Archive for Inspiration
What do You Believe About Time?
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Do you feel like you just have no time (or never enough time) to create?
I think lack of time is the number one obstacle for people wanting to start creating again or wishing they were doing it more.
And it’s easy to see why–our speed-driven culture creates high expectations of how much we should get done and how fast we should be able to do it.
But if we could change our relationship with Time–find our true personal rhythms–then all kinds of possibilities open up.
That’s the premise behind Slow Time: Recovering the Natural Rhythm of Life
Hurrying
One of the first things she asks you is to explore your own beliefs about Time–ideas you might not even realize you embrace because they feel so natural, you’re so used to them, that they just seem like “The Truth”.
Many of these ideas come not only from the culture, but from your particular family.
For instance, I always feel like I’m in a hurry. And I realized that a big belief I learned from my upbringing was that hurrying signified being serious about something.
Conversely, being slow signified being overly relaxed, too casual–not taking something seriously. Therefore, if I cared about something, I had to do it in a hurry or I wasn’t taking it seriously
Whew, let me tell you, that hurrying belief wears me out.
It’s also very difficult to actually hurry through learning new things (which I’m constantly doing), so I usually feel like I’m taking too long to do just about anything–which means I’m also feeling like I can’t measure up. More exhaustion.
But when I think about my notions about hurrying as a belief I have instead of just being the truth or the nature of things, well then I’ve got a fighting chance to stop that pattern and allow a new belief to take its place–one that still incorporates my values and the things I want for myself–such as being productive or doing good work.
Here’s a few new beliefs affirmations I’m playing with:
>When I take my time, I do better work.
>I accomplish more when I’m relaxed and present.
>I feel good, think well, and accomplish a lot when I take my time.
>I make better artwork when I pay attention, take my time, and let my understandings unfold naturally.
>I prefer to pay attention to what I’m doing without multi-tasking.
Creating a New Paradigm
Our beliefs about time are very tangled up with how we do everything in our lives–when I think about my hurrying belief, I see how it impacts everything I do–how I clean the dishes, how I drive, how I create.
When I interrupt my usual patterns and slow down, it’s a great feeling because I’m allowing myself more. When everything isn’t urgent, it helps me remember my priorities. And one of those priorities is my creativity.
It’s exciting to realize I have the opportunity to interrupt what isn’t working for me about how I experience Time and begin creating a new paradigm for myself, based on my own best nature.
Frankly, it’s just so nice to realize that I have a say in all that. That I don’t have to go through life feeling like there’s never enough time to do what I want.
That how I experience time is up to me.
And since my time is my life, this ain’t no small thing!
Your Time and Your Creativity
How about you? Do you know what your beliefs about Time are? How do they impact what you do and what you allow yourself? Please share in the comments–I’d love to hear.
Doing Vs. Trying: What’s the Difference & Why Does it Matter?
Posted by: | CommentsMay was a tough month for me.
It was tough for what felt like A LOT of reasons–personal, financial, business–but I recently realized it was mostly because of one reason.
Too much trying.
I had had to do a lot of hard things for the past several months, and all that trying was wearing me down until I finally felt miserable.
Why couldn’t I just do instead?
What the Heck is the Difference?
I’m a do-er. I do things. I make things. I like taking action. I like to execute, and I like to finish.
Doing suits me.
Doing has no agenda really, other than the task at hand. Doing has no heaviness.
I’m also a try-er.
Sometimes this is healthy, like the way I’m very willing to try new things I don’t know how to do. I’ll give it a try–what the heck.
Sometimes it’s less healthy, like when I try hard to do things right. When I try to succeed. When I try to make something happen. No “what the heck” attached.
This kind of trying has lots of emotional heaviness associated with it. Lots of striving. The effort, the doing, is all wrapped up in the outcome.
Trying = Doing + Drama
As I was trying to figure out how to make myself feel better, I assessed my to-do list. There wasn’t much I could leave out, except the way I felt about what I needed/wanted to get done.
I realized if I could just do them without all the emotional heaviness of trying to get them all right/perfect/successful, I’d be a lot happier.
I’m good at doing, but I was so busy trying that I poisoned the integrity of the tasks at hand. I was ruining my doing with all my trying.
So now I’m focused on the “doing” without the drama of the “trying”.
And since I also have other unhelpful beliefs attached to trying such as “trying=being virtuous” and “trying=being-serious-about-what-I’m-doing”, it’s good at quietly slipping in the back door unnoticed when I’m busy working on something.
