Since my course wound up for summer I have been taking myself on a creative journey. The Artist's Way program was recommended to me by a friend as my next step in my personal growth journey. (I got my results for year one, am relatively happy with them and in the past few weeks I have been offered and accepted a place to do my placement hours - I'll come back to this point at a later date!),
There are two main tools that I have been using each week (I'm on week 5 of the 12 week program this week). Firstly Morning Pages - I have been aware of the benefits of journaling for a long time now but it wasn't really sticking. I kept doing it for a while and then running out of motivation to keep at it. For this program, I write 3 pages of stream of consciousness content every morning. At this time of year I usually wake up at 5am or 5:30am so that's the usual time of day I write my morning pages. So far it's been a bit of a mixed bag of content. If I have something on my mind, I write that down. In the beginning I wrote down my blurts - any doubts or thoughts of a self-deprecating nature and turned them into affirmations. I find I now have very few of these lack of confidence thoughts any more at the 5 week mark. Sometimes my morning pages become a list of things I need to do on a particular day or week. I'm finding I'm procrastinating a lot less and just getting things done since I have been making these to do lists. When I run out of things in my head to write and haven't finished my three pages I focus on what I can see out the window or what I can hear and write about that until the thoughts start flowing again. Personally I am finding massive benefit in the morning pages. I get up and start each day with my mind free of all the clutter that I have put down on the pages. I have not yet reached the point in the program where I go back and re-read my pages, the benefit for now is in writing them not going back over them again and ruminating over their content. Re-reading my pages is still to come.
The second main tool in the Artist's Way Toolbox is the Artist's date - a solo activity once a week where you take your inner artist on a date. So far my Artist's date's have consisted of trips to the range, people watching in a cafe and time spent on water-colour painting and crocheting. I usually do these artist's dates at the weekend.
In addition to the two main tools there are also weekly tasks. Last week I wrote a letter to myself to be read on my 80th birthday and I also wrote a letter to my 8 year old self following the making of a list of things I loved at that age. I told myself things I should have been told at that age but never heard as a child. I explained to myself how the things I loved, my dreams and ambitions would evolve and grow as I grew older and moved into adulthood. It was an extremely worthwhile exercise and one that also nurtured my inner child as well as my inner artist.
Week 4 was reading deprivation week, the artist's way first made it's debut in the 1980's before the days of social media. The aim of reading deprivation week was to minimize distractions, and for me that meant a week long ban on doom scrolling on Facebook, no reading fiction, no tv or radio and keeping social media in general to a minimum. It was a great success! It has made me realize exactly how much of my life I waste doom-scrolling and I think I will try to limit my time on Facebook every day going forward. I would also like to repeat this exercise at Christmas when I have time off work and don't need to check messages for work etc.
I highly recommend The Artist's Way to all, in every walk of life as a personal development tool. I make a promise to myself now to continue on with the morning pages and artist's dates beyond the 12 weeks of the program. It has become a very healthy habit by this point in time and I can see how the benefits will transfer to my life when I start my placement and begin counselling sessions with clients. How can I recommend the benefits of journaling to clients if I am not being authentic in reaping the rewards of it myself!
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