In Coaching the Artist Within, creativity expert and psychologist Eric Maisel devotes an entire chapter to “Achieving a Centered Presence.” He describes a simple, six-step, one minute process for carefully breathing and thinking yourself into a grounded state of calm so you are ready to create and take the next right step for the project […]
In his self-coaching creativity manual Coaching the Artist Within, Eric Maisel offers four specific tactics or strategies you might adopt to help yourself create more consistently and more easily. “Don’t Snivel” Stop complaining. Take that time and energy-sucking, self–indulgent complaint/excuse-generating habit and redirect its power and intensity toward doing the work instead. Do you seriously […]
Creating in the middle of things is admittedly not easy and often difficult, fraught with all kinds of risks and fears and do-ability issues. If “Just do it NOW!” doesn’t push you to take action, then you may need to work on some strategies to help yourself get moving. In Coaching the Artist Within, creativity […]
According to creativity expert Eric Maisel’s Coaching the Artist Within, we must all learn to create in what he terms “the middle of things” — things being both external and internal constraints limiting what we believe we can accomplish. Facing External and Internal Barriers Certainly we must create while life goes on, whether we face […]
In Coaching the Artist Within, creativity expert Eric Maisel discusses the mental energy required to create. Unlike physical energy which is based on food/sleep inputs, mental energy depends on your interest, passion, desire, concern – the intensity you apply to creating. Your mental energy is depleted by mental activity, including creating – and not creating! […]
According to Eric Maisel, psychologist, creativity expert and author of Coaching the Artist Within, the antidote to self-sabotaging negative self-talk is training yourself to stop the wrong-thinking and start thinking right. In other words, he recommends replacing block-inducing anxious self-talk with affirmations. You may be familiar with affirmations from other creativity books such as Julia […]
In his creativity book Coaching the Artist Within, Eric Maisel insists we need to get a grip on our mind, take charge of our own self talk. We talk to ourselves all the time, and all too often what we are saying in our self-talk is not helpful. We talk ourselves out of creating, out […]
The self awareness and courage to ask the hard questions of ourselves, and then find the honest answers, is the basic skill required for self coaching as described by creativity expert Eric Maisel in his self-coaching creativity manual, Coaching the Artist Within. Picture yourself moving back and forth between two chairs, one being the coach […]
Seth Godin says snark = quick ‘n dirty and fun ‘n easy while earnest = less shiny, long term better. He’s probably right, he’s a plenty smart guy. What can we learn, if anything, from either or both kinds of criticism? Sometimes there’s a kernel of truth in the snark, or a hit you over […]
Throughout The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron stresses how blocked creatives tend to be stuck in our own heads, and how the antidote to blocking is to take action. To keep moving, to embody the spirit of “Create or Die” is a strong statement, but I think it is true for creative people. There is an […]