Don’t let your Predictive Mind suck all the joy out of your Creative Practice.
In my STUDY, SAVOR, & SUPPORT Each Other CHAT☕️🍵, we’re doing a deep-dive into our Book Club selection! This week is Chapter 10 of BECOMING AN ARTIST: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity by Dr. Ellen J. Langer.
In Chapter 10: The Mindful Choice, EL reminds us that even Pablo Picasso has said, “I don’t know in advance what I am going to put on canvas any more than I decide beforehand what colors I am going to use.”
My MINDFUL Reflection:
I find this to be such a refreshing way to approach our creative work, don’t you?
It’s also hard for me to do. Too often, I approach things from this urge that I “need to know” how it’s done first. So I can do it “the right way.”
That tendency makes me wonder how many opportunities I have missed, to learn through exploration.
I am not alone in that tendency. But we get it wrong when we think we’re bad for not knowing. As EL states, “The problem is not not knowing; the problem is thinking we should know.”
And, she suggests the problem’s worse the more important we believe the outcome will be for us.
Instead, she reminds us that we can’t know. Not before we try and see for ourselves.
Most of all, she emphasizes, creativity is supposed to be fun.
Enter…
CHOICES: Where Focus Meets Fun
EL takes a unique perspective on Creativity: she sees it as the perfect opportunity to question whatever options are presented to us, to exercise our personal power.
As she puts it, “Any form of creative engagement almost by definition can encourage us to question the choices we are given….”
And, for all those Creatives who feel they have to learn how to do it “the right way” (like me), she reminds us that we don’t want to mindlessly accept anything, because “Certainty breeds mindlessness. Uncertainty, then, is a friend rather than something to be avoided or feared.”
Being Mindful means we recognize we hold the power to make a choice.
And there’s a bonus: the more choices we make (and mindfully notice we’re making), the more confident we can become in our decision-making ability; and the less stress we will place on ourselves to always “make the right choice,” because we know we’ll make many additional choices in the near future.
My MINDFUL Conclusion: It Pays to Play
What’s another way to express our ability to make a choice, and another choice, and another choice?
In a relaxed and free-flowing way?
It’s PLAY.
The same way a Kindergartner confidently grabs different colored crayons, to draw and design a picture however s/he sees fit.
Without requiring any instruction in advance.
Without enrolling in any course.
Without straining or stressing out about how others will perceive their artwork.
And they don’t stop at creating 1 piece of art. Or 2, or 3, or 4….
They just keep going.
Tilting their heads from side to side.
Considering how their drawing makes them feel. Does it feel right to them?
Not caring if it’s drawn in the right proportions. Or with the right depth perspective.
Technically, it’s NOT “correct.”
Unless its drawn by a savant, it’s usually more “surreal” than realistic.
But, isn’t that why it’s so magical?
MAGIC’s captured, not only in the drawing itself, but in the way the child smiles, from the inside out.
That’s the MAGIC I want to rediscover & capture in my Creative Practice (music).
Now, take a Mindful Minute, to ask yourself:
⭐️ Think of your chosen Creative Practice.
⭐️ Do you tend to plan out what you “should” do, based on how others have done it before?
⭐️ On a scale of 1–10 how open minded are you, to embrace not-knowing?
⭐️ What might happen if you focused less on Certainty and more on the Magic that Uncertainty brings?
⭐️ Are you like me? Let’s not let our Predictive Mind suck all the joy out of our Creativity.
🧠🎨 The Uncertain, Free-Flowing Creative in Me 🎨🧠
🧠🎨 honors & respects 🎨🧠
🧠🎨 the Uncertain, Free-Flowing Creative in Each of You, 🎨🧠
Marisa
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