Stirring Broken Eggs

by Barbara Martin

in Try This

At the beginning of my creativity coach training with Eric Maisel, one of our assignments was to break some fine fresh eggs into a bowl, shells and all, and stir them around.  Keep the bowl of broken eggs at your workspace and each time you feel tempted or compelled to get up and go do some distraction, […]

Recent Reptitude posts examined some of the ideas, exercises and techniques psychologist and creativity expert Eric Maisel presents in his self-taught creativity course or creativity manual, Coaching the Artist Within. You might find these posts useful as a companion to the book or as self-review tools, or as reminders to help you stay on track […]

Creative people, people in the arts, and people who live a passion-driven life of making meaning can all benefit from the following guidelines to living as enumerated by Eric Maisel in his self-improvement creativity manual, Coaching the Artist Within. Know your game – your creative field, how it works, what is expected, and how to […]

Do you have a well stocked creativity kit within easy reach? In his self-coaching manual Coaching the Artist Within, psychologist and creativity expert Eric Maisel recommends you keep a special collection of organizational and management tools together in a box or in a handy spot. Doing so will help you stay organized and productively on […]

Creative people who wish to create consistently face a double challenge: the challenge of following their dream while also facing a potentially harsh reality and bringing their work to life. Eric Maisel, creativity expert and author of Coaching the Artist Within, highlights the importance of maintaining a focused equilibrium between these two aspects of living […]

Many creative people struggle with planning. Writing in Coaching the Artist Within, psychologist and creativity expert Eric Maisel suggests “Five Golden Rules of Planning” to help creative people set their goals and formulate better, more realistic, more effective short and long range plans. Too often our best and well-intended plans fail – let’s be honest […]

I hate to bring up the subject of creative anxiety twice in one week and then not offer a coping exercise! In his self-help creativity manual Coaching the Artist Within, psychologist Eric Maisel suggests we learn to appreciate what he terms the “Tao of Anxiety” and thus coach ourselves through it. It is, as are […]

As Eric Maisel explains in his expert creativity manual Coaching the Artist Within, anxiety can be a tricky thing for creative people. Sometimes fear serves as a valuable alert, sometimes as a false alarm. But how can you tell the difference? And what can you do about it? Symptoms of Anxiety First of all, you […]

In his self-help creativity guide, Coaching the Artist Within, psychologist Eric Maisel devotes an entire chapter to Anxiety. Certainly some anxieties are rooted in the irrational, but creative people often experience reality-based, rational fears. What happens, for example, if we perform badly, or our book does not sell, or no gallery will represent us? These […]

Deep in Chapter 8 of Eric Maisel’s Coaching the Artist Within, we come across a nugget on identifying and dealing with perfectionism. Maisel argues that we are culturally conditioned to value a high gloss perception of perfection over reality. Reality, of course, includes both glossy and matte, highs and lows, successes and failures, perfection and […]