breakTHROUGHArts
a free newsletter for visual artists

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December 2007 Contents

I.  I Don’t Know …. Yet
II. Energy Management: Translations from the Psych Research Lab, the Board Room, and the Shrink’s Couch
III. Friends in Print: When you feel like reading
IV. Creative Links
V. Newsletter and Info: Share this newsletter, subscribe, or unsubscribe

I. I Don’t Know …. Yet
In my coaching work, I’ve been hearing a rich variety of clients’ doubts lately, so I’ve been taking a look at my own. Most of mine are triggered by inner critics, and usually I can draw on my psychotherapist background to do them battle effectively.

I notice two main tiers in my critics’ peanut gallery these days. There’s a group where each specializes in one area only, which I call the department heads. I have conversations with them, catch them in their inaccuracies (they always have some) and get back to work. For this newsletter, there is a perfectionist type who inaccurately tries to criticize a first draft for not looking like a final one. He’s asked to go away until the final version and then is put to work.

The second tier is one of generalists, a splatter-shot gang that simply fires at will to make me feel bad. Messages on the order of ‘your work is just not good enough’ deliver their broad sweeps and character defamation at times of low energy for maximum effect. Once I recognize I’m feeling bad without cause, I can challenge these guys to get specific; they huff off in a snit because, in fact, they do not deal in specifics.

Having some tools to work with these critics on the back roads of my mind does help diffuse the doubts they stir up, but leaves those self-doubts that arise in the face of creating something new. I still have major doubts about what I’m doing because, in truth, I don’t know.

Not-knowing-what-I’m-doing is not a state I would normally choose. Yet here I am, making art on a regular basis in a reliably recurring state of doubt. It doesn’t feel so hot when I’m thinking “I don’t know”, but some part of me keeps going. I can only say that there is a kind of faith at work here, faith that my desire to create will bear fruit. When I change it to “I don’t know … yet.”, I can feel desire and hope in the background. That “yet” is the faith in the creative process which keeps me willing to entertain my doubts.

So, if it works for you, set the table to entertain the necessary creative doubts lavishly, welcome them in, and serve tea and crumpets. You just don’t know …. yet.
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II. Energy Management: Translations from the Psych Research Lab, the Board Room and the Shrink's Couch. Neuharth, Dan. Secrets you Keep from Yourself. How to Stop Sabotaging Your Happiness. 2004.

Perhaps we fear that fully accepting our potential would feel too out of control or unfamiliar to tolerate. Perhaps we worry that seeing ourselves at our best would deprive us of our inalienable right to kick back, quit or fail when we feel like it.” Neuharth, Dan. Secrets You Keep From Yourself. 2004. p 184.

Neuharth helps us face the question, “What was I thinking?” that follows moves we wish we hadn’t made. Unlike many self-help books that are quick with questionnaires but short on depth, he has gone into great detail about four main tools of self-sabotage – how we overreact and mislead, distract and abandon ourselves. He proposes that these maneuvers forestall what we fear will be a loss of some kind. The paradox is that the self-sabotaging tactics employed to avoid loss backfire and create loss, with the added irony of being below the radar of our own awareness. If fears are a major block in your creative work, he provides examples of how they cause us to turn off our own light switches, forget that we did, and then complain about the dark.

“Visualize yourself doing what you most desire. At this stage, desire is akin to a spark trying to start a campfire in the wind. Protect newly remembered or articulated desires so they can fully ignite.”  Neuharth, Dan. Secrets You Keep From Yourself. 2004. p 173.

He suggests, also, that our fears and desires are “joined at the hip” and guides us to use the fears about losses to highlight and strengthen our core desires. So, for example, if one of my fears is boredom (and it is) his exercises helped me see that rather than staying busy and entertained (which in my case easily strays into the realm of self-sabotage), one of my core desires is the excitement of something new. I then see this desire in my creative work more clearly, both the upside (originality) and downside (gimmicks). Keeping the excitement of the new as part of my creative work with awareness should result in fewer times at the end of the day when I ask “What was I thinking?”
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III. Friends in Print: When you feel like reading
Robinson, Jo & Staeheli, Jean Coppock. Unplug the Christmas Machine: A complete guide to putting love and joy back into the season. 1991.

I’m recommending this book again as a perennial sanity helper for the holiday season. Although it is tilted toward Christian celebrations, its thoughtful approach to what’s really important for each person is a calming antidote to too much retail tinsel. The authors underline how simple rituals and traditions can nourish us.
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IV. Creative Links
http://www.annegeddes.com/  
Even the internationally successful have to wrestle with self-doubts. This site of this popular photographer of babies showcases a visual artist who followed her own instincts in the face of much early skepticism. A review of her new autobiographical book (A Labor of Love) says it’s “the extraordinary journey of self-taught artist who has long battled her own “self-doubts”.
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V. E-mail changes. To change your e-mail address, subscribe, or unsubscribe please e-mail connect@dianereardon.com. If you use a spam filter, please add this e-mail address to your list of approved senders. This material is included on the breakTHROUGH Creativity Coaching (website www.dianereardon.com) All material is copyrighted ©, November 30, 2007, Diane Reardon. All rights reserved. Visit the website for back issues and details on scheduling a complimentary one-hour coaching session.
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