breakTHROUGHArts
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September 2007 Contents
I.  Stopped but not Stuck
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. Stopped but not Stuck
You are at a choice point. Creating is a string of choice points and sometimes one just stops us. What to do? Should I choose this color or that? What size brush strokes? I don’t know what’s needed.

Rather than bemoan the risk of being stuck, you can see this as an invitation to explore that spot. Here’s what I’ve been finding. (1) It helps to ask a question, a one sentence question with a noun and a verb. Make it clear enough that you could say it out loud or write it down if you wanted to. (2) Relax, using your favorite physical routine, and let go of the question. (3) Notice whatever you experience next. Whatever shows up may seem unrelated to your decision point at first, but follow that line of thought, feeling, or experience further.

For example, if I don’t know how to make my next stitches in a fiber art piece, I might frame the question: “How big should the next stitches be to outline these rounded shapes?” You can see that by putting the question into words (1), I’ve become more specific. I do a familiar breathing pattern to relax and let the question go (2). I then notice (3) that although I’m looking at the green outside my window, internally I’m seeing the look of Sunday’s fried eggs on a plate. First, I realize I’m hungry. Then I see the eggs again with the elliptical circle of the yolk surrounded by the wavy outline of the white. I somehow know it’s relevant but am momentarily confused by how the eggs relate to my stitch question. (I do get it that it’s time to eat.)

I go back to looking at the piece as a whole and now see contrast between sharp clear lines and less defined, more organic linear marks. I also now see that within the rounded shapes there are barely visible central areas that would be sharpened by small stitches (here come the yolks) and these would be within the more loosely stitched rounded areas (the whites). After doing a few stitch samples, I see that this treatment brings the shapes into the atmosphere of the piece as a whole more fully. My first choice of thread colors, however, provides a little too much contrast and now all I can see is a field of fried eggs. I back off the thread color to lower the contrast and now have the textural echo of sharp and wavy that unifies the piece. That’s how it can work.

For me, when the question at the stopped decision point is a specific question (e.g. what size?), my associations tend to broaden out to the larger context of the piece as a whole, either visually or conceptually. However, when my question is more general (What’s next?), often my attention is led to very specific next steps without reference to the larger composition (e.g. clean up the blue edges.). Once I’ve done that very simple step, I am no longer stopped and can see how to move the piece forward.

The next time you are at a decision point that stops you, see what experiences you can explore there. Notice any patterns, similar to my moving back and forth from specific to general, and let them help you keep those stops from becoming stuck.
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II. Energy Management: Translations from the Psych Research Lab, the Board Room and the Shrink’s Couch
Maisel, Eric. Ten Zen Seconds. 2007.
Here’s another approach to brief moments of focusing to improve your work. Maisel continues his trips to the psychotherapy buffet of literature, bringing back suggestions that may be nutritious for artists. His latest book offers a combination of using breathing to stop and focus on the moment and feeding oneself useful thoughts. He calls these breath and thought packets ‘incantations’ and, like most tools from self-help books, I believe him that they can be very useful when put into practice on a regular basis.

He has combined the tools of centering one’s attention and those of cognitive therapy, an approach where you learn how to challenge and undo your automatic inaccurate negative thoughts and create positive accurate thoughts. He has fashioned 12 replacement ‘thoughts’ for you, ones that he has found to be helpful in many contexts. I don’t know of any research that shows the effects of using someone else’s positive thoughts, but my experience is that it would be good to choose among those that are accurate for you.