The Artist's Way Week 7: Recovering a Sense of Connection and Dealing with Perfectionism
Week 7: Recovering a Sense of Connection
In Week 7, we are working on connecting deeper with our inner artist and training our ear to listen closely to the voice of our artist child. This means continuing to be reflective in our morning pages, proactively filling our well, and being receptive to the ideas of synchronicity and abundance.
In order to arrive at a place of total connectivity, we also need to get out of our comfort zones and take action towards the creative desires and dreams that our inner artist is starting to put on our hearts. This isn’t an easy task, but this week we are working to confront the mental/emotional blocks that get in the way of taking action - and by taking action, we’ll also be able to dig deeper into our wells and uncover the hidden dreams of our artist child.
Dealing with Perfectionism
For me, personally, perfectionism has always been one of my biggest struggles as a creative, and that’s probably why Week 7 is one of my favorite (but also most difficult) weeks in The Artist’s Way.
So, let’s get talking about perfectionism. Why is it such a big block in our creative recovery?
Here’s what Julia says in the book:
“Perfectionism has nothing to do with getting it right. It has nothing to do with fixing things. It has nothing to do with standards. Perfectionism is refusal to let yourself move ahead. It is a loop - an obsessive, debilitating closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details of what you are writing or painting or making and to lose sight of the whole….Instead of enjoying the process, the perfectionist is constantly grading the results.”
Perfectionism is such a huge block for so many creatives and it has the power to completely paralyze us from taking action. In fact, it can even take away the belief that you have the ability to do anything at all. How many of you can relate to this? I definitely can.
Even just in the last few weeks as I’ve been working through my portfolio, I’ve been feeling so much resistance. I procrastinated for days convincing myself that things had to be “perfect” before I could even get started on sketching. I needed the right sketchbook, the proper workflow, the perfect placement, the right design. I also suddenly felt the urge to reorganize my office, clean up my inbox, and do all these other things completely unrelated to my work.
Deep inside, I knew that this was perfectionism rearing its ugly head again. For two weeks, I let myself get sucked into feelings of doubt, fear, and discouragement. Perfectionism can be so pervasive. But you know what the most ironic thing is? The only way to overcome perfectionism, is to take action. Imperfect action.
Taking imperfection action
When perfectionism keeps us from taking action, we do something that Julia refers to as “remaining outside our sphere of possibility”. We stay stuck - motionless and starving ourselves of the abundance that is waiting to be received. Again, the river is flowing, but perfectionism, fear, doubt, and all these other mental and emotional blocks are keeping us from it.
So what can we do to get ourselves to take more action?
I shared some more practical steps on a previous blog post I shared about perfectionism, but here’s a quick exercise from the book that might help:
Complete the following sentence: “If I didn’t have to do it perfectly, I would try_______”.
Make a list of 20 things that come to mind.
Here are some of mine:
If I didn’t have to do it perfectly, I would try:
To design things out of my comfort zone
To paint more often
To start a vlog
To take a class doing something I’m “bad” at (yoga, swimming, dance, etc.)
To show up more
What are some of the things that come to mind when you let yourself let go of perfectionism? Maybe these are the things that we need to start taking imperfect action on.
“We deny that in order to do something well we must first be willing to do it badly. Instead, we opt for setting our limits at the point where we feel assured of success. Living within these bounds, we may feel stifled, smothered, despairing, bored. But, yes, we do feel safe. And safety is a very expensive illusion.”
I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather live a life full of abundance and possibility - doing things imperfectly and badly - than to deny myself of these things for the sake of feeling safe. I know it’s not easy to take that first step, but the more we do it, the less uncomfortable it will feel.
What imperfect action will you commit to this week? Let me know in the comments or send me a message on Instagram. I’d love to encourage you.
See you back here for Week 8! ♡