? Does anyone want this? Am I the right person?”
The Scarab gathers what’s available — mud, dung, scraps — and moves. That’s the medicine: working with what you have, right now, before the inspiration dissipates.
For the Ancient Egyptians, and many other ancient civilizations, a critical part to making that momentum is Words of Power. Creation happens through confident, specific speech. You don’t analyze an idea into existence.
You speak it into reality.
Creation as Speech
In Egyptian cosmology, the god Ptah creates the world through speech. Not tentative words. Not “I’m thinking about maybe trying…” Confident, specific, ritual speech aligned with Ma’at — cosmic truth, the intersection of your inner potential and your community’s needs.
This is the opposite of how we’re taught to work. We’re told to plan first, validate second, execute third. But inspired ideas don’t survive that process. By the time you’ve analyzed them to death, the energy has moved on to someone else who will actually use it.
That’s why we can take a page from the most powerful mythic figures in our collective consciousness and ancient cosmologies. We choose a mythic path for ourselves. We choose a story of creation, heroic achievement, and governance.
This is why your tagline keeps failing, by the way.
You’ve rewritten it thirty times because you’re trying to compress your entire vision into one sentence. But Ptah didn’t create the world by describing himself. He spoke what would exist and for whom.
Your tagline isn’t a summary of you. It’s a door for them. The right words come when you stop trying to explain your complexity and start naming the transformation you offer.
Why Your Ideas Keep Dying
You’re waiting for permission or perfection.
I spent years trying different platforms — blogging, Tumblr, YouTube, Instagram, Medium, Substack — looking for the “right” place to share my ideas. Meanwhile, the ideas themselves were getting stale waiting for the perfect container.
Ten years ago, one of my YouTube videos and one of my Medium essays each took off. I thought I had found the magic. But the next upload and the next post received crickets. I took that as a signal that I was wrong, and needed to keep perfecting my work.
That’s not how any of this works. Build for the long term, and start speaking your ideas into existence immediately. Exactly where you are. With whatever you have. Strike with inspiration, not after it’s faded.
You’re treating inspiration like a passenger.
You get excited about an idea, then immediately hand control to your analytical brain to “figure out if it’s realistic.” By the time you’ve stress-tested it into oblivion, the creative energy has left.
I say “passenger” because a good idea will get out of your car. It will leave you if you don’t act upon it, engage with it, or co-create with it. It will go find someone else who will bring it into existence.
So put inspiration in the driver’s seat. Let the vision lead. Use strategy to serve the vision — not the other way around.
You’re not commanding your reality.
Tentative language creates tentative results. “I’m thinking about maybe starting…” has almost no creative power.
Compare that to: “I am building this. It will serve these people. I’m starting now.”
That’s spellcraft. The words shape the reality.
You’re describing the idea instead of the person it serves.
When you try to explain your inspired idea, you probably start with what it is. The features. The format. The structure.
But ideas don’t get traction because of what they are. They get traction because of who they’re for and what changes for that person.
If you’ve been struggling to articulate your idea, try flipping it: Stop describing the thing. Start describing the transformation. Who walks through the door? What are they struggling with? What’s different after? The idea becomes speakable when you stop making it about you and start making it about them.
The Scarab Method
When your friend tells you about their dream business or dream life, you get that *feeling.* You know the one. The one where you fully believe in them, that dream, and want them to chase after it with all the earnestness of a dedicated perfomance artist.
But it’s hard to root for yourself that way, isn’t it?
It’s also SO MUCH EASIER to build for a business that isn’t your own. I often reflect on how I was able to secure multi-million-dollar partnerships for my employer but couldn’t seem to trust myself enough with my own ideas to give voice to them. I’m sure it’s similar for you.
So here’s how I think about this now, with all that mythic energy woven in.
Step 1: Recognize inspired ideas when they hit.
You know something is divinely inspired when it feels like something other than a logical conclusion. There’s sudden clarity, yes, but also an unexpected excitement, a feeling that the pieces will fall together on their own. There’s an energy that’s larger than your own individual thinking at work. Us spiritual folk might feel that it’s a call.
Step 2: Speak it into existence — literally.
Not “I might try…” but “I am creating [this specific thing].” Not “Maybe I could…” but “This will serve [these people] by [this outcome].” Not “Someday I want to…” but “I’m implementing this by [these actions].”
