Yesterday, I mentioned having a ritual to get you into the studio. Today we are going to take a look at why we leave the studio before we are done–emotionally or physically.
Whether you write or draw, paint or sew, at some point you put down your work and leave the studio. That instant is significant in your creative building. What happens in your head and heart just as you leave the studio defines how easy it is to come back and work again.
If you have trouble returning regularly, and you think of the studio fondly while you are in a meeting or watching soccer practice, you have a priority conflict. But if you find yourself doing laundry, dusting or making the bed, it’s not a priority problem, you are putting off going to the studio.
There are many reasons we put off going back in. The first thing my coaching
Fully realized dust bunnies.
clients usually mention is fear of failure. But I don’t think so. I think we fear success. If we do something wonderful in the studio, we are responsible for it. We have to own our own creativity, our creation and the power of being a creator. Better to search for dust bunnies than be powerful. Owning our own power is often hard, even if we want to be famous or recognized. Because once we have created something, there is responsibility in creating more. Doing it again. Competing to outdo ourselves. Explaining success. Easier just to let it slide.
Sometimes we leave the studio right before a breakthrough, before that Aha! Moment changes our lives. It is so much easier to cut short the revelation, the hard truth, the secret we hide. Ah, but what we resist, persists. And then refusing to return seems like a good idea. We need to “take a break,” or we need to “work it out.” Take your break in the studio. Work out your truth in the studio. Because no place else is your studio–the space dedicated to your own creation, your own growth. That’s where the magic happens–right after the sweat and fear. Stay. Wait for the magic. Give it a chance.
Tomorrow: Tips for returning to the studio with anticipation.
—-Quinn McDonald has experience studio reluctance. That’s the only time her house is clean.
Dust bunny image: http://rubyreusable.com/artblog/?cat=110
Comfort zone image: http://www.proteinandpumps.com/breaking-out-of-my-comfort-zone/
QuinnCreative 
Oh yes . . . I wonder if this is why I go from one thing to another or if I really do just want to have a go at everything? Either way I tend to totally immerse my energies into one thing at a time, for a time . . . and now I wondering about why I change direction.
And such true words “what we resist, persists.” I cannot resist the urge to create . . . I have to. Although today, in order to create I’m off to participate in some destruction as I help some friends pluck some roosters and maybe a pukeko.
Had to check on what a pukeko was–love those blue feathers! Will they wind up in your work somehow? Emersing yourself in one thing at a time is effective–it pinpoints what you like and what you need to leave behind. You change directions because you have learned everything you need to learn, or you don’t want to learn more. What’s interesting is finding out which one is which.
I read somewhere that Orson Welles (may have) had enormous fear of success, or possibly of “completing things”. Experiencing huge success very early in life probably creates its own kinds of problems.
Many perfectionists are huge procrastinators–the fear of completing something in a less than perfect way. That can really sabotage success.