Creating & Maintaining a Creative Practice Archives - Page 6 of 15 - Melissa Dinwiddie | Create the Impossible™

March 7, 2013

Bedroom Rituals Learned On Retreat

The courtyard at Santa Sabina Center, the setting for the Friends of Calligraphy retreat

On Sunday I got back from a five-day retreat hosted by my beloved calligraphy guild, the Friends of Calligraphy. I’d been counting the days to the retreat for months.

The first time I went on this retreat was in 2002, and since then I’ve only missed one FOC retreat in twelve years. In the words of one of my fellow retreat regulars (though to be fair, with only one out of the 32 of us a newbie, the retreat has a way of making everyone who attends a regular):

“The retreat is non-negotiable.” [Read more…]

February 25, 2013

Creative Commitments, Vacations, and Compassionate Hands (Plus a Snowman for Good Measure)

Last week I was up to my ankles in fluffy snow, in Big Sky, Montana, an hour’s drive outside of Yellowstone National Park.

It was an amazing week: cross-country skiing almost every day (that hill in the pic above? I climbed up it on my skis, then skied down the other side), a memorable tour into snow-covered Yellowstone in a snowcoach, great food, and most wonderful of all, the rare treat of having my whole family together!

Montana Snowman — Here’s a snowman Bro and Mr. Goo made the day I left for home.

My brother’s lived on the opposite coast for decades, but now that he has a kid — my almost-3 1/2-year-old nephew (who has my hair!) — I feel the miles more than ever. Getting a week with Mr. Goo (as my brother sometimes calls him) was so precious to me (and yes, also sometimes exhausting — couldn’t someone please figure out how to bottle that energy and give me some?)

Keeping Creative Commitments on Vacation

I confess I didn’t do as good a job of unplugging as I would have liked. There was wifi all over the ranch where we were staying, and that, combined with my iPhone and some wildly entertaining conversations in the clubhouse made for an irresistible combination…

On the other hand, I did manage to do at least a little writing on my book every day I was gone. It wasn’t always easy to fit it in, but I’d made a commitment to write every day, and I stuck with it.

One thing that helped was keeping my goal really attainable.

I wanted to put in at least an hour every day. I knew that would be hard to make happen, though, and I also knew I’d feel vastly more successful if I had a 100% chance of actually succeeding.

So I scaled back my goal.

Instead of an hour of writing, I made my target just fifteen minutes or 500 words. I still wanted an hour, but I allowed myself to feel successful with just fifteen minutes.

This is the same technique that helped me create over 150 finished artworks in 2011.

(Yes, I feel pretty happy about that fact — as happy as I look in the pic above.)

There’s nothing magic about the number fifteen — I’ve used the technique with ten minutes, five minutes, three minutes, and in one case I got some great results with a hugely resistant client by assigning one minute a day.

The key is to make the goal ridiculously achievable — impossible not to achieve. All it has to do, really, is get you started.

Starting is always the hardest part, so if you can make the hurdle to starting as low as possible, you’re a lot less likely to trip over it. (And once you start, you may find yourself happily logging more time than your tiny goal!)

While I was in Montana, fifteen minutes of writing was all I got on some days. Other days it was a lot more. The important thing is that every single day — even the day we left at 7:00am for the snowcoach tour into Yellowstone and didn’t get back until dinner — I kept my commitment and had the satisfaction of checking off the “Daily Writing Commitment” checkbox in my goal-tracking app.

The Disruption of Travel

Funnily enough, my record has not been so good since coming home. Usually travel disrupts my schedule while I’m away from home, but sometimes the disruption is worse during the transition back to “normal life.”

Sigh…

A 24-hour migraine put the kibosh on my plans for Saturday and Sunday, and I lost most of yesterday in a spasm of tech mania OCD (trying to create post-by-email functionality for the clubhouse, and comparison shopping to settle on the best way to create a landing page and site for Your Big, Bold, Creative Life — the book and book tour [yes! a book tour!], and the course — an updated and renamed version of my Time to Glow program — which I’m revving up to start in April.)

So yeah, I fell short of my (admittedly rather big) goals for getting lots of writing done this weekend. But I’ve learned that beating myself up is never the right solution. Instead, I love myself up, remind myself I’m only human, and reboot (hat tip to Jeannie in the clubhouse for that awesome word!).

