You're obsessed. You're obsessed with your work, your craft. You think about your art, your character, painting, sculpture, upcoming tour, or screenplay seemingly every waking minute of every day. Heck, you even dream about it!
This fiendish infatuation with your craft, the passion that drives you to get out of bed in the morning is a wonderful gift. Why is it, then, that this fixation on what makes the earth move for you can also stop you dead in your tracks? Cold. Left abandoned by the "What if's" or "I'm not enough's" or any version of "I can't because".
What starts as a life-affirming energizer bunny within you becomes a taunting dragon that tortures you day in and day out. You feel like there is no escape. If you walk away from what your heart is calling you to become you trade desire for a lifetime of despair. Anxiety.
What is anxiety? Anxiety is worry, anticipation for a future misfortune. Anxiety is irrational fear. Rational fear is real. You fear fire if you're in a burning house because fire will deliver great harm to you if you just sit there. Irrational fear is worry that your house might burn to the ground as you sleep when there is no sign of fire, no observable hint of a pending fire, as you rest your head on your pillow. Irrational fear is despair over potential bad reviews of your work. You spend your days in desperate anxiety over what you think will be a career, or life-ending, dose of criticism. You believe that your future will be ruined if your performance or creation doesn't meet with high approval and reward. You think your life will be meaningless; you will have no value or purpose.
And, in your anxiety, you are stuck. You're frozen on your path like the proverbial deer in the headlights. You Find Excuses And Reasons (F.E.A.R.) to put off moments of judgment. You never finish your painting, screenplay or composition. You blow off your audition because you think your boss won't let you have the afternoon off. And then you beat yourself up over your procrastination and missed opportunity. And what you fear becomes even more real to you.
Nonsense!
Your anxiety can work for you! Anxiety is just a signal. It is a signal to your Higher Self that you are about to stretch out of your current comfort zone; about to grow. You are about to enter into unknown territory and that ego within you, the Inner Critic, is spooked. Just observe. Notice when your Inner Critic, the voice that delivers your self-doubt and fear, is freaked out. Know that in that moment you have a choice. You can give your personal power over to your Inner Critic, let him lead your choice and stay right where you are where it is 'safe'. Or, you can recognize that you are about to take one giant step closer to the actualization of your dream.
Remind your egoic Inner Critic that whatever happens, you will be safe. If you are booed off the stage, publicly humiliated by an art critic or your screenplay is tossed in the round file you are still you. You still have meaning and purpose. And you get to learn something from that experience. These lessons are gifts for they are what ultimately deliver what you desire - the masterful expression of your full potential. Look around you. Those you admire got to where they are through a path of stretching, learning, growing, and mastering their craft. So can you.
Choose to maintain your personal power. Know that what you fear is also what you are here to do. There is only one way to mitigate your anxiety and that is to do the thing that makes you anxious!
Valery Satterwhite is an Artist Mindset Mentor and Coach who helps creative people get out of their own way so that they can overcome the struggles that often come packaged with the life of a visual & performing artist. Clients learn how to express their full potential deliberately & responsibly to create more passionately, profoundly, productively and profitably. Empower the Wizard Within to actualize and express your full creative potential. http://www.InnerWizard.com. Get Free "Empower the Wizard Within tips"!
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
How to Get A Grip on Your Inner Critic
Ever want to tell someone to get a grip? Tell them that they have run amok in their minds and are not facing reality? Stop them from completely 'losing it' and self-destructing? How often have you told yourself to get a grip only to later serve up more and more justification for your misguided thinking and emotions? Your very own self-sabotage?
How do you achieve a centered calm presence when your life experience is flung in scattered directions, randomly, leaving you with anxiety, fear, depression or utter confusion? Or worse yet, your frozen in action; completely stuck. Trapped in the mire of your own monkey mind.
You get a grip on your Inner Critic by letting go of the grip it has over you.
"People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them." ~George Bernard Shaw
You create your experience through the expression of the essence of what you think about, whether it is something you want or something you do not want. Your Inner Critic is often the originator of what you think about. If your focus and attention in upon that which you have and do not want, you will create more of what you do not want. If you allow your thoughts to be occupied with worry then you will create an experience that reflects what you fear.
