July 19, 2025 • 31 mins
On this week's episode of Write Your Story with Ally Fallon:
Do you have an artist in you that you’ve tucked away because…
- Obligations and responsibilities took precedence over art?
- You were shamed or ridiculed for being “unrealistic” or having your “head in the clouds”?
- You’ve forgotten what it felt like to be creative?
- You got hurt and had to close your heart to survive?
- You were told you’re “not very creative”?
- Something you made was criticized or rejected?
- You think you need to be the best at something and you can’t just do it for the joy?
In today’s episode, I invite you to come back to your inner artist. Not only for the sake of your own healing, but for the healing of your community and the world.
Never have we been in such dire need of creative ideas, creative solutions and open, creative hearts to shape and shift the path in front of us.
Tune in today for some nourishing, easy ideas to bring back the artist in you.
I promise it will be worth it.
Sign up for class for free on the MindBody app.
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write, all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down on cold It's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon, I'm
your host, and I want to talk about today the
importance of having a creative practice. If that phrase doesn't
make a lot of sense to you, don't worry. I'll
unpacket on the episode today. But I want to talk
about how having a creative practice is what guides us
(00:48):
through our life and through our story. If you've been
around this podcast for a while, you know that I
am a huge advocate of having a writing practice, a
daily writing practice, which for me looks like just five
to twenty minutes a day of putting pen to paper,
writing whatever's on your mind, writing about what's going on
in your life, writing about how it makes you feel,
writing about what sense you make of it, what it
makes you think, the thought patterns that are in your brain,
(01:10):
and that when you put pen to paper like that,
you end up discovering that you think things or feel
things that you didn't know you felt, because it takes
you deeper, It takes you into a deeper part of
your brain. And I will forever stand behind having a
regular writing practice. But today I want to expand the
lens a little bit and just talk about having a
creative practice. So even if you don't feel like writing,
even if writing isn't what's right for you in this season,
(01:33):
even if you know you have long periods of time
where putting pen to paper just doesn't feel accessible to you,
that having a creative practice can provide you some of
that same support. In fact, maybe even other aspects of
support that writing can't offer you. And so I want
to expand the lens and talk about what that looks
like in my life, what I've noticed it looks like
for others, and just invite you to have your own
(01:54):
creative practice because of all of the benefits that it
can bring into your life. This is coming up for
me because I reread a book that I had read
I don't know probably ten times before, called The Artist's
Way by Julia Cameron. I will put the link in
the show notes. If you haven't already heard of this book,
you should go and order it immediately right now. Like,
go to your local bookstore, go find The Artist's Way.
I can guarantee you they have a copy of it
(02:15):
in stock if they don't, ask them to order it
and keep it in the store, because it's just one
of those books that you can return to over and
over and over again and reread and reread and reread,
and it just takes you deeper every single time. Like
I said, I've read The Artist's Way at least ten
times in my life and gone through the program. I
don't know as many times, probably as many times I
(02:35):
haven't counted, but I hadn't revisited the book in several
years and found it when I was going through a
box of books that had been in storage, and so
pulled it out and started going through it again and
was just blown away by the value and the depth
and just the generosity of the practice that she teaches
(02:55):
in the Artist's Way. So the book is by Julia Cameron.
It's called The Artist's Way or the book. Literally write
this minute, order it on Amazon, or even better, order
it at your local bookstore. But go find a copy
of this book and get it in your possession and
just start reading. Julia Cameron walks you through a three
month practice that's called the artist Way. That's returning to
(03:16):
the heart of the artist and the way that I
would define the artist. I don't think she necessarily defines
it this way, but to me, the artist in you
is the true you. The artist in you is the
you that many of us have rejected. When I teach
writing workshops, one of the first things I ask is
I ask people to share what their earliest experience was
with writing, because you'll hear these amazing stories. Like some
(03:38):
people's stories will be something like this. My earliest experience
with writing was this writing teacher who called me out
and told me I was a great writer and really
encouraged me, and gave me a notebook and a pen
and told me to keep writing for the rest of
my life because this was something I was really good at.
So that's one version, and usually that person is still
in a practice of writing. Another version of the story
(04:01):
is my earliest memory with writing is I was writing
in a journal and I had the journal hidden under
my bed, and my mom found it and I got
in trouble or she told my friends about it, or
she burned the journal in the fireplace. I'm not joking,
I'm not exaggerating. I've heard every version of that story
that someone's mom found something that they had written that
was meant to be private and either made it public
or told their dad, or something bad happened quote unquote
(04:25):
bad happened because the parent found this piece of writing.
And of course those people feel all lucked up around
their writing practice. They don't want to show up at
the page, they don't want to write anything honest on
the page. And of course they would because the pattern
that got laid down really early is if I show
up and tell the truth, I get in trouble. Imagine
(04:46):
the kind of mind trap that that could get you
into in other parts of your life that don't have
anything to do with writing. If you believe that when
you tell the truth, when you show up and tell
the truth, that people are going to reject you, or
people are going to betray you, or you're going to
get in trouble in some way. Yeah, you would not
really choose to do that. You would just be like,
let me put on a mask, let me say what
(05:06):
I know. You know, people want to hear, and the
consequences of that can be dire in every single aspect
of our life. So this is one of the things,
one of many hundreds of things that writing can bring
into our life. Is it teaches us to show up,
to tell the truth, to say it with clarity, to
say it with confidence, to say it with courage, to
be honest at first with just ourselves, to just say
(05:28):
something on the page that's true, and then to carry
that honesty and integrity into other parts of our lives.
And it will transform your life from the inside out.
A writing practice will, but the same is true with
a creative practice. And one of the things that Julia
Cameron talks about is this abandoned artist, and it's really
similar to the abandoned writer. To what I've always said
about the abandoned writer, which is that we learn reasons
(05:50):
to abandon our inner artist because our inner artist faced
criticism or bullying or negative feedback or whatever it was
in childhood, and so we've learned to kind of put
this artist aside, to pretend like I'm not a creative person,
and then to go out into the world and do
what's expected of us and do what gets us good
(06:11):
feedback and gets us accolades and success and money and
all the other things, and a life can really start
to feel suffocating. It can start to feel stale. We
can start to feel depressed. When we deny our creative selves,
when we push aside the part of us that wants
to make something from scratch, we can start to feel
(06:31):
really empty inside. We can start to feel really disconnected
from ourselves. We can start to feel disconnected from the
people around us. We can start to feel like nobody
sees me, nobody knows me, nobody understands me. You know,
my life is just sort of happening to me. I
don't have any control over it. And one of the
things that will heal those wounds is and I would
argue one of the best things that we have at
(06:53):
our fingertips to heal those wounds is a creative practice.