As I like to say, the most important practice you can engage in is the practice of getting back on the wagon. (Click to tweet this!)

That, and self-awareness + self-compassion = the key to everything good. (Click to tweet this!)

So no self-flagellation here, just an acknowledgment that to stumble is human. Plus a whole lotta self-compassion.

Think about it. It’s remarkable how much easier it is to climb back on that wagon when instead of a fist punching you about the face and neck, you find a compassionate hand reaching out to pull you back up.

May your wagon always be short, and the hand pulling you up always be compassionate when you stumble.

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

February 21, 2013

There Is No Silver Bullet (But There Are Some Golden Tools)

I’m in Montana as you read this, unplugged from the Interwebs, playing in the snow with my not-quite-3 1/2-year-old nephew, Spencer (who has my hair!), and when I get back, I’m headed off to my annual spring retreat with my calligraphy guild. It seemed a perfect time to pull this article out of the archives.

So, for your enjoyment, I present to you an article first published on Feburary 26, 2012. -xom

Here’s the sad truth: there is no silver bullet.

I would love to tell you that if you follow my instructions, figure out your motivators, etc. etc. you’ll be blessed with unobstructed creative abundance for the rest of your days.

I’d love to tell you this, and I could, of course.

But it would be a big, fat lie.

That truth is, living a creative life — the creative life of your wildest dreams — requires ongoing effort. Resistance is the sneakiest adversary you will ever encounter, and fighting it off requires constant vigilance.

I’m sorry, my dear creative soul, to be the bearer of bad news, but there it is.

Here’s the good news:

Thankfully, we have lots of tools in our toolbox, lots of weapons in our arsenal (if you like militaristic metaphors, which I really don’t, but then, sometimes they’re useful).

One of the most powerful tools ever is the Retreat.

Ahhh, the Retreat! A bubble of creative space and time, where you’re beholden to nobody but yourself.

And that’s exactly where I’m going on Tuesday night, after my Creative Ignition Circle call — to my annual Spring Retreat (never mind that it’s not actually Spring yet..) with the Friends of Calligraphy.

It’s heavenly.

For years it was the only place, the only island of time in my year, where I actually created to feed my soul.

Hard to believe, but true. And as a result, this retreat holds a very precious place in my heart. People have been going to the Friends of Calligraphy Spring Retreat for 30 years. This will be my tenth Retreat in eleven years. (Yes, I missed one — huge mistake, which I’m not anxious to repeat.)

Being at the Retreat affects your thinking. Everything feels possible. Dreams feel achievable.

The joy of unimpeded creating led me, every year at the Retreat, to create outrageous goals for myself (which never felt very outrageous at the time) for after I got home. Goals like “I will create a weekend staycation retreat for myself once a quarter!” and “I will create a full afternoon retreat for myself to play in the Creative Sandbox once a week!” They seemed so reasonable!

Yeah, right. Never happened.

Eventually (as in last year), I figured out that smaller, more bite-sized — hell, teeny tiny — goals were a lot more effective. As in 15 minutes a day. And now I live a more creative life than I ever imagined possible, filled with more creative doings than I ever imagined possible.

Yet I still make the time (and spend the money) to go to the FOC Retreat.

Why?

Why, if I’m creating on my own, in my own home, in my own studio, do I still spend the money (~~$538~~ $548 this year) and take the time to go to the FOC Retreat?

Because it’s magical.

Because something truly special happens when you allow yourself to get away and focus, uninterrupted, on your creative desires.

Because the bubble of the retreat requires other creators, each of us working on our own creative thing, in order to stay afloat and keep all of us aloft.

Things happen at the Retreat that do not happen elsewhere

Two years ago the FOC Retreat was where I created my very first artwork in my Irresistible Woman line. (In fact, that was the only visual art I made that week. The rest of the Retreat I wrote like a woman possessed. I think that may have been where this very blog was conceived, as a matter of fact!)

The year before that I made an entire alphabet of illuminated letters, including the “S” just below right (for Spencer, of course!)

