But That’s Too Hard!

Quite often we know we need to do some creative work, we want to do some creative work, but we don’t turn off that game show on the TV and get off the sofa to do it. What could be keeping us from doing what we really would enjoy more? That old bugga-boo ‘fear’.  There are lots of components to what we are afraid of when it comes to a creative block but one of the fears is that what we want to do will be too hard for us.

If we deem ourselves not to be capable or competent enough for what we are envisioning, then the task we want to undertake appears insurmountable. We stand at the bottom of that creative mountain unable to move. The doubt that we’ll make a mess of any attempt we undertake or that once it is done it will fall short of our vision stymies our first move. And we don’t have to know how bad that piece will be if we never make it.

One of the things that will help us scale down the momentousness of what we want to do is talk to ourselves in a helpful manner. Someone I know often looks at work that I’m doing and says, ‘Why are doing that? It looks so hard.’ I try not to look at the difficulty but the beauty of what I’m making. My focus is not on how hard it is to make something or how long it will take or how much frustration I will experience along the way. Instead, I focus on the satisfaction that will come with the finished product, the joy of the process itself, the sense of mastery  that comes from completing a difficult task (even if it took me twenty times to get it there) and being willing to make mistakes along the way.

When you consider a creative venture do you first see difficulty and roadblocks to accomplishing your goal? What phrases are you using to discount these ideas? Are you saying things like ‘That’s too hard;’ ‘No way could I do a whole painting like that;’ or ‘There’s no way I could write an entire book’ ? If so, then some challenges to those automatic negative responses are in order.

If you say ‘That’s too hard,’ break down what it is you think is so difficult: is it the style, the size, the colours you want to use, the time you’d have to commit to completing something? Figuring out what part is really scaring you allows you to focus on a challenge or a solution to that. If it’s how to mix the colours, then you can spend some time just learning how to do that and then tackle the project. If it is the size,  then talk to yourself about how you can only paint one stroke at a time any way so that’s all you’d be doing. But first, when you say to yourself ‘that’s too hard’ remember to answer with ‘yes, it may be hard, but not that hard’. Or, ‘it may be hard, but I am ready for the challenge’.  Remind yourself that you are capable and competent and that each venture is another chance to improve.

I think it’s ok to acknowledge the difficulty of a task. But to follow with an encouragement is the key. Talking to your self as your own personal cheerleader (without the gymnastics and shouting) is how to get through a tough project. Using phrases like ‘this may seem hard but with practice it will be easier’ and  ‘this may be hard but I’m willing to make the effort’ will carry you a lot further than the defeatist lament (to be said with a whine) ‘this is too hard!’ If I find my self saying a lot of times while working ‘Man, this is really difficult!’  I then have to follow it with ‘but I’m going to keep making the effort.’ And with that encouragement, the piece gets done!

Another aspect of the ‘it’s too big, too difficult, too much’ syndrome is to remember to break things down into smaller chunks. Like the old joke: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. That is how you do any art piece: one bit at a time. We don’t start with the whole painting; we don’t start with the whole novel instead we start with a sketch, a few ideas, a line here and a line there. We start building with one piece at a time. Remembering to break it down in your head as well as with your hands into one small piece at a time helps us from getting overwhelmed with the entire project.

It’s ok to step back from time to time and see where you’re going. When you do, you’ll be surprised to find how far you’ve come. And hopefully your thought will be, ‘that wasn’t so hard after all!’

Remember Your Inner Silliness

Recently I read a quote from Eckhart Tolle that said ‘When you lose touch with your inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself.’ In my own just-skimming-the-text way, I read it as ‘When you lose touch with your inner silliness, you lose touch with yourself.’ I did a double take as it didn’t sound at all like Eckhart Tolle; but upon reflection, I like my version better. We do indeed need to stay in touch with our inner silliness. It can be an extremely important part of our creativity as well as our overall well-being!

