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Raise your hand if you’ve ever failed. (All hands go up).

Now, raise your hand if you’ve ever engineered your own failure. (Is mine the only one raised?)

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In “The Artist’s Way,” Julia Cameron talks about creative failures this way:

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“Creative U-turns are always born from fear–fear of success or fear of failure.”

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Whether we fear falling flat on our faces or actually succeeding beyond our wildest dreams, many of us have undermined our own creative successes. We have chosen to take a u-turn away from our best creative lives.

We have stopped showing up to the page.

We have stopped scheduling time for our drawing classes.

We have ignored the friends who have told us that we have a gift that needs to be developed.

Or, even more undercutting, we have told ourselves that the dreams and creative energy we have should be tucked away in the name of sensibility.

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And when we do this, we erode trust.

Trust in ourselves.

Trust in God.

Trust that we can find our strength, our voice, our ability.

It is trust that helps us to access our power to actually meet and exceed our own expectations.

When we hit a creative u-turn, when we let ourselves down, we have to rebuild that trust to keep going!

Did you know that when you feel frightened or unsafe, your brain specializes in feelings of fear and when you feel safe and loved, your brain specializes in exploration, play and cooperation?

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So how can we rebuild our trust to keep moving forward?

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I want to share an exercise with you that we recently did in my Artist’s Way Alumni Group.

In this exercise, you will be prompted first to reflect through writing and then to respond through movement.

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Think of any upcoming projects, offerings, opportunities, or creative hopes you have and do this exercise.

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Writing Exercise

1) What am I angry about? The goal is to make a list about any anger you have related to the project at hand. Examples could be anything from resentment about being the second artist asked to do a show, to anger at an editor or director who constantly nitpicks your work (Cameron, 159).

2)What am I afraid of? The goal of this question is to identify any and all fears about the project or people connected to it. You might say in this case, “I’m afraid of people not liking my work,” “I’m afraid of not being able to live up to my past projects,” or “I’m afraid that the only reason I got the part was my competitor had a falling out with the director and now everyone will compare me to him.”

3) Have I left anything out? With this question you are supposed to ask yourself if your current issues are all there is. Have you left out any anger or fear that seems inconsequential or trivial? This might be the part where you say “Ok…I am somewhat afraid of seeing that one musician/writer/director/etc. that’s always so condescending when he talks to me at any events.”
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4) What do I stand to gain by not doing this project? With this question you need to find out exactly how you benefit from any self sabotage. The most common example might be “Well if I don’t perform/write this piece no one can criticize it or me.” This is by no means the only example though; others might be “I can criticize others from a less vulnerable position ” or “My editor/mother/significant other/ex will worry about me.”

Now, let’s release these fears through movement!

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​Movement Exercise

When we move and dance, we create a sense of self-compassion. This is a great way to learn to trust ourselves again.

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1) Remember that feeling of fear? Fear makes us shrink. Take a minute to try to make yourself as small as you can. Get on the floor if you have to. Shrink yourself and take note of what it feels like. How do you breathe when you shrink yourself? How does your body feel?

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2) Now I want you to experience what it feels like to take up as much space as you can. You get to determine how to do this with your body. Whether you stretch, run around every corner of your room, lie on the floor … take note of what it feels like to expand, make large movements and take up space. How do you breathe? How do you move?

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3) The shake … now let’s do some trauma release. Take all the feelings around what we’ve talked about today and shake them out. Start with one arm and begin to wiggle and move it. Make sure you are breathing while you do this. Then move to the other arm. Then to the leg and the other leg. Then begin to bounce and wiggle. Let your whole body release. After, take a few deep breaths and note how your body feels.

4) Hug yourself as deeply as you can. Rock back and forth if you need to. Release any unrealistic expectations you have had on yourself.

5) Lastly, accept what is by opening your arms, palms up. In this posture, we are also asking for and admitting that we need help.

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​Say this to God: “You take care of the quality, I’ll take care of the quantity.”