Living A Balanced Day – An Artists Journey To Life: Day 823

Today on my drive to work I began opening up the word “weak”.

I have noticed now for a couple weeks or even longer that there has been this background noise experience within myself as a form of weakness and tiredness when it comes to my general experience of myself.

One dimension of this that I am seeing here is that I was spreading myself thin and not living a more balanced life when it comes to the activities in my life.

For the past few months I have been pushing 2 different expressions when it comes to my art. This past weekend this process came to a head where I essentially decided to rather than continue focusing so much on both, to now just more focus on one.

An interesting side affect of this is this blog. Because normally when I would get home from my day doing one art expression, I would begin preparing for and going into the other art expression.

And so most of my focus was on doing art and I wouldn’t really get to doing much of anything else like for instance taking an evening and sitting down with myself and writing a blog.

What I am seeing is that within pursuing two art expressions, that I created within myself a form of anxiety as a ‘chasing experience’ in that I was feeling like I wasn’t moving both points effectively and so often felt incomplete at the end of each day.

Its interesting through as I am only seeing this now because I have noticed yesterday and today when I got home from a day of work in the carving studio that I experience myself as much more calm where before I would just feel the urgency to jump into my second art expression and so ended up creating a rushed and anxious experience within myself and as I am writing this I am also seeing how this would contribute to that tired/weak experience I referenced at the beginning of this blog.

This brings up an interesting question about balance and how to create balance in ones life through the activities one does each day

Because yes, I have been productive in recent months while I was pushing to do both art expressions, however was this ‘productivity’ actually a compromise of self and creating more havoc in myself and life than contributing to it.

So here I can redefine the word ‘Productivity’ to include a kind of balance of activities where I give to myself all that I need, and not just try and push one point all the time as much as possible while neglecting other aspects of myself and my life because ultimately one ends up tired, stressed, and anxious like I found myself.

To be productive may not mean just doing one thing all the time full-out as much as possible, but rather should include Balance, like eating a balanced meal where the body requires a balanced intake of different foods to get the sustenance it requires.

So I am now looking at Productivity in this way to include balance (Like a balanced meal) and to create that point of completion where one actually feels fulfilled and complete, instead of how I was feeling at the end of each day which was “I never did enough” and so felt stressed and anxious and actually incomplete.

So here ‘Productivity’ is not about getting a lot done but getting the right stuff done in a balanced way to cultivate that point of completion each day. Excess is not productive because then you do more of one thing and compromise other aspects of yourself and life.

So, is your day balanced and complete like a complete meal leading to fulfilment.

Or are you just all potatoes.

Links I follow

https://eqafe.com/ – Understanding Everything

https://www.patreon.com/earthhaven/overview – One World Solution

https://www.patreon.com/mindbodyinnerverse/overview – Understanding Self

 

 

 

Advertisements

Why do Some Projects Flow and Others Die. – An Artists Journey To Life: Day 822

My life at this stage centers very much around….I want to say ‘creating art’ but in fact it is centered around ‘making money’ where ‘creating art’ becomes more of a by-product of making money.

Recently I was met with some challenges regarding this expression of creating art where it so closely is intertwined with making money that it is sometimes difficult to see myself in the expression.

My recent challenge was in regards to my starting point within this process of creating and selling art where through the years I have tested various starting points within doing this with some being more based on a purer self expression where I created the art for me and put the idea of selling it as unimportant, to others based more deliberately on creating something that I think someone will buy and then also trying everything in between these two polarities and within these different starting points observing the feedback as monetary return as well as the intrinsic fulfillment I receive through creating art from various starting points where some art forms die out very quickly and gain almost no momentum where some flow more naturally and are able to be sustained longer.

So the question I am bringing here today.

Why do some expressions flow and grow and others do not?

Why do some ideas that I think are great never get anywhere are fizzle out where other ideas that I think are great flow more naturally and seem to ‘connect more’ with what is here and therefore are sustained more.

Sometimes it seems like the ideas I have or projects i start connect with my reality more effectively and so are sustained more easily where others struggle to connect anywhere and so then just die out.

