The Muse is IN Blog

Habits and Hummingbirds

There's this hummingbird that flies high in front of me when I do my daily treadmill workout on the deck. A beautiful sprawling tree is backdrop. The way he flies reminds me of how Tinkerbell flew above the castle when my family watched Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color every Sunday evening. There was comfort in knowing where I was supposed to be on those Sunday evenings-watching Disney with my family-one of our rituals.

After the show I returned to being not so certain of where I fit into the world. Reality was back and within it I was a nervous, highly sensitive little kid who worried a lot. Structure calmed me.  

The hummingbird appears at workout-time in Tinkerbell-form so regularly I’ve started to believe he is suspended in mid-air, fluttering the miracle of his wings just for me.

 

 

Creativity is a human accessory we use for writing, art, and innovation but it also gifts us with a malleable perspective about our existence. Creative daydreaming has become as much of a ritual as using the treadmill. Like a sneaky Muse, it regularly slips in when my resistance isn’t watching and lures me into the wonderful world of “What if …”

"What if" a hummingbird's mission is to snap us back into the joy of the present moment when our mind has wandered to bills, estrangement, and tell me again, what was I doing at See’s Chocolates after lunch yesterday?  The hummingbird transports me to bliss more than the statistics on my treadmill dashboard.    

When you work for yourself, creating structure can be easily intercepted by distractions, the turbulent inner battle of defiant procrastination versus showing-up,  and the result of all of this: An unpleasant lashing from the inner tyrant that admonishes you for having such little discipline.

Working for myself is filled with freedom but the flipside of that can include being held captive by bad habits and the relentless reprimands of an overactive inner critic who knows I can do better. It's painful to squander intentions to immediate gratification.  Unless I have a deadline or a class I need to teach, there is no one to be accountable to but me. The emotional energy that can go into floundering with a lack of structure is more than those who work for other people may realize.

That’s where ritual comes in.

With a morning ritual, I know there’s no place I’m supposed to be but starting my day with a cup of tea, making some quick scrawls in my journal for 10 minutes, and starting a workout. I no longer have that inner battle of resisting my intentions because the ritual has become a habit.  Showing up is more automatic. (Thank goodness).  And because creative possibility starts running loose while I run, showing up for the next step of my day is much easier. In fact, sometimes I have to leave the treadmill before my workout is over because I have an urgent need to write down some compelling idea. Idea urgency - a favorite part of the creative process. (Endorphins might be a part of that.)

 My morning ritual is the body-mind connection because sometimes the mind isn't enough for me. It took me awhile to figure this out because I thought writing should be the ritual.  

 It's not about being productive, it’s about being open and present when and if the flow of ideas flutters. It takes the pressure off the need to perform creatively so performing creatively is more likely to happen. If it’s not the treadmill, it’s yoga or walking. Making it about the body, relaxes the mind and that’s when the magic happens.

Twyla Tharp writes about a similar approach to ritual in her book The Creative Habit, but her's is even simpler: just to hail a cab.

“I begin each day of my life with a ritual: I wake up at 5:30 a.m., put on my workout clothes, my leg warmers, my sweatshirt, and my hat.  I walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to the Pumping Iron gym at 91st St. and 1st Ave., where I work out for two hours. The ritual is not the stretching and weight training I put my body through each morning at the gym; the ritual is the cab.  The moment I tell the driver where to go I have completed the ritual.

It's a simple act but doing it the same way each morning habitualizes it -- makes it repeatable, easy to do.  It reduces the chance that I would skip it or do it differently.  It is one more item in my arsenal of routines and one less thing to think about.

What ritual makes showing up for your creativity easier?

 Watch for hummingbirds.

 

Tenacity is your currency.

Without tenacity, unfulfilled dreams clutter up the desks of our good intentions.

Tenacity bought me three published books and a thriving creativity coaching training. But I used to find my resolve wavering and wandering from one distraction to the next when I didn’t have a deadline or a class coming up.

Recently I found freedom by using tenacity to buy a morning ritual. Rituals are vital to the creative person's happiness and as I get older, I find that they are also the source of spiritual comfort.