Your Inner Critic serves up these seemingly automatic thoughts of worry, fear and other anxiety to hold you back and keep you safe. He has you in his grip as if you were a child about to run into the street. He holds onto in fear of your safety for if he were to let go you would surely die. And you live, frozen in place or creating more evidence to support the stronghold the Inner Critic has over you.
To release the Inner Critic grip tell him "You're not the boss of me!" Reclaim your power. In that powerful you stand centered in the truth of who you are and committed to your passion, your gift that you are here to bring forth into the world. You will remember that there is nothing that you desire that you cannot achieve, and there is nothing that you do not want that you cannot release from your experience.
Recognizing the connection between what you think and feel and what you create for your life experience weakens the fearful grip you hold upon yourself. You can release the grip by taking responsibility for generating the thoughts and feelings that will deliver more of the experiences you desire and less of what you do not want to occur in your life.
What is your dream, your deepest desire?
Speak and act in the direction of that desire. Any thoughts, feelings, emotions you have that run contrary to that desire is the work of your Inner Critic. He in then in control of the decisions and choices you make moving forward. It's easy to tell if your Inner Critic has a grip on you or not. When you are victim to his power, entrenched in his grip, you do not feel good. It is as simple as that. Uncomfortable feelings are clear indicators that your thoughts are not in alignment with your dreams, your desires. The choices you make based on those thoughts will not result in the experience you want to create. Fear based thoughts will lead to self-sabotage. Without exception.
"Every speaker has a mouth; An arrangement rather neat. Sometimes it's filled with wisdom. Sometimes it's filled with feet." - Robert Orben
Whatever you are paying attention to, whether it be remembering the past, observing the present or thinking about the future, you use to plant the seeds for what you will experience in that future. How you show up in your life is what you create. Do you show up in the clenched fist of your Inner Critic or will you present yourself standing firm in your own power, speaking and action in alignment with the fullest expression of your authenticity, your truth?
Release the Inner Critic grip to free yourself to create from your heart instead of your Inner Critic monkey mind. With this freedom comes expanded possibilities and unlimited potential.
"To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts." - Henry David Thoreau
Valery Satterwhite is an Artist Mindset Mentor who helps creative people get out of their own way so that they can overcome the struggles that often come packaged with the life of a visual & performing artist. Clients learn how to express their full potential deliberately & responsibly to create more passionately, profoundly, productively and profitably. Empower the Wizard Within to actualize and express your full creative potential. http://www.InnerWizard.com. Get Free "Empower the Wizard Within tips"!
How do you achieve a centered calm presence when your life experience is flung in scattered directions, randomly, leaving you with anxiety, fear, depression or utter confusion? Or worse yet, your frozen in action; completely stuck. Trapped in the mire of your own monkey mind.
You get a grip on your Inner Critic by letting go of the grip it has over you.
"People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them." ~George Bernard Shaw
You create your experience through the expression of the essence of what you think about, whether it is something you want or something you do not want. Your Inner Critic is often the originator of what you think about. If your focus and attention in upon that which you have and do not want, you will create more of what you do not want. If you allow your thoughts to be occupied with worry then you will create an experience that reflects what you fear.
Your Inner Critic serves up these seemingly automatic thoughts of worry, fear and other anxiety to hold you back and keep you safe. He has you in his grip as if you were a child about to run into the street. He holds onto in fear of your safety for if he were to let go you would surely die. And you live, frozen in place or creating more evidence to support the stronghold the Inner Critic has over you.
To release the Inner Critic grip tell him "You're not the boss of me!" Reclaim your power. In that powerful you stand centered in the truth of who you are and committed to your passion, your gift that you are here to bring forth into the world. You will remember that there is nothing that you desire that you cannot achieve, and there is nothing that you do not want that you cannot release from your experience.
Recognizing the connection between what you think and feel and what you create for your life experience weakens the fearful grip you hold upon yourself. You can release the grip by taking responsibility for generating the thoughts and feelings that will deliver more of the experiences you desire and less of what you do not want to occur in your life.
What is your dream, your deepest desire?