I look at it like planting a seed.

Some seeds or small plants for whatever reasons just don’t ‘catch’ they just can’t seem to integrate with the environment around them and so they just die off before they even get going. Others are planted and ‘take-off’ where it seems to be the prefect relationship of seed/plant and surrounding environment where everything kind of lines up and the plant is nurtured into its full potential. I also suspect that the plant/seed itself plays a large role in its own survival where if it is defective in some way that this would affect its ability to do what it is supposed to do to connect with its environment and grow.

 

Opening the Gifts of Everyday Life – An Artists Journey To Life: Day 821

Opening Up A Moment.

What does it mean to open up a moment and get the most out of a moment?

This is the question and process I will be exploring in this blog to assist and support myself to substantiate a recent realization that came through with regards to how I can practice and refine my Living Expression so I can get the most out of myself, my life and what is here.

 

And this a Key – ‘What is HERE’

 

I find that I have the tendency to overlook what is right here as my life and to also Judge what is here where I judge my life and how it is, and what I have, my environment, my job, my relationships, my hobbies, my routines, ect. I judge everything seeing and thinking it is just not good enough, that ‘there is nothing there’ that it is boring, that its wrong, or broken, or not enough, and then I go through each day and it becomes a struggle in a way.

 

When I do this, I start looking ‘out there’ I start looking at and desiring something else, something more, something better.

 

My question is however…

 

When I do this, when I judge myself and my life in this way, am I preventing myself from seeing what is really here and so preventing myself from receiving the gifts of everyday normal life.

 

This has been a shift that I have been practicing of late.

 

Receiving the Gifts of Everyday Ordinary Life.

Essentially, extracting the fruit of the moment.

 

Though I have been practicing this process, I’d say at this stage that this entire process or concept is largely a Realization that I have still to actualize and Live and Express for real within my life, though I have began this process and have began settling down more in day to day life.

 

So lately I have been practicing Focusing on What is HERE in the moment to moment of my life. It makes a lot of sense to do this, and that instead of trying to go out and find a new life or new relationships, to actually FOCUS ON WHAT IS HERE as the Relationships, Points, and Processes that I am already engaged in and look at where I am not getting the most out of the Life that I have already created for myself.

 

And to dig into the moments more.

I see I can bee more engaged in the relationships that already are here but that I have kind of not tended to or participated in.

 

That is not to say that I shouldn’t go ahead and open up new relationships or points or processes. Its more a point of embracing what is already here to its Fullest instead of resisting it, judging it, and pushing it away.

 

So this has to do with realizing the Gifts of Everyday Life, where now I can redirect my focus to HERE and to getting the most out of each moment instead of thinking I need this great grand life or experience to have fulfillment, and to rather Extract from the Ordinary to create the Extraordinary from what is simply here.

 

For me I have had a tendency to expect the worst and to assume that I am messing everything up and that my life is falling apart because there is something not right or there is something I am doing wrong. So this is another point I see is important for me to adjust within myself and for me to rather Embrace the Successes in my life. This is something else I have been working with. I have been working on Celebrating my life more. And Honoring what I have created as my life at the moment. And practicing letting go of that paranoid anxiety that I sometimes allow to take me over to the point where I end up living in fear that everything is all wrong and will fall apart.

 

This Is also connected to Slowing Down which is the Words that I am utilizing to support in this process of stepping out of my anxious paranoia that I am somehow fucking everything up, and to rather embrace and acknowledging my Life and what I have created, allowing myself to See the Good also, instead of always just seeing and focusing on the bad.

 

So moving forward my direction will be to embrace what is here, embrace the moment, embrace the ordinary and to open up the moment, open up the ordinary and see what is here. This way I don’t have to go out and try and find some miraculous moment or over the top experience to experience some sense of fun and fulfillment within myself, but to rather work with what is already here in every moment which is actually quite cool because it takes the pressure off where I can now Look into the Ordinary and uncover the Gifts and Gems of Everyday Life and acknowledge and Explore this Potential that Everyday Life is a Treasure to Behold.

