Try This At Home
If you want to create a Brave Space for yourself while I’m on hiatus, here are a few things you could do to make the process of creating easier!
1) Invite a friend. If you make a "Date to Create" with someone else, you will show up for them! Funny how we have a harder time showing up for ourselves. This also plays out in how we talk to our actual friends v. how we sometimes talk to ourselves. Why I am always trying to remind us to be kinder to ourselves... So if you don't want to invite a friend, make friends with yourself.
2) Set a timer! Whether or not you make a date to create with a friend, you can still set up a timer for yourself. This takes the pressure off to write for an hour or a half day or an endless period of time that is not realistic, even if you wish it was. Whether you work for 20 minutes or 5 minutes, you will be exercising the muscles you want to exercise. It will make a difference! Being able to achieve a goal, even a small, purposefully do-able goal, will give you a dopamine rush and a sense of accomplishment. This is important, especially if your overall goal is large.
3) Be kind to yourself. Yes, I'm repeating myself, but when I think of the most important ways to be able to create on a consistent basis, kindness is IT! Change your relationship to your Inner Critics. Not by shutting them down by force, but by getting to know them. Offer them some respect (not if they are actively being mean to you, but when they are quiet, draw them out and thank them for trying to help you. Yes, they might do it in difficult, hurtful, ways, but they have good intentions created when you were young. Work a bit to gain their trust, and it will help you in the long run. If you want a session or two about how to do this, I am not on a desert isle without wifi. I am dealing with a construction project. (I'm afraid to travel right now, so I'm re-doing the bathroom and living in an apartment down the hall.) I am available for private sessions!
4) Allow what arises. The more you are able to practice kindness, the more you will be able to allow what arises. Even if it feels like the same old stuff is arising, and you've been this way before, trust there is more there now to understand. Life is like a mountain climb. The road isn't flat; it spirals upward. So if you've seen this view already, you're seeing it from a new altitude now. You will have a new perspective. You don't necessarily know what that is, but the reason old stuff keeps knocking on your heart to be voiced is so that you can discover - in a Discovery Draft - what you need to know.
5) There is more to your work than the surface idea that may have started it. Okay, I get this is really part B to number 4. This is why it's important to allow the impulse to arise. This is why it's important to notice it and to let it shape whatever you are making. Onward!