Life in Small Bites

By Dr. Eric Maisel, psychotherapist, teacher,coach, and author

• 1 Honor the Creative Process
• 2 Get Really Easy with Mistakes and Messes
• 3 Create in the Middle of Things
• 4 Crack Through Everyday Resistance
• 5 Get a Grip on Your Mind
• 6 Institute a Morning Creativity Practice
• 7 Expect Risks to Feel Risky
• 8 Err on the Side of Completing
• 9 Let Meaning Trump Mood
• 10 Get Smart About the Marketplace

1  Honor the Creative Process

The reality of process is that not everything you create will turn out well. You must accept this reality and learn the necessary dance of attachment and detachment. Maintain your dreams, desires, and ambitions for your creative work while at the same time accepting that only a percentage of what you attempt will prove successful!

2  Get Really Easy with Mistakes and Messes

All day long we’re supposed to get things right: pay our bills, pick up our kids, and so on. It is very hard to move from this everyday mindset to a creative mindset where huge mistakes and messes are permitted and even welcomed. You may understand in your mind that the creative process comes with mistakes and messes but you must accept this truth in your body!

3  Create in the Middle of Things

You may be telling yourself that you can’t create until your circumstances improve: until the in-laws leave, until the semester ends, until the kitchen renovation is completed. This way of thinking is a creativity killer. You must create now, right in the middle of your real life—and right in the middle of your real personality, with all of its light and shadows!

4  Crack Through Everyday Resistance

Because creating is at least a little bit harder and scarier than some other things we might choose to do, like turning on the television or surfing the net, we are often resistant to getting started. Learn how to crack through that everyday resistance by using a variety of simple and effective cognitive, existential and physical techniques.

5  Get a Grip on Your Mind

How you speak to yourself determines whether or not you will create. If you tell yourself that you have no talent, that you hate mistakes and messes, that you have no imagination, or that you’re too far behind and maybe even ruined, you won’t create. You must change and improve how you talk to yourself to have any shot at creating regularly and deeply.

6  Institute a Morning Creativity Practice

There are three important reasons to institute a morning creativity practice before your “real day” begins. First, you will be fresh. Second, you will be able to make use of the thinking your brain has been doing during the night. Third, you will be starting your day making some meaning. These are three great reasons to start each day creating!

7  Expect Risks to Feel Risky

Everyone pays lip service to the idea that they want to take some risks in the service of their creative life. Only they don’t want those risks to actually feel risky! As a creative person, you need more than intellectual permission to take risks, you need visceral permission. Start right now to embrace the fact that risks are bound to feel risky!

8  Err on the Side of Completing

Don’t abandon your creative work too soon. Even if you feel that you don’t know what you’re doing or where to go next with the work, try to stay with the process and get projects completed. Too many creatives start and stop and never experience finishing, showing, and selling. Try to err on the side of completing the projects you begin!

9  Let Meaning Trump Mood

Maybe you’re not in the mood to create. But is your mood really that important? Aren’t your meaning-making efforts more important than the mood you happen to find yourself in? Try to convince yourself that your creative efforts matter and that attending to them is more important than any transitory mood you may be experiencing.

10  Get Smart About the Marketplace

You support your creative efforts and advocate for the work you create by getting smart about the marketplace and by learning what actually works. You are not being supportive of your novel or your suite of paintings by refusing to get your hands dirty in the art marketplace. Be fearless here too—your work is counting on it!