Living The Artist’s Way, Week One: Inviting Grounding
This is my first post in my series on Living The Artist’s Way, a workbook focused on writing for guidance to find creative inspiration. This week introduces the six-week journey I’m embarking on.
Guidance is a direction that comes from a higher source of wisdom than we ordinarily encounter… With guidance, we ask on the page and we receive answers on the page.
As someone constantly asking herself, “What am I doing with my life?” this book couldn’t come at a more perfect time. I’ve felt disconnected from my higher self for a while now and I want to hear her voice again. I have been recognizing a pattern in my life where I make choices not based on what I want, but on what I think others expect from me. I practice self-denial of my own hopes and dreams in order to ease the lives of others. Each time I do this, I feel like I lose a part of myself. This disconnect ends up spiraling into depression.
I’ve decided to pursue the journey my higher self wants to take, instead of lying to her and denying her dreams, I’m putting her first. I sit in an extremely privileged space of having options, but with those options comes decision paralysis and anxiety. There are so many paths to take, but only one life to live, so how do I know which path is the right one? This is where I’m hoping this book will step in to help me.
Four essential tools of this journey:
Morning Pages: 3, single-sided pages in short-hand written first thing after you wake up.
Artist Dates: a weekly solo date that enchants and inspires your inner artist.
Walks: a twice-a-week solo walk, without the distractions of a phone, dog, music, or any other humans.
Writing for guidance: write down a question, then write down what we “hear.”
Finding Guidance
Writing for guidance is the essence of this book. Connecting to that divine source that lives within each one of us through the written word.
The first exercise Cameron gives us in figuring out what to find guidance for is this:
Quickly write down the following sentence twenty times, replacing the “...” with a different wish.
“I wish …”
Each chapter contains many subsections, where Cameron writes about her experience receiving guidance from her writing and spoken to her from her close friends. She shares sage advice from her decades of listening to and obeying the guidance she receives. This chapter was all about seeking guidance over everyday life to discover that there is nothing too small to ask for guidance on.
Embracing Optimism
Cameron stresses that the guidance we receive is a positive, encouraging, optimistic force, and if we have low self-worth, it is difficult to trust this voice of optimism.
An activity I’ve tried to incorporate into each day is to write down three things I’m grateful for at the start of every day and three highlights at the end of it. When you take stock of what is going right in your life, the positives will start to outweigh the negatives and optimism can replace pessimism. Cameron noted that by focusing on the things you can control, you’ll find yourself “feeling less a victim of circumstances and more a master of [your] fate.”
“Focusing on what I had accomplished rather than what I had failed to accomplish, I found myself holding depression at bay. … Hope for the future - a future built on cumulative positive days - began to replace my feelings of foreboding”
Quelling Anxiety
Quelling my anxiety has been a lifelong struggle. Cameron notes this struggle in herself as well and points out that anxiety silences this voice of guidance. Her cure for overcoming anxiety is breathing deeply. It seems like a small, insignificant, and even minimizing cure for such a debilitating feeling, but focusing on your breathing is one of the best cures for stopping the spiral of anxiety. Recently, my counselor walked me through a body scan meditation similar to this one and I felt a thousand times more relaxed after. Body scans are part of somatic experiencing therapy that helps you notice what is going on in your body in times of heightened emotions; to invite ease into your body before your mind begins to write a story about what’s going on.
Prompts
These are lifted from Chapter One of Living The Artist’s Way:
Choose a topic in your career where you yearn for clarity, support, or direction. Write “What about X?” And then listen and write out what you hear. Don’t be surprised if the guidance is decidedly succinct, optimistic, and insightful.
List three positives from this week. List three positives from today.
Fill in the following:
If I could embrace the positive, I would believe…
If I could embrace the positive, I would hope for …
If I could embrace the positive, I would try…
Choose an issue in your home environment that you wish to change. Ask for guidance about this issue and listen. Write down what you hear. Is there an action to take?
Fill in the following sentences:
I am anxious about …
I worry that ..
My number-one source of anxiety is …
Now, choose the most “potent” topic on your list. Write for guidance: What should I do about X? Do new solutions come to mind?