One year, after not making a new ketubah for three years, I made four new ketubah designs in the 4 1/2 days of the Retreat. Considering that my “fastest” ketubah design up until that point was about 20 hours, this was nothing short of miraculous.

That was the year I dropped out of the Retreat at the last minute, because money was so tight. My friend Jen called me up and told me “Honey, don’t worry about the money — it’s taken care of. You have to be there.” She and her father and two other dear Retreatants chipped in to pay for my stay. One of them even anonymously gave me a gift certificate for a massage from the masseuse who always sets up a table in a room upstairs for us. I’m getting teary just thinking about it. The fact that my presence wa

s so important to them — friends whom I only ever see at the Retreat — still chokes me up.

That was also the year I realized that, although I thought I couldn’t afford to go to the Retreat, in truth I can’t afford not to go to the Retreat.

Here’s the thing: yes, I live a more fully creative life now than I ever imagined I could. But it’s still a continual uphill battle to make sure my creative Bliss(es) get the attention they need. I fall off the wagon over and over and over again, and have to keep practicing at getting back on it.

There is no silver bullet.

But there are Golden Tools

Like the Retreat. And workshops. And creative communities that keep you focused on what’s important and validate that you keep doing it.

Which is, of course, precisely why these are the things — retreats, workshops, creative community — I’ve been working so hard to build. (All part of my plan for World Domination, of course. ;))

Then there are books, and blogs, and conferences, and pen pals, and creative challenges, and videos and podcasts…

If your creative spirit is important to you (and if you’re on this blog, the odds are pretty good that it is), you must — must — take advantage of every single tool you can get your hot little hands on to help you keep your toe in the Creative Stream and your mind and body in the Creative Sandbox as much as you possibly can.

Do you know of anyone who said on their death bed “I regret following my Bliss”?

Ha. It’s the NOT following, the NOT doing that leads to regret.

Arm yourself, dear creative. Your health and happiness depend on it.

If you’re looking for some golden tools for yourself, join me at one of the retreats and workshops I have coming up — Canada and California in May, Istanbul and the Turquoise Coast along the Mediterranean in September/October. Get the full skinny here.

Have you ever been on a retreat that filled your creative well? What other favorite “golden tools” have you used for pushing past Resistance and getting to your creative thing?

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

Bite the Bullet photo by Richard Elzey at Flickr

January 22, 2013

Depression, Mindfulness, & Creative Productivity

Of the two of us, MB is definitely the one with the more “even keel.” Compared to him, my moods are rather like a roller-coaster: high highs, low lows, and a lot of swerving in between.

That said, I’m rarely what I would call depressed.

I might feel down for a short time, but the life-sucks-and-I-don’t-want-to-do-anything-but-read-novels-in-bed-and-the-idea-of-dealing-with-existing-utterly-exhausts-me-and-I’d-like-to-just-disappear kind of depression thankfully doesn’t happen very often.

So I was rather surprised when I felt just that the other day.

My mood had been on a bit of a down trend for a few days, and then I woke up and felt, well, pretty miserable. The temptation was very strong to wallow in the feeling, pull the covers over my head, and shut out the world. But I resisted that temptation.

Instead, I got mindful.

As I like to say, self-awareness + self-compassion = the key to everything good (click to tweet this!), and so I consciously practiced some of both.

Instead of being driven by my depressed feelings, I took a metaphorical step back, and noticed them.

“Hunh,” thought I, “I notice feelings of depression. How fascinating.”

I acknowledged that this kind of feeling was rare for me, and wondered what might be causing it. When I remembered that my period was drawing nigh, I had an explanation that made sense. I don’t normally exhibit PMS symptoms, but very occasionally I have noticed an unusually down mood before my period.

Having an explanation didn’t change my emotional state — I still felt lousy — but it lifted some of the fear that had been creeping in, that I might (egad) get stuck this way.

The biggest thing this mindfulness approach did, though, was to create a separation between me and my emotional state.

Instead of just sitting in the depression, a part of me was able to step outside of it and just notice it. I still felt depressed, but mindfulness gave me some breathing room and a chance to choose my response to the feeling, rather than just sinking into it.

