by Jenna | Sep 29, 2011 | Writing Articles
One of the things that can stop us from moving ahead with our creative work is our creative wounds.
These are the painful experiences we've been through associated with our creative work that lead us to make decisions that it's not safe to be creative or take creative risks, and that ultimately we'll be hurt if we express ourselves creatively.
These wounds show up in our lives looking like creative blocks, and we can even forget about them until we do a little deeper digging.
So How Does One Heal a Creative Wound?
Here's a simplified version of the process I'm using with my clients, which is based on Isabel Parlett's powerful business transformation work.
- First, identify the story of the creative wound. What happened, factually? What happened, emotionally?
- Then identify the conclusion that you've drawn as a result of that experience. What have you decided to believe about being creative as a result of the experience?
- How can you reframe that limiting belief into a new way of looking your creativity that is both believable and supportive?
- Now do some release work on the story -- write a forgiveness letter and shred or flush it, do a shamanic fire ritual (a "green fire"), use ho'oponopono, or create another ritual to let go of the old story.
Simple as this work may sound, it can have quite an impact.
by Jenna | Sep 14, 2011 | Writing Articles
Lately I've been talking a lot with my very right-brained, creative, multi-passionate, multi-talented clients and cohorts about the "D"-word.
Yeah, that's right.
Discipline.
It's enough to make an artist cower in terror behind legions of excuses and doubts or pipe up with even a little disdain.
(I'm an artist, I like to go with the flow / wait for the right mood to strike / follow the energy / be divinely inspired.)
(Not that there's really anything wrong with that. As an intuitive, an empath, and an Enneagram Four, I can relate to ALL of that, and I don't even think it's "wrong" per se.)
But the thing is, when it comes to getting our creative work out into the world, we often go to sleep on ourselves instead of doing the work to make it happen.
We go to sleep on those deeper-yet-oh-so-slippery truths that tell us what we need to do our best work.
We forget.
We get busy with other things.
We wait for something that never comes.
Is Discipline Really the Enemy?
It never ceases to astonish me how little actual discipline is practiced when it comes to doing the hard work of creating our stuff.
And by hard, I don't mean Hard. I mean HARD.
The kind of hard that keeps you massively resisting showing up to your writing or your canvas or your practice development, even when you don't even realize it (we'll save the other D-word conversation for another day).
You think you're too busy, you need to make more money first, or your kids need too much of your attention.
Ha!
The truth is, you need to make a commitment to get your Butt In Your Seat and show up to the creative Big Dream you know you are here to fulfill.
There is simply No Other Way it is going to happen.
One thing we do know is that the artists who take regular action to see their work through to completion are the ones who quietly make it happen.
Here's the funny thing about all of this.
You don't need to force yourself to make big, giant, rigid commitments of time and energy to make your work happen.
It's much simpler than that.
Make discipline your friend and ally.
Just commit to taking regular, consistent, and small steps and you'll move forward in a sustainable way to seeing your dream become a reality.
Inspiration From Seth Godin:
“While you and I have been busy running down dead ends and wasting our effort, scientists have been busy trying to figure out what actually works. And they know how:
- Small steps work.
- Consistent effort works.
- Group support works.
That’s it. Three things. Set a goal, and in small, consistent steps, work to reach it. Get support from your peers when you start flagging. Repeat.
You will change.”
by Jenna | Jul 27, 2011 | Writing Articles
Is it necessary to be “creatively inspired” before pursuing creative projects, or is waiting for creative inspiration a pitfall that trips us up?
Another way of saying this is: Do you have to be in the ‘right mood’ or ‘right energy’ in order to be creative?
Steven Pressfield would call this “resistance,” and say instead that what we need to do is show up and “do the work” no matter what pain, doubt, terror, or mood we might encounter in the process.
My experience is that often when I think I “can’t” create, and I do it anyway, the act of engaging with my art puts me in a whole new energy state, usually one that is more uplifted and inspired.
Other times, when I’m really stuck in my thinking or in a bad mood (yes, me too), I can jolt myself out of it by wondering about creative solutions, which puts me in a more resourceful creative state.
