If you’ve felt your creative attention fray under the weight of today’s headlines, you’re not alone. Upheaval is often the messy prelude to renewal, part of the creative process, but how do we stay focused on what we want to create when everything feels like it’s falling apart?
In this episode of the GoCreative! podcast, I share my own daily practice… and a little poetry.
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Transcript:
Orna Ross: Hello everyone, creatives and creativists, welcome back. Great to have you here. As you know, this podcast is relatively new and unfolding, and making a small change going forward. One of the things that's happening is I'm getting lots of, feedback and response from you. You're coming back to me with lots of questions. Issues and challenges that are arising for you in your own creative life.
I think going forward the best format for this, um. A podcast to take is to actually address those questions, because I'm finding it very fruitful in terms of my own thinking when I'm focusing on a specific issue that somebody has. So we'll try that for a while and see how it goes. I'd like to talk about Anne's issue today because, she's representative. A few people more than a few actually, both in the Alliance of Independent Authors, but also in my own community have been saying that they're finding it difficult to stay focused on their creative work. So that's what I'd like to talk about.
Here's how Anne puts it, in her. Short note that I asked her to send after we discussed it. “I'm a writer who cares deeply about the world, but every time I sit down to create these days, I find I can't. I'm just too concerned. It all feels like a waste of time. And then with AI thrown into the mix I just feel, what is the point? Then I find myself dragged off by the news into dooms scrolling instead, and I come away feeling even worse. I know the solution is to stay focused on my art, but how do I do that when everything feels like it's falling apart? It's a really great question and I think it's something that every single one of us has encountered at some point.
I'd like to approach my answer in two different ways. I'll share my own personal routine around creating space for flow, because I think that's the number one., We recognize the state of mind we need to create is a different state of mind than the one we use to listen to what's going on in the world and think about it cognitively.
So understanding that there are two different states, we need to make choices that foster the creative state. Sometimes yes, flow comes and grabs us by the scruff of the neck and takes us there they are beautiful and precious moments. But on the day to day, where, significant creative work gets done, it's a day-to-day commitment. It can feel like a grind. Sometimes the mind can be in the wrong place. The job is, to get into the right state to go creative. So yeah, I'll share my routine around what I do for that, I'm not going to go into the whole thing of creative rest and play, but just how I approach a day's work.
And then secondly, I'd like to share my thoughts about this. I feel what we're witnessing here, is the death of the old and labor pains of the new. I don't think this is end game. And I do believe that something better is being born right now out of the suffering and the chaos. That we're seeing around us. And most of all, I feel that writers have a very, an artist and anybody who approaches life from a creative perspective has a lot to offer. In fact, it's vital that we turn up, this is the time that we are most needed.
The other factor just before I kind of get started is that our nervous systems weren't built for this 24 hour crisis feed that's being dumped in on top of us, and it's really important to recognize that some degree of control around that. And yeah, I feel that's best approach, not from, um, a negative perspective, as in I'm not going to do this. I'm cutting down to such and such a level, I'm only going to tune in, at such and such a time. They are great things to do, and I have limited my news intake now to Sundays only, which is kind of a bit ironic. It used to be, you know, on the seventh. Day we rested from daily life, but in actual fact, such is the nature of the onslaught into us that we're already picking up all over the place. The negativity that arises outta the 24 hour, news. Cycle.
So I have reversed it very much for myself. I deliberately on a Sunday go out there to take in what's going on, and I'm selective about the sources that I choose to take that from.
I don't, use X, or any other social media as my news intake because it's way too easy to get distracted. Instead, I pick traditional, news, outlets, different ones from around the world. And then I also have specific people that I like to tune into. Sundays only for that.
I give it about an hour and a half and that keeps me informed and I enjoy it. The rest of the time I keep my focus on my own creative work and what I'm doing. The focus really is about the other, days and the rest of Sunday. It's not like it's all given over to news, most certainly not. The focus is on going creative. How do we feed that side of ourselves?