One possible response — and definitely the most appealing one at the moment — was to just spend the day in bed. But in the space opened up by mindfulness, I was able to instead ask myself if that was what I really wanted to do. Would spending the day in bed, reading novels and sleeping, make me feel better or happier at the end of the day?

Unlikely. What makes me happiest (as someone with Achiever as my #2 Strengthsfinder strength) is a sense of accomplishment. So spending the day in bed would have a much higher chance of making me feel more depressed, rather than less, at the end of the day.

So I drew up a list of all the stuff I really wanted to get done, and I asked myself which were the THREE things on that list that I’d feel most pleased to have checked off by the time I went to bed, and most annoyed to have NOT checked off.

Then I pulled myself out of bed, still depressed, and got on with tackling those three things.

Was I magically un-depressed at the end of the day? No, I still felt pretty lousy. But I also had a sense of accomplishment, despite the depression. And I was able to see that the feeling was very likely transitory. It did not define me.

This is the “magic” of self-awareness.

Epiloque: Serendipity

The Universe acts in mysterious ways. The day that I started to write about this experience, I happened to tune into my local radio station right when they were airing a live interview from months back with Jon Kabat-Zinn, the originator of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, or MBSR.

He was being interviewed by Kelly McGonigal, author of The Willpower Instinct, and teacher of The Science of Willpower, a Stanford Continuing Studies course which I’m enrolled in right now.

And it just so happens that I’m running a Willpower Instinct reading circle inside the Creative Ignition Club, starting on Thursday! (There’s still time to join in.)

I’ve never studied MBSR, I’d never even heard of it, but I resonated with Kabat-Zinn immediately. What he and McGonigal were discussing was exactly what I had been practicing the day before, when I was so depressed!

We don’t reduce stress (or depression, or any emotional state) by resisting it, or trying to stuff it away, but rather by noticing it and allowing it to be.

Mindfulness, it turns out, is also a powerful willpower booster. When we can act mindfully, we’re less likely to be driven by unconscious impulse.

The impulses don’t go away (I still want a cookie, I still want to lie in bed instead of getting up and getting on with my task list, I still feel depressed, etc.), but we’re better able to access that part of our brain that is in charge of getting us to do the “harder thing,” the thing we really want in the long run.

Hence my ability to get out of bed, even on a highly depressed day, and get stuff done.

The first piece of homework McGonigal gave us in The Science of Willpower class was to meditate five minutes a day* — one of the best ways on the planet to not only practice mindfulness, but to strengthen your willpower throughout the rest of your day.

(Given that I’ve been meditating daily since last April, ten to fifteen minutes every morning, my homework was kind of a breeze. :))

I can only wonder if I’d have been able to respond with such self-awareness to waking up depressed a year ago, before I started meditating.

Of course I’ll never know, but what I do know is that the lessons I’ve learned from The Willpower Instinct have proven hugely helpful. I’m excited to be going over this material again, little by little, over a period of several weeks, both in class with McGonigal, and in my reading circle inside the Creative Ignition Club. The book was a quick read, but there’s just too much good stuff to absorb in a weekend!

I’ll let you know how it goes.

*That, or get regular, consistent (read: more) sleep. Also a powerful willpower booster.

NOTE: This post is in no way intended to give the message that mindfulness is a cure-all for clinical depression! I was not clinically depressed, and I’m certainly not a medical professional. Simply sharing my own experience.

Still time…

Want to learn tools for making it easier to leap past distractions and get to your creative thing? Join the Creative Ignition Club and you can be part of our Willpower Instinct reading circle. Click here for all the details. The cart closes after Wednesday, FYI, so if you want to join in, now’s the time.

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

January 15, 2013

My 3 Most Transformative Reads of 2012

I read a fair number of books each year, but it’s not always that I can say a book is truly transformative. 2012 was a rich year in that regard.

Last year I read such outstanding and highly regarded tomes as The Gifts of Imperfection and Daring Greatly, by (my hero extraordinaire) Brené Brown, Linchpin, by Seth Godin, Drive, by Daniel Pink, and a good chunk of Flow, the classic book on the psychology of optimal experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. (I confess I’ve yet to finish that one…)

Those are each excellent books, which I highly recommend (anything by Brené Brown especially!) But if I were to pick just three books that I read in 2012, which effected the most transformation in my own life, it would be the following:

1. The Willpower Instinct

By Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.