Is coming back to the sense of wonder that children
experience when they sit down to make art. This is
so fun because my kids are with a perfect age
for me to watch this take place in real time.
My daughter especially is very into art, or what we
would traditionally call art. My son is also into art,
(07:15):
but his is more like building stuff. He likes to
be in the sandbox and build sand castles and use
magnetiles and blocks and all that stuff. So that's also
a creative practice. But my daughter watching her with you know,
craons and markers and colored pencils, and just for hours,
she'll sit at the table and have all her supplies
around her and just make stuff, you know, and she's
(07:37):
not even worried about what the outcome is. She's not
wondering who's gonna like this, or how many copies am
I going to sell? Or you know, will Mom approve
of this picture that I'm drawing. She definitely, when she's
done with something, wants to bring it to me and
show me how proud she is of it. And I
can just be proud with her. But she's not making
it so that Mom will be proud of her. She's
(07:58):
making it because it's fun for her. She's made it
because she can't not make it, because it's just part
of who she is to create. And I guess the
point I want to make on today's episode is it's
part of who you are to create too. And when
you begin to believe that that's not true, when you
begin to believe that you're not a creative person. This
is when a downward spiral starts to happen, where we
(08:18):
start to feel really stuck in our own lives when
we think, yeah, I would love to, you know, be creative,
but I really just need to pay the bills. I
really just need to do you know, what's asked of me.
I have all these responsibilities and all these obligations. Life
is hard. There's so many things on my plate. I'm
just overwhelmed. I'm just trying to get through the day.
(08:39):
These are valid feelings and valid concerns, and a valid
tension that we all face in living an adult life.
And yet a creative practice is the antidote. A creative
practice brings you back to who you are. A creative
practice will wake you up and revive you and remind
you of what's true about you, which is that you
have something beautiful to offer, that who you are is
(09:00):
so unique. It's unique as a fingerprint, as the very
fingerprint on your thumb. It is that unique. There is
no other person in this world who could replicate who
you are and the beauty and the gift that you
have to bring. And in order to be reminded of
that we have to be reminded of our creative practice.
So this is what Julia Cameron does. Julia Cameron's creative
(09:21):
practice consists of many different activities that you do to
come back to your creative self, but one of which
is what she calls morning pages, which is waking up
each morning and just writing freestyle, stream of consciousness style
for three pages. So you sit down to the page
(09:46):
with pen and paper, old fashioned, real pen, real paper,
first thing in the morning, and you just sit down
and write. My caveat to this would be if writing
first thing in the morning is not accessible to you
because for any reason, because maybe you have kids like
I do, and they wake up early and you don't
have time to wake up before them, then don't worry
(10:07):
about it being first thing in the morning. If writing
for forty minutes or three pages is not accessible to you,
don't worry about making it forty minutes or three pages.
Find a way to make this fit in your life
and be committed to the practice, and you will begin
to see changes. You will begin to see shifts. So
if it's five minutes first thing in the morning, or
if it's five minutes at nine point thirty after you
(10:29):
drop your kids off or whatever. Find a way to
weave this into your practice. Weave this into your daily habits,
and you will begin to see shifts and changes. One
of the spaces and places where I find time to
write is in the car. And I know, if you're
a mom out there, you're feeling me on this one.
There's something about being in the car after drop off
or whatever, you know. Or sometimes I'll have my kids
(10:51):
in the car and we'll go through a drive through
or something and get a treat, like we'll do Starbucks
drive through and get a treat, and then they're buckled
into their car seats, they're eating a treat, I'm drinking
a coffe whatever, We're sitting in the car and it's just,
you know, not quiet, not utterly quiet, but it's like
peaceful for ten minutes maybe, And maybe that's the place
that you find where you can jot a couple of
(11:12):
notes down. I've talked about this on a previous episode,
but I've started the practice of just writing the date
at the top of a note in my iPhone and
just recording anything that happens to come to mind. So
maybe my practice isn't forty minutes first thing in the morning.
But maybe my practice is five minutes here, five minutes there,
two minutes here, one minute there, thirty seconds before I
go to bed, and maybe it adds up to somewhere
(11:34):
around twenty minutes by the end of the day. Whatever
it is for you, find a way to make this
practice work for you and work in your schedule. Don't
feel like you have to do forty minutes or it's
not good enough. Just find a way to make it
fit for you, and I promise you you'll start to
see shifts and changes. You'll start to feel these waves
of insight, these waves of epiphany come through. It's almost
(11:55):
like you talking to you, or maybe you like to
think about it as like you in contact or in
touch with the divine light that's in you, that's guiding you,
that's speaking to you, that is the original you, that
is the divine you, that is the artist in you,
that has gotten lost somewhere along the way in the
(12:15):
complications of being a human being in this three D world.
Which I'm not of the camp that says, you know,
the physical world doesn't matter. It's like I talked about
in last week's episode. You have asesinas, you have practices
in yoga, you have the physical postures that then trigger
or bring up the deeper work. They bring up the
(12:37):
inner yoga. As I said, my teacher Missy talks about
so physical practices, you have the asinas that's outer yoga.
Then you have the inner yoga, and the outer yoga
triggers the inner yoga. And I said in the last
week's episode that Missy talks about Baron Baptiste who says,
until you want to come out of the posture, the
posture hasn't really begun. So we need the physical practice.
(12:57):
We need the physical postures in order to bring us
into attention to what's happening at a spiritual level. So
I'm not of the belief that the physical world doesn't matter.
I think the physical world matters deeply. Your responsibilities, your obligations,
your to do list, it all matters. And it isn't
until those physical things in your life bring you into
(13:20):
attunement with the inner yoga that the real meaning starts
to come to the forefront. When it's just physical and
there's no spiritual, when it's just material and there's no emotional,
your life will feel flat, it'll feel meaningless, it'll feel
it'll be lacking, it'll feel depressive, it'll feel boring. But
when there's a physical obstacle in front of you and
(13:41):
you're aware and in tune with the inner yoga, the
change that's happening inside of you because of this obstacle,
Suddenly life suddenly, problems, suddenly, obligations, responsibilities, loss, is grief, rage,
all of it starts to feel meaningful. It starts to
feel like this matters for something, This means something to me.
It's all part of this journey that I'm on. And
(14:03):
this is what creativity does for us. Creativity brings this
to life. Speaking of yoga, I'll bring this into the
conversation for just a second, because speaking of yoga, yoga
is absolutely a creative practice. I used to give the
advice to writers that I was working with when they
were experiencing writer's block to get their heart rate up.
