I am Liz Watt

essence

[es-uhns] noun

1. 1. the basic, real, and invariable nature of a thing or its significant individual feature or features

archetype

[ahr-ki-tahyp] noun

1. 1. an archetype embodies the essence of some model, pattern or type which naturally occurs and is repeated over and over. Archetypes are things we connect with and recognise intuitively and instinctively.

Before archetypes I was lost. I had spent a short lifetime trying to find joy and happiness in the things that pleased other people. I had tried to make myself value and enjoy the things society says we should. It wasn't working.

I struggled to conform, but I still kept seeking and re-creating myself, desperately trying to fit.

I came across archetypes around 2015 in the work of Caroline Myss and Debbie Ford while exploring aspects of “the shadow.” I soon found Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Carol Pearson.

There was something magical and mystical about archetypes. Something familiar, safe and certain. I didn’t fully understand them but I was drawn to them at a deep, soul level.

I understood we all hold and express aspects of all archetypes to varying degrees. I played with Caroline Myss’s Archetype Cards and found some that kept repeating, that resonated more, that drew me in. I had done multiple quizzes that labelled you a personality type or identified your major archetype but left it at that. 

I began to go deeper. Through a journey of journaling, creating, exploration, testing and reflecting I kept coming back to archetypes and how they had and could impact my work and my life.

Your Archetype Mix is the combination of your Major and Minor Archetypes. 

They are the two dominant archetypes that naturally exist within you.

Your Major Archetype leads. Your Minor Archetype supports. It feels in all the gaps. 

Your Essence is the very unique combination of qualities and characteristics from each… that express themselves in a one-of-a-kind way that is you!

The Sage in me loves learning, studying, researching, writing, curating and collating information. I love spreadsheets and analysis. I love journals and books, papers and pens. There’s always leaky ink on my hands.

And… The Creator in me loves making things. Physical, hand-made objects, gifts and even buildings and houses. Playing with paper, materials, fabrics, textures, colours, shape and form. Creating digital books, reports and graphic layouts.

When these two things come together, I am finally in my bliss. I feel like I am home.

Creating systems and processes and ways of understanding.

Curating and expressing information in a creative way.

THAT... is my sweet spot, my zone of genius, my essence, my joy.

sage

[seyj] noun

1. 1. a profoundly wise person; a person famed for the possession of wisdom, judgment, and experience

creator

[kree-ey-ter] noun

1. 1. a person or thing that brings something into existence

I can’t remember who I was as a small child but the clues are there.

• The Sage - In the storybooks I made as a child, stuffed in a box in the garage. In the constant need to learn, and enrol in another course and another degree. The constant quest for knowledge, understanding, and meaning, and the desire to bring it into order and remove the chaos.
• The Creator - In the art classes I took at school that felt like escape from everything - but I stopped because they said I could not make a living. In the excitement of a career in architecture, the potential to create a better world, and the disappointment in the mediocrity that it turned out to be.

The clues are there for you too. Your essence and your soul is expressing itself in everything you do, yearn for and deep down want to be. 

I want to help you see. I want to help you reconnect to you.

I struggled to own my archetypes (and sometimes still do) because the most joyous aspects of them had been criticised and condemned by the outside world, and in response, hidden and suppressed by me. The most joyous aspects of my archetypes, my essence and my soul have been buried for most of my life. Some still are. But they are coming back to life.

The Sage in me thrived when she learned and studied and regurgitated what those in authority wanted to hear and reinforced the party line. But, through her curiosity and questioning she had been told over and over by authorities, school, family, and the workplace...

“shhhh… nobody wants to hear what you have to say.”

Those words kept me silent for so long. Occasionally their echo still keeps me questioning myself, my words, the work I know I am here to do. Sometimes I hit publish or play - have I got it right? Because my questioning, my curiosity, my desire to know truth, uncovers things that others don’t want to see or know. I make people uncomfortable.

Deep down, I know I can never get it wrong when I just show up as me.

My Sage is strong in her conviction and quest. My ego is the one that falters in the face of other people’s fear and discomfort. We are all a work in progress.