Creative work can be fun. It can be satisfying. But it can also be quite difficult and feel like an uphill struggle. If we forget to have fun, to add a bit of silliness to our lives, then we are drudgery incarnate! And drudgery stifles creativity. Even if our creative work is something sombre and serious, we need to indulge in a bit of fun to keep ourselves balanced.  Actually, I ought to say that especially if your work is sombre and serious do you need to engage in jocularity.

When you do your creative warm-ups, try adding a touch of silliness from time to time. If you are a musician, play a silly tune; a writer, a limerick that is absurd; a painter, draw something whimsical, etc. Deliberating being silly can open up levels of creativity that you didn’t realize were there. The serious ‘I’ve got to create’ can sometimes block us from doing just that, making the wonderful.

There have been studies done to show that humour and fun can improve one’s creativity. With laughter or a sense of fun, the brain releases endorphins and these endorphins help us to relax and allow creativity to flow more easily. When brainstorming, it seems that the more ridiculous the ideas get the more ideas you have and that leads to coming up with some real gems

There is also something called ‘Laughter Yoga’ which is used to not only relieve stress, depression and for pain control, but it has been found to be a useful tool for boosting creativity. I’ve actually taken part in a laughter yoga exercise and it was really helpful for my creativity. At first it felt absurd to just be laughing while taking on different positions but after a while I just relaxed and the laughter became quite real.

I often feel very anxious before starting a new project. Using the centring techniques, breathing, etc. sometimes don’t seem to have the total desired effect. For those times, watching a few funny clips on YouTube or talking with my sister (who always makes me laugh) are other ways that I help to set myself in creative motion on those particularly tough days.

If you start your work with something fun, it’s less likely that you’ll avoid getting into your workroom or space and doing the work. And the fewer reasons you have to avoid doing your creative work, the more likely it is that you’ll get in there and create and thereby meet your goals. So every now and then, get in touch with your inner silliness because, to quote Oscar Wilde, ‘life is too important to be taken seriously.’

Clearing the Clutter

One of the aspects of being creative is that often we are interested in many things. Another aspect is that we are easily distracted by something that looks more interesting than meeting a deadline of any kind. But these same qualities can keep us from achieving our creativity goals. Sometimes we need to go through our lives and clean out the clutter, not just in things but in activities.

We are all familiar with the idea of spring cleaning but I think it’s also important to do a bit of autumn cleaning as well. Recently I realized that I was getting busier and doing lots of things but none of them were what I really wanted and needed to be doing creatively nor were they even things I needed to do for living maintenance. I was erasing creative time on my calendar for extraneous non-creative activities.

What had happened? I’d allowed my life to get cluttered with a lot of extraneous ‘to dos’. Granted they were all interesting and very worthwhile, but they were keeping me from meeting my real objectives. With courses starting as well as some work commitments, I felt something had to be done.

So, a friend and I sat down together (she was having similar problems) and looked at what we were doing in our lives. First of all we made lists under the various headings:

·         Daily activities (family, job, housework, school, leisure activities)

·         Commitments to outside special interest groups and activities

·         Creative goals and activities

We looked at what things really were priorities and what things were taking priority. It is important to sit down and make those distinctions. Next we underlined the things there were real priorities; everything else was a perceived priority. Then I drew a little bubble chart of how much time was being spent on priority items and how much time was spent on perceived priorities. Once you have these things in front of you visually (whether a list or a chart), it is easier to see how much time is being spent where.

Sometimes things take over our lives because we don’t know how to say ‘no’ and we put our own desires to the back burner. I’m not saying to tell your children to fix their own dinner or do their own laundry (unless, of course, they are teenagers and then it’s good training for when their move out!). What I’m saying is: are you putting yourself first creatively at times when you really can? If you find that most of your time is spent doing things for others that really could do themselves and you are feeling resentful, stressed and spread thin, it’s time to de-clutter your life. Just as you would clear out a closet, you can look at what activities can be let go of to allow you more freedom for what is truly important.

My friend and I both felt that we were doing things for a couple of voluntary groups at a level that was interfering with our own personal goals. While these organizations were worthwhile, it seemed that they were taking up a lot more time than the couple of hours a week we originally thought they would. There was one organization that I was serving as chair for and, even though I wasn’t doing much with regard to it, I felt that I should be doing more. The mental clutter of another ‘to do’ lurking in the back of my mind was interfering with actually doing anything creative! In this case, perceived priority was adding clutter to my activities.

