Sometimes you the things you decide to try without really knowing what you expect to get out of them are the experiences that affect you most profoundly. Such was the case with my recent weekend with creativity expert Eric Maisel at the Rowe Conference Center.
It was a last-minute thing. Years ago, I read and was wowed by Eric's book Fearless Creating, and have watched over the years his growing and impressive body of literature about the creative life, its myriad challenges, and strategies that helping professionals can use to help artists with their unique set of issues and needs. Now and then, I'd read about workshops he was leading in Paris or London or California, and while I was intrigued, these were not logistical realities for me (Really? A week in Paris, for this single mom? I'm still trying to work out the mechanics of getting a 7-year-old to school on the morning on time!).
So I was surprised when I looked at his website recently to learn that Eric would be offering a weekend workshop in Rowe, Massachusetts. Then, when my parents agreed to take care of my daughter for the weekend and there was still room to enroll, I felt like a Fairy Godmother had orchestrated my against-all-odds attendance at the ball.
Still, as I was packing for my weekend away, I began to wonder what exactly I was hoping to get from my weekend, besides an adults-only weekend and a chance to listen to, and perhaps converse with, a writer and creativity coach I much admire. The program blurb about the weekend said that it was geared toward people who wanted to learn about creativity coaching, as well as artists who wanted to learn strategies to help them with their art and their lives. Having recently launched a private practice, I decided I fit mainly into the first category, and I headed out wearing my helping professional "hat". But if I set out as a helping professional in search of skills and strategies, I returned as an artist on fire. Such is the magic of Eric Maisel.
When I experience something particularly meaningful, (and in this case, almost magical-seeming), I tend not to want to talk about it much. There is a certain fear that the act of trying to describe or explain it will dilute it somehow, on top of the understanding that the essence of some experiences can never really be conveyed. So talking about this in a blog post feels a little like writing an outline version of a Cliff Notes version of a classic. But what I can say is this:
Amidst some really fantastic lectures and discussions about the artist's life, Eric did some coaching demonstrations. I had zero interest in being "coached" by anyway, including Eric, especially publicly. My goal was to sit in my safe corner with my notebook and work with the weekend's information intellectually and quietly. But this was not to be.
My plan for being the scholarly observer fell apart when I asked a question about an issue I grapple with as a writer, and Eric invited me to join him for an impromptu coaching session in front of the group. What followed was an exchange in which Eric listened to me very deeply, got me to say out loud (and in the process, to hear myself say) some of my deepest truths as a writer, and then helped me turn those deep truths into an action plan. It felt like years of work in the course of a 30-minutes dialogue. I left the weekend with a clear sense of myself as a writer and what I need to do next.
I wish I could give that experience vicariously to every single writer and artist friend I have out there. But since I can't, I offer these 5 things I learned during my weekend:
1) When we make art regularly, only a percentage is "good". Sometimes a large percentage of it is "bad". If our percentage of bad outcomes is minuscule, it probably means not that we are stupendous, but that we play it way too safe.
2) Since many artists are both sensitive souls and over-thinkers, we must be vigilant about our thoughts, particularly those thoughts which, in Eric's lingo, "do not serve us", whether or not they are literally "true". (If, for example, one of our life purposes is to create novels, but we are writing our first novel and know that only a very small percentage of first novels are accepted for publication, it does not serve us to keep thinking about publishing odds. Much better to redirect our thinking to our reasons for wanting to write novels in the first place).
3) "Balance", if there is such a thing, looks different for artists than it does for non-artists. (This could be a post unto itself, and perhaps should!). We are likely to lead a life of "cobbling" as opposed to doing/being one thing, and it helps us to think flexibly about this.
4) When it doubt, we should err on the side of completion. This especially true for hummingbird artists like me who flit from half-finished project to half-finished project, using legitimate artist questions and dilemmas which arise as part of the creative process as "reasons" to abandon ship on a project and start something brand new.
5) We should always hold our artist purpose as one of our life purposes, remembering the importance of our other life purposes, which generally include our valued relationships and may include contributions we're trying to make to a workplace, a community, or society.
So there you have it, my best stab at summarizing a weekend that surprised, moved, and challenged me. If you ever get a chance to work with Eric www.ericmaisel.com, individually or at one of his many workshops or trainings, I can't recommend it highly enough. I've returned from my weekend physically exhausted, but creatively energized, and feeling like a writer in a whole new way.
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