Finding Creative Motivation

Creatively Distracted, Finding Motivation

I have noticed that I have quite the growing list of books to read about writing. I want to make sure I write correctly.  I want to not bore my readers.  These books promise instruction and inspiration.  There are so many out there!  How can you not want to read them?  Well, there isn't so much a problem in wanting to read or reading books about whatever creativity genre you are interested in.  The problem comes in when you spend the bulk of your time reading these books and not practicing creatively.

Books in general can be another distracter. Just a multitude of books, they don't have to be about your creative subject.  Just the very stack is beckoning.  I once had to ask myself: If I had less to read, would I have more to write?  I don't know if I will ever find out the answer either because I am not willing to part from my stacks of books whether out of love or out of need.  For the maximum distraction punch here's a way to offer yourself some insurance: Make sure the books are from the library.  Then you *have* to read them before you can settle down to write. Books can be very tricky because when you get inspired from a book it can sometimes mimic the satisfaction that you would feel had you just completed three pages of longhand writing or sculpting a new figure. But it isn't always books or reading......

Take for instance the opened bag of Conversation Hearts sitting slackly on my desk.  So slack because of my indulgence, indulgence being another form of distraction..  Maybe it is just another form of reading when I quickly scan each one before I throw it in my mouth.  I recently found one that said, "U Can Do It!" I haven't yet had a Conversation Heart lead to writing, no matter how encouraging or inspirational they are either.
 
Most often indulgence comes in the form of eating.  Hence the Conversation Hearts.  Although it isn't always these heart-shaped candies.  We have all heard stories about the drug and alcohol addicted artists and writers. It is said that some writers used so they could write, but I'd venture it was probably more of a distraction most of the time.

Honestly, the list goes on and on.  As long as there are other things to do than writing, drawing, or painting, you will have ample opportunity to distract yourself, even if it is just by cleaning your home.  I don't know what it actually takes to sit down and work at our craft if not for one thing....ritual. Habit, discipline.  To make yourself do it today and everyday.  I wish I could say that I had found some magic answer.  That all we have to actually do is read one more book about painting or clean the house so we can "finally focus."

The answer lies in just doing.  Just doing the work.  Not amplifying it up in your brain to be some formidable task.  Instead, make it fun.  Some fun writing ideas are using glitter crayons and writing longhand.  Or tell yourself you only write in the bathtub...and then keep it that way.  Even if you just sit with a pillowed cocoon, no water inside. (I saw this once in a magazine for kid's and it looked divine.  Just throw a bunch of pillows in so you don't have to lie on anything too firm.  Prop yourself up and write.)

Don't blow the writing process (or dancing session or other creative pursuit) out of proportion.  The way to to staying creatively on task is to keep your creative pursuits bite-sized and fun.  If you are actively engaged and loving the experience nothing else can tempt you.  Except maybe one more Conversation Heart......What?!  It's a reward for doing the work.  Remember rewards are good motivators too!

Self-Sabotage and Resistance

Another way we sabotage ourselves is by resisting things that are good for us, especially when that thing that is good for you requires you to experience something new. Yet having new experiences, in due moderation, is part of what makes for a good, well-lived life.  What is it that we are resisting exactly?  For some it is the uncomfortable feelings that ensue during times of change.  Doing something good for ourselves is a change and that makes us feel uncomfortable.  For others, the rut they are in is just too cozy to escape.  Fighting inertia to do something, even if that thing is a positive action may feel like just too much.  I know this happens with me quite steadily.  And then there’s the problem with inconsistency, you can start taking good care of yourself, but, you figure,  it won’t last long so you resist starting at all.

You’re afraid to be uncomfortable (in other words, you are scared)….

The first issue is when we are afraid of being uncomfortable.  This is when we feel like we can’t endure the troubling emotions and sensations of change.  In fact, when we’re in the middle of change we might panic, quite literally.  You may find yourself to be prone to anxiety attacks.  The thing with panic attacks is that they feel as if they are non-stop and destined to escalate to the point of your demise-mentally, physically or emotionally.  At your most panicked is the worst it will get, never further than that.  That is something important to remind yourself of.  As unpleasant as the feelings and emotions are that you are experiencing during change, they won’t kill you. 

Another thing to tell yourself is, “Okay, I can handle this environment too.” That is affirming to your mind (which informs your nervous system and vice versa) that you can handle this uncomfortable experience.  Sure you might be very anxious and just as uncomfortable.  But it will plateau and then fade away.  Ironically, these anxiety attacks usually leave you feeling a strange calm in its aftermath. 

