There is the risk you cannot afford to take, and there is the risk you cannot afford NOT to take. (Peter Drucker)
happy Monday again! the Mondays are coming and going way too quickly for me…i feel like i can’t keep up 🙂
anyway, i’m so excited to share part two of The Artist’s Way Week Five with everyone. this book knows how to call you out on your crap, i’ll tell you that 🙂 i want to start by asking you the question that the author asks repeatedly in this section: Are you self-destructive? i initially answered “no,” just like most of you may have. i think of people with drug addictions or extremely poor self-esteem as self-destructive. not me! boy was i wrong. this is where “The Virtue Trap” comes into play.
as an artist, we must have downtime…time to do nothing & recharge. however, defending our right to this time takes a lot of courage and conviction. it requires withdrawing from our friends & family, and we can’t stand the idea of people thinking we’re “selfish”. i remember going through a phase in college where i just hit rock bottom. i have always been a people pleaser, and i got to the point where i was tired and just couldn’t take it anymore. anytime i said “no” to the people i loved i was told i was being selfish or made to feel guilty. “why don’t you want to go to the movies with us?” “fine, go spend time with your friends.” “what’s wrong? you used to be so nice & helpful. maybe you should see a therapist, you seem depressed.” god forbid we say “no” to the people we love, right? my parents thought this was my rebellious phase, but i’m beginning to see that it was my depleted artist phase.
this is what Julia Cameron calls “being caught in the virtue trap.”
For many creatives, the belief that they must be nice and worry about what will happen with their friends, family, mate if they dare to do what they really want to constitutes a powerful reason for non-action.
if you work in a busy office all day and crave solitude, but fear that time alone would be seen by your wife as selfish. if you have kids and want to take a class but know that you might miss a few of your son’s Little League practices, so you play the good mother and end up building up resentments. if you have a serious interest in music, but know that it would require dipping into your savings and your wife wants a new couch, so you use the money for that instead.
whatever your story is, the point is that many recovering creatives sabotage themselves most frequently by making nice. we have made deprivation a virtue. we believe that we are being good, or superior. this false sense of superiority is the Virtue Trap.
Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages to be a good wife, good mother, good-looking, good-tempered, well-groomed, and unaggressive. (Leslie M. McIntyre)
the author says, “Afraid to appear selfish, we lose our self. We become self-destructive.”
so, let me ask you again: Are you self-destructive?
if your life doesn’t serve you, but only others, than you are probably being self-destructive. by seeking the Creator within and embracing our own gift of creativity, we learn to be spiritual in this world, to trust that God is good and so are we and so is all of creation. in this way, we avoid the Virtue Trap.
i’ll leave you with a little exercise 🙂 take a few minutes and list 10 things you love and would love to do but are not “allowed” to do. the author says that most times just the act of writing out your forbidden joys breaks down the barriers to doing them. be sure and post your list somewhere that you will see it everyday.
i hope you all have a great evening!
xoxo
jess