Breaking Rules like an Artist
This quote jumped out at me this week after watching a video of another creative entrepreneur talking about how her business is thriving because she made up her own rules.
And it got me reflecting on where I'm still insisting on following rules made by someone else instead of allowing my Inner Artist to break them and make my own.
Rules are part of our everyday existence, and many may in fact be necessary, but many more are not. Most are absorbed subconsciously through childhood and adolescence, and we're not often taught that actually, especially as adults, we can make our own rules and choose which ones to follow because they make sense and feel good to us!
This very act of identifying and questioning the rules that govern our lives and creative endeavors can do wonders to release the stoppers on creative flow. In fact, breaking the rules is often what leads to massive innovation. Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, anyone?!
So I invite you today to try this exercise and identify and re-evaluate the rules that may need to be broken so you can create like the artist you are:
I would love to _____________ but I can't because _____________________. List as many reasons as you can.
For each of the 'becauses' ask:
Is that absolutely true?
How does it feel to create or live when I follow this reason/rule?
Am I willing to release it or create a different version?
If I could make up any rules I wanted for my art/business/life, what would they be?
How would it feel to follow these rules?
It's your choice!
We spend our lives absorbing rules and following them so we can have pleased parents, teachers, and others, perhaps get good grades or get ahead. But there comes a time when those rules stop working for us - if they ever did, when the guidelines we've been given aren't producing the desired results, when it's time to create for ourselves and move forward in deep integrity and alignment with our own souls.
May you discover your own rules and set your artist free this holiday season!
If you'd like to go even deeper in creating your life and art with integrity and alignment, check out my mentor Martha Beck's Integrity Cleanse! I went through it a couple years ago and it produced dramatic results in healing some deep wounds in relationships and helping me identify what rules I want to continue to follow, and which ones I don't. It's a powerful way to end the year and a potent gift for yourself or a loved one!