Using Self Forgiveness to See and Understand Me – An Artists Journey To Life: Day 820

Today when I woke up I experienced a resistance to getting out of bed mixed with a depression energy. I decided that I would speak some Self Forgiveness on my drive to work and see if I could open up within me what this experience was all about as it has become something of a familiar experience recently in the mornings, particularly when I work.

Initially when I started speaking Self Forgiveness I wasn’t really seeing anything specific and the Self Forgiveness seemed routine and the same ol’ points. However I decided to continue speaking the self forgiveness and after a few minutes I started hitting on points that were more specific and I began seeing and understanding my experience, or at least understanding the point that I was seeing in that moment about my relationship to my own inner experiences and my relationship to my work.

One of the main dimensions that I was seeing within me in relation to my work was that I was stuck in a kind of perpetual blame cycle towards my job where I had at some point decided that “it was my jobs fault” that “its my job that is causing and creating my experience”, “it was my jobs fault that my life is the way it is”

So within the Self Forgiveness I came to understand that I was making my job “more than” me, blaming my job for my current experience and so me not Standing as THEE point within myself as the Source of who I am and my experiences, rather I was in a point of allowing myself to say that it was my job that was the main thing, that “I” was doing everything right and nothing wrong and  that it was my job that was causing and creating my experience, and if my job would just change or be different, then I could go back to an experience that I would prefer, in other words, I was effectively disempowering myself.

So yes, totally giving my power and my responsibility away to this external point within my reality. So the speaking of Self Forgiveness really supported me to see what I have been accepting and allowing of myself in relation to this aspect of my job and I also saw that, how could I reap the fruits that I desire or want from my job if I am constantly blaming and judging and angry towards my job?

That is like having a child and wanting to have a deep, fun, and enjoyable relationship with the child but then raising that child through blaming it, judging it, criticizing it, being angry at it, ect… eventually you are going to create a resentment within the child towards you so in essence,

How can I create the success I am wanting with my job if I am in direct conflict with the very thing I am wanting to support this end. It’s a contradiction. So this was an interesting dynamic to see in the my relationship with my job and realizing here that It’s up to ME to establish a more effective supportive relationship with this particular part of my job that I was in conflict with, beginning with stopping that relationship where I was giving all my power away through blame, by saying “its your fault” so rather, now accepting, and realizing, I am the ONE, I am the SOURCE of my experience and I am the SOURCE of the relationship I create towards, with, as my job and so I must start working with my experience, like that experience I have of resistance and depression in the mornings that I seem to wake up with where for instance if I see this experience coming up again, I know that its connected to and based on the points of blame and abdication of my Self Responsibility in relation to my job and so can support myself to change this through for example, speaking some self forgiveness  and correct myself in those moments and Direct Myself to Stand as the  SOLE Creator of experience and so 100% responsible for them and my relationships that exist as me within my life.

So now going forwards after seeing this today, I am now going to practice identifying that ‘blame signature’ of this particular experience that has been coming through lately so that I can make sure to ALIGN myself according to Supporting myself and Standing as SELF RESPONSIBLE for Myself and my Experience and my Relationship to my Job so that  I can stop and change this experience and see how I can support myself to change my relationship to/within my job so that it is Supportive!

 

DIP Lite – Free Online Course to get you started with learning the Tools of Self Support
DIP PRO -A Desteni Course for those Ready to Walk the Journey of a Lifetime
SOUL –  The School of Ultimate Living is an online community of people interested in
discovering and developing their utmost potential
eqafe.com – Invest in a wide range of Interviews and Support yourself to Self Perfection
Journey To Life Blogs – Read the blogs from those walking the 7 year journey to life.
Self and Living – Practical Living Support To Live to Your Utmost Potential