Reframing the situation is another way to deal with unpleasant emotions.  Take the situation that is troubling you and think about it for a second.  What emotions come up?  Now, with that in mind, pretend you had to explain the situation, in a reassuring way, to a child.  What would you say?  Would you tell the child it was all going to work out and be okay?  Can you tell yourself the same thing about this situation?

The uncomfortable emotions will not last forever, whether it is a low-grade uneasiness or a full-on panic attack.  And it won’t lead to your demise either.  Breathe deeply.  And slowly (otherwise you’re just hyperventilating!).  The thing to do is train yourself to accept what you are feeling, reminding yourself that this too will pass and you will come out of it all the stronger for it.

You’re too comfortable…

If you’re issue is with being too comfortable and cozy in your rut then I have a tip for you.  In fact, this category could be argued as being part of “being afraid of becoming uncomfortable.” Because a lot of people will mistake being in a comfortable rut as being the same thing as living a contented life.  There is a fine line.  But sometimes it isn’t about being afraid of change which is why I have included this in a separate section.  Sometimes you are just stuck in a ditch in life.  It might a pretty ditch, decorated quite nicely and rather comfy.  But be not mistaken, it is all the same a ditch.  And taking the easy road does not lead to your dreams. When faced with the idea to do something good for yourself, and you think, “No, I’d rather just stay where I’m at,” consider this: How will you feel in two hours if you haven’t pushed yourself to do what you know you must?  How much better will you feel, having accomplished your goal?  Focus on those positive emotions, using the positive energy to propel you forward and choose to go in that direction.

And then you must push yourself to do it.  It will take effort as many things in life do.  So you push yourself to do it and you might find out that you’re like me and after you’ve done a little bit of whatever it is that is good for you and start to meet with a little resistance, you say, “OK, I did it!  Yay me! All done for now,” and try and slip off the hook.  This is dangerous.  You must train yourself to stay at the activity.  You will see that as it becomes a little difficult or you meet with a creative challenge that the impulse to go ahead and stop for the day becomes almost reflexive in nature.  “No, I must press on!” is what you have to tell yourself.  I have a goal.  I will feel like crap if I don’t force myself to meet it.  You must press on, whether what is good for you is eating healthy or writing a book.  Whatever facet of life you are approaching, you will meet with a challenge when you set about doing it.  It will happen at some point or another.  And this will be the time you’ll want to bolt in the opposite direction, quite literally.  I physically have to fight the impulse to stay in my chair and write.  As soon as the words get confused in my head or the ideas start to intertwine in an unusual way and understanding becomes too hard for the moment, I fight to stay seated.  I literally will shift around in my chair and start readying my muscles to stand up and “take a break.”  Yes, there are times and places for breaks but it is not when you are only doing it to run away.  Who is kidding who?  I know full-well that if I let myself get up and take an innocent little break, I won’t return to it.  Or if I do, I will have to spend the first fifteen to thirty minutes re-orienting myself to the material and attempting to enter flow once again.  And besides, it is the lazy creative person who waits for inspiration to act. 

When a woman is giving birth and the baby is crowning it is likened to a “ring of fire” that you feel.  Well, so it is with you and when you start doing that good stuff for yourself you will be “crowning” so to speak and that ring of fire only means you are there.  Train your Can-Do muscle and push through it.  And as a side note, there is another advantage to using your Can-Do muscle and training it.  There will come a time when life hands you some true lemons.  Real whoppers of problems and you won’t be able to avoid it or get up and take a break.  If you have used your “push through it” and “Can-do” muscles all along in your regular life, when an unavoidable challenge occurs, you will be ready and fit for it.  It will not tax or vex you nearly as bad as if you had always been choosing the easy road in your regular life.

You believe that the only thing consistent about you is that you’re inconsistent….

And then, lastly, there is the “why even try?” club.  This is the group of folks who just know they’ll quit sooner or later so why even start?  Although I believe there is a time and place to push through it, I also know there are times to quit.  And you cannot take every time in the past when you have stopped doing something as a personal failure.  It might have been the wisest thing you could have done about the situation.  Above, where I insist on pushing through the challenges towards what is good for you, towards your goals, I am referring to when it is something that matters to you.  Something that matters to you is something that will bother you if you don’t do it.  It won’t nag at you in a perfectionistic way, but in a manner where you feel that every day you avoid doing this practice, this task, this exercise, this study….everyday that you resist doing it is a day you disappoint your soul.

