Hi Friends-
After much gestation, I feel the seeds of knowing-my-direction-forward finally sprouting in concert with the tender green leaves on the sugar maples and the fiddlehead ferns slowly unfurling in the forest.
Yesterday a pair of deer happily munched on the yellow dandelion caps in my yard, and this morning a majestic turkey vulture flew straight over my head. I am also watching this National Geographic series about the wild intelligence and shapeshifting abilities of octopuses.
It feels like the magic has returned, but of course it never left. β¨
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To celebrate this beautiful spring rebirth, I am currently offering a deep discount on my 12-lesson course about how to take a heart-centered approach to productivity β RESET.
If you're feeling run down, burnt out, and/or ready to take a more nourishing approach to your daily work, RESET can teach you how.
βYou can click here to opt into a brief RESET mini-podcast & newsletter series to save $60 on registration.β
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Scroll on for an essay about finding creative inspiration and a lovely bouquet of links.
Much love,
Jocelyn
Laying the groundwork for inspiration
On not being in the mood, anxiety as a creativity killer, and ways to "find" creative inspiration
When I was little my Mom used to say that she had to "put on her face" before she was ready to leave the house. By which she meant: Do her makeup before she was prepared to face the world.
We all have our little rituals and ablutions that we like to go through before we feel ready to start the day. My variation on my mother's morning routine is "putting on my mood."
For better or worse, I often awake in a melancholic or anxious state of mind. So most mornings I have to remind myself that the thoughts on loop when I awake β the mood that is on offer β is not set in stone. And that it's a bad idea to make any decisions or assumptions about what today will be like before I go through my morning routine, which β without fail β always changes my outlook for the better.
That doesn't mean I go from sad to sunny, but there is always an improvement of some kind. It gets better, as they say.
The most important pieces of my morning routine are meditating and connecting to spirit, walking my dog in the woods, and taking a shower. If I do these things, I will always feel more grounded, more connected to my intuition, and more open to possibility.
Of course, you can't force your mood to change, and I wouldn't recommend trying. But you can cultivate a commitment to the rituals and practices that help you find your ground.
This isn't just true for those of us who wake up a little blue, it's also true in terms of how you relate to your creative practice β and inspiration in particular.
Because what do we say when we are feeling uninspired?
"I'm not in the mood to be creative." Or some variation thereof.
You sit down at your desk to get to work and for whatever reason you're not "feeling it."
And then we usually choose one of two options:
- We give up and move onto something else, or
β - We force ourselves to be creative β which typically results in banging your head against the wall and/or just generating a lot of mediocre output.
Creative work cannot be forced. Inspiration cannot be forced. This we know.
But is giving up the only alternative?
Of course not.
The crux of any creative practice is all about finding a point of balance between those two extremes β locating your "flow state" in that mysterious and magical hinterland halfway between I'm not inspired and I'm forcing myself to do this thing.
And we find that flow state not by waiting, or hoping, or forcing, but by doing the groundwork.
In one of my favorite passages from The Gift, the scholar Lewis Hyde makes a distinction between work β which can be forced β and creative labor, which cannot. He writes:
"Work is what we do by the hour. It begins and, if possible, we do it for money. Welding car bodies on an assembly line is work; washing dishes, computing taxes, walking the rounds in a psychiatric ward, picking asparagus β these are work. Labor, on the other hand, sets its own pace. We may get paid for it, but it's harder to quantifyβ¦ Writing a poem, raising a child, developing a new calculus, resolving a neurosis, invention in all forms β these are labors.
Work is an intended activity that is accomplished through the will. A labor can be intended but only to the extent of doing the groundwork, or of not doing things that would clearly prevent the labor. Beyond that, labor has its own schedule."
To be explicit, what Hyde means here is creative labor β work that requires intuition and insight. But what, exactly, does he mean by "groundwork"?
For me, groundwork has a lot in common with "putting on my mood."
Groundwork is the practice of asking: What are the rituals and practices that help me feel more grounded, connected, and expansive?
Groundwork is engaging with those rituals and practices before you decide whether or not you are "in the mood" to be creative.
Groundwork is how you show the muse that you are dedicated to showing up.
As Hyde says, creative labor has its own schedule. We cannot control inspiration. But we can lay the groundwork to invite inspiration in.
But that begs the question: What's getting in the way of inspiration?
Why are we so frequently "not in the mood"?
As I've said elsewhere: Anxiety is like kryptonite for creativity.
And the news, the social media, and the entertainment we willingly consume are excellent at nudging us into states of anxiety.
So, oftentimes, what we perceive as a lack of inspiration is actually a thin coating of anxiety that is coming between us and our ability to connect ourselves and to the muse.
As mentioned, this is how I awake sometimes β covered in a thin film of anxiety that seems to have settled over my body like dust during the night. Then, I must go through my morning rituals to shake the dust off so that it won't be obscuring my vision of what's possible.
Doing the groundwork shakes off that dust β it helps you break free of any anxiety or other preoccupations that may be clinging to you and constraining your ability to connect to inspiration.