Forgetting To SEE MYSELF in my Passions – An Artists Journey To Life: Day 819

I thought I would take a moment and sit down here to do some writing and share what I have been up to lately. I have recently started putting more time towards developing some acrylic paintings. Most or much of my focus these days goes towards developing my art business. So a big point for me that I have been walking for some time is the relationship between Art and Money. But this could also be understood as the relationship between ones passions and making money with ones passions. I am not sure how rare my situation is but I decided that I would pursue creating and selling art, essentially my passion, as how I would make my primary income and it has been an interesting journey. For the first 10 years after I graduated art school and begun pursuing my passion of creating art and turning that into my career, I never really sold much art and just found other ways to make money. My approach back then was simply to create art and frankly I never made art to sell. In fact I believed that if I was making art to sell then I would be a Sell Out and so I steered clear of that and went for a kind of purity (or so I believed) of just expressing myself and not bothering to worry about if it sold or not, though, I actually did want it to sell and I did want to make money off of it. Although during that time, even though I wasn’t really creating art with the mindset of making it to sell, I did still have external influences from the perspective of I did want other people to like what I was doing, they didn’t have to buy it, they just had to like it. But that is whole other point for a different blog.

After a time away from doing art as my primary focus I got back into it about 4 or 5 years ago and this time I ended up in a situation where I was making it and selling it and surviving off of it. Though the art I was making you could say was more geared towards a particular market or aesthetic preference that wasn’t necessarily my personal preference. And this has been quite a challenge for me to essentially take a subject or style that is not necessarily ‘my preference’ and then to find myself in it, to, Make it My Own so to speak.

I will also add here that “My Preference” is definitely something I am still getting to know and so am willing to do things that I believe are not my preference to actually investigate them deeply and see if I can connect to it on some level because honestly “my preference” I realize has been greatly influenced, directed, impulsed by my culture, parents, peers, society, ect, so I have am definitely willing to challenge “my preference” and to make actually walk that process of really understanding what it means to get to know Myself on a deep level and understand what I do really personally like and enjoy and make sure this  is not just something that someone told me I like or I thought I was supposed to like it because everyone else did. Okay back to my point…

Over time and more so lately I have begun putting more time into painting and developing this more marketable line of work. And the question I have been walking and attempting to find the balance within is, that line between creating art to sell, that is marketable, and creating art for me where I can add my personal touch and take the art in directions that is more about my personal self expression and making sure that in the end the artwork contains depth and substance, than just making something to sell.

Okay going to add some Self Forgiveness Here.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear what other people will think about me if I create art that is marketable.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not consider that one can make marketable art that still has depth, substance, and quality.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be distracted or dissuaded by my fears in a way where I don’t give myself the opportunity to test the theory of creating art that is marketable but also still has ME and My personal touch on it where I can create the depth, quality, and substance that I would like to.

I commit myself to assist and support myself to develop a style that is both marketable as well as having substance, quality, and depth to it so I can be proud and happy with the work I create.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define myself as a sell-out if I create art that is marketable.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to allow my fears to get the best of me where I will stop before even giving myself the chance to explore various ways of creating the Depth that I would like into my art while at the same time having it be something marketable and sellable.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to go into EGO within thinking “I am too good” to make art that sells, meaning where I essentially believe and have also judged others as “Just making art to sell” and believing that this compromises the artistic integrity within the art.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want my art to be good and fear diluting it through its relationship with money, but then not take this point BACK TO SELF and consider how HOW I LIVE and WHO I AM in my daily life within and without is for instance compromised by money or ultimately where I am actually compromising Myself and my own Quality and Substance by allowing myself to live in ways that is not best for me, but then divert my attention off of myself and just obsess about my art when the Real point here Should be about WHO I AM for real in real life because Who I am is what really matters.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear other people knowing that I am making art that is marketable because I fear they will lose respect for me and they will stop respecting the art I make.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear that people think I am selling out.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear what other people think about me when what other people think about me is Not who I actually am, and who I actually am is what really matters and that is something that I Live and Walk and Express day by day and I am essentially the Gatekeeper of Who I am and am Responsible for who I am and must answer to myself with regards to what I accept and allow of and as myself and so I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to forget that Who I am and How I live moment to moment is really What Matters in this world

