“The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.”
~ Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
I am currently reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, “Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear” and it is AH-MAZING!
In it she teaches that we are ALL creative. The above quote states her belief that we all have creativity inside of us and the hunt to uncover those jewels is “creative living”.
My personal story is that my “perfectionism” prevented me from uncovering those jewels for many years. You know, the good ole ego doing it’s job to prevent me from looking like a big fool and embarrassing myself. My inner perfectionist would compare my first brush strokes to a finished masterpiece by one of the “greats” and use that as evidence to show me that I had no business painting.
Thankfully, those inner jewels kept giving me little nudges that grew louder as I progressed along my healing journey.
My desire to paint kept returning. Two or so years ago I decided to try it again, for like the third time.
Finally, I made a commitment to myself that I was going to finish a painting. No matter how much I thought it sucked, no matter how many times my ego told me to stop making a fool of myself, no matter how many tears I cried, I HAD to finish the painting.
Long story short, I finished my first painting. It took me 10 months. Those 10 months were some of the most joyful, painful, scary months of my life. During that time every bit of resistance that possibly could showed up for me.
I cried countless tears during that 10 month period – tears of frustration, tears of joy, tears of wanting to quit. With each layer of paint I applied (and there were MANY), I healed countless things within myself. It was a transformational process.
You are probably reading this wondering why in the world I would force myself to stick to something that caused me so much angst.
Because I knew it was my perfectionist that wanted me to quit…again. She didn’t want me to create anything that was less than a masterpiece. I had allowed her to drive the bus for too long and I refused to spend the second half of my life letting her call the shots. (She is also the one that didn’t want me to make a fool of myself by creating Beautifully Blissed.)
My inner perfectionist was very vocal and she successfully squelched my creative expression for a long time. Those inner jewels had to get pretty darn insistent before I was willing to feel and heal the pain that allowed them to reveal themselves to me.
Elizabeth Gilbert says that fear prevents us from living a creative life. Really? Since the book quickly made it to the best seller list, I assume there are many of us in this same boat. Well good thing, because you know misery loves company.
All kidding aside, today I want to express gratitude for our creativity and the fact that we are all creative beings.
So what has your journey been with your creativity?
Were you born knowing you were an artist and you never doubted that part of yourself?
Has your journey been an exciting discovery process?
I haven’t heard of many others that have had as extreme of an experience as I had with my inner perfectionist (aka my critic). Am I wrong?
Also, I have noticed a lot of people’s creative urgings didn’t start stirring until the second half of their lives. Have you noticed this?
I am so interested in this topic of creative living.