It’s week 3 of The Course, and it’s a week for mindful visioning.
While I am continuing on my mindful meditation path—and in doing so building in skilful habits—I’m taking this week as time to breathe. Time to disengage from the information we’ve covered during the past two weeks … and let my subconscious go to work.
This is a strategy I use as a fiction writer, as a blogger, and as an introvert. Over the years I’ve realised it’s a reliably good strategy for me, in that it allows me to ‘process’: to step back so I can see the woods for the trees. Join the dots. See new connections, and let go of extraneous fluff.
One way I do this is by walking in nature.
I recently read an article in HuffPost that outlines the creative process in more detail. When I read it, I was nodding to myself in agreement. Especially when the topic of ‘mindfulness’ was raised.
But, I have to admit, when people call themselves ‘a creative’, I get a bit nervous.
I understand the evolution of the ‘nouning’ of the word ‘creative’—some people work in creative industries, and what with the advent of social media like LinkedIn and Twitter, it’s useful to be able to describe yourself. (“I’m a creative.”) Having a category in which to place one’s self is also a comfort to many artists and writers whose art dictates an alternative way of operating in the fiscally-driven, modernist world.
And yet everyone is creative.
I reckon everyone has the capacity to think outside the box: about their lives, about abstract problems, and about life in general.
seeing the blues and the greens
I don’t think you need to be working in a ‘creative industry’ to be creative. I certainly don’t think by labelling one’s self as ‘a creative’ that it makes you any more or less of a person than anyone else.
Mindful words
This week, as I write my first office-job application after many years as a freelancer, I’m being mindful of terms we use to describe ourselves.
I’m being mindful of the words I use around my children, and I’m carrying with me Debra‘s challenge from Week 2: to notice when I describe a state of mind.
Which words am I using? Which story am I telling myself?
For me, as a parent, the biggest challenge is to find ways to help my kids notice their words when I hear them doing the same.
Because sometimes a parent is the last person a teenager wants to listen to.
Or is that just a story?
And so I keep walking.
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The Feels 