You could say, it’s about mindset. The stuff I write about here: developing joy.
I’m ambivalent about the word mindset, so it’s not a word I use personally. Maybe because the word is about the mind, and I try not to over-identify with the mind—the mercurial and unreliable mind, like an unreliable narrator. The idea though, resonates with me, and I subscribe to it. We cannot control what happens outside of ourselves. The grand social and political narratives that shape our realities. We can control how we relate to that stuff, how we relate to all the narratives around us. I take it all with a pinch of salt.
I can control how I show up. I can control if I engage in good faith. I can control how I feel about something. If I have an unconscious aversion I’m hiding from myself, that’s on me. If I unconsciously will my own failure, so that I can keep telling the same stories of my thwarted and overlooked genius, or the way I’m consistently overlooked and undervalued, then the question is: how much did I bring that into being?
I’ve been doing the work to uncover my unconscious stories. It’s tough because once you unwind that thread and give it a yank, there’s a lot that falls out. We keep it packed for our own preservation, keep the self intact. But those stories keep us small. I found stuff in there from when I was a teenager. The fears I had then I no longer have, so it’s not useful to continue to carry around these hidden erroneous beliefs mistakenly for my self-protection when those very fears are out of date.
Working on your mindset, to me, means finding an open way to engage with your own ideas, wishes, dreams, and ambitions open-heartedly, without cobbling yourself with your own fear. Truth is it’s ongoing work because as fast as you can clear out old fears, others can come nestle in their place. Thus, cultivating a positive outlook is really cultivating the practices that clear out fear, on a regular basis.
Being a person is a complicated business. Being creative adds to that complication. There is no point add more complication to the mix by dragging along any and every fear.
When I work with artists, I want to know their dreams—these are our compass to guide the path. The fear, these are the demons we need to understand, avoid and neutralise. And I want to know what minimises the fears—what, in practical terms, keeps fear at bay?