Speak and act in the direction of that desire. Any thoughts, feelings, emotions you have that run contrary to that desire is the work of your Inner Critic. He in then in control of the decisions and choices you make moving forward. It's easy to tell if your Inner Critic has a grip on you or not. When you are victim to his power, entrenched in his grip, you do not feel good. It is as simple as that. Uncomfortable feelings are clear indicators that your thoughts are not in alignment with your dreams, your desires. The choices you make based on those thoughts will not result in the experience you want to create. Fear based thoughts will lead to self-sabotage. Without exception.
"Every speaker has a mouth; An arrangement rather neat. Sometimes it's filled with wisdom. Sometimes it's filled with feet." - Robert Orben
Whatever you are paying attention to, whether it be remembering the past, observing the present or thinking about the future, you use to plant the seeds for what you will experience in that future. How you show up in your life is what you create. Do you show up in the clenched fist of your Inner Critic or will you present yourself standing firm in your own power, speaking and action in alignment with the fullest expression of your authenticity, your truth?
Release the Inner Critic grip to free yourself to create from your heart instead of your Inner Critic monkey mind. With this freedom comes expanded possibilities and unlimited potential.
"To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts." - Henry David Thoreau
Valery Satterwhite is an Artist Mindset Mentor who helps creative people get out of their own way so that they can overcome the struggles that often come packaged with the life of a visual & performing artist. Clients learn how to express their full potential deliberately & responsibly to create more passionately, profoundly, productively and profitably. Empower the Wizard Within to actualize and express your full creative potential. http://www.InnerWizard.com. Get Free "Empower the Wizard Within tips"!
Monday, July 13, 2009
Is Creative Block Just Part of Your Process?
Blocked!
Words are not spilling onto the page; color choices elude you; you can't embody the character you've been chosen to portray. Simply put, you're stuck! It's not the first time you've been stuck and certainly not the last if you're a creative being. In your stuck-ness you beat yourself up, and often others, in your frustration and anxiety over your creative blocks. You worry that you may not have another creative thought, an inspired moment, ever again! Your life will be over! Argh!! And you resist your stuckness only to give your power over to it allowing the struggle to grow large blocking your vision, your expression, your talent, your gift to the world. Double ArrrggghhhH!!!
"Being true to yourself is what feeds creativity, not self-doubt and criticism." - Diane Arenberg
Did it ever occur to you that you were trying too hard to get over your artist, your creative, block? What if your seemingly blocked moments were just pauses in your creative process? What if the pause is a call to you to replenish your energy, feed your creative soul, with what it enjoys, what it plays with? What if this pause was opportunity calling?
"An inconvenience is an unrecognized opportunity." - Confucius
Instead of resigning to the possibility that you're washed up as an artist, consider that you are merely making a pit stop. Pit stops are essential to any Formula One race champion and you are absolutely a champion! You are a master, endowed with unique gifts and talent, here to express your full potential. Pull into the pit stop and refuel!
I can hear your Inner Critic screaming now! "If I stop, pull out of the race even for a moment, others will pass me by!". Nonsense! Others will require pit stops as well. Besides, they're not running the same race you are. They're not creating YOUR masterpiece. They are in the process, the race, to create theirs as you are yours. The only one you're racing against is your very own Inner Critic who has no idea where he's going or how to get there. He is hopelessly lost begging you, your Higher Self or what I playfully call the Wizard Within, to take over the lead.
"Creation is such an elusive thing, for the more we think we are in control, the more we remove ourselves from the actual creation." - Betty Jean Billups
Recognize that you've paused and allow the pit stop experience to unfold. Let if flow naturally without restraint. What you resist, persists. If you resist being blocked, your block will persist. If you embrace where you are in the process the process will continue to move forward, you will naturally replenish your energy that serves your intuition and inspiration. Before you know it you will pull out of the pit stop inspired and firing on all cylinders!
"The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward." - Joseph Campbell
Valery Satterwhite is an Artist Mindset Mentor and Coach who helps creative people get out of their own way so that they can overcome the struggles that often come packaged with the life of a visual & performing artist. Clients learn how to express their full potential deliberately & responsibly to create more passionately, profoundly, productively and profitably. Empower the Wizard Within to actualize and express your full creative potential. http://www.InnerWizard.com. Get Free "Empower the Wizard Within tips"!