My friend found that she had spent nearly 40 hours one week on a voluntary position with a group. It was keeping her from doing what she really needed to do which was tend to her own creative business (as a self-employed person that really should have been her priority). We both had taken on responsibilities reflecting worthwhile interests and which were meant to enhance our creativity; instead these things were taking over our lives in a negative way.

After taking stock of what I wanted to do, what I had to do and what I was doing (that’s another possibility of list headings for clarification), I found they were grossly unbalanced. The next question was ‘what can I do to make things more balanced in favour of creativity?’ The answer was to take at least a temporary leave from a couple of groups, resign as chair from another (three years is long enough to be chair), make arrangements for others to take over some responsibilities that they really could do but weren’t, politely excuse myself from involvement in activities that were not necessary for me and formulate a clearer schedule. Instead of blindly running along trying to ‘get things done,’ I had to stop and examine where I was spending my time; I found that I was frittering away a lot of creative time.

As I said above, the mental sense of things ‘to do’ can take a great toll. If a lot of your thinking is that you should be doing something other than what you are doing, it is time to take stock. Examining where things could be shifted around, what corners could be cut, what things do you really not need to be doing and what things are you doing because someone else won’t? It’s especially difficult when you spend most of your hours at a day job and then try to squeeze in creative time. Asking others to take over some duties that will free you up is not shirking your responsibility; it is sharing the work load more equitably. And if you are a happy creator, then everyone around you benefits from that!

So far the de-cluttering has freed up my thinking and has allowed me to tackle some creative pursuits that had gotten lost in the mess. And so far, the world is still spinning after I said ‘no’ and the groups understood my need to step back for my own well-being.

Happy Little Clouds Above Happy Little Trees

I want to share with everyone a video that I ran across recently. It follows on quite well with last week's goal check regarding beliefs. The words for this video were taken from many of the phrases painter and instructor Bob Ross used on his television show. The encouraging words are set to a catchy little tune that just gets me smiling. And so much of what he says is so true.

If you aren't familiar with Bob Ross, he was a staple of American public broadcasting for many years. He sold millions of books, videos, kits and instructional paraphernalia during his career that unfortunately was cut short in 1995. But his easy style, his gentle voice giving simple instruction has done much for many painters over the years whether they were serious artists or hobbyists, he brought a lot of joy to people. His kits can still be purchased (I saw some at LPC on Bishop Street just last week). I loved his encouragement, how he made 'happy little trees' and 'happy little clouds' and he didn't make mistakes, he just had happy accidents. But one of the things that he did emphasis over and over was about relaxing when creating, believing in our creating and knowing that you are the creator, not only of your artistic world, but your emotional and mental world.

So, not much today except to remember to enjoy creating and believe in your ability. Even if you're not a painter, this little video just leaves one feeling a little bit lighter, a little bit smiley-er! (I know it's not a real word but it is a real feeling!)

So, enjoy and sing along: I believe that any day's a good day when you create!

I Do Believe, I Do, I Do, I Do Believe in My Creativity

Making inferences or making evaluations determines what sorts of feelings we will have. When an event occurs a person has a reaction to the event. She may feel angry and that feeling is accompanied with angry thoughts. Then what the person does with those angry thoughts and feelings—her actions—impacts on results and that in turn affects what she thinks about herself.

Inferences that are evaluative become beliefs. Beliefs are not facts and it is up to us to determine if what we are telling ourselves is a fact or if it is a belief and then chose which we will invest in.

This is part of the cognitive process of establishing beliefs. Beliefs are an essential element to life; we all have beliefs, but it is whether these beliefs help us or hold us back that makes them important. These two types of beliefs can be called serviceable beliefs or unserviceable beliefs. Serviceable beliefs help us to have the perseverance to keep at our creative work. Unserviceable beliefs cause us to abandon a project just before it’s about to come to a successful point and stop us from trying.