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to get caught up in the surface dimension of worrying what other people think about my art and if they think I am selling out when this is like an irrational fear that is actually removed from who I am and what I live in real physical substance day to day and moment to moment.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to influenced and directed by fear energy and anxiety energy in relation to what I thought or think people think about my art.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to focus too much on what my art looks like where it becomes a form of obsession where in I forget about ME and Taking Care of Myself and Working on points within myself to assist and support me to become and live to my utmost potential.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to obsess over my art and if other people will like it, and end up neglecting Myself and Working with myself in a process of Self Creation to become a Self that I am Satisfied and Happy with.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to ignore working on my inner reality through regular Self Writing and Self Forgiveness as a point of actually supporting myself to Correct, Change, and Transform those parts of myself that I see are not what they could be or are supporting me within my utmost potential. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to forget to work on these aspects of self, and just focus all of my attention outside of myself into my art, and art business.

I commit myself to LIVE HERE, and to when and as I see myself going into that dimension of obsessing about what others might think about my art, to stop and take and in breath, and within the exhale, I slow myself down and bring myself back to the moment and back to here and realize that what Really Matters is WHO I AM and that when I start worrying about what other people think about my art and how that reflects on me, I realize that here I am actually OFF POINT and so I bring myself back to THEE POINT which is ME and Self and Who I am within myself and How I am LIVING moment to moment and I commit myself to assist and support myself to place my attention HERE onto me and to assist and support myself to work on Myself and What Really Matters which is Who I am in each and every moment, So that I can stand and face myself and look myself in the Eye, and know that I am Living my Best Self and be actually truly Satisfied and Content with myself, and Love Myself.

Okay so the point that is actually coming through here, which I was thinking that this blog would be about anyways, is not so much about the relationship between ones passions and making money with ones passions, but rather when ones Passions become more important than SELF. Because I have been noticing this with myself lately where although I have been investing more time into my art which is cool, though, I have in a slight way have been neglecting the most important point which is ME and just working with myself on that Inner Deep level in a way where I am supporting ME within my Process of Personal Self Creation and Transformation and basically just working on WHO I AM in each and every breath.

A New Dimension of SUCCESS – An Artists Journey To Life: Day 818

I recently started reading a book written about Jack Ma and the creation of Alibaba which is one of the worlds largest online marketplaces. In reading about Jack and his enterprise I came across a couple examples of Ma’s definition of Success that I found to be very grounded, practical, and livable by anyone where he really took that point of success and boiled it down into something tangible, and accessible to everyone.

What I find interesting is that I have been deliberately working with the process of Re-defining and Living Words, and here this man actually did exactly this by coming up with his personal definition of Success that he could live and apply in his world in a way that supported him.

In the book, Ma defined it as follows,

“Success lies not in how much you have accomplished, but in the fact that you have done something, experienced the process, and begun to learn something”

What I like about this definition is it emphasizes not an outcome of good or bad, success or failure, but of THE ACT, the point of taking action and actually doing something – That is the success, the fact that you got off your but and applied yourself.

For me, I have been slowly starting to develop a new body of artwork and so I really relate to this definition of success because for me the most difficult part often is just getting up and DOING SOMETHING, or motivating myself to sit down in front of my canvas and start painting. Where that very action IS the success, not the outcome, but the ACT.

So here I see for myself that to be more successful requires me to take more action. On paper it looks easy, though I do understand that applying and living this definition of success may bring up other dimensions for me to consider and work out.

Okay that’s the point I wanted to Share!

 

DIP Lite – Free Online Course to get you started with learning the Tools of Self Support
DIP PRO -A Desteni Course for those Ready to Walk the Journey of a Lifetime
SOUL –  The School of Ultimate Living is an online community of people interested in
discovering and developing their utmost potential
eqafe.com – Invest in a wide range of Interviews and Support yourself to Self Perfection
Journey To Life Blogs – Read the blogs from those walking the 7 year journey to life.
Self and Living – Practical Living Support To Live to Your Utmost Potential

Living the Word ‘NURTURE’ – An Artists Journey To Life – Day 817

 

Today marks one week since I began re-defining and living the word ‘Nurture’. What I have found with doing this deliberately for the past 7 days is that it has been a process in where various different dimensions of this word and application opened up during the week.