Words are not spilling onto the page; color choices elude you; you can't embody the character you've been chosen to portray. Simply put, you're stuck! It's not the first time you've been stuck and certainly not the last if you're a creative being. In your stuck-ness you beat yourself up, and often others, in your frustration and anxiety over your creative blocks. You worry that you may not have another creative thought, an inspired moment, ever again! Your life will be over! Argh!! And you resist your stuckness only to give your power over to it allowing the struggle to grow large blocking your vision, your expression, your talent, your gift to the world. Double ArrrggghhhH!!!
"Being true to yourself is what feeds creativity, not self-doubt and criticism." - Diane Arenberg
Did it ever occur to you that you were trying too hard to get over your artist, your creative, block? What if your seemingly blocked moments were just pauses in your creative process? What if the pause is a call to you to replenish your energy, feed your creative soul, with what it enjoys, what it plays with? What if this pause was opportunity calling?
"An inconvenience is an unrecognized opportunity." - Confucius
Instead of resigning to the possibility that you're washed up as an artist, consider that you are merely making a pit stop. Pit stops are essential to any Formula One race champion and you are absolutely a champion! You are a master, endowed with unique gifts and talent, here to express your full potential. Pull into the pit stop and refuel!
I can hear your Inner Critic screaming now! "If I stop, pull out of the race even for a moment, others will pass me by!". Nonsense! Others will require pit stops as well. Besides, they're not running the same race you are. They're not creating YOUR masterpiece. They are in the process, the race, to create theirs as you are yours. The only one you're racing against is your very own Inner Critic who has no idea where he's going or how to get there. He is hopelessly lost begging you, your Higher Self or what I playfully call the Wizard Within, to take over the lead.
"Creation is such an elusive thing, for the more we think we are in control, the more we remove ourselves from the actual creation." - Betty Jean Billups
Recognize that you've paused and allow the pit stop experience to unfold. Let if flow naturally without restraint. What you resist, persists. If you resist being blocked, your block will persist. If you embrace where you are in the process the process will continue to move forward, you will naturally replenish your energy that serves your intuition and inspiration. Before you know it you will pull out of the pit stop inspired and firing on all cylinders!
"The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward." - Joseph Campbell
Valery Satterwhite is an Artist Mindset Mentor and Coach who helps creative people get out of their own way so that they can overcome the struggles that often come packaged with the life of a visual & performing artist. Clients learn how to express their full potential deliberately & responsibly to create more passionately, profoundly, productively and profitably. Empower the Wizard Within to actualize and express your full creative potential. http://www.InnerWizard.com. Get Free "Empower the Wizard Within tips"!
Friday, July 10, 2009
Your Exhaustion is Really Inner Critic FEAR
Many people come to me complaining that they're tired, exhausted, unable to find balance in their life. Some have incredibly busy schedules and others live a life of casual leisure. Yet, both are exhausted. I also know people who have either busy or leisurely schedules who are not tired, they are full of energy and rarely, if ever, tire. What's the difference?
I've discovered that those in the chronically tired camp live 'should be' lives. They fear they are not good, smart, talented or whatever enough to live life centered in the truth of who they are, on their terms so they adopt a way of life that meets with who they think they're supposed to be, what they're supposed to do and have. One can get very good at living a 'should be' life but it is exhausting. I takes a lot of work to live contrary to your natural preferences and talents; against your purpose. It is a life spent swimming upstream - and that's exhausting!
"Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself." Samuel Butler
Those who live authentically, aligned with their purpose, enjoy a seemingly inexhaustible source of energy. Aligned with purpose, energy is always there to do whatever inspires you. You never get tired, and each day is met with a sense of joy. No matter how busy, days unfold effortlessly, a flow with the stream of life.
If you are exhausted, too tired to create you are really stuck in Finding Excuses And Reasons (F.E.A.R.) why you cannot honor and give voice to your authentic self, your purpose and unique abilities that are your birthright. If you are giving power to that monkey minded Inner Critic chatter telling you that you cannot do or express what your heart is calling you to create you deplete your energy source, your Inner Being, Higher Self or what I playfully call the Wizard within. If you think too much and fail to take action, fear makes its home within you. You become exhausted as you work against your natural flow. You stand still in your journey to actualize and express your full potential.
