If there is one thing I hear constantly from the creatives and writers I work with at my recommit to your art, recenter in your heart Oasis, on retreat, or in my writer’s mastermind, it’s the lament of what didn’t happen.
The cry of “I didn’t make my page count” or “My best friend’s mother is dying and I put all my focus there and now it been weeks” or simply giving in to self-doubt and the siren call of Netflix.
These wonderful creatives place their attention on what they didn’t do, on how they fell short of where they wanted to be by when, and on the story of being less than or being behind. Strangely, none of this helps them to get back to creating.
Why not try something different, I suggest to them and to you. Why not place your attention on the flow of life, the endlessly creative experience of being alive. Why not let that move you forward?
Did you think about breathing while you’ve been reading this? Did you think about how your brain is taking these little squiggles on a screen and translating them into thoughts and images that make sense to you?
No, of course, you didn’t.
Life is always working in the background, despite our minds insisting they’re in charge.
Life is always living through you. It’s always wanting to animate and inspire you; To keep bringing you even more and more into its flow.
Why not put your attention there?
Yes, it takes courage, focus, and practice to tap into this flow, but why not start practicing now?
Yes, you will have to choose to create only one thing right now (not seven or twenty million), because you are a human who exists in space and time. Constraints are what life uses to help you give it form. Embrace them as you would a beloved friend.
Yes, your brain might mutter and sputter about what you should have already done, or how beginning again is too hard and you suck, and there is so much to learn and… because that is what brains do.
It doesn’t mean we have to believe their nattering.
Instead, ask yourself: is that thought useful? If it is, use it to create, to move forward right now. If not, relax back into life and let it love you into action.
There is nothing to be fixed, nothing to rue or regret.
What is there is life wagging its tail and inviting you to play, to make with it, as your partner, a vase, a story, a sketch, a grant proposal, a dating site profile, or a class you will offer next week in your living room.
Meet life now. Relax your jaw, your forehead, and your shoulders; all the places you tense up when thinking you have to get something right.
Open your body to its energy.
Open. Unfurl. Make.
Off you go.
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And if some companionship on your getting back to creating journey sounds like just the nudge you need, my free 5-day challenge “Get Back To Creating” starts January 28th. Click here to sign up! Give me a few minutes a day to support you and your life in making more of what you want!
