Choosing you and your creative practice
What does your soul really want??
No doubt you’ve heard from time management experts that scheduling essential tasks and important appointments on your calendar is the key to getting stuff done. This is usually advised in the context of things that are not inherently fun, like tasks that you’re obligated to complete and goals that are tied to society’s success metric.
I’m not a big fan because it makes me feel like I’m running on a never ending treadmill; my productivity may increase but my life satisfaction tanks. And yet, I keep trying. At this stage in my life, if I don’t write stuff down on my calendar, it won’t happen. Anyone else?
But today, I want to share a really big breakthrough that came after I scheduled time for my creative practice on my calendar.
First, the inspiration: I was motivated to schedule creative time after listening to artist and teacher Nicholas Wilton. I’m in his Creative Visionary Program for a second time. He starts the program with a two week deep dive into mindset, desire, and art as a way to connect with soul - you can see why I signed up again! So good.
Second, the resistance: Even with Nick’s strong urging, I couldn’t quite commit to assigning specific blocks of time in my calendar. This is a recurring situation for me. My creative practice is often relegated to the bottom of my to-do list, if it makes it on there at all! I put everyone and everything else before my own desire to create.
I shared this hesitation with my friend, Julie, and she called me out on my reluctance: It’s RESISTANCE! She shared some advice from Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art. He writes that resistance is a compass, pointing to the thing that you must do! “The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”
Thanks, resistance! You’re showing me that I must prioritize my creative practice because it is important to my soul. With that kick in the pants, I added a two-hour block of time to my calendar for the following five days.
Finally, the follow-through: The next day, as I was sketching away at the scheduled time, a pesky and all too familiar voice demanded to know if this was the most productive thing to be doing at this moment. I pointed to my calendar and confidently declared "yep! says so right there on my calendar!!
I felt victorious! I had conquered resistance, at least for a day.
I’ve been able to show up to my creative practice, and choose to show up for myself, for almost three whole weeks! That doesn’t seem like much, but each time I choose to prioritize what my soul wants, I grow in my ability to trust myself, and resistance has to find a new tactic.
What does your soul want you to choose?
Need a little help figuring out how to choose yourself? Here’s what I’m noticing:
Baby steps, baby.
In my first week of scheduling my creative practice, I penciled in two-hour slots. On many of those first days, I was only sketched for about an hour. Now, I schedule one-hour slots and stop when I feel complete. Just because I didn’t perfectly meet my goal of creating for two hours at a go, I didn’t quit on myself. Instead, I modified my schedule and kept going.
“Little and often.”
Wilton’s advice is to show up little and often because consistency is better than waiting for your calendar to clear so you can spend a whole day. Does a clear schedule ever happen??? Creating in small chunks of time is much more achievable than waiting for the stars to align so you can create all day long. Plus, it's rather exhausting for me to spend that much time in one go.
Good enough is good enough.
Voltaire is credited as saying: “Don’t let being perfect be the enemy of good.” I would restate it as “Don’t let being perfect be the enemy of good enough.” Good enough. That’s a metric I can embrace. Get a “C” and get it done. Being happy with a “C” won’t come easy to over-achieving straight-A types. But moving the line a little bit each day keeps you involved. It keeps your creative practice top of mind. A lot of creativity happens in the background while your mind is working on other tasks. By regularly feeding your creative practice, you’re keeping the practice percolating. It’ll be so much easier to pick up where you left off yesterday than it would be to follow a cold trail a month from now.
Choose you.
Photo by Jake Hill on Unsplash
Do you struggle to choose you? I’m not sure why it’s easier for me to commit to and follow through on promises I make to everyone else, than it is to follow through on promises I make to myself. Maybe it’s my people-pleasing gene? I do know that subordinating my desires to meet everyone else’s needs is a recipe for resentment and bitterness.
Choosing yourself is powerful magic! Making a promise to yourself to do what you desire, and keeping that promise, sends a strong message. When you commit to do what you desire, like “Sketch at 11:00 tomorrow,” you are telling yourself: “I respect myself.” “I am trustworthy.” “I am worth doing what lights me up!” These messages are revolutionary!
How do you want to choose yourself today? What baby steps can you take this week that will send the message that you are worth choosing. Can you commit to spending just 15 minutes on that one thing your soul longs for? Like sketching, or taking a walk outside, or calling a friend to reconnect. Let me know in the comments!
What do you need? What is the smallest step you can take to meet that need? Write in on your calendar and then do it. And then do it again and again.
Here’s one suggestion of how you could choose you: Choose clay!
You can squish it, smash it, smooth it, and shape it - clay can take all your feelings! Join our CREATIVE RESISTANCE on April 26th at 11:00 - 12:30 eastern to experience how playing with clay can be cathartic. We still have a few spaces left!