"The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have." - Norman Vincent Peale
Go from tired to inspired by giving power to the Inner Being voice within you. This is the voice that knows you by heart, knows your personal passions and greatest desires. Ask what your Inner Being wants to do and create and take one step in that direction. Then take another step. And another. Soon you will be living your life authentically, in alignment with what you are here to be, do and have. You will have turned around to flow easily with the stream instead of paddling exhaustively against it.
“I'm so tired, but I can't sleep...standing on the edge of something much too deep...funny how I feel so much but cannot say a word...we are screaming inside, oh, but we can't be heard...so afraid to love you, more afraid to lose...clinging to a past” - Sarah McLachlan
Valery Satterwhite is an Artist Mindset Mentor and Coach who helps creative people get out of their own way so that they can overcome the struggles that often come packaged with the life of a visual & performing artist. Clients learn how to express their full potential deliberately & responsibly to create more passionately, profoundly, productively and profitably. Empower the Wizard Within to actualize and express your full creative potential. http://www.InnerWizard.com. Get Free "Empower the Wizard Within tips"!
I've discovered that those in the chronically tired camp live 'should be' lives. They fear they are not good, smart, talented or whatever enough to live life centered in the truth of who they are, on their terms so they adopt a way of life that meets with who they think they're supposed to be, what they're supposed to do and have. One can get very good at living a 'should be' life but it is exhausting. I takes a lot of work to live contrary to your natural preferences and talents; against your purpose. It is a life spent swimming upstream - and that's exhausting!
"Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself." Samuel Butler
Those who live authentically, aligned with their purpose, enjoy a seemingly inexhaustible source of energy. Aligned with purpose, energy is always there to do whatever inspires you. You never get tired, and each day is met with a sense of joy. No matter how busy, days unfold effortlessly, a flow with the stream of life.
If you are exhausted, too tired to create you are really stuck in Finding Excuses And Reasons (F.E.A.R.) why you cannot honor and give voice to your authentic self, your purpose and unique abilities that are your birthright. If you are giving power to that monkey minded Inner Critic chatter telling you that you cannot do or express what your heart is calling you to create you deplete your energy source, your Inner Being, Higher Self or what I playfully call the Wizard within. If you think too much and fail to take action, fear makes its home within you. You become exhausted as you work against your natural flow. You stand still in your journey to actualize and express your full potential.
"The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have." - Norman Vincent Peale
Go from tired to inspired by giving power to the Inner Being voice within you. This is the voice that knows you by heart, knows your personal passions and greatest desires. Ask what your Inner Being wants to do and create and take one step in that direction. Then take another step. And another. Soon you will be living your life authentically, in alignment with what you are here to be, do and have. You will have turned around to flow easily with the stream instead of paddling exhaustively against it.
“I'm so tired, but I can't sleep...standing on the edge of something much too deep...funny how I feel so much but cannot say a word...we are screaming inside, oh, but we can't be heard...so afraid to love you, more afraid to lose...clinging to a past” - Sarah McLachlan
Valery Satterwhite is an Artist Mindset Mentor and Coach who helps creative people get out of their own way so that they can overcome the struggles that often come packaged with the life of a visual & performing artist. Clients learn how to express their full potential deliberately & responsibly to create more passionately, profoundly, productively and profitably. Empower the Wizard Within to actualize and express your full creative potential. http://www.InnerWizard.com. Get Free "Empower the Wizard Within tips"!
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
How to Drop Your Creative Resistance
The simple truth is creativity functions best when you let go of resistance to the creative flow. Resistance comes in many forms. Anxiety over a creative block is a form of resistance. Finding Excuses And Reasons (F.E.A.R.) for why you cannot or aren't whatever enough to come up with the vision or the energy to create is another face of resistance. Worrying about how you're going to pay your bills or how the critics will view your work is nothing but resistance. Resistance is saying NO! to YOU. It is saying NO to what your heart is calling you to be, do and experience.
Let go of your resistance. Trust. Trust that you can, are 'enough', will be able to keep a roof over your head and handle criticism of any kind. Just drop the baggage of resistance that you've been carrying around with you that makes you too exhausted to get your creative juices flowing. Even if you give yourself permission to let go for only 1 day, just drop it! Drop out of the vicious cycle of artist block and stunted creativity.
