Purpose (objectives, goals, desired outcome, intention, function)
My life purpose is to live my life according to my values. My purpose as a writer is to communicate ideas, tell moving stories, be a truth-teller for my culture, and prove a positive force. My intention isn’t to avoid creating because of pain and anxiety. My intention to manifest my core values of respect, integrity, and assertiveness through my art helps my mind not wander into the fear of being seen even when it makes perfect sense to be scared. For example, I grew up and down from a child into an adult in the past decade. My concept of responsibility and dependency evolved like a white water rapid rush of reconciliation of too-firm or too-loose boundaries in different areas of my life. One area, in particular, was my need to be heard, not judged, and not commanded. One extreme involved a lack of self-respect in asserting my own judgement, which, in turn, meant failing to practice integrity in my own principles. Another extreme involved an “I cant take it anymore” attitude- a blaming, controlling, self-enhancing, self-denying way of being. Writing became a way to generate evidence for myself about what thought processes were processing in my head. So, my art helps me develop as a person. Creating in turbulent times felt like using the northern star for a sense of direction in a stormy landscape of wind-driven waves, tides, and tsunamis.
Question at Issue (problem, topic, “the point”, “Q at I”)
The question at issue is: Is my art a vehicle for self-actualization? The problem with using art as a vehicle of self-actualization is that it might prevent the creation, dissemination, and efficient exploitation of my subject matter in the marketplace. The purpose of creative “property” is to achieve an economic goal with the minimum of deadweight loss. The effects of “protecting” my art too much has hampered the development of some of my art pieces. There are two aspects of “protecting” my art that will need to be shaped appropriately. First, I need to determine the scope of how I will protect my art and the remedies available to enforce it. For example, I choose not to provide services that label my clients based on arbitrary characteristics; however, in the current marketplace some business practices use demographic characteristics to define their target audiences. In order for me to protect my art, my partnerships and collaborations will require an upfront, clear, precise, relevant definition of my target audience from the very beginning of the relationship.
Second, I need to consider the way in which my art pieces fit together because different subject matter in my art pieces will require different types of protection. For example, I offer group workshops, I coach clients individually, and I write for the Coaching Project: The Race to Help Humanity on Medium. Sometimes, I may need to allow the standards of each existing art piece to operate differently in different contexts but I do not control its use once it’s public. In other words, the fact that I’m responsible for the creation of this writing piece, does not, without more, ground a claim to control its use.
From my perspective, my artistic work is not an extension of my myself for me to control. In other words, my organs, for instance, are not a constant apparatus to which I give reality to my ideas and wishes. It’s clear that my organs my home, my kids (with paws) each play a role in my development as a person. However, the measurement of that role is not clear. Michael Spence in Intellectual Property says, “it’s also clear that these potentially appropriable things may not play a more important role in my self-actualization than, say, my home city or the school I attended as a child. To roll up all these self-actualizing relations with the external world in the metaphor of embodiment is imprecise and unhelpful”.
Assumptions (background theory, what is given or what is taken for granted, axioms)
Protecting my process of self-actualization is different from protecting my reputation, autonomy, or self-expression when it comes to my art. My reputation, autonomy, and self expression are practices I can execute outside of myself. Reaching my full potential as a human-being requires compassion toward myself. Being a human being is difficult because this body or this mind requires connection with the outside world in some shape or form that I can’t always discern. Even though I can’t always define what exactly is wanted, compassion toward myself is a need I can meet myself. For example, my body and mind will turn against each other when the need for connection is unmet. Sometimes, my body manifests pain in my chest and I lose the grip on my mind. My mind will blame the body for rubbing it in and the body will scream louder in pain. This dynamic fight takes place inside while the status of my professional reputation, autonomy, and self-expression outside of me remains static at one moment in time. For this reason, I don’t believe we own ourselves like we don’t own people and other beings.
I believe that art is something I can do instead of experiencing pain and anxiety when it is not in my best interest to do so. Writing for a purpose gives my mind focus while my body shakes from my nervous system settling and my eye nerve decompressing in anxious state. For example, writing articles for the Good Men project creates a metaphorical experience of letting go, but I don’t actually let go of anything. I reach the outside world by translating my internal thoughts into words, into concepts, into clarity, into logic, into the ipad screen then into someone else’s’ mind as the read it. Internally, my mind focuses on describing what my body wants me to focus on. While my mind is busy, my body is left shivering and my fingers turn cold because my mind is no longer fighting with my body. I’m taking away the heat that furnaced my eyes, the congestion that blocked my airways, and the feeling of being dumb-founded when I lost that grip. I let the heat that burns on my skin dissipate into these words on the screen. Somehow, my body feels heard by my mind and I no longer need an external being to hear me. I realize I am all I ever needed.
