[In this series of posts that I’m calling “Your Creative Life,” I want to paint a picture of how you can become more everyday creative and how you can sustain a creative life. If this series intrigues you, you might think about becoming a creativity coach. If you’re interested in that, please visit my new certificate and diploma program or read my latest book The Coach’s Way.]
Your first task as a creative person is to do the best job you can of “minding your mind” and thinking thoughts that serve you. Doesn’t it make sense to speak to yourself in ways that help you create more deeply and more regularly, that allow you to detach better from the everyday chaos of ordinary life, that decrease your anxiety and negativity, and that remind you that you are in charge of showing up and making an effort?
Most people do a poor job of “minding their mind” and choosing to think in ways that serve them. It is a completely common practice for people to present themselves with thoughts that amount to self-sabotage and to refuse to dispute those thoughts once they arise. If people did a better job of “minding their mind” by noticing what they were thinking and by making an effort to replace defensive and unproductive thoughts with less defensive and more productive thoughts, they would live in less pain and they would give themselves a much better chance of living the life they dream of living.
It is almost this simple: notice what you are thinking, dispute those thoughts that bad-mouth you or that send you careening in the wrong direction, and replace those unproductive thoughts with thoughts that better serve you. This is tremendously important! There are many useful tactics and strategies available from the cognitive-behavioral school of therapy that you can use to get a better grip on your mind and help yourself think more productively and positively. Here’s one I’ve created.
Often you have a productive thought and then you immediately follow that productive thought up with an unproductive one that stops you in your tracks. This sounds like “I’d love to practice the piano” followed by “I’m much too old to learn complicated piano music.” Or “I want to get my novel written” followed by “But I don’t really know what my novel is about.” Or “I love my photographic collages!” followed by “But lots of people are doing them.”
This cognitive sabotage happens all the time. It is almost what we do best as a species. What I would like you to do is to notice how this dynamic works in your own life. Look at your own defensiveness, self-unfriendliness and self-sabotage when it comes to those things that you claim matter to you.
People engage in this self-sabotage all the time. They decide that something matters to them and then they talk themselves out of taking action by countenancing thoughts that do not serve them. I want you to look at this and change this!
Complete the following, filling in the X and Y with your own responses: “I say that X matters to me. But I often follow that thought up with Y thought, a thought that does not serve me. I no longer want to countenance that thought.” You may have more than one self-unfriendly Y thought—you may have lots of them! By all means include as many Y thoughts as you like in your exercise response. The clearer you are on the things that you say to yourself that don’t serve you, the better your chances of extinguishing them.
Your exercise response might sound like the following: “I say that writing my novel matters to me. But I often follow that thought up with the thoughts ‘I have no talent,’ ‘The competition is too fierce out there,’ ‘I need to make money, not play at writing,’ and ‘I don’t have enough time to write.’ I no longer want to countenance those thoughts.”
Try the following exercise: “I say that X matters to me. But I often follow that thought up with Y thought, a thought that does not serve me. I no longer want to countenance that thought.” Give this simple exercise a try!
“The Coach’s Way is possibly the finest resource available for anyone who wants to develop or enrich their coaching abilities. This new book is designed to give coaches the confidence and structure in their practice that will generate real results for their clients. Any- one who makes a living in the coaching arena will benefit from Dr. Maisel’s tremendous experience and training as a therapist, coach, and human. I’m so glad to have this book as a guide for my own coaching work and will recommend it to many others in the helping professions.”— Jacob Nordby, author of The Creative Cure: How Finding and Freeing Your Inner Artist Can Heal Your Life
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
