Doodle Reflection: Just Holding on for the Creative Journey!

Creative Journeys are special entities. They love to grow and move. They love to evolve and re-create themselves. As the creator, we are along for the ride!

Sometimes this is a really fun ride. The ideas are flowing, the work is emerging, the people are loving it, and we are on cloud nine.

Sometimes it is a really scary ride. We took a surprise turn, the work is requiring us to take risks, we feel exposed and vulnerable and uncertain of our abilities.

Always it is a very alive ride! It is the ride of being human, of having multi-sensory experiences, of crazy connective conversations, of continuing to know oneself in ever deeper, more meaningful ways.

In order to always be up for this journey, I have a few practices that keep me grounded no matter what gets uprooted.

I have my contemplative practice that helps me to be still and reflect. I have my inspirational practice that constantly feeds my hungry soul and invites the muse. And I have my movement practice that keeps me embodied on the earth and learning from the wisdom in my bones.

What are the practices that allow you to grab onto your creativity and ride it? What new practices might you need?

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The creative journey that is Studio Light Illustration also continues to evolve and create/re-create itself!  Born from creative coaching, the apprenticeship program, doodle-shops, and the desire that so many of us have as creatives to be in community with each other, is the Creative Community Circle. Click here to learn more and find the links to our free Launch and Tour events!

Getting to the Heart of It

As I was guided to check in with the heart of my creative business today, its heart showed up as a child. She asked me to remember the most powerful lesson I learned as a teacher which is that the child needs to lead the way. Children are to be enjoyed and their aliveness is to be protected. My job as the teacher is to nurture this aliveness as I guide them.

Reflecting on this in terms of my creativity and my business, I started seeing how easy it was to be a drill sergeant. “I need this result and I need it done in this way and I need it to happen now!” No wonder some days I just feel tired. Demanding things is exhausting and I miss all the good, juicy stuff that creating things has to offer.

On the days where I approach my work with more curiosity, more openness to what it wants to show me in the moment as I hold the long-term vision, the energy is electric, the ideas are plentiful, things seem to happen all by themselves. Work becomes a playful adventure with fun surprises at every turn.

So, as you engage with your day, take a minute to breathe. Check in with the heart of what it is your are doing - your art, your business, your work - and see what it has to say today. How can you put what you hear into practice?

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Let’s keep growing creatively together! We are excited to announce our new Creative Community Circle membership for busy creatives who don’t want to be alone in the process of finding creative joy and satisfaction. This membership will be open for new members Sept 1 - Oct 31, 2020! But before you enroll, you can learn more at our CCC Launch Celebration and Tour events which are free, fun, and informative.

Doodle Reflection: How Much Are You Being?

How much are you doing?

It’s such a competition out there. It goes a little something like this:

“I have to take the dog for a walk.”

“Well, I have to take my dog for a 5 mile run while answering emails and practicing my breath work!”

Even meditation and mindfulness are added to the to-do list and multi-tasked away! Our value, our worth seems to hinge on all of our doings.

I certainly get caught up riding the doing-ness train right alongside everyone else. And sometimes this leads to major blocks to my creativity and joy.

Just this morning, I found myself scrolling on Instagram wondering why some people have so many more followers than me. I started spinning in what I could do and getting a little upset that what I have done hasn’t really paid off. And a voice said, “Step off the doing-ness train.”

I shot back, “But this is what people DO!”

And the voice said, “But in this moment it is not supporting who you want to BE.”

Sigh. Yes. I’m once again too focused on how much I am doing instead of asking myself, “How much am I BEING?”

Well, today, I want to be creative. I want to be joyful. I want to be kind to myself and others. I want to be inspired. I want to be rooted in my vision.

When I make this tiny shift, when I take a tiny moment to think about my being, I am reminded of what is truly satisfying and enlivening in life.

It feels like a much softer place to land. I feel my stress filter though the clouds, leaving me free and open to explore and intentionally build the creative path I am on, centered by my BEING.

How much are you being today?

If finding and removing blocks along your creative path is important to you, you will be excited to know that in September we will be launching a creative community that you can join! It will provide regular community interaction, creativity jump-starts, and lots of tools to help you on your creative journey. Stay tuned!

