I have to admit this has been one of the hardest blog posts to write and I can’t exactly pinpoint why. I was just not feeling a sense of safety.
Yes, I know this is supposed to be the beginning of an amazing journey but eeehhh The Artists’ way..it makes you deal with things that honestly I did not what to deal with or maybe I am not ready to deal with but this is the 100-day GlowUp Challenge and we are going to dissect how creativity meets wellness hook or crook,even if I am the guinea pig here. haha!!
“Emotional safety is feeling internally secure and confident in your life.”
Amy Leigh Mercree
EEehhh but Julia!! The Artist’s Way is described as a twelve-week course that guides you through the process of recovering your creative self. It aims to dispel the ‘I’m not talented enough’ conditioning that holds many people back and helps you to unleash your own inner artist.
Its step-by-step approach enables you to transform your life, overcome any artistic blocks you may suffer from, including limiting beliefs, fear, sabotage, jealousy and guilt, and replace them with self-confidence and productivity.
It helps demystify the creative process by making it a part of your daily life. Whatever your artistic leanings, this book will give you the tools you need to enable you to fulfil your dreams.
Wow! That is what these next months are about and yes,I do realise that I am fighting against myself but I need to push on if I expect to see any change in my creativity. It is not a matter of if I feel like it, I must do it. This week starts with a sense of safety.
The course implores us to do two things: One is to do your morning pages every day. Yes, you read right!! EVERY DAY!! So here you just get a journal and well journal..hahaha about everything and nothing. Julia calls this the primary tool for creative recovery.
The second thing is to have an artists date every week. Here you take the artist aka You out on date wherever. It can be watching your favourite series or going to a bookshop or even the museum. It is just something that will charge your creative juices.
An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist.’
Julia Cameron
Recovering A Sense of Safety
I was a bit taken aback when I first saw this…sense of safety..what exactly did this mean? How did safety relate to creativity? But I was shocked to realise that yep she knew what she was talking about. Julia introduces the shadow artist!!
‘Shadow artists often chose shadow careers—those close to the desired art, even parallel to it, but not the art itself.’
This was totally me. I even at one time was a talent manager. With a friend, we managed two musicians. I could never call myself creative. I was the one to support the creatives. All this changed when blogging came into my life and I thought wow, I am a creative!!! But there were and still are some negative beliefs that I needed and still need to deal with.
And that’s where The Artists way goes in the first week of safety. We need to deal with our negative beliefs. We need to identify and break them down so that they don’t block us from being our most authentic selves.
Creative Affirmations
To deal with the negative beliefs, I had to write all the negative beliefs I had. The one that messed me up was I am not creative at all and I will never be able to be successful in my creativity.
After writing all of the negative beliefs down, we are then to write affirmations for every belief. Eehhh turning negative to positive!!
These affirmations are positive statements that we keep on saying till it reaches the depths of our souls and we begin to believe and live them. I am still a work in progress but I am getting there coz…
I, Patricia Opio, am a brilliant and prolific creativepreneur!!!
Do you have any negative beliefs that keep you from creating? Do share and we debunk these myths together. But Just know- YOU ARE CREATIVE!!
