Unleash your creativity!
Are you familiar with Julia Cameron? In addition to her talents as a novelist, poet, screenwriter, and playwright, she has also been teaching creativity for over thirty years.
Her teachings are condensed in a book, The Artist's Way, and have influenced millions of people worldwide since its publication in 1982. It has become the go-to book for many artists. Julia Cameron starts from the simple premise that creativity is within us; it is our inner child, programmed to create.
Picasso also said that "every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up."
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STEP I - The Basics
Here are the ten principles (to be reread as regularly as possible) that form the basis of her teaching:
1 - Creativity is an energy and the natural order of life.
2- There is a creative force in every life, including our own.
3 - When we open ourselves to our creativity, we reconnect with our inner child.
4 - We are creations ourselves and are meant to maintain creativity by being creative ourselves.
5- Our creativity is an innate gift: we must be grateful for this gift by putting it into practice.
6 - Refusing to be creative is unnatural.
7 - Exploring our creativity is in the natural order of things.
8 - Opening ourselves to our creativity will bring about many powerful changes within us.
9 - It is completely safe to open ourselves to increasingly broad creativity.
10 - Realizing our creative dreams brings us closer to what is most sacred within us.
STEP II - Overcoming Our Obstacles
Obstacle 1: Negative Beliefs
First and foremost, to reconnect with our creativity, we must overcome our blockages, stop telling ourselves "it's too late," or "it's just my ego, my dissatisfaction, my pride." Thinking that we need to have "made enough money to get started," or believing that "our dreams are not real life and what we have is already good enough," or fearing the reactions of those around us. All these attacks can come from within, as well as from outside of us.
From within, it's our "censor," that voice that judges us, often more harshly than anyone else around us. Listen to this voice, confront it, and consider it a small fictional character, a spoilsport who constantly belittles us.
From the outside, these are the "tyrannical intruders," people who unwittingly believe they are protecting us, warning us, but who, in reality, dare not go in search of their own creativity and unconsciously cannot bear for you to succeed. They will throw their own fears in your face, but all these fears tell us more about them than about us!
Obstacle 2: Escaping Reality
On the other hand, another significant obstacle is indulging in imagination, our thoughts, dwelling on what we could have done or been, or feeling jealousy towards those who have succeeded.
Do not hesitate to list all the fears, criticisms, and judgments that prevent you from realizing your work (fear of lacking money, supposed lack of legitimacy, fear of being seen as marginal, etc.).
List them and try to find their origin by answering these three questions:
- Who told you this?
- What event led you to have this belief?
- And finally, how to replace these negative beliefs (crazy, broke, irresponsible, lonely, unhappy, etc.) with positive alternatives (sane, solvent, responsible, friendly, happy, etc.)
STEP III - Exercise
One of the fundamental exercises of Julia Cameron's method, which she emphasizes repeatedly, is writing "morning pages." This is an extraordinary daily exercise that presents absolutely no difficulty other than sticking to it: writing three pages every morning upon waking.
Yes. That's all: three pages. Every morning.
Three pages of handwritten text in which we give free rein to our thoughts.
Nothing is insignificant, silly, or strange.
No one will read them, not even ourselves, at least not right away, not for several weeks.
If you have nothing to write, then write it: "I have nothing to write," and talk about the weather, your headache, your sleepless night, yesterday's movie, what you have to do, what worries you, your angers, your joys, your frustrations, your projects, your successes, your failures, your mood. It doesn't matter. Three pages. Every morning.
Perhaps these pages will seem repetitive, negative, tearful, disjointed, filled with anger, self-pity, banalities, naivety.
Perfect, keep going: write three pages, every morning!
Everything you pour into these pages are obstacles that cut you off from your creativity.
These morning pages are the main tool for your creative reconquest.
Moreover, we quickly see our "inner censor" reappear, you know, that little voice that tells us that what we are writing is "lame, uninteresting, banal, without style, or pretentious," that writing all this is "a waste of time when we already lack it," which says of your drawing that "frankly, it's no Picasso."
We know this little voice well, don't we?
Anyway, there is no right or wrong way to write the three morning pages, except not to write them!
This exercise teaches us to disregard our judgment, our mood, or circumstances.
Starting tomorrow morning, begin writing three pages (because tomorrow morning is the best time, and the reconquest of your creativity becomes your priority from now on!)
Write your three pages every morning, because it is more painful to be a blocked artist than an artist in action.
So here you are, launched into Julia Cameron's twelve-week program!
Congratulations, you deserve it!
I can only encourage you to read her, reread her, reflect on her valuable advice, and practice her many exercises, because as you surely know, "creativity only wears out if you don't use it!"