The Artist’s Way – Week Five (part one)

Expect your every need to be met, expect the answer to every problem, expect abundance on every level, expect to grow spiritually. (Eileen Caddy)

happy Monday everyone! i’m so happy to report that we survived one of the busiest weekends i’ve ever had 🙂  i’m also happy to report that we have lots of awesome sneak peeks coming this week!! yay!

this next chapter of The Artist’s Way is a little longer, and the content is pretty heavy, so i decided to split it into two posts. i loved the intro of the chapter so much that i’m going to start by sharing that…

One of the chief barriers to accepting God’s generosity is our limited notion of what we are in fact able to accomplish. We may tune in to the voice of the creator within, hear a message – and then discount it as crazy or impossible. On the one hand, we take ourselves very seriously and don’t want to look like idiots pursuing some patently grandiose scheme. On the other hand, we don’t take ourselves – or God – seriously enough and so we define as grandiose many schemes that, with God’s help, may fall well within our grasp…We decide how powerful God is for us. We unconsciously set a limit on how much God can give us or help us. We are stingy with ourselves.

how many of you can relate to that? i know i can 🙂 Julia goes on to share a few stories illustrating this, but the bottom like is that we act as if God is human. we put what we know as our limit on God, as if that’s all he can do to. does that make sense? i absolutely love this quote by Margaret Young:

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first BE who you really are, then, DO what you need to do, in order to HAVE what you want.

this couldn’t be more true.  i’m sure most of us have put off starting, or maybe even growing, our businesses because we felt like we needed more money, nicer equipment, more experience. and the list goes on and on. i think these are simply excuses. and i’m sure they are born out of fear a lot of times. fear of failure. fear of looking foolish. and even fear of success.

i challenge you to reflect for a few minutes and ask yourself if you’re living life backwards. if the answer is yes, start BEING who you want to be today, regardless of all of the things that you think you need more of 🙂

next week, i’m going to talk about the “Virtue Trap” – if you’re a creative person and you’re married or have kids, you will definitely want to return to read this!

hope you all have a great night,

xoxo

jess