So I would say, you know, if you're sitting at
(14:25):
the computer and you're staring at the blinking cursor and
you can't think what to write at the very least,
get up and do like ten pushups and then sit
back down, or even better, get up and you know,
run around the block and come back, or walk around
the block and come back to your computer. There's something
about that physical practice. There's something about getting the heart
rate up that drops you from your frontal cortex into
(14:46):
your limbic system and that allows you or invites you
to use even more of your brain and even more
of your body, that invites you to come from a
more physical place, that invites you to come from a
deeper place, a more place that you can't just do
when you're just trying to figure out the problem from
the top front part of your brain. Your prefneral cortex
(15:08):
is extremely important. You could not exist in this world
without it. And yet when your prefneral cortex is driving
the show, then you're making every decision from a place
of logic and no decision from a place of creativity.
Because all your creativity, all your imagination, all of your
ability to dream up something new and dream up something different,
comes from the lower part of your brain, from the
(15:29):
limbic part of your brain. Yoga activates that limbic part
of your brain, so does pretty much any form of exercise,
anything that gets your heart rate up. A walk around
the block is great not only for getting your heart
rate up, but also for activating the bilateral parts of
your brain and again inviting more of your brain to
the conversation, more of your brain to the table, to
(15:49):
the party. And yoga is a practice that has been
used for thousands and thousands of years. This is an
ancient practice that's been around forever. It's been used by many,
many different cultures. There are energy centers in the body
that are activated when you're doing these yoga poses and
these yoga postures. They're not just meaningless postures. It's not
just for no reason. You know. A warrior one is
(16:11):
not just a warrior one. A warrior one is activating
parts of the body and inviting you into more depth
with yourself. And even if we don't fully understand why
or how all of those things are working, the fact
of the matter is this practice has been working for
human beings for thousands of years across many different cultures,
you know. And then we bring yoga practice into the West,
(16:33):
and in the West, we have this obsession with figuring
things out and defining the science, which is such a
gift and such a beautiful thing. And so you have
scientists who are figuring out all of the reasons why
for so many thousands of years this practice has been working.
You're finding now that science is proving that the benefits
(16:54):
of yoga are really taking place in the brain and
taking place in the body. And so you're seeing this
merging of an ancient practice and also a modern quote
unquote proof that it works. And it's really cool to
be able to see that happen. But a yoga practice
is a creative practice, and yoga is one really amazing
way to reactivate that creative part of you that so
(17:16):
many of us have set aside. So yoga is one
way to do this. Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way is
a great way to do this. I talked about how
she has you do morning pages. She also has you
take yourself on what she calls artist states. So artist
states are where you take yourself to do something unusual
or unexpected, outside of the normal. It's just you. Nobody
(17:37):
comes with you. There's no taglong kids, there's no taglong partners,
no spouse's come. It's just you taking yourself to do
something that activates the senses. And I love how Julia
Cameron talks about the well that you can't draw from
an empty well. And so if you are feeling burnt
out in your life, if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you're
feeling like you're running on fumes, you're burning the candle
(17:58):
at both ends, whatever it is is. If you're trying
to have a creative practice in the midst of those feelings,
the creative practice is going to feel pretty dry, because
you're drawing from a dry well. Well. What fills the well,
according to Julia Cameron, is sensory input. So sensory input,
first of all. Other acts of creativity fill the well.
(18:21):
When you read a book, when you listen to a podcast,
when you have an experience at a retreat, when you
take in someone else's creativity, It fills the well. When
you go get a latte and it just is beautiful
and it tastes so great, and it's got the latte
art on the top, and you're taking it in through
your eyes, and you're taking it in through your nose,
and you're taking it in through your taste buds. That's
(18:44):
filling the well. I used to go on Artist States
to Whole Foods quite a bit. I haven't done this
in a really long time, but I used to really
love going to Whole Foods. Especially when I was younger
and felt like I would go into Whole Foods and
couldn't really afford much of anything. I would walk the
aisles in Whole Foods and just admire the way that
the shelves were stocked and the prepared foods, and you know,
(19:05):
all these beautiful like colors and labels and smells and
sights and sounds, and just take it all in and
would always buy myself a little treat while I was
at Whole Foods, And that was my artist date. Now
these days, my artist state might be taking myself to
Shelby Park, which is not far from my house. I
can drive myself down there and listen to the crickets
(19:26):
or listen to the frogs, or just take in the sites,
the sounds, the smells, the feel of being in the park,
regulate my nervous system through nature, and just take myself
there alone, you know, or maybe I'll go grab a
coffee and then take myself down there. So artist states
(19:49):
are a beautiful way to fill the well so that
you have more to draw from when you come to
your creative practice, and you can begin to come back
into touch with that creative version of you that creative
side of you, that part of ourselves that so many
of us have set aside. I have started affectionately calling
my inner artist the poet, because if you are familiar
(20:10):
at all with IFS or internal family systems, this is
a type of therapy that I've used on and off
over the years. I've had a few therapists who have
been trained in IFS and who have used this tool
with me, and it's been extremely helpful in a lot
of different ways. But the idea behind IFS, and I'm
paraphrasing here, and I'm also not a therapist, but I'm
in a paraphrase quickly, that IFS is this idea that
(20:30):
you have many different parts of you, and that the
therapeutic work is to welcome all the different parts of
you that some of us are trying to cut off,
the part of us that's angry, or cut off the
part of us that's wounded as a child, or cut
off the part of us that talks too much, or
whatever it is. And IFS is really about working with
the parts. It's about integrating the parts so that they
can all become part of one healed, well integrated human being.
(20:55):
But that all these parts are welcome, that the wounded
five year old is welcome, that the you know, angry
mother is welcome, whatever it is. And one of the
things that I started talking about in therapy is this
part of me that I call the poet, and the
poet is the artist part of me that I decided
at a young age wasn't acceptable to be seen in public.
(21:16):
You know. The poet was the part of me that
was secretly writing poetry on the side, which is how
she got named the poet. So the poet in me
was secretly writing poetry on the side on the bus
at home in my free time, whenever I had a
moment to myself, I would just kind of hide out
in the corner and write a poem. Well, then I
would go to school and realize that in order to
get accolades at school, in order to get the straight
(21:37):
a's that I wanted, in order to be successful to
my teachers and to my parents, that I had to
act in a different way. I had to really like
think in a more linear way. I had to really
focus on staying really present in class and maybe presents
the wrong word, like paying very close attention to what
the teacher was saying, memorizing facts, answering the questions correctly,
(22:00):
learning you know, the framework that the teacher wanted me
to learn, getting the answers right, getting the straight a's,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that carried me through,
you know, my entire school experience. I went to college,
I got an advanced degree. I went to grad school
and was obsessed with getting straight a's, getting good grades,
getting teacher's approval, you know, just having people think like, oh,
(22:22):
she's such a good student. She always knows the answer,
she's always raising her hand, she's always sitting in the front,
she always shows up on time. And so I started
calling that part of myself the valedictorian. Which side note,
I was never the valedictorian, which is always a little
bit of a sore point for me. I was salutatorian,
which meant I got one B straight a's, but one
B in geometry I think it was anyway, I can't
(22:44):
even remember now, see, not important, not important, but it
felt important to me at the time, and I remember
feeling so devastated that I wasn't valedictorian. All of that
to say, so I have this valedictorian part of myself
that really is about being successful, seeking approval, getting other
pe to think a certain way about me. And she
is welcome here. She is welcome here, and she has
(23:05):
served an absolute purpose for me for so long. She
has earned me a lot of respect, She has earned
me a lot of money. She is part of how
I got out of my abusive relationship and paved away
for myself moving forward. And then there's this poet that
lives inside of me, the inner poet as I call her,
but for the sake of you, as you're listening, it's
(23:28):
just your inner artist. There's a poet, an artist inside
of me that I have set aside because I decided
that she wasn't welcome here. I decided she wasn't acceptable here.