Whenever we feel stuck or uninspired, we always have the opportunity to ask: Have I done the groundwork here?
Have I engaged with the rituals and that practices that help me find my center?
Have I done what I can to demonstrate that I am devoted to showing up for my creativity?
Sure, going through your rituals and practices doesn't always "work" but it does make a difference β by which I mean it does generally improve your mindset in some small way. And, in my experience, most of the time it does help me get into a flow state.
Not always, of course. But often.
This past Monday, I had grand ambitions for some writing and business projects but I was just in a funk. I did my rituals and my practices, and my mental state improved, but there wasn't any amount of groundwork that was going to get me from Funk into Flow State on that day.
And that's okay. Those days happen.
Because I did the groundwork, I felt fine accepting that it wasn't going to be a creative day for me and I turned my attention to other things.
There is a lot we can't control in this world, which makes it even more vital to remember the areas where we do have some influence.
Calling on the rituals and practices that ground us is one of them.
Offering ourselves a little tenderness is one of them.
Considering how we show up is one of them.
What are the rituals & practices that ground you?
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LINK ABOUT IT
βBecoming a "possibilist" in a world of conflict. A fascinating interview on the Insights from the Edge podcast with veteran negotiator William Ury about the power of listening, how conflict makes us more creative, and learning how to be less reactive: "There's a key thing which is critical β we think of negotiation as talking. I'm going to have a talk with my neighbor. We're going to have peace talks or whatever. We always talk about us talking. Actually, negotiation is much more about listening. There's a reason why we're given two ears and one mouth, which is to listen twice as much as we talk."
βHow to make good work great. A wonderful interview with Adam Moss about his new book The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing wherein he talks to 43 different artists about how they do their work. On the artist Amy Sillman: "Her own self-description [is]... that the important thing in the making of the painting is the making and destroying and making and destroying, that that's actually what the whole thing is about...It's almost like 'a game of musical chairs' where she decides to stop in what I think is a fairly neurotic process, but I don't mean neurotic in a bad way. She is performing a kind of artistic ritual, and it happens to be that a great painting usually is the thing that she ends up with."
βOn pettiness & tricking yourself into being creative. A nice piece from Anna Fusco on the importance of persistence in art: "My being an artist is not a question of being able to make artwork. It is a question of my willingness to make something imperfect, or ugly, and how much resilience I have to face that reality repeatedly. How do I motivate myself to keep doing things in front of people? Where does my resilience come from? I hear the doubtful, comparative voice in my mind just like anybody else."
βAll of life is a womb. I love reading about Claudia Dawson's dreams. This learning from her vision of a common womb is so beautiful: "Lately, when I'm at a gathering, I consider the room that we are in a womb. I imagine we are all being incubated or that we are embryos or seeds, and that we have no idea what will become of us, but that we are all in a state of metamorphosis. The only requirement is that I let myself be reborn by our time and space spent together. I try not to suck all the resources or energy out of the womb. My wish is that the others in the room β my temporary brothers and sisters β have space to grow and expand."
βThe world's most tender thing surpasses the world's hardest thing.β
βDeep menswear analysis via Kermit the frog's fashion.β
βArt isn't supposed to make you comfortable.β
βThe robots are getting pretty good.
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Offerings: How you can work with me β β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β βRegister for my RESET course by May 19th and save $60. RESET is my lovingly crafted, 12-lesson course that teaches a "heart-centered" approach to productivity. It distills down everything I've learned from my years of research in the productivity space and my personal experience with burnout. It looks past b.s. silver-bullet solutions and shares simple, intuitive approaches that really work. To get the $60 discount, click here to opt into a brief series of mini-podcasts and newsletters about how the course can help you. β βJoin KILN, my brand new creative incubator. Got a creative project that's been on the back burner for too long? KILN is a transformative space for turning half-baked creative ideas into a reality. The spring session is happening now and we are having so much fun! Registration for the summer intensive will open soon. Click here to share your email and be notified when it does!β β βBook a one-on-one energy session with Jocelyn. I love doing energy work with folks who are looking to get in deeper touch with their heart's purpose, their creativity, or their intuition. If you haven't experienced energy work before and are curious but have questions, just hit reply and drop me a line. : ) β From a recent client: "I loved the work I did with Jocelyn in so many ways. I was navigating a tremendous amount of change and the work we did together allowed me to feel grounded, centered, and empowered. I felt like I was able to return to a wisdom and intuition that I knew was lying under the surface and was able to unlock a part of me that I did not have access to before." β βLearn more about what a session entails and book here.β β β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ β¨ |
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SHOUT-OUTS:β
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βThe beautiful artwork is from: Amaury Filho who is based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Link ideas from: Brock Labrenz, Cody Cook-Parrott, Sebene Selassie, and The Audacity.
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βYou can support me & my work by: Participating in one of the offerings listed above, joining me for the next cycle of my creative incubator, KILN, or taking one of my courses.
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Website: jkg.coβ
βTwitter/X: @jkgleiβ
Copyright Β© 2024 Hurry Slowly LLC, All rights reserved.
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βPO Box 832, Woodstock, NY 12498
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