Cultivating Presence in an Increasingly Digital World

Reflection and Artwork by Sebila Kratovac

Working on the land in New Mexico, planting, watering, caring for plants, taking time to notice all the creatures, colors, and shapes around me, must have been the first time in my adult life where I felt completely present. I was more in tune with my needs, I ate food that I planted, I gazed at the stars every night, and I woke up at sunrise for meditation, yoga, and birdsong. For most of us, these moment of enjoyment and presence are rare, and we are conditioned to feel guilty when we aren’t fully participating in the demands of the society. It is not necessarily realistic for most of us to leave the lives we know and go live on a farm but there are many small changes we can make to feel the joy of connecting with others and nature. I was inspired to write about presence when listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Design Matters with Debbie Millman. In an episode with filmmaker and author Tiffany Shlain, Tiffany and Debbie discuss how simple changes in our lifestyles can make a huge difference in the quality and enjoyment of our lives. These changes can help us be more creative, enjoy other people’s company, be more productive, deal better with fear and anxiety, and become greater manifestors.

Children in today’s age grow up with cellphones and screens, and have little time connecting eye-to-eye with other children and even their parents. Most people work a job where they are at the computer most of the day and this doesn’t stop after they go home. Tiffany’s biggest epiphany on her journey to more presence was giving up all screen time on Sundays, a journey that her whole family embarked on. She talks about feeling as if she was resuscitated – everything became more real and enjoyable, and her relationship with her husband and kids became stronger and more intimate. I never thought about how I have been impacted by being on my computer every day for hours until I remembered my time working on a farm in New Mexico. An extension to this advice is to go back to the analog way of doing things at least for some part of our day. For example, use a watch instead of checking time on your phone. You can read a physical book, draw or pain using physical art supplies and paper, write a letter with pen and paper to someone, get a landline so that you don’t have to depend on cellphone towers, burn candles instead of having artificial lights on, or ride a bike instead of driving a car.

Journaling, writing by hand to transmit thoughts onto a page, is another great tool for staying present. Writing can also be seen as a form of meditation, a way to become conscious of what is hiding in our subconscious mind and to be present with our thoughts, desires, and needs. The more we get to know who we are, the more we can manifest what we desire in our lives. Another form of meditation that I particularly love is walking. I prefer walking in nature but walking anywhere helps me ground and relax while noticing everything around me and feeling each step I take. If I am in a forest or garden, I can also connect to the energy of peace and beauty of nature and embody these qualities. I also love petting my cat Poey, looking into his eyes and imagining my energy going to my heart center. This heart centering exercise is hard for me but I keep practicing it because I know that being in my head makes me anxious and reactive. If I am unable to take a walk, I try to sit in silence and do nothing for a little while. This can turn into a meditation session, but it doesn’t have to be so structured. I also love sitting still when I am in nature and listening to all the organic sounds which are, to me, just as healing as silence.

When was the last time you really connected with someone without a phone or other distractions? When I moved to the US, one of the biggest culture shocks I experienced was that people didn’t take time to talk and get to know each other. Meeting up with people was always about doing an activity or having a short coffee break or meal. To me, these interactions felt so cold and superficial that it was very hard for me to make good friends and deep lasting connections. I am a great supporter of the art of listening deeply to one another, having empathy, and showing our vulnerable self and I hope that deep relationships will make a come-back in the Western society. I think that our priorities would have to change from prioritizing work, technology, and how to get ahead to investing more time in high-quality lasting connections and taking time for leisure and hobbies.

Another one of my favorite ways to cultivate presence is to move my body. Walking in nature is a no-brainer for me but so is dance, yoga, tai chi, pilates, and other forms of exercise. We all have different preferences, but as long as we can move in some way to oxygenate our blood and move energy throughout the body, we can be more aware of how our body feels, of our boundaries, how we show up in the world, and how we engage with life. Noticing how our body feels is an important element of an incredible meditation technique called Vipassana. In Vipassana, the meditators scan their body to notice any sensations that each part of the body holds. If there is any pain or discomfort, the ideas is to stay with the feeling until it vanishes. This meditation method also shows us that we experience emotions and sensations inside each moment and that these experiences are of temporary nature. If we can live presently through these uncomfortable feelings, we can live more aware, healthier, and purposeful lives.

