The one shift that transforms everything

"When you do something for the first time, you bring ignorance with you, which can greatly elevate the creative process."
-- Rick Rubin 

"You don't understand," I told a friend. "It's no good making suggestions because you just don't understand."

I had started the conversation because I was feeling overwhelmed, but his calm suggestions were not helpful (or at least that's how it felt). 

"You don't get it," I told the next person who tried to help (not even noticing that she had said almost the same thing as the first person).

It was only when a third person made the same suggestion that I stopped and examined my thinking.

Was everything as I saw it? Or was there another way to look at it?

As my nervous system calmed down, I remembered that actually there is never just one way to look at things. We can always move around something and look at it from another angle.

Once I examined the source of my feelings of overwhelm, I was able to write a list of tasks and break them down into smaller tasks. I was then able to ask for some help with some things, postpone others, and hone my list down to something very  manageable.

And yet in the moment, my overwhelm felt completely justified and every single one of those tasks had felt urgent.

I am always helped in these situations where everyone sees things differently. It's easy to look at the faces of everyone else and think "huh, they know something I don't. Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture."

This knowledge can then help us move around and see that thing from a different perspective.

But what about when there is no-one else to challenge our thinking?

Alone in our heads, we usually view our thoughts as facts. We think something and it's just true. It's the only way to see things. But this certainty closes off so many possibilities. It stops us from seeing alternative options. It blocks our ability to develop creative solutions. 

And in fact life teaches us over and over again that we don't actually know very much at all.

Have you ever been utterly convinced of something, only to be proved wrong almost immediately?

Your spouse doesn't give you a birthday present, so you seethe all day, feeling hard done by and upset, until you learn about the surprise party that's been months in the making.

You feel sure you're about to be laid off and worry night after night, before being called into the office and offered a promotion. 

Or to put it in art terms, you're working on a painting that refuses to come together. Convinced it's unsalvageable, you stop even trying. You splash some paint on randomly, and suddenly the piece is transformed

The truth is that we know very little. We have an ant's view of an ever-expanding universe. 

Some people find this a disturbing thought, but I believe it can set us free.

If we know nothing, and if we assume we're mostly wrong about things, we are free to look at things in a new ways.

Just recently I was asked to think about the gifts inherent in a difficult situation. The old me would have laughed and said "gifts? Are you having a laugh??"

But as I paused and let the question sink in, the answers came quite easily.

This isn't to say that life is always wonderful or that we should never feel down or upset. I don't believe that for a moment. But reality is always what it is - we have very little power to change it. All we can change is the way we look at it (or perhaps the way we choose to stop staring at it and look at other aspects of our life or our art instead).

In some cases making this shift can lighten the load immediately (as it did with my sense of overwhelm). In others the darkness will still be there - but it will feel different, a little more hopeful somehow.

I do think this is a vital concept for anyone to grasp but especially for creatives. The more open and flexible we can be in our thinking, the more we allow new possibilities to arise. And, as artists, we are in the possibility business!

As you go through this week, see if there are places where you can move around a problem or feeling or situation and view it from a different angle. You might be surprised at what can happen. 

As for me, that "impossible" to do list is almost completed and I'm back on an even keel :)