Creative Solutions and Inspirations from the Modern Day Muses

Doing Nothing with a Muse called Lull

By Jill Badonsky, M.Ed.

PLUS: Meet the Muse Lull

I have a secret for you — no it’s not THE SECRET. Heavens no, it’s even better because this one involves, are you ready? Doing nothing.

You know how we are always doing … well, something? I have it from some excellent sources, yes, world renown people that, okay listen carefully: doing nothing is actually going to get you somewhere. That’s right and, this is the extra special, prize in the cereal box, grand jack-pot: doing nothing can make you more creative. What a concept eh? It’s a secret because in this society there’s a lot of hoopla about doing stuff... all the time... Productivity, bottom-line, scrap booking just like Miss www.scrapbook.com, painting like that girl I-forget-what-her-name-is, keeping my body slim like the deprived women on TV, writing, cooking, gardening, marketing, raising Nobel peace winning kids, Well, I have it on these sources including myself because I just noticed that I published a book, have sold the manuscript for another one, have written and performed a one woman show, had several successful art shows, traveled the country doing storytelling, created a business based on creativity, built a training program for creativity coaches, … and a lot of what went into the process of doing that stuff was sitting there doing nothing. First, I stopped trying to change those parts of myself I’m always trying change and transferred the energy that I was using for that, to my creativity. Second, in the process of doing nothing, or at least looking like doing nothing, things incubate, percolate, connect, combine, burble up and create a new idea. When we are always doing SOMETHING, we get depleted and this miraculous, spiritual wonder we have as mortals to bake an idea subconsciously in the void does not have a chance.

Put on pause the prospect of powering your supposedly imperfect self into perfection and productivity. Go ahead, hit the pause button. I’ll let you in on another secret that I know as a trainer for creativity coaches. What I find is that we mortals don’t give ourselves enough credit for who we already are. Repeated for subliminal advantage: we mortals don’t give ourselves enough credit for who we already are. Here are some of the magic questions we ask as Kaizen-Muse coaches that have changed hundreds of mortals’ lives —- and that would be for the better: What are you already doing right? What are YOU doing that has worked? What are you glad you already did? How magnificent are you…. Already? Without making one more change?

Because when unattended, our minds will go to why we need to change, what we did wrong, what we need to do more of and why we aren’t good enough at everything under the sun. For right now — let go of that. Take it all into your arms like a flock of doves, or a bunch of balloons, or a jar of lightning bugs. Go ahead do that. And now let them go. Free yourself of the pressure. Celebrate who you already are and you will emerge with some of that confidence I talked about in the column on Audacity last month.

In the creative process, we need to let go. We need to surrender. Forget trying to control things and change yourself for a minute, for a week. Trust in the process. Be in gratitude. Here are some of those excellent sources I was telling you about:

“Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.” — Zen Proverb quotes

“It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.” — Gertrude Stein

“Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth comes to the top.” — Virginia Woolf

“By slowing down, taking a break, releasing the process, and diverting our attention, we fill our souls, body and mind with the nutrients for the next step in the creative cycle. Ideas, inspiration, and motivation fulfill the creative cycle’s promise of the return to spring. Aha-phrodite shows up again, you resume your Marge efforts and continue from a place of plentiful readiness. We don’t need to fill every space of silence with stimuli. Silence and stillness can be quite medicinal” —Lull, Jill Badonsky’s Modern Day Muse of Pause, Diversion and Gratitude.

“Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.” — Satchel Paige

Copyright © Jill Badonsky, 2007. All rights reserved.

About the Author | More by Jill Badonsky
Jill Badonsky, M.Ed. is a nationally recognized workshop leader, artist, performer, humorist, and author of the book, The Nine Modern Day Muses (and a Bodyguard): 10 Guides to Creative Inspiration for Artists, Poets, Lovers and Other Mortals Wanting to Live a Dazzling Existence. She teaches creativity lovers to facilitate classes and workshops based on her book and along with UCLA psychologist, Robert Maurer, she trains people to be Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaches. She can be found lurking at www.themuseisin.com.

05/12/07