For me, presence comes down to feeling good in my own skin - embodied, grounded, integrated. I am also practicing what it feels like connecting from the heart with others and the environment around me. This concept may seem a bit too abstract but it is very important because connection is essential for optimal physical, mental, and emotional health. The fear and anxiety we feel when meeting people is kind of a resistance to presence. We can push through this resistance if we realize that we are otherwise cutting ourselves from our life supply - heart energy we call love. Love, however, isn’t a temporary fix to our problems but something that comes hand-in-hand with healing the parts of us that make us feel empty inside. Love, to me, means wholeness, vitality, and unstoppable creativity. We all have this capability inside us that is waiting to be nourished and expressed.

On this episode Debbie talks to Tiffany Shlain about cell phones have taken over our lives.

Lessons in Stumbling on a Creative Path

Reflection and Artwork by Sebila Kratovac

My confidence as an artist and my self-worth as a human being has been tested many times in my life but a memory from my eleventh-grade art class comes to mind very vividly. In high school, art classes were my only refuge from feeling like an alien in the American Deep South. I loved drawing, painting, and sculpting and remember only feeling joyful in art classes. In this particular art class however, I had a teacher who very much disliked my art. Despite not being supported by this teacher, I decided to enter a high school art competition that year. The teacher was shocked and displeased when my painting received an honorable mention. This happened to me again in graduate school for science, where I was discouraged and unsupported by my “advisors” but I still continued to go forward and eventually got great feedback from other people who were more receptive to what I was trying to do.

So many of us hear our calling to create – an urge which is deeply connected to our joy and soul purpose. It can be heartbreaking to discover that others don’t recognize our great potential and passion for what we want to do. In a recent episode of her podcast Magic Lessons called "Who Gets To Decide Whether You're A Legitimate Artist?", Elizabeth Gilbert interviews Cecilia, a young poet whose love for poetry was tested when she tried to apply for MFA programs in poetry. Despite writing poetry from youth and loving the process, Cecilia stopped writing after all the schools she applied to didn’t admit her. She felt absolutely crushed and conflicted because she saw herself as a talented poet while the “experts” didn’t feel the same way. How was she to trust herself ever again? Luckily, Gilbert, a writer of the beloved book Eat, Pray, Love, who went through her fair share of criticism, gave Cecilia some great advice on how to continue committing to her craft.

First, Gilbert compassionately reminded the young poet that she doesn’t need anyone’s permission to do what she loves – no teacher, no “expert”, no parents, no friends, no one but herself. She gave Cecilia an assignment to create her own diploma so that she can give herself permission to continue writing poetry and to think of herself as a poet. To me, the handmade diploma is a symbol for our faith in ourselves and commitment to staying true to what lights us up. Many now-famous artists and writers have had to overcome ridicule and constant rejections. Gilbert’s second guest, poet and spiritual adviser Mark Depo, gives a striking example of the celebrated American author Herman Melville. When Melville presented his book Moby Dick to the world, he was laughed at, shamed, and banished from his writing community. Melville even stopped writing for a while. Today, Moby Dick is considered by many as a masterpiece and one of the greatest books of all time. The impressionistic painter Vincent van Gogh found himself in a very similar situation. Despite being rejected by his peers and never selling a painting in his lifetime, he continued to paint passionately until his death. Nowadays, he is one of the most revered and loved painters because people from all walks of life recognize something very special about his art. No critic can take the magic away from what he created. Gilbert goes on to highlight the importance of looking into history to feel that we are a part of a larger and timeless network of creative people that went through the same struggles but persevered.

