How you do one thing…

It's going to come as zero surprise to you when I tell you that having a regular creative practice can help you live better.

How?

Aside from the mental health benefits that come with focussed creative time, it’s related to the idea that how you do one thing is how you do everything - you tend to have ways of thinking and feeling and moving through the world that are similar, no matter the circumstances you find yourself in.

And so if you regularly play with a blank page (or in your kitchen or your garden or sewing room - however you like to create) and watch what you do and how you do it, the parts that feel fun and the parts that challenge you (and how you deal with those challenges), you might start to see connections with how you live life in the world outside your blank page or art journal or kitchen or garden or wherever you like to create.

Want an example? Here’s a few.

For some of us (a lot of us) blank pages can be intimidating. All that empty space, endless possibilities of things to fill it with. How do you know where to start? Even if you know what you want to fill it with, making the first mark can feel a bit daunting sometimes.

And that can be kind of like life - even if you know where you want to go, taking the first step can feel a bit daunting sometimes.

A regular creative practice (like any kind of regular practice) can become a little mini world you can step into that helps you concentrate on just what’s in front of you - maybe a blank page - and for a while, nothing else matters but your journey with the page.

If you give yourself permission to make a mess, to make art with no expectation that the end result will be anything in particular, without attachment to an outcome, a blank page can start to feel like a friend, a comfortable place that demands nothing of you. And in the world we're living in which is full of demands, that can be a relief.

You might step into your creative world feeling anxious and come out again a while later feeling more at ease. Or you might step in feeling curious and excited and come out having learned something new about how to use a pencil or about how the colour red makes you feel dreamy today.

You can step in and get frustrated that the thing you’re drawing doesn’t look like how you want it to look, and while the drawing might feel like a failure, when you step out of your creative bubble, you can use that same skill of letting go of rigid expectations in the rest of your life - so perhaps it wasn't a total waste of time.

What you learn from creating something on the page - about yourself and about the act of creation itself - is very transferable to the rest of life. As it becomes easier to hear and trust your inner knowing on the page, so does it become easier to hear and trust your inner knowing in your life.

So, of course, your mission for the week (should you choose to accept it) is to make something, and pay attention while you're making it. What does how you're approaching this task teach you about how you approach the rest of your life? Your relationships? The work you do? The excuses you make to yourself? The dreams you have, and the steps you take to reach them?

Need an art journal prompt to get you started?

Well, you're in luck…

I’ve started a collection - you can find them here:
www.ellenmay.com.au/art-journal-prompts