 

My starting point directive with living this word Nurture was for me, to simply stop abusing myself through participating with behaviors and making decisions that I know are not best for me. So initially I kept it very simple because I could see that even through I wasn’t ‘doing anything’ per se, but rather stopping myself from engaging with destructive habits/patterns/addictions, that in itself was for me a point of living this word Nurture, where I was simply giving myself the opportunity to Nurture the Best of Me, to Nurture my potential which I was not allowing of myself through accepting me to engage and participate with addiction behavior patterns that was creating quite a toxic inner experience within myself. So part of my decision to live this word ‘Nurture’ was to support myself to stop creating and living within a toxic inner environment and instead support myself in creating and living within a supportive, Nurturing inner environment.

 

From that initial starting point I then began later in the week looking at and practicing a more ‘active’ application where I began asking myself how I can actually physically, practically Nurture myself and the different points in my environment which is also ME as an extension of me. I also had a new art project that I had started and so I was looking at what it would mean to “Nurture” this new art project which I began doing by simply spending some time actually working on it.

 

I also began focusing on giving more direction to my environment in terms of maintaining my laundry, doing the dishes, making the bed, and just general household tasks where in moments where I wasn’t doing anything I would direct myself to move, even if it was just a little, some of these household tasks. This to me was Living the word Nurture, because I was taking action to creating a supportively functional environment for myself, like having fresh clean clothes, or a cleaner space and meanwhile sticking to my initial starting point of this word Nurture through by not engaging in that which I know actually ends up creating inner frustration, resentments, and hatred within and towards myself which ultimately does not INSPIRE me to make the most of me and my life, and so I do see the importance here of essentially giving myself this base platform of support by stopping my participation in those decisions and activities that really create a lot of inner turmoil within me.

 

Also just to mention here that around 4 or 5 of the 7 days, I would actually sit down with my notebook and go over my process with living the word Nurture in writing, where Id just kind of write out any new points I was seeing and realizations and hang-ups and things like that where writing regularly is definitely a part of me working with opening this word up for myself and developing some direction with it.

 

Last night at the end of the week my partner mentioned a New dimension that I could add to my practicing and applying Living this word ‘Nurture’. She mentioned this dimension of Honoring what I had already created, so meaning where now that I have walked this point for a week. To Living this word Nurture, would also mean to Nurture that which I had already begun birthing into existence as the dimensions of this word which I had begun living and applying the first week.

 

I think of a little chick in an egg where it starts out as just an embryo. Now, the mother doesn’t just get up and walk away after a little while but rather does the due diligence to ensure the embryo can grow into its full potential and eventually hatch from the egg and become a full grown chicken. So this dimension of the word Nurture that was mentioned last night by my partner is that point of not walking away or disregarding what I have started but rather to follow through, to support and nurture the development of the point until it is Solid and full grown.

 

This was a cool point brought up by my partner because I had in the past had the tendency to abandon points that I had begun nurturing and before they grow into something substantial within and as me and my life I just let them go and return back to ‘my old self’ or the old patterns and this case the old destructive habits that end up cultivating self hatred, resentment, and frustration. And so I am seeing here “Follow Through” can be a key here to Living and applying this word Nurture for and as myself.

 

So that is where I am currently with this word Nurture, and will continue to practicing implementing this word as a Living Application into my life so that it just doesn’t disappear like so many things I do or decide to do. I mean, I still have to do it so ultimately I will see how it goes.

 

I mean right now this word after living it for a week, feels like just an embryo just in the very beginning stages of taking shape and becoming something of substance, yet at the same time I recognize that I have actually brought forth this little creation through deliberately making the decision to live this word for this week, and so I see, that there is much I can still do to solidify and strengthen this word/point within myself and my living to support me to really form a new habit or application or way of living so to speak instead of just letting it/myself go and going back to my already pre-established patterns. So I will continue and see what unfolds.