And the valedictorian has taken up so much space, and
the poet has not had as much space to take up.
And what would happen to me, to my personality, to
my experience of my life if I gave the poet
(23:49):
a little bit more space to exist. I had this
old memory pop up of a teacher in high school,
missus Gardner was her name. She was my English chief.
So I had turned in many essays to her and
always gotten a's on all my essays. And then for
one project that we did, I don't remember what the
requirement was. I don't know why I did this, but
(24:10):
I decided to put my poetry together into a little
poetry anthology and turn my poetry into her and I
remember she said to me, you should probably stick with prose.
You're much better with prose than with poetry. And that
was maybe my sophomore year of high school, junior year,
I can't remember, but I think it stealed the deal
for me in terms of sharing my poetry. I felt like, Oh,
(24:34):
I worried that it wasn't acceptable for me to show
my poetry. And then I took a chance and I
shared it, and I realized I was right that it's
not acceptable for me to share this part of me,
this poet part of me, is not welcome here. And
I think so many of us have stories like that.
If you can just take a minute and think about
the input that you got from adults as it related
(24:56):
to creativity in your life, as it related to writing,
as it related to poet, as it related to music
to dance. You know, another memory that has come through
for me is of my ex husband telling me when
we first got married and moved to another state, I
really wanted to take a dance class because I had
grown up in a dance studio and I was actually
a really decent dancer as a young child. I was
(25:17):
on dance team. It was such a huge part of
my life for so many decades. And I was feeling
really lost and sad, and I was missing my family
and missing home and feeling homesick, and so I was like,
I would love to take a dance class. And he
said to me, if you can show me one measurable
way that taking a dance class will add to our
bottom line, then you can take a dance class. But
(25:37):
otherwise it's a no. As these stories come back to me,
and as I remember them and tell them back to myself,
I can trace back the lineage of this idea that
I have in my body that my poet, my artist
is not welcome here. And I think this transition that
I've been in in my life where I've been training
(25:59):
to become a yoga teacher, I took a step back
from coaching. I took a pause on teaching my online
course a book. In six months, everything that's been going
on in my life. I think what it's really been
about is about taking a pause for long enough to
invite back in my poet, to invite back in my
inner artist, to give space for her to breathe. And
(26:19):
I will tell you one thing. Julie Carmeron's book, The
Artist's Way is a fabulous way to It's a program
that will invite back in your inner artist. And one
thing I want to add to her program is space.
Just space, just white space in your life is a
way to invite back in your inner artist. We are
(26:40):
terrified in our culture of white space. We are terrified
of having unscheduled time. We are terrified of the quiet.
We're terrified of downtime. We're terrified of not being productive.
We are so afraid to just let there be space.
And I'm telling you, just having space in your life,
just not having something scheduled every second of every day,
(27:02):
we'll invite back in your inner artist. And maybe at
first that feels like just crying for no reason at all.
Maybe at first it feels like panic. Maybe at first
it feels like frustration or anxiousness. That's another big one.
Sometimes we feel anxious when we have white space because
we're like, I'm supposed to be doing something. I think
(27:22):
I'm supposed to be getting something done. The anxiety, the fear,
the sadness, whatever it is that comes up for you
is the breakthrough of the inner artist. It is part
of the process of inviting that artist back to the table.
And I'll say, just on a philosophical level, the reason
for inviting back in the inner artist is not just
so that you can feel happier, Because you will feel
(27:45):
happier as you invite your inner artists back to the table.
You'll feel more in touch with yourself, You'll feel more
in tune, You'll be more present, you'll be more excited
to wake up in the morning, You'll feel more depth
and meaning in your life. All those things are true,
and also on a level beyond the personal. We are
in a time in our world, in our culture where
(28:05):
we desperately need creativity, where we have to look at
the problems that are at hand and ask ourselves, how
can we approach these with a new lens. We have
to be able to step back and see from a
thirty thousand foot view the issues that we're facing, and
see each other through the lens of an artist through
(28:25):
the lens of your analytical note taker, your valedictorian, whatever
you want to call that part of you. Through the
lens of your analytical note taker, you're valedictorian. You may
look at a problem like what we're facing in our
culture right now, and you might have a really great
step by step A to be a through Z plan
(28:46):
for how to solve the problem. And I think this
is part of the issue we're facing as a culture,
is that everyone seems to have a structure, a plan,
a program, an idea of how to resolve these issues,
and we're all fighting about it. We're all just arguing
about it. And the only way to really find a
path forward is for us to reconnect to the inner
(29:07):
artist that is open. The inner artist, as opposed to
the intervaledictorian, is open to new ways of thinking and
new ways of seeing. Can receive what someone suggests without
immediately shooting it down and see what's good about a
suggestion instead of immediately what won't work about it? And
(29:30):
I think that we have to find a way to
communicate and to connect with one another from the standpoint
of the artist. I mean, you watch kids. My kids
are a part of this wall door fee outdoor play
program where they just play with these other kids all day.