Serviceable beliefs are flexible, have a realistic logic, and are based on things you’d like or prefer to have happen. Your sense of worth can be maintained if what you want or your aims aren’t achieved. Serviceable beliefs are supportive and encouraging; they help you move toward your goal. Another thing that serviceable beliefs help with is to assist in the understanding that an action is not automatically equated with the person; you are not a failure if you don’t measure up in one activity. Even if you don’t meet with success in many things, your value is not equated with an arbitrarily set standard of ‘success’ or ‘failure’. You can still be a loved, valued person if you don’t write a best-seller. You may carry some disappointment at not having achieved this but you are still valuable.

Unserviceable beliefs are rigid, unyielding, and dogmatic and are based on superlatives such as: must, have to, got to, need to, always, never. etc. Generally, unserviceable beliefs do not have a foundation in reality and tend to not allow other possibilities. They are overly critical and self-condemning. Unserviceable beliefs are usually stated in the form of a demand, not a request or suggestion. Holding these unserviceable beliefs undermines one’s feelings of worth which can impact our ability to create. A person thinking they are the worst singer in the world would keep them from developing their singing voice. They wouldn’t see any point because this unserviceable belief doesn’t allow for the possibility of improvement or attaining a satisfactory level.

It’s important to know what your own personal beliefs are concerning your creativity and abilities. A helpful tool would be to write down all your beliefs about your creativity, your abilities, and your drawbacks, the good and the bad. Take each belief and look at it carefully. Is it a belief that furthers your activities? Is it a belief that stops you from trying new things or finishing your work? Clarification of your beliefs helps you to identify some things that could be holding you back. Quiet often we are not aware of beliefs; often they exist as vague notions in the back of our mind, but we still affect how we think and what we do. So, clarifying these beliefs can allow you to bring the helpful beliefs to the forefront and look for ways to challenge the unhelpful ones.

Another way of manifesting these beliefs in a negative way are seen in ‘either/or” thinking or “all or nothing” thinking. If we believe that we have to be the best, and if we don’t believe our self to be the best so thereby we are the worst, we are engaging in an unserviceable belief system. If we think we have to complete a novel without any editing each time we sit down to write and don’t achieve that and just give up, then we’re engaging in unserviceable beliefs. These are unreasonable, limiting beliefs, but many people hold them.

However, if we believe that our creative efforts are worthwhile and have value in the mere fact that we’ve done them, we are engaging in a more serviceable belief system. We are engaging in a much more serviceable belief system if we embrace and accept the fact that a major part of creativity is engaging in the process, as well as making the mistakes, the edits and the changes. We a more helpful way is to nurture the belief and fact that we ourselves have value and our work has value, even if it isn’t “perfect”.

Get Back on that Horse

We all understand the importance of being able to get back up and try again in all aspects of our lives, but being creative sets up a whole new set of challenges with regard to resilience. How we maintain our resilience has to do with how we think about setbacks, challenges or rejections.

The things we tell ourselves when we don’t achieve a desired outcome affects whether we’ll get back on that horse and try riding again. Talking to ourselves in encouraging ways such as ‘you did a great job at the concert last week, so you know you can perform well;’  ‘many people compliment your work and you have won awards for it’ or ‘you are capable of writing well and have done so many times before’ are more helpful self-statements than denigrating your efforts.

Built into the overall creative process is the aspect of acceptance or rejection of our creative products. Due to the arts being a subjective field, there is a greater risk of our efforts not being appreciated or accepted, especially in a monetary fashion. Most jobs have set, well-defined, objective criteria related to a task being successfully completed.  The arts are not like doing someone’s accounting, fixing a leaky pipe or filing all the latest invoices. In the creative fields success is dependent on your audience’s personal tastes and there’s no way to set a definitive guideline for what people will like. There are indeed varying standards of which one must meet at least a minimum level, but by and large, it’s what people like and there isn’t a way to determine that.