"Drop out" suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. It meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean 'Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity.'" -Timothy Leary
When you drop your creative resistance you change your structured path of least resistance. Your current path is mired with fear and self-doubt. When you drop your fear and self-doubt you create a new path; a path that is clear, free from the quagmire of restraints and limitations to your creative flow. You are open to new vision.
"It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it." - Anais Nin
It is very easy to drop your creative resistance. Just be willing. Take a deep breath and begin. It doesn't matter how you begin; just do anything. If you're a painter pick up your brush or knife and choose a color. Put some paint on a canvas and let go. If you're an actor, audition for a role that you think is impossible to win. If you're a writer, write a romantic comedy if your work is largely science fiction. Do something out of your ordinary, out of your comfort zone, and be willing to fall flat on your butt.
"Every man, through fear, mugs his aspirations a dozen times a day." ~Brendan Francis
If you do create a stink bomb, have a good chuckle over the experience and notice that the fall didn't kill you like you feared it would. In fact, you learned a thing or two about yourself and how you can improve your work. It is in the lessons learned from new experiences that your vision of what's possible for you expands. And laughter will give you distance. Laughter lets you to step back from an event, learn from it and then move onto bigger and better experiences.
Drop the resistant Inner Critic monkey-mind chatter filled with doubt and anxiety. Chuckle and hum a little tune.."I can see clearly now, the brain is gone..."
"The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward." - Joseph Campbell
Valery Satterwhite is an Artist Mindset Mentor and Coach who helps creative people get out of their own way so that they can overcome the struggles that often come packaged with the life of a visual & performing artist. Clients learn how to express their full potential deliberately & responsibly to create more passionately, profoundly, productively and profitably. Empower the Wizard Within to actualize and express your full creative potential. http://www.InnerWizard.com. Get Free "Empower the Wizard Within tips"!
Let go of your resistance. Trust. Trust that you can, are 'enough', will be able to keep a roof over your head and handle criticism of any kind. Just drop the baggage of resistance that you've been carrying around with you that makes you too exhausted to get your creative juices flowing. Even if you give yourself permission to let go for only 1 day, just drop it! Drop out of the vicious cycle of artist block and stunted creativity.
"Drop out" suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. It meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean 'Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity.'" -Timothy Leary
When you drop your creative resistance you change your structured path of least resistance. Your current path is mired with fear and self-doubt. When you drop your fear and self-doubt you create a new path; a path that is clear, free from the quagmire of restraints and limitations to your creative flow. You are open to new vision.
"It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it." - Anais Nin
It is very easy to drop your creative resistance. Just be willing. Take a deep breath and begin. It doesn't matter how you begin; just do anything. If you're a painter pick up your brush or knife and choose a color. Put some paint on a canvas and let go. If you're an actor, audition for a role that you think is impossible to win. If you're a writer, write a romantic comedy if your work is largely science fiction. Do something out of your ordinary, out of your comfort zone, and be willing to fall flat on your butt.
"Every man, through fear, mugs his aspirations a dozen times a day." ~Brendan Francis
If you do create a stink bomb, have a good chuckle over the experience and notice that the fall didn't kill you like you feared it would. In fact, you learned a thing or two about yourself and how you can improve your work. It is in the lessons learned from new experiences that your vision of what's possible for you expands. And laughter will give you distance. Laughter lets you to step back from an event, learn from it and then move onto bigger and better experiences.
Drop the resistant Inner Critic monkey-mind chatter filled with doubt and anxiety. Chuckle and hum a little tune.."I can see clearly now, the brain is gone..."
"The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward." - Joseph Campbell
Valery Satterwhite is an Artist Mindset Mentor and Coach who helps creative people get out of their own way so that they can overcome the struggles that often come packaged with the life of a visual & performing artist. Clients learn how to express their full potential deliberately & responsibly to create more passionately, profoundly, productively and profitably. Empower the Wizard Within to actualize and express your full creative potential. http://www.InnerWizard.com. Get Free "Empower the Wizard Within tips"!
