How My Art Reflected My Business Saboteurs

and how it led me back to me

I always wanted to paint, but never did.

I listened to the voice that said “you can’t draw anything realistic. You’re no good. Therefore, you can’t paint.”

Scrolling on IG one day an ad caught my attention: learn to paint abstract.

It took me an embarrassingly long time for me to realize I didn’t have to paint realistically, and I didn’t have to be “good” to paint. I could just paint.

So, I started.

I bought some canvas, some acrylic paint, and took that short online class.

It was a great distraction from flailing around in my business. It was a way to be in the creative process without asking for money. It was a way to surrender expectation and result and just be in the process. It was a way to let go. Until it wasn’t.

The voices came in…“what if I’m doing it wrong, what if I’m ruining it, what if I’m missing my chance.” Like there’s only one chance. Like I can even control the outcome and results.

Familiar tendencies, triggers, and resistances started creeping in…

·        Getting attached to what I’ve created

·        Scared to add more paint in case I “wreck it”

·        Scared to make decisions because they may be “wrong”

·        Scared of mistakes: they aren’t “fixable”

·        Scared of judgement: others will say it’s not very good

·        Trying to control the outcome / result

Where had I seen these before?

Ah, yes. Those are the same ideas that show up when I work in my business.

Hello, old friends.

This is exactly the kind of thinking that holds me back in my work.

You know that saying “how you are in one thing is how you are in everything”?

That tracks.

I wasn’t just sabotaging my work by trying to control what was not mine to control. It was my artwork, too, even the stuff I don’t get paid for, that nobody ever sees.

This makes sense because my business is also my artwork. My soul work. I pour everything into it, authenticity is my goal. When I write, create content or programs, I do it from my soul, from scratch.

Clearing the Channel

To create from an authentic place, in art, or in my business, I need to clear the channel for the creativity to flow through. I can’t be clogged up with conditioning and layers. I can’t be clogged up by fears of doing it wrong.

Conditioning and layers will ultimately take me in a different direction. One where I need to be liked, right, and where I lean on external success to prove my worthiness.

It reminds me of that analogy of flying an airplane from NY to LA. If you change direction by 5 degrees, you won’t end up in LA.

Creating and making choices from fear, anxiety, and scarcity will take me to one place.

Creating from authenticity, worthiness, wholeness; will take me to another place. A place I want to live.

With awareness comes choice, and with choice comes change.

I think of it like layers. My wholeness, my self-worth, abundance, all these things are inherent; they’re IN there SOMEWHERE – but buried. They never left, I don’t need to do anything to earn them, they can’t be taken away; they’re buried under layers of conditioning and safety.  Buried under adaptive responses that became maladaptive as I grew. It’s ok. It’s changeable with awareness and choice.

Understanding them allows me to reach the place where I can make authentic choice.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Carl Jung

As a hypnotist, my favorite saying is “with awareness comes choice, and with choice comes change.” Hypnosis is all about giving the subconscious a voice with choice. We can’t change the past, but we can change our perception of how the past affects us today.

Part of that choice is the magical space between the trigger and the response. The pause. The pause interrupts the reaction and leaves space for the response, the growth, the choice.

Case in Point

Yesterday I sat down to write this week’s Substack. I was making the decision from “should”, and “I’m running out of time”. Not terrible, but not terribly inspiring, either.

I showed up to my desk, I wrote. It was OK. It left me feeling self-doubt, exhausted and unsatisfied.

I went for a walk.

I slept on it.

I woke up understanding I had created from a place of “should”. Not terrible, but maybe 5 degrees away from where I wanted to go.

I started thinking about the rhetoric in my head as I wrote: it needs to be better. The other stuff I started isn’t good enough. The other writers on Substack are really good. I need to up my game. I need to be something other than me.

So many layers and conditioning hiding the real me. And just me, is enough. It has to be, ‘cuz I don’t got anything else. What else can I do?

This morning I sat. I journaled. I listened to an inspiring podcast (We Can Do Hard Things, no less).  

Then, I sat and wrote.

And it felt good.

I felt “clicked in”.

Is it amazing?

No. ha ha.

But it felt amazing.

I’ve decided that’s what I’m going for because that’s what will take me to where I wanna go; not 5 degrees towards generic and inauthentic.

Just like painting, when I slip into the flow of it, release the need to control the outcome, the process of it is so much more enjoyable.

And isn’t that the point, anyway?