And when you watch kids play together like that, it's
amazing what you watch them come up with. They are
so creative. We are creative by nature. The child in you,
(29:54):
the five year old in you, the four year old,
and you the six year old in you. You know,
between those ages of like four and eight, that version
of you is so unbelievably creative, and so unbelievably open,
and so unbelievably collaborative with the people around you. We
need to reconnect to that part of ourselves. We need
(30:14):
to find again a way to be in community with
one another and to work together toward change. I really
believe we won't make it through this time unless we're
able to do that. And so it's not just about
you becoming happier, although it will make you happier, it
will make you feel more engaged with your life. It
(30:35):
is a way to become unstuck, to become more connected
to that inner artist. And also it's also a way
to become more connected to those around you and more
collaborative and more generous and more generative, and to find
a new way and a new path forward. So I
invite you to go by the artist's way. I invite
(30:57):
you to come back to a creative practice that you've
lost more along the way. I invite you to reflect
on the stories from your life about where you tucked
away your inner artist, why you tucked away your inner artist,
what you decided about who that person was, or how
that person was unacceptable inside of you. And I invite
you to find a way to welcome your poet, your
(31:20):
artist back to the table today. Until next time, I
will be thinking of you and your inner artist, and
I will be so excited and grateful to have you
back next week on Write your Story podcast. I'll see
that
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write, all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down on cold It's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon, I'm
your host, and I want to talk about today the
importance of having a creative practice. If that phrase doesn't
make a lot of sense to you, don't worry. I'll
unpacket on the episode today. But I want to talk
about how having a creative practice is what guides us
(00:48):
through our life and through our story. If you've been
around this podcast for a while, you know that I
am a huge advocate of having a writing practice, a
daily writing practice, which for me looks like just five
to twenty minutes a day of putting pen to paper,
writing whatever's on your mind, writing about what's going on
in your life, writing about how it makes you feel,
writing about what sense you make of it, what it
makes you think, the thought patterns that are in your brain,
(01:10):
and that when you put pen to paper like that,
you end up discovering that you think things or feel
things that you didn't know you felt, because it takes
you deeper, It takes you into a deeper part of
your brain. And I will forever stand behind having a
regular writing practice. But today I want to expand the
lens a little bit and just talk about having a
creative practice. So even if you don't feel like writing,
even if writing isn't what's right for you in this season,
(01:33):
even if you know you have long periods of time
where putting pen to paper just doesn't feel accessible to you,
that having a creative practice can provide you some of
that same support. In fact, maybe even other aspects of
support that writing can't offer you. And so I want
to expand the lens and talk about what that looks
like in my life, what I've noticed it looks like
for others, and just invite you to have your own
(01:54):
creative practice because of all of the benefits that it
can bring into your life. This is coming up for
me because I reread a book that I had read
I don't know probably ten times before, called The Artist's
Way by Julia Cameron. I will put the link in
the show notes. If you haven't already heard of this book,
you should go and order it immediately right now. Like,
go to your local bookstore, go find The Artist's Way.
I can guarantee you they have a copy of it
(02:15):
in stock if they don't, ask them to order it
and keep it in the store, because it's just one
of those books that you can return to over and
over and over again and reread and reread and reread,
and it just takes you deeper every single time. Like
I said, I've read The Artist's Way at least ten
times in my life and gone through the program. I
don't know as many times, probably as many times I
(02:35):
haven't counted, but I hadn't revisited the book in several
years and found it when I was going through a
box of books that had been in storage, and so
pulled it out and started going through it again and
was just blown away by the value and the depth
and just the generosity of the practice that she teaches
(02:55):
in the Artist's Way. So the book is by Julia Cameron.
It's called The Artist's Way or the book. Literally write
this minute, order it on Amazon, or even better, order
it at your local bookstore. But go find a copy
of this book and get it in your possession and
just start reading. Julia Cameron walks you through a three
month practice that's called the artist Way. That's returning to
(03:16):
the heart of the artist and the way that I
would define the artist. I don't think she necessarily defines
it this way, but to me, the artist in you
is the true you. The artist in you is the
you that many of us have rejected. When I teach
writing workshops, one of the first things I ask is
I ask people to share what their earliest experience was
with writing, because you'll hear these amazing stories. Like some
(03:38):
people's stories will be something like this. My earliest experience
with writing was this writing teacher who called me out
and told me I was a great writer and really
encouraged me, and gave me a notebook and a pen
and told me to keep writing for the rest of
my life because this was something I was really good at.
So that's one version, and usually that person is still
in a practice of writing. Another version of the story
(04:01):
is my earliest memory with writing is I was writing
in a journal and I had the journal hidden under
my bed, and my mom found it and I got
in trouble or she told my friends about it, or
she burned the journal in the fireplace. I'm not joking,
I'm not exaggerating. I've heard every version of that story
that someone's mom found something that they had written that
was meant to be private and either made it public
or told their dad, or something bad happened quote unquote
(04:25):
bad happened because the parent found this piece of writing.
And of course those people feel all lucked up around
their writing practice. They don't want to show up at
the page, they don't want to write anything honest on
the page. And of course they would because the pattern
that got laid down really early is if I show
up and tell the truth, I get in trouble. Imagine
(04:46):
the kind of mind trap that that could get you
into in other parts of your life that don't have
anything to do with writing. If you believe that when
you tell the truth, when you show up and tell
the truth, that people are going to reject you, or
people are going to betray you, or you're going to
get in trouble in some way. Yeah, you would not
really choose to do that. You would just be like,
let me put on a mask, let me say what
(05:06):
I know. You know, people want to hear, and the
consequences of that can be dire in every single aspect
of our life. So this is one of the things,
one of many hundreds of things that writing can bring
into our life. Is it teaches us to show up,
to tell the truth, to say it with clarity, to
say it with confidence, to say it with courage, to
be honest at first with just ourselves, to just say
(05:28):
something on the page that's true, and then to carry
that honesty and integrity into other parts of our lives.
And it will transform your life from the inside out.
A writing practice will, but the same is true with
a creative practice. And one of the things that Julia
Cameron talks about is this abandoned artist, and it's really
similar to the abandoned writer. To what I've always said
about the abandoned writer, which is that we learn reasons
(05:50):
to abandon our inner artist because our inner artist faced
criticism or bullying or negative feedback or whatever it was
in childhood, and so we've learned to kind of put
this artist aside, to pretend like I'm not a creative person,
and then to go out into the world and do
what's expected of us and do what gets us good
(06:11):
feedback and gets us accolades and success and money and
all the other things, and a life can really start
to feel suffocating. It can start to feel stale. We
can start to feel depressed. When we deny our creative selves,
when we push aside the part of us that wants
to make something from scratch, we can start to feel
(06:31):
really empty inside. We can start to feel really disconnected
from ourselves. We can start to feel disconnected from the
people around us. We can start to feel like nobody
sees me, nobody knows me, nobody understands me. You know,
my life is just sort of happening to me. I
don't have any control over it. And one of the
things that will heal those wounds is and I would
argue one of the best things that we have at
(06:53):
our fingertips to heal those wounds is a creative practice.
Is coming back to the sense of wonder that children
experience when they sit down to make art. This is
so fun because my kids are with a perfect age
for me to watch this take place in real time.
