 |
 |
Home · Creativity · Arts & Crafts · Writing & Prompts · Creativity Coaching · Authors · Submission Guidelines | What's New » | 20Questions » | Kindness » | Participate » |
|
|
Home · Creativity · Arts & Crafts · Writing & Prompts · Creativity Coaching · Authors · Submission Guidelines | What's New » | 20Questions » | Kindness » | Participate » |
Eric Maisel : The Anxiety of Possibility
The Anxiety of PossibilityBy Eric Maisel, PhD Even if you do an excellent job of choosing, and you know that you are committed to this particular novel or this particular suite of paintings, an anxious residue remains as you consciously or unconsciously remember all the other projects that you are not getting to and all your other loves that you are not engaging with as you focus your time and attention on this project. Because you have significant appetites, loves, dreams, and ambitions, part of you wants to do everything, and the stark realization that it is impossible to do everything can cause serious anxiety. In the beginning you may try to do your version of everything by squeezing in an hour of collage, twenty minutes of poetry, half an hour of songwriting, and fifteen minutes on your novel into the same day. But typically over time you begin to see that this simply doesn’t work. Nothing gets finished, and you feel fractured and all over the place. So you decide to commit to one thing — and instantly feel anxious about having put all those other possibilities aside. Part of the anxiety is about having put all your eggs in one basket; part is about your fear that you may not have committed to the right project; and part is the “hungry-mind” anxiety of missing out on all those other possibilities. The best approach to this dilemma is a cognitive one: remind yourself that you can create for a lifetime, that there is no expiration date on your creativity and no mandatory retirement age, and that, rather than operating from a scarcity model in which you “only” get to do one thing at a time, you will operate from an abundance model instead and picture — and relish — the body of work you get to create by attending to one thing at a time and one thing after another. If this approach happens not to extinguish every drop of anxiety that arises because you feel limited or restricted, deal with the remaining anxiety by using the anxiety-management tools you are learning. HEADLINE
The reality of process prevents us from doing a million things simultaneously. It is hard to attend to more than one major creative project at a time, or a few at most. This means that the other projects we crave tackling (and that may seem more interesting than our current project, which may be slogging along) must remain undone — a reality that we maturely accept, even as it makes us anxious. TO DO Get a clear picture in your mind of what it takes to create a real body of work. Such a body of work is not created piecemeal by doing a touch here and a dribble there: it is only accomplished when you pay attention to one project at a time, project after project. VOW I will serially commit and deal with the anxiety that arises from not being able to do everything at once. Next: The Anxiety of Performing »
5/16/11 |
 Creativity Portal® founder, artist, creativity coach, and mentor Chris Dunmire, KMCC, provides deep listening, good humor, and compassionate guidance to anyone desiring to excavate and process their rich experiences of living and reach deeper, more meaningful levels of creativity, artistic expression, and everyday being. Learn more at CoachingYourCreativity.com. |
About the Author