The Creator in me had been told she could never pursue a career in the arts. That painting and drawing and creating would never make her money. She compromised with a career in architecture, which is totally fine. It worked, and got me to where I need to be.

But the freedom I once felt in the process of painting and drawing and creating for the sake of creating has dimmed. She stopped fully expressing herself a long time ago, and still struggles to give herself permission to fully come back. There is still more inner work to do. We take it one day at a time.

There is an easel set up for whenever she’s ready. I know that time will come.

For now, my Creator expresses her creativity through writing and the voice of the Sage. We are all more than content for now.

The Sage is definitely my Major Archetype and the Creator supports. My biggest focus and my highest value is learning. As I commit to allowing, embracing and exploring my archetypes, my life changes and becomes more aligned every day.

In my early years I tried to participate with big social groups. My extroversion was learned. I knew a lot of people but felt the activities and connections to be shallow, empty and superficial. I kept trying but I always felt like we were children dressing up and taking on roles - as we stood around at art shows, work functions, cocktail parties in suits and formal dresses, clinking champagne and pretending to be someone we were not. 

Maybe that was who they all were but it never bought me joy.

My Creator and Sage loves the richness, history and culture of cities. But these days, we visit, because people en masse can drain me. Right now, I live in a little beach house on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. I live simply and am constantly downsizing. Eventually, I’d love to live in a tiny house, designed totally by me for me. I have a handful of friends that I meet with one-on-one for a chai and great conversation and philosophical discussion. 

They are the people with whom I can be me...

My days are spent sitting in my garden, writing, creating, learning, journaling and questioning. I could go days without seeing another human and it’s totally fine. It’s who I am and I embrace her. I finally want to know her even more.

In my past work, I was an architect, a project manager and an educator. Now I am a content creator. All of them express my Sage-Creator. And I finally own it.

The architect wanted to create and learn and make the world a better place. She struggled with the process of having to work under other people and the constraints of clients, budgets and suppress her questions, imagination and ideas. So she became a project manager, to make a bigger difference.

The project manager sought to ask questions and understand the people and organizations she was creating buildings for. She loved creating systems and processes to curate and organize information and communication. She loved supporting and facilitating creative people to make an amazing project. Until she realised that the buildings and organisations she was supporting were keeping humanity small - but that’s a whole other story!!! So she became a teacher.

The architecture and design teacher found a compromise. Perhaps she could go back to her roots and a place of learning and creativity. Perhaps she could take what she had learned and teach new architects how to do better architecture, how to make the world a better place, and how to imagine big. She loved the process of learning how to teach and creating ways to communicate what she knew. She loved helping creativity express itself. Until she realised the university institutions she was working for were keeping everyone even smaller and she had to stop.

Every single job and experience were leading me here…

The Sage-Creator has finally stepped out on her own. She’s still jumbling around, trying to find her voice, her feet, her place in the world. She's doing her best to find objective truth about ourselves and reality - and share it with the world.

But every day, the more she lives aligned to her true self, the closer she comes to truth and freedom. The closer I come to me!!!

It’s only been very recently that I even fully understand and embrace myself as a “content creator” rather than the consultant, coach or mentor that so many gurus and coaches have tried to paint me as - because they didn't understand me.

But then, neither did I.

A content creator and what that uniquely means to me is the ultimate combination and expression of Sage and Creator - for me, for now.

This business, if that’s what it is… this website and body of work has been a confusing but essential part of my own journey. It’s existed in some form from an idea to a website, a course and now a book - for over a decade without being a true business. I have many bits and pieces and ideas that I have not yet put out into the world - but are coming. Much of what I have written years ago, I have taken down because it was not truly me, but it got me here. It still exists in some form.

I knew I was here to do something more, but I didn’t know what it was or how the pieces went together. I now have clear ideas about what I want to create and what I need to say, but for a long time was too afraid to put it out into the world.

I didn’t understand what my business was supposed to be until I fully understood me. It wasn’t ready to appear in the world until I was ready too.

It’s finally here and evolving as a body of work that expresses the essence of me - as best it can. I hope it helps you on your journey to find you.