In essence, the experience we go through when we are rejected is a path of self-acceptance and of living a life we desire despite all outside forces telling us otherwise. The final advice that Gilbert gives Cecilia is to focus on writing her poetry without the pressure of putting her work out there for one full year. This advice may seem counter-intuitive or even crazy but when we are not pressured to put out artwork that gets likes on social media or approval from critics, we finally may be able to let go of resistance enough to start creating what we want. Even seeing that we are more productive can improve our self-esteem. The bonus comes when we realize that we have accomplished what we never thought we could and that we created work we are really proud of. From this empowered state, putting our work out there when we are ready might not feel as scary since our worth would no longer be tied to what others say about our art. In Cecilia’s case, there are many reasons why she wasn’t admitted into graduate school including that it just wasn’t the right time for her. She could have been scared to send in her most-cherished poems because of her need to fit in. Now that she can have time and space to work on her poetry and strengthen her confidence, she may not even feel compelled to go to graduate school after all. Situations that to us seem crushing, can teach us to believe in our own worth and to project this confidence into the world, releasing our dependence on the outside world to tell us who we should be.

I wonder what compelled me to defy my art teacher and believe in myself enough to enter the high school art competition. Maybe it was my rebellious nature which loves to prove wrong those who think that there is the right way to create art, or possibly my intuitive knowing that art is my calling, that gave me the courage to stand up for myself. The golden thread that I see running through Cecilia’s and my own life experience is the necessity to stick to doing what we love and what sounds true to us. Through committing to our truth, we can develop unshakable confidence, even if it is at first a symptom of our defiance. As we embody confidence, we can attract other people to us who truly appreciate what we do. We are then supported for who we are, not for what others expect from us. I am reminded of one of my favorite artists, Kate Bush, who decided to introduce herself to the world with the song Wuthering Heights. Everyone in the music industry said that the song would end her career before it started. She could have debuted with a pop song but she knew that she wouldn’t be speaking to an audience that would support her authentic self. Wuthering Heights, as strange and alien as it was to untrained ears used to pop music, became Bush’s most iconic song and inspired many artists in the 80s and beyond to embrace the unusual.

Capacity: A Doodle Reflection

I have been listening to wonderful teachings on Capacity by Mark Silver. This image came to mind along with the following questions:

- Why is it that thinking I have a much larger capacity blocks out the sky and leaves little room for anything else?

-What if looking at myself as unlimited isn't inspirational, but harmful?

-What if thinking of myself as unlimited has really limited me by dispersing and depleting my energy, affecting my ability to be in something for the long haul?

-What happens when I fully accept my limited capacity?

-How does that change where I put my energy, what I say yes to, what I say no to?

-How could this help me to be clear on my role in my personal relationships, business, activism, everything?

-How does this help me rest?

-Could it be that accepting my limited capacity can bring about the clarity of focus that results in doing more than I ever imagined?

- What could accepting our limited capacity as a culture do for us in terms of being able to sustain movements that require our energy for a long period in order to bring about transformation?

What are your thoughts/struggles/questions/celebrations with capacity?

Where We Stand: Black Lives Matter

A small sixth grade boy in a moment of defiance against me woke me up to my privilege. He woke me up to the fact that just because I had genuine love in my heart for all my students, it didn't mean I was anti-racist.

So I shut up and sat down.

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I threw out my lesson plan and listened to my students (99% black) tell their stories that day. That is the day my education truly began and I understood I was there to be taught more than teach.

This experience along with many, many more have brought me to a place of standing unequivocally behind Black Lives Matter. Studio Light Illustration is committed to shining the light of awareness on that what needs to be seen in order to create a future in which all beings and the earth thrive. We do this with ourselves, we do this with individuals that we serve, and we do it with the world. We may do it imperfectly, but we are committed to the growth and learning that is required to eliminate an oppressive culture in which black people and many others have endured the brunt of violence and cruelty.

As we travel down this road, here are guiding questions that come to mind:

- How do I stay curious with an open mind and an open heart to cultivate deeper understanding and connection?

- How do I share so that others can receive what I have to say?

- How do I take care of myself so I can keep showing up even when I am afraid and uncomfortable?

- How do I do the work to unpack my own emotional baggage so I don't put that burden on someone else?

- How do I do the work imperfectly and have the humility to learn instead of needing to be right or have it all figured out?

- How do I discover and use my own unique gifts so I can feel the light of my purpose even in the darkest of circumstances?

What are your questions?