One of my inspired dreams I keep having and keep letting slip away is a literary magazine for witchy folks. Every few months it floods my senses, and I let it go when I consider all the work that goes into it. One of my goals in 2026 is to take my own advice and ACT.
Step 3: Align with Ma’at — your truth meeting the world’s needs.
Ma’at is more than cosmic truth in the abstract. It’s the intersection of your inner knowing and the world’s actual needs.
This is where a lot of inspired ideas go to die — not because they’re bad, but because they’re not aimed. You have the vision, but you haven’t asked: Who is this for? What problem do they know they have? What words would make them say “that’s me”?
An idea without an audience or a market isn’t a business. It’s a journal entry, a roleplay.
Ma’at asks you to get specific. This is why I love micro-niches: it’s not about shrinking your vision, but helping it land. The Scarab doesn’t go in every direction. It chooses a path, and the world expands from there.
The most potent ideas exist at the intersection of your unique gifts, what the world actually needs right now, and what feels genuinely aligned for you. When all three meet, you’ve found the place where your creative energy will be most effective.
Step 4: Work with what you have.
You don’t need the perfect platform, the perfect audience, the perfect moment. You need to start. The Scarab doesn’t wait for better materials. It uses what’s here.
Your Inspiration Energy Needs Somewhere to Go
Think about energy in ritual. If you raise it and don’t direct it somewhere specific, it dissipates. Creative inspiration works the same way.
If you don’t alchemize that idea into something real — even imperfect, even small — the energy will leave and find someone else who will actually use it.
But that’s another way inspiration dies, isn’t it? You keep it too precious. (Kind of like my literary magazine idea…)
You don’t want to “waste” the idea on a small audience. You want to wait until you have the platform, the reach, the credibility. So the idea sits in your notes app, aging, while you chase the conditions you think it deserves.
But ideas don’t need perfect conditions. They need expression. Even to five people. Even in a messy first draft. Even before you’ve figured out the business model.
Be the Scarab. Work with the mud that’s here.
Your other option is to pour all that creative energy into someone else’s vision. Which can be meaningful if you have genuine ownership and alignment. But you might end up serving something that was never really yours.
I learned this the hard way. I loved a company I worked for. I poured everything into it. But deep down, I knew what we were building wasn’t quite right. We were chasing profitability over purpose.
Building The Work Witch is different. It doesn’t make as much money. It doesn’t have employees or investors. But I’m having far more fun because I’m implementing my ideas, not just executing someone else’s.
You Were Born to Be Radically Creative
One last thing! Because you know I love to get on my pulpit for a weekly sermon/pep-talk hybrid.
Your inspired idea doesn’t need to be one thing. Maybe you’ve been killing ideas because they don’t fit neatly into a niche. They’re too multifaceted. Too “you” to be marketable.
I was talking to a woman at length about this recently. Her idea has pathways to become real, but she doesn’t see herself as the right person to bring it to market because the market itself is too ambiguous. We had to break down where she’s already building an audience: by being her authentic self, and attracting like-minded people. We had to bust the myth that you need 40k on Instagram and a face-on-video kind of brand to get any traction.
The problem isn’t you. You likely just haven’t found the through-line yet. The integration point. The frame that holds all the pieces. And discovering that comes through experimentation.
To experiment effectively, you need to give yourself permission to be radically creative. That’s how you find the story that makes aaaallll the moving parts of your vision make sense together.
Like I told her, you have three choices with your inspiration energy:
- Build it yourself — a practice, a project, a business, a body of work that honors the vision that came through you.
- Create change from within — if you’re positioned to redirect existing systems toward your inspired vision, do that. We need people in corporate, government, and community spaces who can improve them.
- Let it go to someone else.
Ideas are living things that want to become real. And they chose you for a reason.
Stop killing your good ideas with analysis paralysis. Stop waiting for permission or perfection. Start speaking them into existence like the ancient creators knew how to do.
The world needs what wants to come through you.
Don’t make it wait any longer.
Work With Me
If you want support applying this framework — or you’re stuck in an elemental imbalance you can’t seem to shift alone — that’s exactly what we do in Pocket Witch. One 60-minute session, Tarot-infused strategy, and honest reflection. We’ll name what’s out of balance and map your next move.
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