Breaking the Spell of Fear and Inertia

Here is useful advice from Danielle LaPorte in the book The Desire Map. She says, "Just do something. Motion is better than stasis. When you take action, you learn, you build skills, you get freer. When you stay still because you're afraid to move, your self-worth wanes, your doubts fester and breed more doubts, your courage atrophies. It's not pretty. Suit up and head out."

This is so true. Sometimes when the spell of inertia immobilizes me I find that doing something, anything, to get the energy flowing again, usually breaks the spell. Even if it's not art related. I take a shower, or do a dance to some loud music, or I do the dishes, or clean my studio, run (okay...walk) around the block or anything that involves vigorous movement. Once the paralysis of doubt and fear (or laziness) is dispelled and I feel alive, then I am usually able to translate this general feeling of aliveness into more focused art making. 

Taking some action, no matter how small, toward that for which we long is better than no action. A thousand mile journey always starts with one, simple, tiny step. And it’s good not to make our goals so extra-ordinary, so spectacular and awesome that we chicken out just thinking about them. Better to lower our expectations to doable, realistic goals and then go from there. Gregg Levoy says in his book Vital Signs, "The only goals with any power are the little ones that you can put on tomorrow's to-do list."

Sometimes we find ourselves not having created anything in a while, as in, going through a dry spell. Not to worry. Life has a certain rhythm. In the dictionary, the definition of rhythm is, "the pattern of regular and irregular pulses caused in music by the recurrence of strong and weak melodic and harmonic beats."

Sometimes my creative beats are weak, and other times very strong. One day my artistic pulse is regular, and the next day curiously irregular....and it's all good, because it is what creates the melodic, harmonious rhythm of my life.