Over time, rituals make the act of showing-up a habit, which takes away the need for discipline and will-power to overcome distractions  It took me awhile to develop a ritual that worked for me, because designing one is personal.

It needed to be based on how my creative process works for me not on trying to follow someone else’s  ritual. So I experimented with different activities until I found the right ones, which allow for variation because rigidity makes me resentful.

It also took awhile to develop a ritual because I didn't underestimate the strength of the distracting habits. I knew I needed tenacity to overcome their familiarity. Having high expectations for a new ritual to immediately become a habit lead to abandonment and self-flogging. Imperfect approximations are a good place to start with gentle knowing that persevering with creative dreams always pays off. Maybe not in the way we expect, but there is always a reward.

My twenty-year-old Siamese cat is experiencing dementia. Her ritual has become yowling at 3 am each morning with the same volume as a cat with her tail caught in the door. If you know this breed you know a Siamese yowl is like a regular meow delivered through a megaphone.... and an amplifier. My cat does this because surroundings once familiar are now unfamiliar, she feels lost.

I am lost when I am not focused on my creative call.   I’m not demented per se, but Facebook had become far too familiar which, when what makes me deeply happy is spending most of my time with creative pursuits, IS INSANE. There's nothing wrong with a little Facebook for me. Too much is self-sabotage.

Next post I will share the rituals of a few wildly successful creative people and how I implemented my own.

Questions -  asked with  a compassionate, not critical viewpoint:

1. What habits are serving you?

2. What habits are immediately gratifying but hollow in the long run?

3. What ritual which work with who YOU are?

 

Asking Questions

^ Dream-like waking states are often the best places to find effortless answers.

As a writer, an artist, and purveyor of creative coaching, I have come to rely on an exquisitely simple tool for triggering creativity and intuition. It's convenient, free, and more dependable than I imagined it would be when I actively started using it many years ago. The catch is it requires patience and trust, and those qualities are on the endangered list.

 

The tool is this: The simple asking of small, conscious, constructive questions without expecting immediate answers.

 

Expect answers and expect more than one, but not immediately.

 

I've been using this method of fertile inquiry for so long that the answers seem dependable in their arrival. I ask a question before sleeping at night and get clarity in the morning when I am still halfway in the dream world - the imaginative delivery system of the subconscious where anything is possible -  as I begin to feel the first conscious clues of awakening, before all my insecurities and habitual patterns of thought get a chance to fog my good knowing. I have been known to doubt an early morning answer as my neuroses kicks in and protests, but more often than not I go back to the answer dawn delivered.

Answers from questions asked about creative directions usually take more time to incubate and arrive in flurries, lightning flashes, and once ... on a billboard.

The mind LOVES questions, they trigger the complex detonation of possibilities.

A question can simmer, incubate, and ricochet off my vast inner world of collected experience.  Not using the most obvious answer is a trick many people fail to use because they too easily fall in love with any idea or answer before they take it deeper by staying open to more answers, finding the answer behind the answer so the idea and the answer results in more depth and confidence.

You can ask questions anywhere (brace yourself for a silly poem):

In a closet with a bear

In a line for underwear

In a greasy corner diner

In the mountains of caroliner

While spacin' out in conversations

Or holidayin' to weird locations.

[Okay.. I'll stop.]

 Here are some questions you might consider test driving but remember: patience and trust.

1. How can I make it easier to show-up to my passions?

2. How do I want to feel in the creative process? Playfully  curious? Mischievously quirky? Anticipating discovery? Boldly sure? 

3. What is one small way I can make my writing/art/music/life fresh?

4. What's one small thing I can do right now, really quickly, just to move into a little more momentum?

5. Where will my next inspiration come from?

6. Why would I want to go to a party when I can stay home and be creative?

Okay, that last one snuck in there, I suppose as an answer to "What additional quirky question can I add to break up the seriousness of these questions?" That's how they work.

I find that concentrating on one question at a time works best.

Asking small questions is one of the tools Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaches learn during their training. If you're interested in knowing more about that, here's where you would go.

 

 “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” ― Socrates