Week 01: Recovering a Sense of Safety

[rejectionchallenge]

Phew! Ok, let's get started. During the first week, we'll work on identifying, understanding, and altering the negative thoughts we have about our creativity.

A lot of us live in cultures where after a certain age, the majority of our energies are expected to go toward earning a living, developing a career, and / or taking care of a family. These are often categorized as “adult” concerns. Drawing, painting, making music, crafts, writing, and other forms of creativity are expected to be turned into lucrative careers or pushed aside to make room for some other kind of work. Young people discussing college plans are inevitably asked what they plan to “do with that,” meaning, “How will you use your education to earn money and secure employment?” We're encouraged to think of our creativity in the same way, and to evaluate it first as an economic asset. Will it look good on a resume? Will it help you in an interview? Well, what good is it, then?

Because of this, and because it can be hard to earn a living from art, young artists get discouraged early and often. Want to be an actor? Good luck ever eating again. Visual art major? Don't you mean art therapy or art education? So you write poetry, huh? A chapbook, is that a thing? Is the title Do You Want Fries With That?



Eventually, the artist self becomes separated from the self that earns money, takes care of family, is “adult” and “responsible.” Some people put their artist self in a back room and brick up the door and avoid that part of the house; some let them out from time to time in secret, or rename them daydream or doodle and indulge them with affectionate tolerance, when they have the time.

Cameron describes people she calls “shadow artists,” who secretly long to reunite with and nurture with their artist self, but are afraid. They might criticize and resent other artists as a way of making sense of their own separation, or they might try to help and support them as a way of giving to others what they don't believe they can give themselves. The latter, incidentally, is a pretty accurate account of why I volunteered to do this workshop.

To welcome your artist as an equal, as part of you, can be scary. Why?

Economic fears aren't the only thing that separates us from ourselves. There's also the fear of exposure, the fear of hurting others, the fear of trying hard and failing and looking foolish, of being selfish and self-indulgent and wanting things we don't deserve. All these negative beliefs accumulate against us, like snow at the door.

This week's task is to identify the negative beliefs we hold about our own creativity, and their sources, and replace them with positive beliefs. Some of the common negative beliefs Cameron lists include:

1) Everyone will hate me.
2) I will hurt my friends and family.
3) I will lose touch with reality.
4) I can't spell.
5) My ideas aren't good enough
6) I will have to be alone.
7) It will upset my family.
8) I will do bad work and not know it and look like a fool.
9) I will feel too angry.
10) I will never have any real money.
11) I will engage in self-destructive habits.
12) My lover will leave me.
13) I will feel bad because I don't deserve to be successful.
14) I will have only one good piece of work in me.
15) It's too late. If I haven't become a fully functioning artist yet, I never will.

(One thousand thanks to alexconnall for editing the original list).

Some of these beliefs are other people's thoughts that we've internalized, and some of them are our own. They often feel like hard truths, so that letting go of them gives us the frightening sense of lying to ourselves or losing touch with reality. But they're not truths at all. They're speculations and opinions, not facts.

Cameron recommends the use of positive affirmations to counter the negative beliefs we hold about ourselves. Try saying some of these out loud: "I deserve love." "I deserve fair pay." "I deserve a rewarding creative life." "I am a brilliant and successful artist." "I have rich creative talents." "I am competent and confident in my creative life."

Or try writing this ten times in a row, with the appropriate noun substituted for 'artist' and your name in its place: "I, [Name], am a brilliant and prolific artist."

Expect some resistance. Your inner censor might jump up here and try to save you from yourself, tell you to be realistic, or criticize your word choice. Brilliant? AS IF. Prolific? Are you kidding? When I tried to do this exercise just now, my inner censor made a Twilight joke about my alleged brilliancy and said my use of the word prolific was “Orwellian double-speak.” My inner censor is a pretentious dick.



This week, when you find yourself thinking negative thoughts about your creativity, write them down. Cameron calls them “blurts.” You can think of them as bricks in a wall, lines of barbed wire, traps, or just as nasty remarks there was no call for.

Take some time to investigate them – where do they come from? Did someone give them to you? Family members, teachers, friends and significant others, random strangers, books and other media can all produce blurts in abundance.

Once you've written them down, you have the option of editing your blurts into positive affirmations. “I have no talent” is one crossed-out word from “I have talent.” “It's too late for me” becomes “It's not too late.” When your blurts are in front of you, instead of inside you, they can be altered, improved, and reversed like any other sentence. Write the new affirmations over again, or say them out loud. Try to do this all week, after you write your morning pages or any time you hear your inner censor.

Daily tasks begin tomorrow. Don't forget to go on a date with your artist sometime this week, and do your morning pages every day!

Comments

[ljwrites]

Ooh, I actually wrote about my hesitation here, in the last paragraph. I had no idea it was so common to cut off and suppress the inner artist. Heck, even the word has faintly negative connotations for me.

In a way, creativity might not be so much the purpose but the symptom of an integrated life. When you don't like some part of yourself and try to suppress it, you've splintered yourself in a very real sense and are no longer whole.

In my case I think casting off my inner writer, or trying to, was out of a desire to be loved and accepted. What part of herself wouldn't a kid sacrifice if it means her parents will love her? I've faced a lot of these issues over the course of the past few years, and I suspect reintegrating my artist will be a key step in the process.

The exercise is a good one. Here are some of my common blurts, and my edits:

A billion other people want to be artists. What makes me stand out?

Edit: A billion other people want to be artists. I have a billion potential friends!

What makes me think I have anything to offer the world?

Edit: I think I have myself in my uniqueness and idiosyncrasies to offer the world.

I can't create anything that anyone will be interested in.

Edit: I can create anything that I am interested in.

[rejectionchallenge]

Those are great edits!