Two interesting things happened to me this week that I wanted to share with you.
The first thing is something really good that I didn’t even realize until someone else pointed it out to me!
The second thing started out as something pretty bad and painful, but turned into something really good.
![Self-Awareness + Self-Compassion = the Key to Everything Good [Calligraphy Artquote]](https://melissadinwiddie.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/self-awaress+self-compassion_blue_640x640.jpg)
I love Thanksgiving. A holiday dedicated to focusing on what we’re thankful for — how beautiful is that?
I’m thankful for so much — a loving, supportive partner; my family and friends; my home; my kitty; abundant, healthy food; clean water; work that challenges and inspires me; the ability to run up and down stairs (not something I could have done post knee surgery, just a few years ago!) The list goes on.
Today I’m especially thankful that now, in my late 40s, I am finally able to extend the same kind of compassion toward myself that I do toward others.
Instead of holding myself to a superhuman standard, and then beating myself up when I invariably fail to measure up, I’m learning to give myself a fresh start whenever I need one.
What a change from my teenage and early adult years, when my unforgiving attitude and impossibly-high expectations (combined with a few other little things like, oh, sexism and Capitalism) helped keep me trapped in a bulimic spiral of doom.
I could point to so many factors that helped me heal, but ultimately it all boils down to self-compassion.
Allowing myself to treat myself with compassion affects all areas of my life, but where it really hit me this morning was when I looked at my messy art table, which had been gathering dust after weeks of on and off travel. I’d been in such a great groove back in October, painting, making spontaneous music loops, playing in the Creative Sandbox — usually in multiple mediums — just about every day. But as it so often does, travel derailed me.
To paraphrase Newton’s First Law of Motion “A body in motion stays in motion; a body at rest stays at rest.”
When we’re in the habit of creating every day, it’s easy (or at least easier) to keep creating. When we fall out of the habit, inertia sets in, and I felt like a Big Block of Inertia.
It was tempting to point to some Very Good Reasons to explain the dust collecting on my paints and tools. I mean hey, I’m busy! I have a Living Room Tour to organize, improv shows to practice for, courses to launch!
Underneath it all, though, I knew these were just excuses.
The temptation was so great to lambaste myself, first for not diving back into the Creative Sandbox, and second for making excuses! “Oh, Melissa,” that inner voice said, “how could you? For shame!”
Thankfully, though, I’m wise enough to know that such treatment only ever backfires. Shame is not a motivator. Beatings do not increase morale.
So I smiled patiently at that mean, inner voice, patted it on the head, and responded with compassion instead.
“You are human,” I reminded myself. “Yes, you stumble, just like everyone else. This does not mean you’re flawed, or broken, or unworthy, or hopeless; it’s simply a reflection of your humanity.”
Instead of beating myself up, I loved myself up.
I reminded myself of rule #4 of my Creative Sandbox Rules, my Keys to Creative Flow: Think tiny & daily. I reminded myself of the surprising power of setting “ridiculously achievable” goals, like 15 minutes a day.
So this morning I set a timer for ten minutes and cleared space on my messy art table. Then I set a timer for fifteen minutes and played.
Another #workinprogress with one of my favorite #quotes: “Better is better.” #livingacreativelife #truth #reminder #quote #wip #art #artinprocess #artistsofinstagram #abstract #abstractart #mixedmedia #mixedmediaart #cracklepaste #kromacrackle #type A photo posted by Melissa Dinwiddie (@a_creative_life) on
And you know what? The rest of my day went better.
I smiled more. I had more patience. I felt happier. I was more productive.
That’s how it works: feed yourself well, and you’ve got the fuel you need to deal with the slings and arrows of life.
I know this. I preach this, for goodness’ sake! And yet I still fall off the wagon.
Thankfully, I know enough to keep my wagon really short (i.e., a few minutes, a single 3×5 card, a brief scribble — or as Laureen says, any amount counts), so it’s easy to climb back on. 🙂
This is what will get me through the craziness of holiday season: the power of self-compassion and the power of play. And the solid understanding that it’s never too late to take a fresh start.
This is what I’m thankful for.
If you’d like a gentle nudge onto your own short wagon to help buoy you up through holiday busy-ness, join me in the sandbox next week, when I’ll be running a special holiday session of Creative Sandbox 101. It runs for one week, inviting you in for a tiny, luscious bite of playful goodness every day for seven days, from Wednesday, December 3 through Tuesday, December 9 (but you have a whole month to access the content and play in our private Facebook group).
Insiders get super-special holiday pricing, so if you’re not already on my mailing list, sign up now in the form below.
I know your mean inner voice is probably screaming that you don’t have the time, but believe me, just a few minutes a day tending to your creative spirit pays off in spades. It may be the best return on investment you’ve gotten all year.
Click here to read more and register now.
Happy Thanksgiving!
PS — Want to give someone else Creative Sandbox 101 as a gift? Email me and I’ll set you up with a special certificate you can send as a gift.
PPS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!
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!
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?)
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.
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!
