The Artist's Way Week 6: Recovering a Sense of Abundance and Indulging in Creative Luxury
Week 6: Recovering a Sense of Abundance
We talked a little bit about abundance last week, but here in Week 6, we are talking specifically about abundance in terms of money and luxury. This always feels like a sensitive topic, but as we’ll see, it’s an important conversation to have as part of our creative recovery.
Many of us don’t really consciously ask ourselves what our ideas and beliefs around money are, but those ideas are deeply embedded in us and hugely affect the decisions we make and the way we experience life. When it comes to creative recovery and nurturing our inner artist, not only do our beliefs around finances affect our actions (or inaction) towards our creative dreams, but they shape our overall feelings about creativity.
Week 6 is all about identifying those beliefs and shifting our mindset to one of luxury, specifically creative luxury.
Identifying Our Beliefs About Money
Here’s an exercise from the book that might help you identify your mindset around money and the meaning it holds in your life.
Complete the following phrases:
People with money are __________________.
Money makes people ___________________.
Id’ have more money if __________________.
My dad thought money was ______________.
My mom always thought money would _____.
In my family, money caused ______________.
Money equals __________________________.
If I had money, I’d _______________________.
If I could afford it, I’d _____________________.
If I had some money, I’d __________________.
I’m afraid that if I had money I would _______.
Money is ______________________________.
Money causes _________________________.
Having money is not ____________________.
In order to have more money, I’d need to ___.
When I have money, I usually _____________.
I think money __________________________.
If I weren’t so cheap I’d __________________.
People think money _____________________.
Being broke tells me ____________________.
What Does This Have To Do With Creativity?
When I first did this exercise years ago, I started to see that I was holding some negative beliefs around money. I related money to things like trouble, greed, stress, and guilty spending. While holding these negative notions, I still believed that it was something that you needed in order to live a good life. So in essence, I believed that money was a necessary evil.
Without realizing it, these beliefs were impacting the way that I thought about creativity. I told myself early on that doing something creative was frivolous and would not provide the financial means to live a “good” life. I allowed myself to feel guilt over wanting to spend time or money on creative hobbies, and my creative dreams took a second place to everything else. I’m sure some of you can relate.
Somehow we convince ourselves that as we get older, it means we must do less of the things we enjoy and more of the things that we “need” to do (i.e. get a job, make money, start a family, buy a house, etc.). As money becomes more of a priority in our lives, pursuing a creative dream suddenly becomes something that’s impractical, unsustainable, far-fetched, and even silly. This list goes on and on. And those thoughts are what continue to block on inner artist.
But what if we started to shift our mindset and allowed ourselves to live a life of creative luxury?
Creative Luxury
So what is creative luxury and what does it look like?
Here’s the simple answer:
“What gives us true joy? That is the question to ask concerning luxury, and for each of us the answer is very different.”
Here are some examples of what creative luxury might look like for different people:
Carving out 15 minutes of uninterrupted time every day for you to sit and do something creative
Claiming one small corner of the house as your creative space and organizing it with all the things that make you happy
Treating yourself to those art supplies that you’ve been eyeing for months
Signing up for that creative workshop or online course
Taking a weekend trip as a creative retreat with your artist friends
Creative luxury comes in all shapes, sizes, and forms. The only criteria it needs to meet is that it brings you joy and encourages you to let loose and play. Think of it as pampering your artist child.
And as we see from the examples above, it doesn’t have to be something grand or lavish. It’s simply a shift in consciousness where you’re allowing and accepting more self-care and self-love into your life.
As we adopt a practice of creative luxury and make more space for our inner artist to dream and play, the abundance that we talked about in Week 5 will start to naturally flow and fill us up.
“In order to thrive as artists - and, one could argue, as people - we need to be available to the universal flow. When we put a stopper on our capacity for joy by anorectically declining the small gifts of life, we turn aside the larger gifts as well.” - Julia Cameron
What are some creative things that you’ve been feeling the nudge to do more of? What are the small gifts that you can give yourself today?
I hope you’ll take the time to think about these things and “indulge” in a creative luxury this week. And I hope that even the simplest act of creative nurture will help you experience the joy that a creative practice can bring.
See you in Week 7!