The Big Peace

Last week - Week 12 The Artist's Way

I love the line in week 12 - "You're either losing your mind - or gaining your soul."
Once again going through the Artist's Date for a second time, I've been to what Julia Cameron calls 'the darkness' and back. I've seen my inner saboteurs at work, heard my inner critic scream so loudly I thought I would go deaf and also reconnecting again and again with that mystery of the creative process.
It's been a full on process for me in the last three months. This process gives you nowhere to hide - those morning pages!!! It never ceases to amaze me how negative I can be - and how it spills on to the page. I wonder, if I don't do my morning pages - where does all that go?

In our last week, we are recovering our faith. "Creativity requires faith. Faith requires that we relinquish control." As a recovering control freak....I can see why I find this week challenging. But I have loved, loved, loved creating my 'God jar'. How wonderful to just let go - of the dreams and the fears, knowing someone else will handle it.

Let's finish with a flourish this week.  Even if you have dropped out of the process. Keep on with those morning pages, book the best artist's date ever and enjoy this last week together.

One of our artist Way Big Leapers asked if we can still use the chatroom after the process is finished to keep in touch - absolutely.

Have a good week. I am away in Cornwall for the bank holiday but back next week and we can wrap up our process then.

Have a lovely weekend, everyone.

x

Artist's date - free makeover?

A client of mine - the lovely Janet Fernhead is just launching her new styling business with free styling make-overs in May. She lives in Manchester.

 

Janet says I would love to take you up on your very kind and fabulous idea to offer your friends/clients a Style Shop personal styling session, totally FREE, for 2 hours in Manchester during the month of May.

 

Let me take care of your clients' style dilemmas and help get that fabulous summer wardrobe.  To take advantage of my fabulous offer and book your complimentary Style Shop either on it's own or as part of a Total Style simply email [email protected] or telephone 07890026112.

 

Janet"

I wish I lived in Manchester! xxx

Week 11 The Artist's Way

Phew, two more weeks to go. Hasn't it been a journey? The Artist's Way has been as life changing for me this time as it was the last time. It's been quite a roller coaster for me - grumpiness and resistance as well as the intense creative highs.

Week 11 and we're recovering a sense of autonomy. I resonated with the line: 'Cutting off our creativity makes us savage." It also makes me resentful and gloomy. When I'm freed to create and brainstorm and write, I feel like I'm living the life I truly want to live. But when I have no space to breathe - easter holidays, sick dogs, children, car tax, a million and one emails - I feel sullen, stifled and yes, savage. I want to bear my teeth.

This week I'm going to enjoy writing the list of the five ways I intend to nurture myself in the next 6 months. Mostly, that will be about space. (By the way - does anyone know a good Buddhist retreat that I can go to that will take my son and I - he's 6 - for a alternative summer holiday?)

I'm also going to binge on self nurturing this week.

Enjoy this week.

I'm running the Change Your LIfe, Change Your thinking event on Saturday 25th - I need a few volunteers on the day to help with initial registrations on the day. If there is anyone who'd be willing to help, it would be much appreciated. YOu will get to hear the speakers too - and you'll get a teeshirt!!
If you'd like to help, email me [email protected]

A week off?

I hope I'm not letting the side down but I need to have a week off this week. I'm still writing my morning pages, and got my artist date planned but can I post week 11 on Monday. Easter holidays, house full of dogs, children and madness and can't think straight.

Speak to you on sunday.

How is everyone doing?

Suzy x

Week 10 Guest blogger Marina says:

Week 10 – Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection

"This week I realise that all my creative blocking is keeping me from my flow and only served to keep me from the very things I crave - change, freedom and (dare I say it) success.

The Artist’s Way has poked me in the ribs, knocked me on the head and shouted at me that

the actions I have been taking to ‘protect myself’ have only been shielding my fragile ego, keeping my creative self very much at bay.  What kind of protection is that?  Last week’s chapter resonated with me more than any other so far.  How relieved I was to discover that in fact, I am not a lazy good for nothing who prefers to chat on Facebook or Twitter all day, but that I am AFRAID. 

 

How comforting to know that I am not alone in this too.  I diligently managed my Morning Pages for the first 3 weeks but had to stop when I realised that I was obsessing and wittering on about the same subject, a long standing relationship ‘problem’ that I just wasn’t resolving.  I was boring myself silly and not putting anything creatively motivated down on paper. ‘What a waste of time,’ I thought. 