My autonomy occurred when words and sentences made sense on paper. My self-expression occurred when I found the words to give my body a voice in the world. My reputation as a writer will grow as long as I honor my values for respect, integrity, and assertiveness. I’m allowing my body and mind to be each other’s advocates. My autonomy, self-expression, and reputation as an artist is outside of my body and can be owned because my whole self controls it. My self-actualization will forever be a lifetime of choosing parts of myself to support other parts —THAT requires constant, conscious choice. Self-actualization is not controllable because it is constant, conscious choice. It is constant change.
Implications and Consequences (what follows, costs and benefits)
What follows after calming the body in an anxious state is mind relief. Giving the mind a break can also open the gates to thoughts from the past and the future — the present is gone. The benefit, at this point in time, is that the body doesn’t feel that heat, congestion, and tension anymore. But the body can raise awareness of where that residual pain got stored. For example, I will experience back pain after resting my mind because I felt so heavy to myself during the internal fight. Not being heard meant I needed to continue to carry the load —so I did for a while. I felt like the 100-year old looking man I saw carrying a sack of potatoes to the morning market in Bolivia. His back didn’t change shape when he unloaded the sack of potatoes. It was like his body knew he would continue to carry the same load for the rest of his life. Everyone else merely carried a grocery bag.
Concepts (organizing ideas, categories)
The beautiful event that occurred after advocating for my body is calmly walking away from one room to another and drifting to sleep. I was no longer a prisoner of that pain and anxiety I felt just moments before I began to write. Despite the momentary freedom during writing, it became increasingly difficult to cultivate a sense of clear intention again as I walked from one room to another. My mind was already sprouting the same thoughts that caused so much pain before. Somehow, my judgment and battering of those thoughts — now on paper — made them linger more. The key was to let go of the judgement I had for them. In other words, cultivating a sense of detachment from my art, my writing piece, meant showing my mind and body compassion.
“In order to achieve right detachment, you need to cultivate a compassionate appreciation for the human predicament, strength of conviction, clarity of intention, and clarity of mind” ~ Dr. Eric Maisel in Performance Anxiety.
For example, I used to think my ultimate goal was to care and show I care and only intend to care. This intention to care too much used to paralyze and cripple my ability to perform in my personal, academic, and professional life in the past. My ability to care and not to care at the same time occurs when I let go of others expectations of me and just follow the intention I have for myself at the moment. The opposite of detachment is like seeing each other as another potato being added to the large sack on your back. Detachment is like seeing each other as your equals: equally living, breathing, being, and mortal.
Conclusions, Interpretations (inferences, solutions, decisions arrived at)
A rational understanding of my artistic purposes is necessary to ground my art’s rational development. And a rational understanding of the purposes of the elements of my art must begin with the recognition that those purposes are often conflicting. The difficult task of reconciling these various purposes is the constant task we undertake as artists.
Point of View (frame of reference, perspective)
My principles and values are at the center of my point of view. Everything I think about is from my foundational identity as a human-being. It is from that identity I started a business to sell my art. My business, rational findings and judgement of what the “next right thing” is, comes from my point of view of what being ethical means to me. For example, understanding that my art work is not an extension of my being but property meant to be created, disseminated, and exploited by my target audience is based on my core values of respect, integrity, and assertiveness. Although intellectual property law and policy are not shaped by morality, the right to protect or control my art work will primarily come from my clear artistic purposes which are fueled by my core values. As a coaching client, my autonomy, self-expression, and reputation were only enhanced and enriched by the non-judgmental, non-directional, no answers principles my own coach followed in our 45-minute zoom sessions. Working with life purposes in the coaching discipline is like the small and big intentions I encourage my clients to break down when anxiety takes over and clarity vanishes. Coaching is helping others live their most authentic, valuable lives.
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If you’re interested in creativity coaching with me, contact me at [email protected]. For further information, check out my site at www.thebutronmethod.com
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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