Recently I watched a video interview of one of my favourite artists, Benjamin Harjo, Jr.  He has been a very successful working artist for nearly forty years. His work is unique in that it has aspects of traditional Native American art combined with an abstract style. One of the paintings he discussed in the interview was depicted a couple of artists portrayed as gamblers surrounded by various good luck symbols. Harjo wanted to express that he felt that doing art shows was a gamble; he and other artists go in with all their work and know that it is a crapshoot as to how much, if anything, will sell. He stated that he had come to look at making a living at selling art as being more about the luck of which buyers came into the show that day than about the quality of his work. I felt this was a very important distinction in maintaining a level of resilience.  Of course, we can increase or decrease our chances of luck. While you may not be able to control whether people accept your work or not, but you can control how you will deal with the disappointment.

If when one’s work doesn’t sell well, or is not received well, it is time to make a careful examination of the level of work you’ve done. If after that, you still feel quite satisfied with the quality, then it’s maybe the throw of the dice that day. The people who were willing to part with their money that day just didn’t show up. If you never do well at a particular show, then maybe it doesn’t draw the sort of people who would ever buy your work. If the type of work that sells at a show regularly is modernistic or abstract, showing a sentimental still-life might not be the work that will ever sell well there. Looking at many aspects of what you are doing is essential in making a realistic assessment and not taking an automatic stance of ‘I’m just not good enough.’ The same line of thinking applies to all the arts; make sure you’re in the right place for what your strengths.

Also, finding out what people like about what you do or what they don’t like gives you areas to work with. It could be that you’ve got the start of something really great; it just may need some changes and tweaks to bring it to its fullest state. Remember there is always another way to do a painting, sing a song, or write that sentence. Sometimes starting from scratch is exactly what is needed to make your work the most satisfying to you as well as to others. Don’t be afraid of alterations or to take a new perspective on old work.

Here are some more suggestions:

·         One of the things that will help with resilience is to keep within easy access accolades or symbols of success. Certificates, photos, awards, trophies, announcements, etc., any of those things however small that remind you of what you are capable of and have achieved will help you to refocus your thinking about your abilities in a positive way. If you’ve not won awards yet, keep around things that give you inspiration and encouragement.

·         Be sure to maintain a good system of support. These are friends and colleagues who offer encouragement and will give you that gentle kick in the behind from time to time to get you moving when you feel like lying down. They support you and won’t let you talk bad about yourself and your work.

·         Recheck motivation. If you’re doing things solely for money, then maybe that is showing and the heart of what you wanted to say isn’t shining through. Being sure that what is motivating you is authentic and what is your true feeling.

·         Go back to your goals. This is why it’s important to have a clear idea of what your goals are. Sometimes in simply looking back over what hopes and aspirations you’ve had you can chose to interpret them with the same enthusiasm with which you originally conceived them. This can be an opportunity to recharge your batteries and remind you what you hoped to achieve in the first place. At this point you can look at what one small thing can be done to move you toward your goal.

·         Nurture a strong sense of belief in what you do, who you are and what it is you want to say. This clarity will boost your resilience and give you that extra push to get back out there and try again. Have confidence in your vision. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of how you perceive yourself. If you frequently call yourself a no-talent loser, well, you’ll more than likely behave as such. But by reminding yourself that you can be competent, capable and creative, you’re more likely to act in such a fashion. Build on this perspective of yourself; I’m not telling you to be delusional and arrogant, but instead to tender a quiet confidence in self-belief. We often have to practice reminding ourselves of our own capabilities. And remember that your work is not your self (although it may feel that way, it is just that, a feeling, not a fact), and they both have value.

·         Don’t always assume that your work is not any good. This is why it is so important to work at your art, to learn as many skills to improve it as you can; if you know you are doing your best and making a good effort at learning all you can, then you have the courage to persevere. It is scary to put your work on the line, have it judged or criticized, but it is the only way to grow and learn more about whether you’re hitting the mark with what you’re trying to say creatively. Take action. Don’t just sit and think about what could be done--get up and do it, whatever that may be.