 

However, a couple of weeks and no MPs later it dawned on me, why wasn’t doing anything about the problem?  I was living with it, feeding it even and doing nothing to protect myself against its harmful effects on me, both as a person and as a creative being. So then came what Oprah Winfrey calls her ‘light bulb moment’.  It was serving me to keep this problem going, I was revelling in allowing it to hold me back...

 

I ended the relationship.  It was and is still painful, but how much lighter I feel, how much extra time I have, how relieved my friends are that I don’t constantly whine about it anymore! BREAKTHROUGH.

 

‘Saying no can be the ultimate self-care’ Claudia Black is quoted in Week 10 .  I have said no to this relationship and things will get better.  I also decided to drawn a line in the sand with a neighbour who has quite frankly ridden rough shod over many people in my street for the past few years.  It scared the hell out of me when I did it, but my stance miraculously worked and now instead of death ray stares over the fence, we are actually waving at each other!  BREAKTHROUGH.

 

In my work I have become less worried about what my clients and associates think about my creative ideas and what I have to say, if others can’t accept my ‘flow’ it is not a reflection on me personally, it is about their attitudes and beliefs and I don’t need to take responsibility for that.  Strangely with that attitude in mind, I have found that those I come into contact with have been incredibly receptive and astoundingly supportive. BREAKTHROUGH

 

In stopping the behaviour that I thought was protecting me I have actually liberated myself and others.  I have discovered a new way to protect myself by always trying to be brave.  I am a creative being and it is that I will endeavour to nurture.

 

Thank you Julia Cameron and thanks Suzy for the the tip off!

Guest blogger Catherine Shaw on week 9:

Guest blogger Catherine Shaw says: 

I love your honesty, Catherine. love it!

"I have to admit that I have found the AW very challenging. Weeks 1 and 2 I battled with. I stopped doing the ‘Morning Pages’ in week 3 (and I only managed a minuscule amount of writing anyway) which means in week 9 I have nothing to read in the ‘Tasks’!!

But what I started to do was a morning meditation instead, which I find much more beneficial to my soul than writing angst down.

Week 4 was relatively easy as I cleared my wardrobe out and had no trouble in the reading ban (except for reading the news concerning the untimely death of Ivan Cameron)…. I discovered in week 5 that my favourite creative block is my laptop, which is  no longer allowed to accompany me to the studio…( I found myself disappearing, like Alice, down the rabbit hole of the internet). I read in week 6 that “When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us….(the rest of the sentence is true, page 108) But this is not always the case…..and I’m sure there are other Artists out there who feel the same. In week 7, I had to complete the phrases “As a Kid, I……” I look at it now that as a kid I got what I needed to bring me to where I am now. It also made me look at how much I have in my life already……Week 8 I was asked to look at early patterning…..I guess I was lucky as my Father thought Art was worthwhile, my mother taught me how to Daydream, nobody said my dreams where rubbish.

 

In week 9, we are finding a sense of compassion, which involves Enthusiasm. I can relate to this wholeheartedly as my Studio is a complete playground and a fun place to be working in and I am living my dream, as thy say. I am full of complete joy when I arrive at my Studio.

However, what I can’t relate to is “Creative U Turns”…….Julia Cameron say’s “We are now on the road, and the road is scary.” The “road” is not called scary, the road is called “Life” and whether one is a ‘recovering blocked artist’ or not it is just that….this is Life and it is f@%king scary at times. Creativity is not scary, it’s just a way of expressing oneself. We can all make excuses for not doing what we want to do in this life, we can hide behind all manor of reasons…..some of us will “Blast Through Blocks” some of us wont. However, the reality is we will all do the very best we can for ourselves as individuals at anyone time. It is no one else’s fault if we don’t follow “Our Dream”…That is an excuse for not taking responsibility for our own lives, no matter what our parents did, or our teachers etc  I can’t think of a creative U-turn that “just kills me” and I don’t know of anyone who has committed ”creative hara-kiri”. Shouldn’t we look at our past so called Creative U turns as energy that we couldn’t engage with at particular moment in time, without seeing them in this so called negative light?