Kelly McGonigal’s book, based on her Stanford University course, The Science of Willpower, has dramatically changed the way I do, well, pretty much everything.

I am so in love with this book, in fact, that starting next week, I’m leading a reading circle inside my Creative Ignition Club, to work through the book again in a group, one chapter at a time. (Wanna join us? I really want other creatives to benefit from the lessons in this book, so I’m opening the clubhouse this week — come on in!)

I also signed up for The Science of Willpower class through Stanford Continuing Studies, to immerse myself more deeply in the subject, and learn about the latest research that has been done since the book was written. (The first class was last night, and it was great fun.)

You may think of willpower as “crunch down and power through,” which sounds about as appealing as slogging through a vat of oatmeal. But that’s not actually what McGonigal is talking about.

Willpower, as McGonigal defines it, is much more nuanced than that:

Willpower is the ability to choose what matters most [to you], even when it’s difficult, or some part of you wants to do something else.

In other words, it’s the ability to choose the “right thing,” even when that little “devil on your shoulder” is persuading you to choose the other thing:

To choose to work on your novel/painting/blog/work deadline instead of falling into a social media black hole, for example.

To pick the salad instead of the chocolate chip cookie.

To take a walk instead of lighting up a cigarette.

To say, “Thank you, sweetie,” instead of snapping, “Why the hell didn’t you do X??”

Get the picture? Self-control may sound like the purview of the uptight and righteous, but in fact it’s something we all need, just to get through the day, let alone to do our best work! And wouldn’t it be nice for those “right choices” to be easier?

What I love about The Willpower Instinct, is that it uses the latest in neuroscience (and some truly fascinating, engaging, and entertaining studies!) to offer up a plethora of small changes you can make in order to do just that: make it easier to make that right choice.

For example: did you know that sleep deprivation — for even a single night — dramatically decreases willpower?

Yep. Just one night of shortchanging your sleep over-activates the part of your brain that’s responsible for impulsive action, and under-activates the part of your brain that’s responsible for self-control.

And the reverse is true: getting good quality, adequate, consistent sleep amounts to good care for your brain that turns on your best self.

Kinda pumps up my motivation to get back on my Great Bedtime Experiment wagon…

And did you know that even five or ten minutes of daily meditation can not just strengthen your willpower, but also increase the amount of sleep you get? A double-whammy willpower booster! (And btw, it was a small section in The Willpower Instinct that strengthened my resolve to keep up my nascent meditation practice, which has now become a fixture of my days.)

These two tips alone have been hugely helpful in my productivity, but that’s just a fraction of the good stuff inside The Willpower Instinct. Seriously, this book is the bomb.

Buy it, but take McGonigal’s advice and read it over time, a chapter per week. Better yet, read it with a group, like I’m doing inside the Creative Ignition Club starting next week. You can blast through the book in a weekend (like I did…), but there’s just too much material to fully absorb and process that way.

If you’re like me, you may need willpower to hold off on reading it, though. 😉

2. Mindset

By Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.

Hat tip to Tara Mohr for recommending this book, which finally explained, among other things, why I’ve struggled with perfectionism, why for many years I could never earn more than “just enough to get by,” and why I gave up writing for fifteen years.

The common denominator?

My mindset.

Turns out there are two different mindsets or belief systems that people walk around with:

The fixed mindset — in which you believe that your intelligence, talents, skills, abilities and personality are inborn and nothing you can do will change them, or..

The growth mindset — in which you believe that your intelligence, talents, skills, abilities and personality are the result of your effort, and therefore changeable.

A simple thing, really, but with enormous implications for success, failure, and self-esteem in all areas of life.

It also turns out that praising children for their inborn “talent” or “intelligence” (as my parents and teachers did, with all good intentions) can have the very counterproductive result of making them resistant to trying anything where there’s any risk of failure. After all, if they fail, it would prove that they aren’t as talented or intelligent as they’ve been made out to be — better to just not try at all.

Oh. My. God. That pretty much describes a lot of my life.

Not in every area, for sure, otherwise I’d never have accomplished anything! One can have a fixed mindset in some areas of life and a growth mindset in others.