My daughter especially is very into art, or what we
would traditionally call art. My son is also into art,
(07:15):
but his is more like building stuff. He likes to
be in the sandbox and build sand castles and use
magnetiles and blocks and all that stuff. So that's also
a creative practice. But my daughter watching her with you know,
craons and markers and colored pencils, and just for hours,
she'll sit at the table and have all her supplies
around her and just make stuff, you know, and she's
(07:37):
not even worried about what the outcome is. She's not
wondering who's gonna like this, or how many copies am
I going to sell? Or you know, will Mom approve
of this picture that I'm drawing. She definitely, when she's
done with something, wants to bring it to me and
show me how proud she is of it. And I
can just be proud with her. But she's not making
it so that Mom will be proud of her. She's
(07:58):
making it because it's fun for her. She's made it
because she can't not make it, because it's just part
of who she is to create. And I guess the
point I want to make on today's episode is it's
part of who you are to create too. And when
you begin to believe that that's not true, when you
begin to believe that you're not a creative person. This
is when a downward spiral starts to happen, where we
(08:18):
start to feel really stuck in our own lives when
we think, yeah, I would love to, you know, be creative,
but I really just need to pay the bills. I
really just need to do you know, what's asked of me.
I have all these responsibilities and all these obligations. Life
is hard. There's so many things on my plate. I'm
just overwhelmed. I'm just trying to get through the day.
(08:39):
These are valid feelings and valid concerns, and a valid
tension that we all face in living an adult life.
And yet a creative practice is the antidote. A creative
practice brings you back to who you are. A creative
practice will wake you up and revive you and remind
you of what's true about you, which is that you
have something beautiful to offer, that who you are is
(09:00):
so unique. It's unique as a fingerprint, as the very
fingerprint on your thumb. It is that unique. There is
no other person in this world who could replicate who
you are and the beauty and the gift that you
have to bring. And in order to be reminded of
that we have to be reminded of our creative practice.
So this is what Julia Cameron does. Julia Cameron's creative
(09:21):
practice consists of many different activities that you do to
come back to your creative self, but one of which
is what she calls morning pages, which is waking up
each morning and just writing freestyle, stream of consciousness style
for three pages. So you sit down to the page
(09:46):
with pen and paper, old fashioned, real pen, real paper,
first thing in the morning, and you just sit down
and write. My caveat to this would be if writing
first thing in the morning is not accessible to you
because for any reason, because maybe you have kids like
I do, and they wake up early and you don't
have time to wake up before them, then don't worry
(10:07):
about it being first thing in the morning. If writing
for forty minutes or three pages is not accessible to you,
don't worry about making it forty minutes or three pages.
Find a way to make this fit in your life
and be committed to the practice, and you will begin
to see changes. You will begin to see shifts. So
if it's five minutes first thing in the morning, or
if it's five minutes at nine point thirty after you
(10:29):
drop your kids off or whatever. Find a way to
weave this into your practice. Weave this into your daily habits,
and you will begin to see shifts and changes. One
of the spaces and places where I find time to
write is in the car. And I know, if you're
a mom out there, you're feeling me on this one.
There's something about being in the car after drop off
or whatever, you know. Or sometimes I'll have my kids
(10:51):
in the car and we'll go through a drive through
or something and get a treat, like we'll do Starbucks
drive through and get a treat, and then they're buckled
into their car seats, they're eating a treat, I'm drinking
a coffe whatever, We're sitting in the car and it's just,
you know, not quiet, not utterly quiet, but it's like
peaceful for ten minutes maybe, And maybe that's the place
that you find where you can jot a couple of
(11:12):
notes down. I've talked about this on a previous episode,
but I've started the practice of just writing the date
at the top of a note in my iPhone and
just recording anything that happens to come to mind. So
maybe my practice isn't forty minutes first thing in the morning.
But maybe my practice is five minutes here, five minutes there,
two minutes here, one minute there, thirty seconds before I
go to bed, and maybe it adds up to somewhere
(11:34):
around twenty minutes by the end of the day. Whatever
it is for you, find a way to make this
practice work for you and work in your schedule. Don't
feel like you have to do forty minutes or it's
not good enough. Just find a way to make it
fit for you, and I promise you you'll start to
see shifts and changes. You'll start to feel these waves
of insight, these waves of epiphany come through. It's almost
(11:55):
like you talking to you, or maybe you like to
think about it as like you in contact or in
touch with the divine light that's in you, that's guiding you,
that's speaking to you, that is the original you, that
is the divine you, that is the artist in you,
that has gotten lost somewhere along the way in the
(12:15):
complications of being a human being in this three D world.
Which I'm not of the camp that says, you know,
the physical world doesn't matter. It's like I talked about
in last week's episode. You have asesinas, you have practices
in yoga, you have the physical postures that then trigger
or bring up the deeper work. They bring up the
(12:37):
inner yoga. As I said, my teacher Missy talks about
so physical practices, you have the asinas that's outer yoga.
Then you have the inner yoga, and the outer yoga
triggers the inner yoga. And I said in the last
week's episode that Missy talks about Baron Baptiste who says,
until you want to come out of the posture, the
posture hasn't really begun. So we need the physical practice.
(12:57):
We need the physical postures in order to bring us
into attention to what's happening at a spiritual level. So
I'm not of the belief that the physical world doesn't matter.
I think the physical world matters deeply. Your responsibilities, your obligations,
your to do list, it all matters. And it isn't
until those physical things in your life bring you into
(13:20):
attunement with the inner yoga that the real meaning starts
to come to the forefront. When it's just physical and
there's no spiritual, when it's just material and there's no emotional,
your life will feel flat, it'll feel meaningless, it'll feel
it'll be lacking, it'll feel depressive, it'll feel boring. But
when there's a physical obstacle in front of you and
(13:41):
you're aware and in tune with the inner yoga, the
change that's happening inside of you because of this obstacle,
Suddenly life suddenly, problems, suddenly, obligations, responsibilities, loss, is grief, rage,
all of it starts to feel meaningful. It starts to
feel like this matters for something, This means something to me.
It's all part of this journey that I'm on. And
(14:03):
this is what creativity does for us. Creativity brings this
to life. Speaking of yoga, I'll bring this into the
conversation for just a second, because speaking of yoga, yoga
is absolutely a creative practice. I used to give the
advice to writers that I was working with when they
were experiencing writer's block to get their heart rate up.
So I would say, you know, if you're sitting at
(14:25):
the computer and you're staring at the blinking cursor and
you can't think what to write at the very least,
get up and do like ten pushups and then sit
back down, or even better, get up and you know,
run around the block and come back, or walk around
the block and come back to your computer. There's something
about that physical practice. There's something about getting the heart
rate up that drops you from your frontal cortex into
(14:46):
your limbic system and that allows you or invites you
to use even more of your brain and even more
of your body, that invites you to come from a
more physical place, that invites you to come from a
deeper place, a more place that you can't just do
when you're just trying to figure out the problem from
the top front part of your brain. Your prefneral cortex
(15:08):
is extremely important. You could not exist in this world
without it. And yet when your prefneral cortex is driving
the show, then you're making every decision from a place
of logic and no decision from a place of creativity.