It seems like if I ask the right question, like, “I wonder how I could make my character more convincing as a tough, surly broad?” :) or “I wonder how I could make contact with sci-fi filmmakers?” all kinds of new answers start flowing to me.
by Jenna | Jun 24, 2011 | Writing Articles
Changing the Way You See Yourself
If you’ve had your hands analyzed or done any visioning work with me, you’ll recognize that a big part of making your purpose real is being ready, willing, and able to adjust to and adopt a new, higher level way of seeing yourself.
It can take time to change your view of who you are.
And it isn’t always easy to do.
Impostor Syndrome, Anyone?
You might feel like you’re pretending to be someone you’re not, or like you can almost grab hold of that new identity but then it sort of slips away and you’re left grasping at nothing.
Regular Life Getting in the Way
I’ve seen it happen with my visioning clients — they get clear on their big vision, but then lose focus then when they go back to their “regular lives” or can’t quite remember how or why they decided what they decided — unless they have help to stay in touch with their new way of being in the world.
Un-Squashing Our Creative Selves
I’m also seeing this happen with creative types.
Yes, ideally being creative is easy and just flows naturally from us.
But that’s not what I see on a daily basis.
More often than not I see creative spirits squashed and held back by our own fears and doubts.
And even more fundamentally, by who we see ourselves to be.
How You See Yourself Makes All the Difference
For instance, if you think of yourself as a IT worker who is a writer on the side, it is a whole different ballgame than when you know you are a writer who happens to be doing tech work to pay the bills.
You’ll make different decisions, take different actions, and have different priorities.
And Therein Lies the Rub
And those decisions, actions, and priorities are the make-or-break difference between getting your creative work out there into the world versus walking around with a movie inside your head for the rest of your life, your manuscript gathering dust on your shelf, or your tribe never hearing the message you are hear to share with them.
It’s all about knowing who you are and doing the work to make it happen.
by Jenna | Jun 22, 2011 | Reflections
If you’ve been hanging out with me for a while, you know I’ve been going through a big transition with my work and my life — I’m now focusing as much as possible on my own creative expression; writing a sci-fi screenplay and writing a non-fiction creativity guide.
It has been quite a journey, at times up and down, fraught with confusion, scattered with moments of sparkling clarity.
Massive Creative Breakthroughs
I’ve recently had a huge breakthrough with my own creative work as a result of claiming my creative identity in a much deeper way.
I didn’t quite realize it until Elaine pointed it out to me, but I was “leaving the back doors open” by not fully committing to my creative work coming first. She reminded me that it doesn’t matter so much how I’m earning a living at this point, but that my focus needs to be on my creative work, first, and no wriggling out of it!
After debating with her for a while (both before and after we talked — do you ever have imaginary conversations with your friends?), I realized she was right.
I was trying to straddle the fence, to be both, while really being neither.
No Matter Where You Go, There You Aren’t
A while back I wrote a post called, “No Matter Where You Go, There You Are” about how we simply cannot escape our life purpose and life lesson no matter how we might try.
Tonight it struck me that not having an anchored sense of Who You Are is kind of like Showing Up But Not Really Being There, if you know what I mean.
This Whole Thing About Creative Identity
So now you know why I’ve been yak yak yakking about creative identity — it’s made a huge difference for me.
Ever since I did my pièce de résistance work on this (a combination of NLP work and some shamanic work) things have been moving like gangbusters.
Clear decisions left and right, new ideas, big changes, a sense of EVERYTHING being lined up in one direction, and BEST OF ALL: I wrote 10 pages of my screenplay during my sacred writing time last week.
So yummy.
“I Hope You Don’t Think I’m A Journalist”
As part of all this, Elaine reminded me of a story about Julia Cameron (author of one of my bibles, The Artist’s Way), back from when she had started working at Rolling Stone magazine. Her boss said to her, “I hope you don’t think you’re a writer.”
Her response, “Oh, I am a writer. I hope you don’t think I’m a journalist.”
Pow.
We should all be so clear on who we are!