What’s really interesting is how, now that I understand the concept of fixed vs. growth mindsets, I have been discovering more areas in my life where I was unconsciously operating under a fixed mindset.

For years I thought my inability to earn more than “just enough to get by” was because I lacked the “moneymaking gene.”

Nope. Fixed mindset, baby.

Otherwise known as a self-installed glass ceiling.

The ability to earn a good income is a skill that can be learned. Some people may have more of an innate facility than others, but nobody is born knowing how to make money. We all have to learn it from somewhere. Once I realized that it was a fixed mindset — not some innate flaw or lack — that had been keeping me stuck, I changed my mindset and set out to learn!

For fifteen years I didn’t write, because I thought I just lacked the “writing gene.” I thought I just sucked.

Nope. You got it: fixed mindset.

The ability to write well is also a skill that can be learned. Again, some people may have more of an innate facility, but it’s the work of writing — including allowing oneself to write badly! — that turns one into a writer.

Dweck offers a plethora of examples of people operating with fixed and growth mindsets, from the worlds of art, sports, and business, proving that “native talent” is not ever the determining factor in a person’s ultimate success. And she offers suggestions for how to change your own mindset.

At 246 pages, this book packs a powerful punch. It might even change your life.

3. Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

By John J. Ratey, M.D.

The tagline on the cover of this book is, “Supercharge Your Mental Circuits to Beat Stress, Sharpen Your Thinking, Lift Your Mood, Boost Your Memory, and Much More.”

“Really?” I thought. “Just with exercise?” But I kept stumbling across references to Ratey’s book, so rather reluctantly added it to my reading list. Then one of my most transformative reads from 2011, Uncertainty, by Jonathan Fields (highly recommended!), made reading Spark an imperative:

First, read [this book]. It will open your eyes to the importance of exercise in every aspect of your life as nothing you’ve read before has done. It will clarify the role exercise plays in preserving and even bolstering your ability to lean into uncertainty, fear, and anxiety as you strive to build something extraordinary.

That’s quite and endorsement, so I finally, rather dutifully placed my order on Amazon.

Within the first few pages I was captivated. And suddenly, after years of always-intending-but-never-quite-managing to “get more exercise,” I was making aerobic exercise a priority in my life!

Honestly, I was kind of stunned. As a former bulimic with a history of major body-image issues, I’d always thought that appearance would be my greatest motivator to get on the damn exercise bike (or treadmill, or outdoors, or whatever). I may be recovered from bulimia, but I’m still a more vain than I’d like to admit.

It turns out I care a lot more about my brain — my intelligence, my creativity, my longevity, my mood — than I care about my looks (which, I’ll admit, is kinda gratifying to know…) Ratey’s book offered me just the motivation I needed to get off my butt.

Have I exercised every single day since reading Spark? No. But I have gotten a decent dose of aerobic exercise (generally 30-45 minutes) more often than not since I’ve been keeping track.

Not every day, but most days.

Considering that the only exercise I was getting before reading Spark was yoga (granted, a pretty intense form of yoga) twice a week (on a good week), this is a dramatic change!

Is it what Ratey recommends as optimal? No, I still have a way’s to go, but hell, you’ve got to start somewhere! As I always say, baby steps, baby. And as an ex-boyfriend of mine liked to say, “better is better.”

This is definitely better.

I finally moved exercise higher up on my priorities because Ratey’s arguments were just too all-encompassing to ignore. Spark offers fascinating examples of the power of exercise to enhance learning; decrease stress, anxiety and depression; minimize attention deficit problems; help beat addiction; deal with hormone problems; and slow/reverse the aging process and dementia. The studies and examples he cites are mind boggling.

Wow! This is powerful stuff! It sure got me to transform my own life.

(Now if only I could get MB to read it…)

Wrapping Up

So that’s it. My three most transformative reads from 2012. If you’ve read any of them, what did you think? Did you find them transformative as well?

What were your most transformative reads last year?

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

Bedroom Rituals Learned On Retreat

Creative Commitments, Vacations, and Compassionate Hands (Plus a Snowman for Good Measure)

Keeping Creative Commitments on Vacation

The Disruption of Travel