Because all your creativity, all your imagination, all of your
ability to dream up something new and dream up something different,
comes from the lower part of your brain, from the
(15:29):
limbic part of your brain. Yoga activates that limbic part
of your brain, so does pretty much any form of exercise,
anything that gets your heart rate up. A walk around
the block is great not only for getting your heart
rate up, but also for activating the bilateral parts of
your brain and again inviting more of your brain to
the conversation, more of your brain to the table, to
(15:49):
the party. And yoga is a practice that has been
used for thousands and thousands of years. This is an
ancient practice that's been around forever. It's been used by many,
many different cultures. There are energy centers in the body
that are activated when you're doing these yoga poses and
these yoga postures. They're not just meaningless postures. It's not
just for no reason. You know. A warrior one is
(16:11):
not just a warrior one. A warrior one is activating
parts of the body and inviting you into more depth
with yourself. And even if we don't fully understand why
or how all of those things are working, the fact
of the matter is this practice has been working for
human beings for thousands of years across many different cultures,
you know. And then we bring yoga practice into the West,
(16:33):
and in the West, we have this obsession with figuring
things out and defining the science, which is such a
gift and such a beautiful thing. And so you have
scientists who are figuring out all of the reasons why
for so many thousands of years this practice has been working.
You're finding now that science is proving that the benefits
(16:54):
of yoga are really taking place in the brain and
taking place in the body. And so you're seeing this
merging of an ancient practice and also a modern quote
unquote proof that it works. And it's really cool to
be able to see that happen. But a yoga practice
is a creative practice, and yoga is one really amazing
way to reactivate that creative part of you that so
(17:16):
many of us have set aside. So yoga is one
way to do this. Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way is
a great way to do this. I talked about how
she has you do morning pages. She also has you
take yourself on what she calls artist states. So artist
states are where you take yourself to do something unusual
or unexpected, outside of the normal. It's just you. Nobody
(17:37):
comes with you. There's no taglong kids, there's no taglong partners,
no spouse's come. It's just you taking yourself to do
something that activates the senses. And I love how Julia
Cameron talks about the well that you can't draw from
an empty well. And so if you are feeling burnt
out in your life, if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you're
feeling like you're running on fumes, you're burning the candle
(17:58):
at both ends, whatever it is is. If you're trying
to have a creative practice in the midst of those feelings,
the creative practice is going to feel pretty dry, because
you're drawing from a dry well. Well. What fills the well,
according to Julia Cameron, is sensory input. So sensory input,
first of all. Other acts of creativity fill the well.
(18:21):
When you read a book, when you listen to a podcast,
when you have an experience at a retreat, when you
take in someone else's creativity, It fills the well. When
you go get a latte and it just is beautiful
and it tastes so great, and it's got the latte
art on the top, and you're taking it in through
your eyes, and you're taking it in through your nose,
and you're taking it in through your taste buds. That's
(18:44):
filling the well. I used to go on Artist States
to Whole Foods quite a bit. I haven't done this
in a really long time, but I used to really
love going to Whole Foods. Especially when I was younger
and felt like I would go into Whole Foods and
couldn't really afford much of anything. I would walk the
aisles in Whole Foods and just admire the way that
the shelves were stocked and the prepared foods, and you know,
(19:05):
all these beautiful like colors and labels and smells and
sights and sounds, and just take it all in and
would always buy myself a little treat while I was
at Whole Foods, And that was my artist date. Now
these days, my artist state might be taking myself to
Shelby Park, which is not far from my house. I
can drive myself down there and listen to the crickets
(19:26):
or listen to the frogs, or just take in the sites,
the sounds, the smells, the feel of being in the park,
regulate my nervous system through nature, and just take myself
there alone, you know, or maybe I'll go grab a
coffee and then take myself down there. So artist states
(19:49):
are a beautiful way to fill the well so that
you have more to draw from when you come to
your creative practice, and you can begin to come back
into touch with that creative version of you that creative
side of you, that part of ourselves that so many
of us have set aside. I have started affectionately calling
my inner artist the poet, because if you are familiar
(20:10):
at all with IFS or internal family systems, this is
a type of therapy that I've used on and off
over the years. I've had a few therapists who have
been trained in IFS and who have used this tool
with me, and it's been extremely helpful in a lot
of different ways. But the idea behind IFS, and I'm
paraphrasing here, and I'm also not a therapist, but I'm
in a paraphrase quickly, that IFS is this idea that
(20:30):
you have many different parts of you, and that the
therapeutic work is to welcome all the different parts of
you that some of us are trying to cut off,
the part of us that's angry, or cut off the
part of us that's wounded as a child, or cut
off the part of us that talks too much, or
whatever it is. And IFS is really about working with
the parts. It's about integrating the parts so that they
can all become part of one healed, well integrated human being.
(20:55):
But that all these parts are welcome, that the wounded
five year old is welcome, that the you know, angry
mother is welcome, whatever it is. And one of the
things that I started talking about in therapy is this
part of me that I call the poet, and the
poet is the artist part of me that I decided
at a young age wasn't acceptable to be seen in public.
(21:16):
You know. The poet was the part of me that
was secretly writing poetry on the side, which is how
she got named the poet. So the poet in me
was secretly writing poetry on the side on the bus
at home in my free time, whenever I had a
moment to myself, I would just kind of hide out
in the corner and write a poem. Well, then I
would go to school and realize that in order to
get accolades at school, in order to get the straight
(21:37):
a's that I wanted, in order to be successful to
my teachers and to my parents, that I had to
act in a different way. I had to really like
think in a more linear way. I had to really
focus on staying really present in class and maybe presents
the wrong word, like paying very close attention to what
the teacher was saying, memorizing facts, answering the questions correctly,
(22:00):
learning you know, the framework that the teacher wanted me
to learn, getting the answers right, getting the straight a's,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that carried me through,
you know, my entire school experience. I went to college,
I got an advanced degree. I went to grad school
and was obsessed with getting straight a's, getting good grades,
getting teacher's approval, you know, just having people think like, oh,
(22:22):
she's such a good student. She always knows the answer,
she's always raising her hand, she's always sitting in the front,
she always shows up on time. And so I started
calling that part of myself the valedictorian. Which side note,
I was never the valedictorian, which is always a little
bit of a sore point for me. I was salutatorian,
which meant I got one B straight a's, but one
B in geometry I think it was anyway, I can't
(22:44):
even remember now, see, not important, not important, but it
felt important to me at the time, and I remember
feeling so devastated that I wasn't valedictorian. All of that
to say, so I have this valedictorian part of myself
that really is about being successful, seeking approval, getting other
pe to think a certain way about me. And she
is welcome here. She is welcome here, and she has
(23:05):
served an absolute purpose for me for so long. She
has earned me a lot of respect, She has earned
me a lot of money. She is part of how
I got out of my abusive relationship and paved away
for myself moving forward. And then there's this poet that
lives inside of me, the inner poet as I call her,
but for the sake of you, as you're listening, it's
(23:28):
just your inner artist. There's a poet, an artist inside
of me that I have set aside because I decided
that she wasn't welcome here. I decided she wasn't acceptable here.
