Mixed Messages - road blocks to Creativity

[Frank]

Are you giving or getting mixed messages about being creative ?
Do you tell yourself little lies ?
Do you find yourself listening to anyone's advice ?

Talk about here - bitch about it here - tell us how you deal with it.

I, myself have found that a continuous loop of my mother's voice plays in my head.

You are so smart, you can do anything, why do you waste time writing and painting.

I can't seem to find the delete button. Any suggestions ?

[Beverly]

Red light, green light, dynamite blue. I guess that's a childhood game I played, but seems to come to mind as I stare at these many traffic signals. Which one do I pay attention to? Which one is right? The mutant traffic light of my
dreams. I'm always hearing voices, from past, present, future. Sorting them out and getting to the soul voice
is probably my priority right now. Well, this seem a great topic to talk about. I myself, Frank am glad you are paying attention to your own voice about writing and painting.

[Lin Neiswender]

It's hard to fight those voices of doubt, since I think we never made any good tapes of our own to combat them with. So how do we we-parent ourselves now? I try telling myself the pep-talks, but it's just not getting it. Maybe I need a program that will send me emails telling me I really have something worth writing and that it will be good!

[Maureen]

Hey guys! Thanks, Bev, for leading me here. Frank -- another great discussion here.

I only made it through the first chapters of VOG and Artist's Way, but both books had me come up with "Blurts" that I tell myself about my creative abilities. When I really started listening, and started to write them down, I was amazed at how many "blurts" I have about myself and my creative abilities. "I'm too old to learn how to paint." "I don't have the talent." "If I try I'll just mess it up and it will be a waste of time." "I don't have money for supplies." blah blah blah.

And of course, like you said Frank, there are the messages from my mother regarding my dream of being a poet someday: "Why don't you go into advertising?" "You would make a great paralegal."

I have to say that CCS has been HUGE in getting me to create again. You guys have been so encouraging and supportive to me in my long journey back to creativity. Sometimes I still have those blurts: "You are wasting your time." "What are you going to do with that stuff -- you can't earn a living from it." "It's not doing you any good sitting around with poetry in your head all day."

But when I get back here with my CCS friends, I realize those blurts are wrong.

This discussion will be a great place for us to help each other out, if we get stuck in our blurts. Thanks Frank. (And all of you!)


love, mo

[Barbara Ann Storrier]

Okay, I'll climb up on the soap box for a few minutes ... hee hee! Thanks, Frank!

These mixed messages and signals are there from so many sources in our lives, and it's so easy to not see them for what they are ... someone else's ideas. Of course, if we did not love and respect the person saying them, they would just have gone in one ear and out the other with no effect. But we do love and respect these people in our lives, and when they try to guide us toward what they feel is right, it's only out of love and concern, a desire to try and help us.

At some point in our lives, sooner or later, we each have to listen to this message ... "I am unique. There is nobody else exactly like me anywhere else in the universe. I am just as worthy as any other. Only I can choose what is right for me. I can listen and consider others opinions and points of view, and then I must choose for myself what I WANT to do."

I can imagine that Jimi Hendrix's/Stevie Ray Vaughn's/Janis Joplin's/Jack Kerouac's/Frank Zappa's/Ansel Adams'/William Shakespeare's/David Bowie's/Maxfield Parrish's/Andy Warhol's/fill in the blank's mother, or father, at least once, and probably more than once, told him/her to go "get a haircut and get a real job" :)

Until such time as we can finally just let go of what anyone else thinks, stop seeking someone else's approval, sit quietly with our selves, listen, find, discover and truly know our own desires, trust in our own truth and follow our own passion, these mixed messages from everywhere else will continue to confuse us and cause creative U turns and thwart and frustrate us. I believe our number one job in life is KNOW THYSELF. Nobody else ever truly will. And once you get that, that's when you can truly begin to create what you are here to create :) And ... let go of the outcome ... it may not be what you expected :)

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it :)

[Maureen]

Barb,
This is one heck of a piece of writing! You are multi-talented, that's for sure. I like your story, and glad you're sticking to it :-). Can I print this out please? I need it on my nightstand next to me, along with Fr. Frank's sermon from yesterday! Love, mo

[Barbara Ann Storrier]

I'd be honored, Mo :)

[debb]

wow
that's a profound statement, I can actully hear you in my head when I read this... and I will be reading this often as I'm going to print it up & put it up where it will be seen everyday
that phrase "What Do I Want" has been appearing in my life for a while now & currently my answer is "I Don't Know" mostly because I seem to have lost some of myself. I'm finding somethings out about where I am that are frustrating becuase I know I choose this and am truly a coward when it comes to making that kind of life altering change...
it's not just creativity that is stifled when we don't know ourselves... it is our whole being that can be shuttered and closed down...
time to let take a leap of faith and really look at those dark places inside, let the light in & it's not so scary to make the change required to be true to myself and do what my heart has always known

[Jules]

Debb, that last paragraph of yours was just as profound as Barbra's writing...

[Barbara Ann Storrier]

Yes it is ... things look so much better out in the light, the true colors showing! And I KNOW it's your inner critic saying that about you being a coward when it comes to life altering change because YOU are the one who decided to go where your heart was calling you and made all that happen for you and Gene-o in a very short period of time! YOU ROCK and don't you forget it!

[Frank]

I believe that for me the problem I have with old tapes and mixed messages is this:

As long as I stay where I am creatively - I do not hear them.

When I attempt to take it up a notch and break new ground in both doing and feeling - such as feeling that I am good enough to be a writer and getting my work out there in publishing land -
I run into one mixed message of the past after the another.

Some uncle says "It's okay to be creative but don't go crazy doing it."
A friend says "Your stories are good but they reveal thing about you. You should be careful about that."
Both seem to say go forward but they also say "Now wait a minute ! Be cautious. "
And that for me says - writing is not safe. Drawing is not safe. Do simple little things and disguise yourself - draw abstract things - write fantasy - write little poems -

But now I try to face all the mixed messages of the past with this little bit of knowledge I gleaned from psychology. Back in the bad old days when Psych professors rested their theories on dogs (see Pavlov), they tested dogs to see if they could change their conditioning - first they would condition dogs to respond to the bell (which would mean food is coming) then they reconditioned the dogs to the bell (which now meant a shock was coming). They found that the dogs would change but only if the change was gradual.
But then they decided to what would happen if the bell meant both a shock and food. They wanted to see what would win out. What happened was the dogs became neurotic and would curl up in a ball and just lay there. The dogs got better but only after all messages were stopped.

So I am thinking - how have I conditioned myself ? What messages have I chosen to listen to so much that I do not even know they are there ?
I know there must be some because I freeze up when challenged with new ground to break and other feats of daring-do.

How have you done this ? found out the subliminal messages that are within you ?

[Barbara Ann Storrier]

I'd tell you Frank, but it would reveal too much about me and it really wouldn't be safe for my dogs ...

[Barbara Ann Storrier]

I find most of the subliminal messages about myself come from writing Morning Pages, unloading all the garbage, and then looking closely at that pile of things that really piss me off and irritate me about other people. I try to see WHY it's so irritating to me.

And it's usually because I am the same way, I do the same things, and I don't like it in myself. And yeah, for a while I curl up in a ball and just lay there. Once I get over it, I can usually come up with a different way to be.