First of all, just the reminder sometimes is enough to say to yourself, go creative now. When you recognize that you're in thinking cognitive mode, just observing that and giving yourself a small instruction or affirmation can be enough to switch. Also, as you know, if you're a regular listener I'm a huge believer in small things done daily, have a huge effect over time.
So I have three times in my day where I deliberately do something that allows me to go creative in that day more than I would if I didn't do this practice. And so, yeah, it's a three part practice: open, allow and be.
If you've done my inspiration meditation, you'll know they are strong words from that meditation. These are brief rituals that keep the creative channel clear even when the world is noisy. And you could wake up in the morning with your head full of thought, about something that happened the day before or about generalized anxiety, that Anne, describes.
We are sensitive beings, creatives, we are open, to what's coming through to us. And that's one of the reasons why we resist creative mode, because we're protecting ourselves from that.
So the, the point is that beyond that layer of noise is the clear, uh, channel of creative flow and that's the place we want to access. When we're there, we are protected. So just trying to cut out and cut off rarely works. It's entering creative flow. That is the way in which we then integrate those thoughts into a much larger, pool of being.
So I open my mornings with sun salutations I want to stress that it doesn't matter what you do here. As long as it's the right thing for you. So I'm sharing what I do, but you will perhaps already have your own routines, or explore and see, if you haven't done some of the things I'm suggesting, you might want to try them out, and see do they work for you as well as they work for me.
So for me, the morning is literally one sun salutation each side. I do my right side and I do my left side, and then I sit for a three minute inspiration meditation sit. So the whole thing takes no more than five minutes. But the point is that I start my day by opening out and you can see some salutations anywhere online if you don't know how to do them.
They're a very simple, very ancient yoga move, which completely, um, activates the body. Opens out the body, the joints, the muscles, the tendons, all get an opening. I'm keeping it really short because my creative time, when I get to do my writing is first thing in the morning before I go to my day job at ALLi.
So I want to be at my writing desk as early as I possibly can, and I don't want to do a big routine in advance of that. You may want to, I would feel that the more substantial your, morning routine, the better. Yes, of course. But for me, and I know this from long years of attempts, it doesn't work.
I actually create a bit of anxiety in myself if it's going on for too long. So just this simple routine first thing in the morning, as I say. Five minutes, seven minutes max, then I'm on my way. It makes absolutely no difference to the amount of time I'm going to spend writing that day. But it makes a huge difference to the quality of how I greet the day physically and mentally.
And for the three minute sit, I smile. It's a, it's a smiling practice. All sorts of research about how smiling affects your mood. The physical act of smiling has a smile effect in internally as well. And so it's a very, it's the most open gesture we can make with our faces. A smile. So it's part of opening.
And then as I walk from my home, where I have my little meditation and yoga room around to the corner. It's a seven minute walkaway to the place where I have my writing studio as I'm going. I'm keeping, connected to that sense of opening up to the day. Opening up to what I'm feeling and experiencing at a sense level, sight and sound: the birds, the trees, the sky, all of that as I am moving to the writing studio. So now when I sit down at my desk, I'm already primed into the creative zone. Midday,
I take an hour and a half for my lunch, and 60 minutes of that is running, walking, dancing, some kind of aerobic exercise. Movement is really important for creatives who sit at their work. Movement is really important for human beings. None of us are moving enough, so no matter what you are trying to create in your life, movement, metabolizes.
In Anne's case, it metabolizes those headlines. The ideas kind of shake loose. The perspective comes in. Again, the act of moving the body has all sorts of, hormonal and neurotransmitter and various other physiological responses in body and brain. And without it, we are losing out. My mantra or my instruction to self during that session of the day is allow whatever is there, let it be. I'm bigger than that. My mind, my imagination is huge. It is at infinity levels. And so what's happening in the world shrinks to an understanding of space and time. You know, that we are part of a long history. There are many years ahead, and that's just how we as human beings, with our human brains understand space and time beyond us.