 

It’s my birthday on Tuesday and I had decided to take my best girlfriend (who is having a hard time with her Catering business due to the Credit Crunch) to Paris for a complete girlie day, Euro star, champagne, lunch, art galleries the lot….but it all hinged on me getting a particular job……I didn’t get it…..so the alternative was pate, French bread and wine under the Transmitter in Crystal Palace Park. Fine as far as I was concerned but my friend decided that that wasn’t good enough….so I was now told that she would to cook a dinner at her home for 8 people…….and I felt CROSS it wasn’t what I wanted to do, I just felt she was now taking over. We were at stalemate.

It took me 2 days to step back and look at it compassionately, she was trying to cheer me up after losing the big job, and I on the other hand, felt guilty that she was prepared to cook a complete French Meal for 8 people. Compassion comes from our inner core and sometimes it’s hard to find.

 

When I look back over the last 9 weeks I’ve come a long way…..I’ve found and seen aspects of myself I didn’t acknowledge. There is a lot about The Artist Way I find flawed….and there is a lot that is pure joy to engage with. Here’s to week 10."

Week 9, The Artist's Way

Huge apologies for this late posting. I have the greatest excuse though - was finishing my Big Peace book and pinged it off to Hay House on Monday. I spent day and night at the weekend writing and editing and even worked through the night on sunday and it occurred to me - as I got that 2am despair 'this is rubbish' who will want to read this' to a 4am high 'I'm nearly there' 'this is really good' - what a rollercoaster this writing business is.

And how wonderful it is to have our writing tribe to support and cheer us on. So a big thank you to all of you for taking this Artist's Way journey with me. I'm not sure if I would have hit deadline without this process as a backdrop to my writing. It has kept me sane. And thank you for all the magnifcent and inspirational quotes that you sent me. It really lifted the book to another level. thank you.

We're on week 9, this week. And it's all about compassion. Compassion is a massive theme in my book - it's actually THE best route to your Big Peace. Compassion for ourselves and others has been scientifically proven to light up the left prefrontal lobe of our brains - the part of our brain that hosts our positive emotions. When brain imaging techniques were used to observe the brains of meditating monks - the bleepers went off the scale when the monks started to meditate with compassion.

I suppose it's about being kind to ourselves and others. Sometimes we can be so rough on ourselves and others. All that does us keep us seperate and disconnected. This week, let's be very, very kind to ourselves. Here is a loving kindness meditation that is in my Big Peace book:

Here is the compassion meditation exercise from Happiness,

A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill by Matthieu Ricard.

 

"Begin by generating a powerful feeling of warmth, loving-kindness, and compassion for all beings. Then imagine those who are enduring suffering similar to or worse than your own. As you breathe out, visualise that you are sending them all your happiness, vitality, good fortune, health, and so on, on your breath in the form of cool, white, luminous nectar. Picture them fully absorbing the nectar, which soothes their pain and fulfils their aspirations. If their life is in danger of being cut short, imagine that it has been prolonged; if they are sick, imagine that they are healed; if they are poor and helpless, imagine that they have obtained what they need; if they are unhappy, that they have become full of joy.

When you inhale, visualise your heart as bright luminous sphere. Imagine that you are taking upon yourself, in the form of a gray cloud, the disease, confusion, and mental toxins of these people, which disappears into the white light of your heart without leaving any trace. This will transform both your own suffering and that of others. There is no sense that you are being burdened by them. When you are taking upon yourself and dissolving their sufferings, feel a great happiness, without attachment or clinging.

You can imagine that your body is duplicating itself in countless forms that travel throughout the universe, transforming itself into clothing for those who are cold, food for the famished, or shelter for the homeless.

 

“This visualisation is a powerful means to develop benevolence and compassion. It can be carried out anytime and during your day to day activities. It does not require you to neglect your own well being; instead it allows you to adjust your reaction to unavoidable suffering by assigning new value to it. In fact, identifying clearly your own aspiration to well being is the first step towards feeling genuine empathy for others’ suffering. Furthermore, this attitude significantly increases your enthusiasm and readiness to work for the good of others,” says Ricard.

Homework this week:

Oh my goodness, we get to read our morning pages back! always an interesting exercise.

Take stock, says Cameron, take heart and acknowlege.

Do the exercises this week that feel good and the ones you most resist.

and keep up with the morning pages.

xxxx

P.S I'm going to The London Writers Club tomorrow in London - I will be celebrating getting my book in. It's at the Hub in London from 6.30pm - come if you can. xxx