Monday, July 6, 2009
Creatively Blocked? Let Go Of It Has To Be Good
There you are again, staring endlessly at the blank canvas or page. Perhaps you are sitting at the piano, clueless as to where to place your hands. Are you struggling with how to develop your character in the role you've just landed? Are you frozen with a creative block, stuck in procrastination, scared that you've reached the end of your talent and will never have a creative thought ever again? If so, you are creatively blocked. You've reached a dead end and you're spent, depleted of all creative energy. Petrified, you struggle and struggle to come up with inspiration only to expand your fear into high anxiety. "If I were any good at this it wouldn't be so hard!".
Ah, there it is. You've Found and Excuse And Reason (F.E.A.R.) to hold yourself back from your creative flow. "I'm not good enough!" What is, exactly, good enough? According to whom? What does it mean to be good enough? Is it perfection? Is it a natural ability to create spontaneously at any given moment? Is it receiving awards and applause for your talent from associates and the public?
"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." - Maya Angelou
There is no greater waste of energy for a creative person than to worry about whether or not one is good enough or talented enough. You are talented. Period. Sometimes you get in the zone of creativity easily and sometimes you don't. Sometimes you create a masterpiece, sometimes you create something that stinks up the room. All of it is part of the creative process. Every step in that process has value, expands your creative vision, talent and work flow. What you bring with you to the work in front of you is contained in the last piece and the ones before that - including the rotten eggs.
"The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable." - Robert Henri
If you're mired in creative block just begin. Write, paint, emote, play anything. Let go of the notion that whatever you are developing has to be good. Be willing to create a major flop. Get silly. Get naked. Do something, anything, that will move you beyond the frustration and stress of having to create something good. Just get into the process and let go. Let the work unfold as it will rather than place limitations through the right or wrong, good or bad of it. Let go and flow.
"I tamed my personal art demon – the tendency to think about painting rather than actually painting – by throwing the stuff on the blank paper and telling myself I didn't care about the end result. I believed it and was saved." - Rich Hawk
Valery Satterwhite is an Artist Mindset Mentor & Coach who helps creative people get out of their own way so that they can overcome the struggles that often come packaged with the life of a visual & performing artist. Clients learn how to express their full potential deliberately & responsibly to create more passionately, profoundly, productively and profitably. Empower the Wizard Within to actualize and express your full creative potential. http://www.InnerWizard.com. Get Free "Empower the Wizard Within tips"!
Ah, there it is. You've Found and Excuse And Reason (F.E.A.R.) to hold yourself back from your creative flow. "I'm not good enough!" What is, exactly, good enough? According to whom? What does it mean to be good enough? Is it perfection? Is it a natural ability to create spontaneously at any given moment? Is it receiving awards and applause for your talent from associates and the public?
"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." - Maya Angelou
There is no greater waste of energy for a creative person than to worry about whether or not one is good enough or talented enough. You are talented. Period. Sometimes you get in the zone of creativity easily and sometimes you don't. Sometimes you create a masterpiece, sometimes you create something that stinks up the room. All of it is part of the creative process. Every step in that process has value, expands your creative vision, talent and work flow. What you bring with you to the work in front of you is contained in the last piece and the ones before that - including the rotten eggs.
"The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable." - Robert Henri
If you're mired in creative block just begin. Write, paint, emote, play anything. Let go of the notion that whatever you are developing has to be good. Be willing to create a major flop. Get silly. Get naked. Do something, anything, that will move you beyond the frustration and stress of having to create something good. Just get into the process and let go. Let the work unfold as it will rather than place limitations through the right or wrong, good or bad of it. Let go and flow.
"I tamed my personal art demon – the tendency to think about painting rather than actually painting – by throwing the stuff on the blank paper and telling myself I didn't care about the end result. I believed it and was saved." - Rich Hawk
Valery Satterwhite is an Artist Mindset Mentor & Coach who helps creative people get out of their own way so that they can overcome the struggles that often come packaged with the life of a visual & performing artist. Clients learn how to express their full potential deliberately & responsibly to create more passionately, profoundly, productively and profitably. Empower the Wizard Within to actualize and express your full creative potential. http://www.InnerWizard.com. Get Free "Empower the Wizard Within tips"!
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