Beware of psyching yourself out because any time that you deem a situation “too” this or “too that,” you make it so.  If I say, “I can’t take time to go for a walk because I’m too busy,” then I am.  I just made it so.  It doesn’t matter if I could rearrange some items in my schedule to find that time because I have already closed my mind to it.  It is so important to be aware of how you word things because your brain will accept it as true.  More than just accepting it as true, your brain will actually look for reasons to support what you have asserted.  In Gretchen Rubin’s book, Happier at Home, she references “argumentative reasoning,” which is to say when you say one thing or assume a certain thing your brain looks for reasons to support it.  Suddenly, when you say you don’t have time, then you will end up thinking, automatically, of all the reasons you don’t have time.  You start calculating work hours, commute time, family time.  Any and all of it so that you can convince yourself that you are right.  Argumentative reasoning can really work against you if you aren’t aware of it.  

And even if in reality I do have the time to take a walk, I might as well not have the time because I’m not going to find it by assuming it’s not there.  So whether your issue is that you are scared and you tell yourself, “I can’t take that ceramics class because I am anxious about meeting new people,” or if you are too cozy in your comfort zone and tell yourself that you can’t undertake something that is good for you because you are “too lazy” or “too unmotivated.”  It does not matter one whit if these things are true or false because you have already deemed the situation to be that way.  Knowing that you have this power to change situations and make them so, how much better would it be to say, “I can find the time to take a walk,” or “I am brave enough to take that ceramics class at the local college.”  Now you are calling on your power and the reserves you have had stored up all along.  Now you have opened the door some and invited possibility in.  You have made the difference between whether you are going to put some power behind your life change or if you are going to let fear, comfort zones or assumptions choose your destiny. 

It seems too simple, that just by telling ourselves we are strong or brave or smart we can accomplish our goals and start doing things that are good for us and our lives but it is the first step and it is necessary.  Because what you have been doing up until now hasn’t worked.  Sure, you will still have to put some work behind your words. 

Let me share an example.  I shared above about how I must force myself to sit down and write.  Each day it feels impossible.  And each day I must tell myself that I have something to write and I can trust the world enough to hear my message. Telling myself these things, I motivate myself.  But that does not mean that by telling myself these things I can circumvent the hard work of keeping myself seated and writing.  I have been known to stare at the screen for prolonged periods of time.  It’s not fun but it is what I must do and everyday that I choose to not do the writing because I am telling myself I can’t because my situation somehow does not allow for it, I feel a little more inner pain and disappointment.

Sometimes it is hard to identify which group you fall into and sometimes you find that you belong in more than one group.  It may take some time in the beginning to become aware of your actions and mindful of the way you behave.  Ask yourself, “When I think of doing something that will improve myself, what comes up for me?” Is the resistance because you’re afraid?  Is it because you feel too sluggish?  Or does it come on like an inspirational spark but you immediately disregard it as being too unpractical?  If nothing comes up for you and you meet with no resistance that is wonderful!  Go forward towards the good that awaits you.  But more likely than not, you will find that you avoid doing the things that are best for you.  We always avoid doing the one thing we know we need to do.  The key is finding out why you avoid it and then confronting your block and overcoming it.  Once this is done, you are able to start to follow-through on your plans and goals, instead of just wishing and dreaming of it with nothing to show. 

Following through on things that are good for you will be fulfilling and rewarding and you deserve to feel that good in your life.

Humbling yourself to baby steps

I want to be amazing right away.  

Maybe you are like me in this regard.  It is my nature to want to please, and if possible, awe.  Yes, awe would be wonderful.  I aim to awe.  I fall into the same old trap of wanting to please others that I become a bobble-head, perpetually nodding “yes” to every request. 

In the three years since my disability first started, I have been home and may have lost some cognitive sharpness, this is true.  I was being challenged physically on a daily basis and I neglected to challenge my mind out of sheer exhaustion, and perhaps maybe a little bit of laziness as well.  I’m not proud of my idleness. 

But yet, I cannot confuse my down time as complete mental idleness.  I have grown in ways other than being mentally sharp and with it.  I have learned to recognize boundaries.  I know that if something seems too big of a project for me, I can brainstorm ways to take care of it.  Or I can simply say, “I don’t know how to do this.”  There is a difference, you see, between telling someone (especially a work superior) that you cannot or will not do something and telling him/her that you don’t know how. 