·         Keep things in perspective; not selling any paintings or not having your book proposal accepted doesn’t mean that you won’t ever do these things. You are not the worst painter in the world; you are not the worst writer or dancer or whatever in the world. Success is built on practice and each piece of creative work, each submission, each tryout is a practice; it’s all practice!

·         Work toward a hopeful attitude. Look for new places to show, find where the next writer’s convention takes place, and look at online ways to get your work seen. Each day brings new possibilities if you are looking for them with an open mind. Tomorrow really is another opportunity. Focusing on ‘I’ll never have success,’ ‘no one wants my work,’ ‘there aren’t any opportunities out there’ narrows your focus and turns your thoughts to a defeated attitude. It’s hard to stand up with that attitude. Be careful about using these negative superlatives in thinking about what is happening.

·         Take care of yourself. If you’re not getting enough sleep, not being active, eating junk food and drinking too much caffeine or alcohol, you’re not at an optimum functioning capacity. Taking care of yourself is a way to best enhance your creative reserve to see you through difficult times. Doubt knocking on your door when you’ve had too much sugar, caffeine and not enough sleep will have a fertile place to come in and take over.

After a disappointment, it may be tempting to just give up your creative pursuits. Don’t do it. Stopping may not make you any happier; in fact, it will more than likely make you more unhappy or frustrated. If you have that creative desire, it is in you and will ask to be acted upon. To ignore this could interfere with having any sense of fulfilment.

But when those low times hit and your manuscript has been rejected again, or you’ve had yet another art show without any sales, or whatever has knocked the wind out of your creative sails, don’t pretend it doesn’t hurt. Allow yourself to admit that it does matter whether others like your work or not. To use an old phrase from the prairies, be like a dog that lost the fight and crawl under the porch to lick your wounds. Give yourself permission to feel that disappointment but only for a short while. Then get back in there and start again. The resiliency to get back up and try again is inherent in our survival instincts. Staying under the porch too long is wallowing in self pity. Coming back out after a respite is bravery and creativity is an act of bravery. We’ve all heard the adage it’s not how many times you’ve been knocked down, but how many times you get back up. Life and creativity is about getting back up. So, saddle up and ride on!

Making Fertilizer

Sometimes we come smack up against a creative block; a wall that won't let us past and we hit it hard. And if not an actual block then we can experience a spell where whatever we create just doesn't seem to hit the mark. If you are experiencing such a time (or when it comes, as it will) know that it indeed can be a hard process to come to terms with. The fact is, just as there are the highs of creativity, there will always be lows as well.

I've come to look at creativity the same as the cycle of the seasons. We know we can do nothing about the joys of summer turning into the quieting and drab of autumn and then autumn turning into the bleak stillness of winter while we wait impatiently for spring and all its activity of growth. This is how things work and it will just make us frustrated and crazy to think that we can perform at top level all the time. It's not possible for anything -- even machines get worn out.

But each of these seasons has a purpose and a reason. Learning to be patient with our 'winters' of creativity is hard but that time can be used the same as nature does: to rest and revitalize. The lows can be used to collect new information, look to skill improvement, and rest the mind (which is an important element). Sometimes a break from your work is necessary to allow for the possibility of a new perspective, to discover a new technique, explore other directions or just play which in itself furthers creativity!

Your winter of creativity is also a time to put down fertilizer (that's what I call the shit we create in low times). Fertilizer is important to the growth of plants, so why not writers, painters, musicians, etc? Even though what we create during the low times isn't what we aspire to, it is an important part of feeding the process and the eventual outcome. Sometimes we need to make these 'mistakes' so we can gauge where we are at. Or as the painter Bob Ross liked to say, 'there are no mistakes only happy accidents.' We can build on those little accidental slips.

Often, the things we create during this time can be the seeds of something great later on. They just may need time to germinate. And when you come back from your winter's creative hibernation, you'll have gained something new that can be added to that fertilizer. This can be a very rich source to mine--dig out the gems in your pile of rubble ideas and ventures. Sometimes it just takes a fresh eye or ear to make the alterations that change something to a new level. Everything we do contributes to the next project.

So be ok with making fertilizer--you have no idea what it might grow out of it!