But that’s okay. It’s a process.
Your Creativity
How about you? Are you also trying instead of doing?
Is it hard to weave creativity back into your life because what you want to make would be hard and you’d really have to try?
Is it hard to go deeper or get bolder with your art because you don’t have the energy for that kind of trying right now?
What if you didn’t have to try? What if you allowed yourself the endless opportunity of doing instead?
To “do instead of try” combines honoring the present with being committed to the long haul of your life. What a generous, loving, forgiving way to be allowed to move through time.
What the heck–why not give it a try? 
Be Ready
Posted by: | CommentsTime for another poem by William Stafford–a prolific writer and poet who attributed his own productivity to an unabashed obedience to his muse.
A great spokesman for following your heart.
He wrote this poem in the last week of his life.
You Reading This, Be Ready
Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life –
What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
William Stafford
The Way It Is
i thank You God for most this amazing
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s that time again!
I’m a huge poetry fan, as I was an English major back in the day, along with studying art, and poetry is one of my earliest loves. I feel like it’s the most marginalized art form, and most of us were taught poetry in school by people who didn’t like it. What a shame, since so often it’s the art form we reach for when we need to express our most important emotions.
I thought the exuberance of this poem would be good for a grey winter day (like the one we’re having here in the Northeast) and e.e. cummings‘ playfulness with language is a great inspiration for doing your own thing in whatever your art form.
You might not know that e.e. cummings also painted and drew, and was influenced by Surrealism, which I talked about recently in my blog post on Automatic Drawing.
Enjoy.
i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
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Pushing Past Rejection
Posted by: | CommentsIn my last post, Bags of Gratitude, I mentioned two big takeaways I got from a talk I heard from motivational speaker Kevin Touhey, but I only wrote about one.
The second one is something I’ve wrestled with on and off for a long time–pushing past rejection.
As part of his talk, Kevin shared his experience of writing a memoir/motivational how-to book and trying to get it published. He sent his book out to fifty-two publishers and they all rejected him.
Fifty-two. 5-2.
And then he published it himself.
It got to 2nd place on the Amazon best-seller list, and now he has a publisher for his 2nd edition.
As I listened to his story, I thought, hmmm, when would I have quit? When would I have thought that I needed to read the writing on the wall and understand that what I had written was no good? Twenty rejections? Eleven rejections? Thirty-one?
All my life I have been so moved by stories of people ignoring rejection or prevailing wisdom about what’s “good” or “worthy” and what isn’t, and turning their dreams into success.
I’ve marveled at their emotional fortitude and lack of self-doubt. Their unwavering belief in what’s they’ve created above and beyond what anyone else thinks about it. Read More→
Bags of Gratitude
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Last night I went to my first ever business networking meet-up in Manhattan.
I almost ran out in the first 5 minutes, panicking about out how I was going to keep chatting with perfect strangers all night.
But I met a lot of nice, down to earth small business owners and we had a motivational speaker, Kevin Touhey, who was a very pleasant surprise.
“Pleasant surprise”, I guess, because I tend to wrinkle my nose at titles like “Motivational Speaker” and the blurb I read seemed like a lot of internet sales hype I’ve seen before. But he was warm, honest and real. And now that I’ve met him, I know he means it all.
And while a lot of what he said wasn’t new to me, it was a great reminder. And he shared two experiences that lingered especially in my mind after the talk was over.
Bags and Bags
One was that he has grocery bags in his office filled with scraps of paper with different thoughts of gratitude and appreciation written on each one. Bags–plural.
He pulls out an appreciation or two when he needs to counteract a negative belief or experience.
He holds his hand over his heart and breathes into it as he reads these thoughts of gratitude and appreciation to himself in order to blunt the effect of the negative belief pattern and stop the spiral of indulging familiar demons.
I really like the idea of physically creating and keeping actual bags of gratitude around me–it’s so concrete and poetic at the same time. Read More→
Creative Spark
Posted by: | CommentsElizabeth Gilbert wrote the wonderful memoir Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
Last winter she gave a fantastic Ted Talk and I thought I should share it here in case you haven’t seen it.
It’s a great talk on creativity, “genius”, success, fear of failure, and the cultural stereotypes of the “unstable artist” and how we might rethink that. I hope you enjoy it–she’s very engaging.
(If you’re reading this in an email, you’ll have to click here to view the video.)
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