I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. The reasoning behind this is pretty simple. Usually (this year being no exception), I spend the first few days of the New Year paralysed by fear. I’m talking serious no-sleep, nails-dug-deep-into-the-palms- of-my-hands terror. I don’t sleep or eat properly (unless you count chocolate and toast as one of the major food groups). I stop writing, painting, communicating with the outside world on any kind of deep level, and I waste countless hours glued to trashy geek sci-fi (the more escapist the better) or chat shows (other people’s problems are so much easier to solve by shouting at the TV). All of this usually takes place from the safety of my sofa, in my pyjamas.
So, how does this relate back to New Year’s resolutions? Surely some kind of structure might stop me falling into this abyss? Perhaps I could decide not to do ‘terror in pyjamas’ this year? Well I suppose anything’s possible.
What I know and understand, which stops me trying to circumvent this apparently pointless set of behaviours is how my creative process works. This is what happens. Over the last couple of years, I’ve developed the habit of saying yes to things that if I gave any thought to them would scare me too much to consider. I say yes so fast, that I don’t have time to think about the consequences. In this way I have built up my business, taken on new challenges, been presented with incredible opportunities, and learnt amazing things about what I’m capable of achieving. My creativity has taken on a life of its own because I’ve begun to understand that the moment I’m presented with a challenge or a new idea my mind begins the process of turning over concepts and possibilities and images, which ultimately (and sometimes in an almighty rush) spill out on the page, canvas or to whomever I’m speaking to.
I know that the same process works even when I create the challenge myself, hence sometimes booking the space for a workshop I haven’t yet written, offering to write a series of articles when I haven’t a clue what they might be about, or beginning work with a client when I don’t know how the process will unfold, simply trusting that what needs to come up and be resolved will do, and that I will know in that moment the best way to support and challenge them to create change.
However, being able to circumnavigate fear does not mean (for me anyway), that it disappears. Keeping myself so busy means that it usually comes in a rush, a wave that trips me up, takes my breath away and lands me in a sodden heap on the sofa. So I’ve decided to make peace with it. Stay in my pyjamas until it passes. All of this because I know through experience that these periods of paralysis always precede an epiphany of intense creativity and focus when everything begins to make sense again. And that is what happened today.
New Year’s resolutions for me follow an artificial calendar- based perception of reality, which implies that change only happens once a year. If we follow our natural processes, begin to understand and respect the natural rhythms of our creativity we enable true flow to happen. And if occasionally the flow dries up we understand this as a natural stage in the process, and can wait for change without berating ourselves or feeling in any way inadequate.
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