Three Principles of Practice
We need a repeated discipline, a genuine training, in order to let go of our old habits of mind and to find and sustain a new way of seeing."
– Jack Kornfield
I recently enjoyed a blog post by Gretchen Schmelzer, She let herself go, in which she turns this phrase from insult to celebration in one fell swoop. I especially love the asterisk at the end, where she writes, "I am going to be posting more frequently, and perhaps less eloquently. I have found that over time I had a higher and higher standard to write this blog to the point that I wasn’t writing at all."
I've written in the past about the falsehood of "having one's shit together" being the be-all and end-all goal in life, and I think this idea of letting ourselves "go" is connected. When we let go of these rigid notions of how we're supposed to be, how we're supposed to write, how we're supposed to relate, we start seeing the gaps between the "supposed tos" and what may in fact be more authentic for us.
This doesn't happen overnight; fews things do. But lately, much of my attention is on the things we don't notice day to day. This line from Marge Piercy's poem The Seven of Pentacles has been riding shotgun with me all week: "You can't tell always by looking..."
Like Schmelzer, my early blogging days were entirely a practice in letting myself go. And like Piercy, I couldn't tell by looking exactly what was happening as a result of all those imperfect posts. I made showing up more important than perfection, and this allowed me to write and share, sit with whatever discomfort and fears of judgment (and there were plenty – still are!), and move on.
In some ways, my new drawing practice is a similar endeavor. I have decided to draw one thing a day, to share it without commentary, and then to move forward without obsessing.
It's a multi-part creative process that is as simple as it may be emotionally or psychologically fraught, some days more than others depending on what other stressors I may be navigating and thus how vulnerable I feel.
The absence of commentary is key. For example, after drawing a coffee mug a few days ago, all kinds of chatter cropped up right away: I didn't love the way it turned out... it wasn't one of my better attempts... and so on and so forth.
Sharing that drawing and simply writing, "Today's drawing" was my way of not sprinkling fish food into those murky waters, instead opting to leave good enough alone, appreciate myself for showing up, and then – you guessed it – moving on with the day. You can imagine my surprise when so many folks said they loved it!
Sure enough, in the case of blogging all those years ago, I couldn't always tell by looking from one post to the next what was occurring. But I was in fact strengthening not only my writing, but just as importantly, my ability to withstand my fears. Fear hasn't necessarily ever left altogether, but I continue to learn how to soothe that well-intentioned but uninformed part of myself that is hellbent on keeping me safe.
THREE PRINCIPLES FOR CREATIVE PRACTICE
Letting yourself go
You can't always tell by looking
Removing commentary from the equation
Whatever you are practicing these days, how might these three principles support you?