Month: November 2015 (page 1 of 2)

a grateful mindset

November 25, 2015 / / 0 Comments

It is the season of giving thanks, and I’ve been thinking about what that means in the context of living a creative life. An attitude of gratefulness plays a huge role in overcoming Resistance. A negative mindset is a huge mental roadblock—in everything, but in creativity particularly. Recognizing what has been given to you has an overwhelmingly positive reach into the rest of your psyche. Grateful people are just more pleasant to be around, and those positive vibes are reciprocated by those who see that attitude. That positive feedback loop can fuel you for a long time. Do you ever have one of those days where you think, “Wow, I feel pretty good. It’s a good day, I can do anything!” A mindset of gratefulness—and being around similarly positive people—can help maintain the momentum of that conquer-the-world feeling. It’s contagious.

When you’re grateful for the skills you have, it’s less likely that you’ll beat yourself up for not living up to your full potential. If you’re grateful for the ability to do work that you love, you’ll jump into it wholeheartedly and silence the inner critic. You will ipso facto be more productive. Guilt over not being productive enough, like most negative reinforcement, is a weak motivator. If you are reading this on the internet right now, chances are you live in a world of freedom and opportunity. You’re allowed to do nearly anything, and you have talent and skill. Be glad about this and let it empower you to do great things. You may inspire others in turn.

Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers!

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fear of futility

November 18, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Do you ever get tired of feeling guilty for not producing enough? For me, in the middle of National Novel Writing Month, this novel writing business is proving to be something hanging over my head rather than an enjoyable activity; I feel like I’m letting it defeat me.

Life is too short to not do something meaningful, but it will feel a lot longer than you’d like if you continually beat yourself up for not being perfect. It’s a catch-22. You will never meet your own standards, and that subconscious idea that perfection is the goal is completely paralyzing. Isn’t it better to just get something done rather than beat yourself up over something that you barely even started?

I know I have these unspoken, arbitrary, lofty standards. But what’s the point of such high standards if I’m incapable of meeting them? If I’m so afraid of failure that I never accomplish anything? If I have nothing to show for all my showing up, then I have failed. If I just do it I have succeeded. Isn’t the latter easier? What is keeping me from just doing the work to even 75% of my standards? There’s time for revision later. Why can’t I just do it? What am I so afraid of? Why do I feel like I’m not even capable? There are millions of people in the world doing what I’m doing. I know I can do it just as well or better than most of them, but not all of them. Being the best isn’t even the point. So what is it that causes me so much anxiety and paralysis?

It’s Resistance with a capital R. I’ve been showing up every day and trying to get out of my own way so the muse can show up. Shouldn’t that be enough to banish Resistance? Why is it still rearing its ugly head? What psychological roadblocks am I not seeing? It’s not fear of success, because finishing the first draft of a novel doesn’t really require anything of me after it’s done. I can roll with it or not. It can’t be the fear of failure because the only way to fail at writing is to not write. A draft is malleable. I can always fix what isn’t perfect. There are only words, and my only failure is not putting them on the page. I’m sure part if it is that little nagging dark force telling me that this isn’t what I should be doing. I should give up. I’m not a writer. I should either move on to some other creative pursuit (which I also won’t be good at) or just give up. Resistance is manifesting itself as both inadequacy and futility. What’s the point of all of this? My work doesn’t matter. My work won’t matter. So what’s the point of doing it? Why show up every day and pour my heart out? What are my blood, sweat, and tears going to accomplish in the end? I struggle to find the meaning and purpose in any of it. Who am I helping by showing up to write every day?

Somewhat ironically, the novel I’m struggling to write deals with immortality and youth. I ask myself why a character would want to live much longer, even with the benefits of youth. My thought was that many people wouldn’t know how to handle living more than a hundred years, that only those with an exceptional sense of purpose and joy would want to go on living. If you outlived all of your loved ones, what would keep you going? Albert Camus said that it takes more courage to live than to commit suicide, and that happiness (even for Sisyphus) is to enjoy your work in spite of the apparent futility of existence. I think the drive to create is stronger than the desire for immortality. Creativity, in one form or another, is where souls find their purpose. It’s how we make sense out of the lives we are living, and helps us and others enjoy that life. It brings context and clarifies meaning for us as we try to imagine what forever might be like. The need to create is a very strong human calling, and when I feel creatively blocked, I start to lose my sense of purpose, direction, joy, and meaning. Guilt creeps in.

Piled on top of personal guilt is the public shame of not having a word count on the NaNoWriMo site for my novel. This feels like a huge failure. Maybe it is a failure at the moment, but the entire project hasn’t failed. I am not a failure. I am a person who matters, who loves to write, and will write my heart out. Even if it feels like it doesn’t matter. Defeat is a mindset. The only thing causing me to fail is the idea that I’m not good enough. If I show up and write in spite of that voice in my head, I’ve won.