It's far more vast than that. So something about the movement. Conscious movement, conscious running, conscious walking, um, dancing. Something about that allows me to hold that bigger perspective.
And then in the evening. Being with what happened for the day and just being in myself before I go to the land of sleep, where all sorts of strange and wonderful things happen. And that's another podcast for another time. In the evening, I do a moon salutation each side. Again, easily found anywhere online just to just look it up if you dunno how to do it. And then after that, I have a 10 minute sit. This is about gently observing what happened in the day, not so much a review as just letting the mind roll over what happened, and then just sitting, and emptying mind.
So that's my kind of daily routine. You adapt it, adapt your durations, but keep the order of the idea of opening the channel in the morning, allowing motion during the day, being with the residue of what happened in the evening. So I've written a poem actually about this whole thing, but, and it's based on, passage. I read, I came across it during the week. I read A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, as a student, I think at college many, many, many, many, many years ago. For those who haven't read it, it's a big book set in London and Paris around the French Revolution and it follows three characters through their adventures and it has themes of injustice. Sacrifice, revolution, resurrection. Dickens wrote it in, the late 1850s, maybe early 1860s. Victorian Britain was very anxious about class unrest. Since the French Revolution, there have been periodic uprisings and there was this negotiation between the well to do and the poor.
Dickens' line on this was very much warning his middle class readers ‘heal the inequities that are all around you or you are going to risk violent upheaval'. And I love Dickens. Still do. Love his take on life. And of course, it being dickens despite not holding back at all in terms of examining the suffering, the terror, and everything,
the book ends with a redemptive sacrifice and, the sense that, individual acts of love are very important in terms of seeding a better future. I think what's important here for us, in terms of what we're we're talking about, is that idea that what we do is important.
I came across the, uh, uh, passage from the book in another book I was reading. It was quoted and, I think it's, it's, it's one of the loveliest pieces in English literature actually, and I turned it into a poem.
Yes. So this is, not a tale of two cities, but a Tale of Human Time Times Three. And with apologies to Mr. Dickens and a Tale of Two Cities, I see a brilliant place and a brilliant people rising from this abyss and in their long struggles to be truly free. I see through their triumphs and defeats the evil of this time, the slaughter of the innocent being born again. The natural birth of what is from what has been the labor pains of history heaving, making expiation for itself, wearing out all power to you dear people, as now in truth. You kiss those holding, killing hands goodbye, and rise, and rise, and rise, this time, into the birthing of what is yet to be.
So I to to finish, I just like to, yeah. Say if you are a news junkie, schedule your news after. You've done, don't reach for it first thing in the morning. Ideally, don't reach for it until later in the day or later in the week when a headline sparks an emotion and you know you're being triggered.
It can be an idea to jot down. Whatever is triggering you as a question seed for tomorrow's open set. In that way, you are engaging with your outrage, which can be amazing creative fuel. I love that word rise, which is in that passage from Dickens. And in the poem, and of course there's the beautiful, wonderful Maya angel's.
Poem, still I Rise, which is a brilliant, poem to tap into whenever you're feeling defeated by what's around you, it's really important that we do this work in my opinion, it's more important than it has ever been. Writers, creators, creatives have always been important because we're holding up that side of life, and it can be really difficult for us to see the effect that we're having, because it is invisible.
We won't ever know who is affected by the things that we put out into the world, but we need to hold the faith. That's why we need to hold the faith because you know, a power politician or anybody else with power and influence, can see very clearly their work in the world and the effect that it's having. Of course, there are also invisible consequences and unpredictable things happening that they don't know about or cannot see, or people cannot see. That is always going on, and that is always the greater part of life.
But in human public discourse, it is the lesser part of life, and it is the creatives and the creatives who hold that up, who allow that to be.
So open, allow and be.
Thanks for listening. Until next time, don't forget to go creative. Bye-bye.