Let’s talk about one of the main topics you, as a creative, will need to address throughout your career.
Discipline.
This is a lifelong challenge.
The essential question is, how can you show up to your daily practice/writing/creative time/ sessions and simultaneously show up without feeling like the routine/habit/ritual/ is squelching/killing/ruining your joy, passion, and excitement for the creative work at hand?
As I listen to the advice of many thought leaders in this world – the common discussion involves these three words; habit, routine, and ritual. All of which appear to take discipline to activate.
This puts you in a double bind. You must create habits, routines, and rituals to be more prolific. But habits, routines, and rituals can make us less conscious – less aware as we are prone to only follow the external pattern of behavior, leaving us void of that creative spark we are so hungry to experience.
Perhaps you have been looking to be rescued by the idea of more discipline when in actuality, the proper remedy could be much more life-enhancing.
Even the word discipline is such a loaded word. Packed with so much history and meaning. Images of a drill sergeant, yelling, PE teachers, straight lines, steel bars, prison, force, power over, and ultimately the harshness of right and wrong, good and bad. Perfectionism is also tied up in this word. Lastly, to be disciplined means to be punished.
Discipline can be a red haring. You already have access to what you seek – and now you just need to summon it.
Since it is not a question of discipline for the creative, something else will help create Space to optimize for the creative path forward. But what?
You want to become more aware of your personalized creative process to create more consciously and with awareness. More than at any other time on the planet now is the time for the emergence of the Conscious Creative.
Unfortunately, working with habits, routines, and rituals could add to our addiction to numbing out from our creative selves as we mechanically go through our day. This approach can unwittingly tamper our essence so that we end up being less than what we could be.
But, you want to move from just surviving as artists to thriving as artists, so we need to set ourselves to be able to authentically produce more creative work.
No more are we to be a zoo animal performing our easy tricks for peanuts or working hard to get out of one jail – only to reappear in another kind of jail with better linens or a more pleasant view.
I have a word for you that will change your game – as it has for me.
Sequence.
Now I’m using this particular word – sequence – because this word does not have a history within this context.
A sequence is malleable. Changeable. True for the day – and subject to change tomorrow. In fact, we want to encourage change within the sequence. This is the whole point. Add, subtract, alter, and change up the order or some nuanced approach to whatever you do for your creative process to give yourself a profound and impactful experience.
Once you have done the sequence, evaluate and re-evaluate how it went and how you might alter it to give yourself a more profound/richer/more meaningful experience the next time you enter your creative sequence. This is a necessary time to work with one of our best allies – curiosity.
Working with The Sequence will make you more aware of your creative process. This will also aid your lifelong appreciation for defining and redefining who you are and how you approach your current creative process.
This approach – working with sequence will keep you open, available, curious, and endlessly engaged as you progress along your individual and collective path toward more awareness as you cultivate your creative endeavors.
More will be shared about working with The Sequence in the future. Until then, give this work a go and let me know your experience.
Creatively Yours ~~
Joshua
#Creative #CreativeWriting #CreativeProcess #JoshuaTownshend #Story #Narrative #StoryTelling #Dada