And the valedictorian has taken up so much space, and
the poet has not had as much space to take up.
And what would happen to me, to my personality, to
my experience of my life if I gave the poet
(23:49):
a little bit more space to exist. I had this
old memory pop up of a teacher in high school,
missus Gardner was her name. She was my English chief.
So I had turned in many essays to her and
always gotten a's on all my essays. And then for
one project that we did, I don't remember what the
requirement was. I don't know why I did this, but
(24:10):
I decided to put my poetry together into a little
poetry anthology and turn my poetry into her and I
remember she said to me, you should probably stick with prose.
You're much better with prose than with poetry. And that
was maybe my sophomore year of high school, junior year,
I can't remember, but I think it stealed the deal
for me in terms of sharing my poetry. I felt like, Oh,
(24:34):
I worried that it wasn't acceptable for me to show
my poetry. And then I took a chance and I
shared it, and I realized I was right that it's
not acceptable for me to share this part of me,
this poet part of me, is not welcome here. And
I think so many of us have stories like that.
If you can just take a minute and think about
the input that you got from adults as it related
(24:56):
to creativity in your life, as it related to writing,
as it related to poet, as it related to music
to dance. You know, another memory that has come through
for me is of my ex husband telling me when
we first got married and moved to another state, I
really wanted to take a dance class because I had
grown up in a dance studio and I was actually
a really decent dancer as a young child. I was
(25:17):
on dance team. It was such a huge part of
my life for so many decades. And I was feeling
really lost and sad, and I was missing my family
and missing home and feeling homesick, and so I was like,
I would love to take a dance class. And he
said to me, if you can show me one measurable
way that taking a dance class will add to our
bottom line, then you can take a dance class. But
(25:37):
otherwise it's a no. As these stories come back to me,
and as I remember them and tell them back to myself,
I can trace back the lineage of this idea that
I have in my body that my poet, my artist
is not welcome here. And I think this transition that
I've been in in my life where I've been training
(25:59):
to become a yoga teacher, I took a step back
from coaching. I took a pause on teaching my online
course a book. In six months, everything that's been going
on in my life. I think what it's really been
about is about taking a pause for long enough to
invite back in my poet, to invite back in my
inner artist, to give space for her to breathe. And
(26:19):
I will tell you one thing. Julie Carmeron's book, The
Artist's Way is a fabulous way to It's a program
that will invite back in your inner artist. And one
thing I want to add to her program is space.
Just space, just white space in your life is a
way to invite back in your inner artist. We are
(26:40):
terrified in our culture of white space. We are terrified
of having unscheduled time. We are terrified of the quiet.
We're terrified of downtime. We're terrified of not being productive.
We are so afraid to just let there be space.
And I'm telling you, just having space in your life,
just not having something scheduled every second of every day,
(27:02):
we'll invite back in your inner artist. And maybe at
first that feels like just crying for no reason at all.
Maybe at first it feels like panic. Maybe at first
it feels like frustration or anxiousness. That's another big one.
Sometimes we feel anxious when we have white space because
we're like, I'm supposed to be doing something. I think
(27:22):
I'm supposed to be getting something done. The anxiety, the fear,
the sadness, whatever it is that comes up for you
is the breakthrough of the inner artist. It is part
of the process of inviting that artist back to the table.
And I'll say, just on a philosophical level, the reason
for inviting back in the inner artist is not just
so that you can feel happier, Because you will feel
(27:45):
happier as you invite your inner artists back to the table.
You'll feel more in touch with yourself, You'll feel more
in tune, You'll be more present, you'll be more excited
to wake up in the morning, You'll feel more depth
and meaning in your life. All those things are true,
and also on a level beyond the personal. We are
in a time in our world, in our culture where
(28:05):
we desperately need creativity, where we have to look at
the problems that are at hand and ask ourselves, how
can we approach these with a new lens. We have
to be able to step back and see from a
thirty thousand foot view the issues that we're facing, and
see each other through the lens of an artist through
(28:25):
the lens of your analytical note taker, your valedictorian, whatever
you want to call that part of you. Through the
lens of your analytical note taker, you're valedictorian. You may
look at a problem like what we're facing in our
culture right now, and you might have a really great
step by step A to be a through Z plan
(28:46):
for how to solve the problem. And I think this
is part of the issue we're facing as a culture,
is that everyone seems to have a structure, a plan,
a program, an idea of how to resolve these issues,
and we're all fighting about it. We're all just arguing
about it. And the only way to really find a
path forward is for us to reconnect to the inner
(29:07):
artist that is open. The inner artist, as opposed to
the intervaledictorian, is open to new ways of thinking and
new ways of seeing. Can receive what someone suggests without
immediately shooting it down and see what's good about a
suggestion instead of immediately what won't work about it? And
(29:30):
I think that we have to find a way to
communicate and to connect with one another from the standpoint
of the artist. I mean, you watch kids. My kids
are a part of this wall door fee outdoor play
program where they just play with these other kids all day.
And when you watch kids play together like that, it's
amazing what you watch them come up with. They are
so creative. We are creative by nature. The child in you,
(29:54):
the five year old in you, the four year old,
and you the six year old in you. You know,
between those ages of like four and eight, that version
of you is so unbelievably creative, and so unbelievably open,
and so unbelievably collaborative with the people around you. We
need to reconnect to that part of ourselves. We need
(30:14):
to find again a way to be in community with
one another and to work together toward change. I really
believe we won't make it through this time unless we're
able to do that. And so it's not just about
you becoming happier, although it will make you happier, it
will make you feel more engaged with your life. It
(30:35):
is a way to become unstuck, to become more connected
to that inner artist. And also it's also a way
to become more connected to those around you and more
collaborative and more generous and more generative, and to find
a new way and a new path forward. So I
invite you to go by the artist's way. I invite
(30:57):
you to come back to a creative practice that you've
lost more along the way. I invite you to reflect
on the stories from your life about where you tucked
away your inner artist, why you tucked away your inner artist,
what you decided about who that person was, or how
that person was unacceptable inside of you. And I invite
you to find a way to welcome your poet, your
(31:20):
artist back to the table today. Until next time, I
will be thinking of you and your inner artist, and
I will be so excited and grateful to have you
back next week on Write your Story podcast. I'll see
that
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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