It’s frustrating to say that the cure for creative block is to just create, but time and again that’s the answer that reveals itself. Feel like you can’t do it? Just show up and do it. Simply doing anything creative usually helps to make the guilt of creative block go away, even if it’s not related to what you want to accomplish. If you’ve been staring at a blank page for a while, get up and go outside with your sketch book or make some bread. Every act of making something helps to bring you back to your center and remind you of the joy of creating without the pressure of meaning or perfection. It’s in your DNA to create, so find something–however small and seemingly insignificant–to make that makes you happy and don’t feel guilty about counting that as a success. It’s part of showing up to your work. If you showed up, you’ve won.

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peace is a universal image

November 16, 2015 / / 1 Comment

Soon after the attacks in Paris, a symbol for peace began showing up everywhere, showing how a single iconic image can unite people in tragedy. Many on social media argue that an image doesn’t help anything, and that people changing their profile pictures just want to look supportive without taking real, meaningful action. But it is a powerful emblem of hope and solidarity and restoration. It says we stand with you. It says we feel deeply for the people of Paris. It says they have not beaten us. It says we will rebuild. We. It says what we all feel at a time that we are powerless to physically help the situation. It is a placeholder until meaningful action is possible. It says we are not afraid; terrorists will still kill, but they have no power to terrorize those who do not fear them.

The image is a powerful thing. Charlie Hebdo, another tragic French casualty, is a very recent testament to the power of the pencil. A symbol is a thing of beauty in the face of ugliness. It is a gesture of humanity, saying that even though I am not a citizen of France, today we are all French. It is universal and transcendent. It says liberté, égalité, fraternité. It says long live France, and long live the resilient human spirit. It says we are all one, united against the dark forces of this world.

inspiring icons

 

 

 

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what pain are you willing to sustain?

November 11, 2015 / / 0 Comments

What pain do you want to sustain? What pursuit is important enough to you (what do you want enough) that you can endure the pain associated with it? What are you willing to risk in order to pursue what you love?

I would like the pain of pushing myself to write more and more words. Two months ago I started waking up earlier to write at least 500 words a day. That quickly started to feel like far too little, so I made it a thousand words every morning. If I want to be a writer, I need to increase that challenge any time it stops feeling difficult. My average word count for 120 days of showing up at 4am is well below a thousand words a day. I need to step up my game. The challenge of pushing myself harder is so worth it because that means I’ve grown and am growing. In his book Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about finding that sweet spot on a sliding scale between comfort and pain that keeps you growing. We have to be challenged just enough to continually improve.

I think I could handle the pain of rejection over and over again if it meant that I was putting myself out there enough to get noticed. I don’t create enough to actually submit my work to publishers, galleries, or contests. Every time I think about submitting to a short story contest or something of that ilk, I’m always disappointed by the backlog of old work that I have. I need to be creating new content. I love the reward of pushing through ideas and watching the word count grow. I love when a character becomes so solidified that you can hear exactly how they would say something, and the characters can practically write the scenes themselves.

I’m willing to suffer trolls and negative feedback because that means my ideas have landed on someone. That means someone is listening. That means I’ve said something substantial enough for someone to disagree. That means I’ve been putting myself out there and haven’t been safe or neutral. I got my first troll on Twitter a few weeks ago. I haven’t posted much and I don’t have many followers (nor do I follow many people), but some random person felt the need to question my post, which means that they read it, disagreed, and wanted to engage. The guy was a douche and a career troll, so that made it very easy not to take it personally or to engage with him back. But that means I made it onto someone’s radar.

I’m even willing to risk the embarrassment of going through the old journal I just dug out of my nightstand if it means sparking some kind of story. I’m not even sure how back it goes, but it certainly hasn’t been touched in years. I’m a little afraid to open it, but I would like to start using a physical journal again. It’s a nice leather bound one, and there’s something about ritual and tangible artifacts that make the act of creating feel so romantic. But I’m not as free on the written page as I feel I can be in a password protected digital document. There’s no security on paper. Not that I have anything at all to hide, but as a creative it feels risky to do the necessary thing of being honest and vulnerable.

I’m also willing to put myself out here on my blog every week, even if no one reads it. It can be disheartening to show up and do the work if it feels like it doesn’t matter yet. But if the work is important enough to you, you do it even if there’s no audience. Whatever your passion is, you have to love the doing, not just the results. You have to take the process and the leg work and being a nobody for a while and love the work enough to still keep doing it every day even if there’s no reward for it.

My wish for everyone is that they find that one thing that lights them up enough to endure the nitty gritty even if it doesn’t result in the warm and fuzzy. What makes you show up every day, even when no one is looking? What pain are you willing to sustain?

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