The Artist's Way
The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity is a book I started reading 3 days ago. It leads you through a comprehensive twelve-week program to recover your creativity from a variety of blocks, including limiting beliefs, fear, self-sabotage, jealousy, guilt, addictions, and other inhibiting forces, replacing them with artistic confidence and productivity
The first week's assignment included creating a list of affirmations. The book warned that while reading them the first time, I would hear lots of negative attitudes that rebut the positive affirmation I was reading. Well that's exactly what happened, and I wrote them down as I "heard" them. I was shocked at the viciousness, variety, and the sheer numbers of negative responces my mind came up with.
For example, when I read"
"My creativity heals myself, and others"
I heard in my head:
"No one notices your art"
In a Skype session with my sister (who wrote my artist bio), we inverted each negative thought and turned it into an affirmation designed to counter it. So:
"No one notices your art"
Became:
"I am receiving more and more recognition."
I made a recording of me reading my affirmations. It's in the jukebox on the "music" page.
A second exersize the book teaches is writing "morning pages" of stream-of-consciousness writing. I adapt that to my situation by starting the day writing a stream of nouns. They look like this:
cannon cluster sheep boy necklace disbelief fig tooth trim orange field lake injustice bowling casino whiskey irritation vengeance sadist sunshine supermarket bass copper centrifuge president chaos election refusal newspaper video grandmother flower peppermint fetish loyalty sniper kindness bell pew candlestick paint truck hat marijuana medicine name tag promotion failure hospital brightness list
candlestick tin.can avalanche steel.belt banana swift.boat recycling fridge tabasco iced.tea oranges milk.carton.photo swimming.pool antenna ice.cream salad whisky moss sludge broom yankee organ scalpel bed.rest director south.america self.sustainability ensure.shate rottenness rabbi blue.cartoon.creature
keyboard turtle oxygen tissue orange cinnamon grace alcohol blueberry tabletop knife magazine soldier victim silence flood rice lagoon airplane vendor ambiance sourness crust serration blimp bullet football strangeness flesh outhouse clap period intensity thumb.tack name.tag closet pain fish breading herb vapor tube shuffle audiology perfection simplicity recommendation partition tradition mud flower flour break pressure illiteracy
I read a newspaper article that said that picking up new hobbies and listening to different music creates new neural pathways and even new brain cells, both of which measurably boost creativity.
I'm listening to Jewish religious pop and choir music, and I'm studying chess.
The first week's assignment included creating a list of affirmations. The book warned that while reading them the first time, I would hear lots of negative attitudes that rebut the positive affirmation I was reading. Well that's exactly what happened, and I wrote them down as I "heard" them. I was shocked at the viciousness, variety, and the sheer numbers of negative responces my mind came up with.
For example, when I read"
"My creativity heals myself, and others"
I heard in my head:
"No one notices your art"
In a Skype session with my sister (who wrote my artist bio), we inverted each negative thought and turned it into an affirmation designed to counter it. So:
"No one notices your art"
Became:
"I am receiving more and more recognition."
I made a recording of me reading my affirmations. It's in the jukebox on the "music" page.
A second exersize the book teaches is writing "morning pages" of stream-of-consciousness writing. I adapt that to my situation by starting the day writing a stream of nouns. They look like this:
cannon cluster sheep boy necklace disbelief fig tooth trim orange field lake injustice bowling casino whiskey irritation vengeance sadist sunshine supermarket bass copper centrifuge president chaos election refusal newspaper video grandmother flower peppermint fetish loyalty sniper kindness bell pew candlestick paint truck hat marijuana medicine name tag promotion failure hospital brightness list
candlestick tin.can avalanche steel.belt banana swift.boat recycling fridge tabasco iced.tea oranges milk.carton.photo swimming.pool antenna ice.cream salad whisky moss sludge broom yankee organ scalpel bed.rest director south.america self.sustainability ensure.shate rottenness rabbi blue.cartoon.creature
keyboard turtle oxygen tissue orange cinnamon grace alcohol blueberry tabletop knife magazine soldier victim silence flood rice lagoon airplane vendor ambiance sourness crust serration blimp bullet football strangeness flesh outhouse clap period intensity thumb.tack name.tag closet pain fish breading herb vapor tube shuffle audiology perfection simplicity recommendation partition tradition mud flower flour break pressure illiteracy
I read a newspaper article that said that picking up new hobbies and listening to different music creates new neural pathways and even new brain cells, both of which measurably boost creativity.
I'm listening to Jewish religious pop and choir music, and I'm studying chess.
posted by Ace Noface at
11:21 AM
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