I guess because I always prided myself on figuring things out, I would just shuffle whatever the new challenge was on to my to-do list and then fret about how it was going to all work out.  I never once thought to ask for help.  It wasn’t denied me.  It wouldn’t even have been that awkward. 

And yet I also finally understand what a co-worker once told me about our superior, “She’ll keep pushing and you’re going to have to tell her ‘no’ at some point.”  At the time I thought, “Okay, I’ll keep that in mind.”  But in reality, I think I dismissed it.  I didn’t think I was entitled to say no.  But now I see that with this particular person (and with others out there in the world, no doubt) she will ask for the moon.  She doesn’t think she’s asking for the moon.  In fact, I think she gets to thinking big and forgets that it is someone else that must break down the task into mini-steps and figure it all out.  In a way, a positive spin to it would be the fact that if she is asking you for the moon, at least she has the faith in your ability to obtain it. 

But back to a logical pattern that I can use as a guiding principle as I move forward for the next 8-9 weeks.  I shall take things slowly.  I shall not rely fully on my mind to remember every last detail, but use a notebook to jot down info as it flies at me.  I will remember that it is okay to say, “I don’t know how to do that but I am open to figuring it out.”  I must be human and stop trying to shock and awe with my intellectual pursuits. 

I am not perfect.  Although I strive to maintain a good work standard, it is impossible that I won’t have errors.  I will also remember that I will improve with time.

It takes patience with yourself and taking mini-steps.  SARK refers to them as “micro-movements.”  Tomorrow is another day.   

Life Goals vs. Contentment with Today

What if we are meant to play small? I know that isn’t the common theme, especially in the Western
world where Self-Help books are bestsellers. We are supposed to flourish and become all that we can
be. In fact, if we are anything less than an absolute success in America, it’s our own damn fault.
My childhood was a good one. It had its faults and its blessings. But overall the message I received from
my parents, teachers, and society was: You can do anything you put your mind to.
And this is true. It is a solid message to give to children.
However, there is a two part caveat:
1. All things come in their own time.
2. You still must be satisfied with what you have now.
Perhaps this isn’t true for everyone. I see a lot of executives that refuse to be satisfied with their results.
They want bigger, better, grander. They have a lot. But they want more. Always, more. They get more
and they aren’t satisfied. What good is more if you can’t appreciate it? How can you appreciate more if
you don’t know how to appreciate enough?
I don’t want to live that way. I would love my life to stand for something. I want to play a big part.
Desperately. I’d also prefer that big part to include financial security and abundance. That’s my own
personal request to the universe.
But no longer will I let this wish (which in reality could be a fairy tale) stand between me and happiness.
When you’re told that success is all up to you and you do everything you can, yet meet with opposition
it makes you want to sit back and take stock of the situation. It’s easy to become disenchanted. To
want to give up.
But there is another way. If #1 above never happens, you must find a way to have #2.
I want to be happy now. And sometimes happiness is found in settling for what you’ve got. Being
grateful, even.
I mean….bottom line, in America (for the most part), we are blessed. We have enough. Commercialism
and materialism and capitalism…they don’t want you to settle. Their profits are driven by your
restlessness and constant search for your own personal El Dorado.
What if El Dorado, Utopia, Life As We Want It, never happens? Will this all be a waste because you
never appreciated what you had?
Or, like me, are you going to look back at the hard times and wished you had appreciated the good you
had? I’ve struggled with money so much that I didn’t see the other abundance. It’s hard to appreciate
the house when you’re struggling to pay the mortgage once every two months. Just like a newborn ceases it’s adorable-ness when he/she is screaming his/her head off for the third straight hour in the
middle of the night and you just want to simply sleep, we forget what good we have in our very arms
when we only hear and see (pay attention to) the screaming. There is joy in today. I want to see it and embrace it before it’s too late. I have to accept that at same
point, I may not achieve what I want.
Because what’s the alternative? I do get it but at the sacrifice of every living moment until then? I have
to be able to enjoy now, even as strive for tomorrow.
I’ve written before about how to manifest and it always seems to be that when you let go of what you
want, that desperate death grip you have on it. When you lower your bar to what is already here in
your life and stop aiming for those stars but instead appreciate the flowers at your feet, something
magical happens. You become happy, now.
It’s a paradox that in order to be happy you need both to accept the now and strive for the future. They
are not mutually exclusive. And it is confusing at times. It’s hard to encompass these dual states.