Breathe!

Here are a few visualizing exercises I've found helpful during stressful times. When I began experimenting with them I was skeptical (a familiar condition for me) but have found that practicing them on a regular basis has made a difference in how I respond to certain situations and people.

Guarding against negative stress: a self-protection exercise

• Get into a comfortable position and relax in whatever way works best for you.
• Visualize yourself being surrounded by a globe of light. You can make this light whatever color you want but make it clear, so that you can see through it.
  
• Give it a flexible but definite boundary, one that will screen out the harmful effects of negative interactions.

This is an especially good exercise if you're feeling the effects of others' emotions or energy, such as happens in a job with high public contact.

Grounding yourself: an exercise for when you feel overwhelmed

• Relax in whatever way works for you.
• Visualize yourself as a sort of human tree. Make your trunk as solid as possible, extend your roots downward and anchor them into the ground. Send your branches upward.
• Just sit for several minutes, holding the image of being rooted firmly in the ground.

This exercise is especially helpful when life feels like it's getting out of hand, you feel spacey or you'll be dealing with someone who always tries to knock you off-center.

Heart Breath: an exercise for practicing neutral compassion

• Take slow deep breaths but imagine your breath is coming from your heart area. As you inhale, imagine compassion for yourself filling you up. As you exhale, imagine that compassion flowing out of you into the world.

I've found this exercise especially helpful in developing an attitude of neutral attention so that you can help others in a way that doesn't drain you.

Finally, a mindfulness exercise I learned from a Zen meditation instructor: every hour on the hour, simply stop what you're doing, take three deep breaths and say to yourself "Here I am." It's a great way to train yourself to stay in the present rather than drifting off into the past or future.

Call it "Work.," Change Your Life

When I first began resurrecting my part-time writing & editing career three years ago after being out of the game for more than a decade, I tried to accommodate this plus all the other activities in my life. These activities included a job (first PT, then FT), everything at home and matters that came up with friends and family. Do I need to mention that this tactic failed miserably and that I ended up with a lot of half-finished projects?

Looking back, I think that even though I've made a secondary income via freelancing for most of my adult life, I'd never treated it as work or given it the same serious attention I gave to jobs working for someone else. This was partly due to my own perception and that of everyone in my life that writing isn't "real" work even if it makes money.

In the previous paragraph you could substitute any passion for "writing" - photography, playing in a band, starting & running a foundation or community service, making & marketing handmade items, running an urban mini-farm - and you'd be dealing with the same perceptions. Those perceptions include the ideas that if it's fun, if it doesn't make much money, and if you're working on our own, it's not real work. You can tweak your office space, hold endless family meetings and incessantly experiment with scheduling but if you're not clear in your own mind that your passion is also serious work, all these measures will fail.

Some of my fellow writers haven't liked this idea because "work" is such a serious word. It connotes drudgery. All of us have days when we're just putting in the hours. Those who hold jobs with extremely repetitive tasks or have little self-determination & opportunity for exercising personal judgement might feel like work is all drudgery.

But it doesn't have to be that way merely by definition. Think of "work" as simply doing something useful, either for yourself or others. If you feel called to do a certain activity - you have a strong sense of purpose behind it - then calling it "work" is the first step. This will provide a reference point for making daily decisions that move you forward rather than keep you stuck.

For example, if you've planned to spend four hours this afternoon proofing copy or drafting a grant proposal, and a friend calls (knowing it's your day off from your job) asking you to help her cousin move, you can say, "Sorry, I'm working this afternoon." If you feel a smidgen of guilt even though you don't even know this friend's cousin, you can add, "I'll bring over some beer later."

My own writing life shifted dramatically when I began seeing it as part of a many-sided career that includes the job, freelancing and things for which I don't get paid at all but are part of the purpose I've defined for myself. It's becoming progressively easier to say "no" to activities that feel out of sync. I have fewer problems with prioritizing.

The most noticeable difference, however, is that the various things I do are finally feeding each other rather than fighting each other. I've seen this happen with other people as well; life starts to feel like a patchwork quilt with an actual pattern rather than a bunch of little fabric squares. A few of these people live seamlessly in a happy state where each relationship or project gives & receives energy from everything/everyone else.

I hope to reach that state someday. And I hope to see you there too.

When Encountering Turbulence, Just Bounce Along

Here's a bit of Zen wisdom I encountered years ago - it's saved my sanity on a number of occasions: if you expect some chaos during turbulent times, you're less likely to be thrown off-base when it arrives. To me this sounded refreshingly sensible after years of trying really hard to believe that positive thinking always produces positive results.

Great expectations have almost become a requirement in our culture. There's a real push to believe that it's possible to solve all problems quickly & painlessly, find a dream job or build a dream life, and have whatever our hearts desire. Acknowledging limitations is "negative." These beliefs have been around as long as I can remember but they've intensified during the last decade. Best-selling books like The Secret create entire programs to help readers manifest their wishes.

The positive-thinking push has given many of us the idea that it's wrong to feel discouraged, that if we don't get what we wish for, we've failed somehow, and that we have to press on no matter what we might be dealing with at the time. I call it fighting the turbulence.

I believe that expectations are important but sometimes keeping up a relentlessly forward-looking outlook is just too much work. During transitions, steep learning curves or rocky times, just staying afloat is a reasonable goal. It's okay to let big goals and projects lie fallow during these times.

I used to try to keep ahead of everything all the time, even when the house was burning down, figuratively speaking. These days I cut myself more slack. And I've found that bouncing with the turbulence is less strenuous than fighting it.

Dealing with Feelings: The Action/Feeling Logbook

What if you're working on a creative project, maybe even one with a deadline, and you're broadsided by a spate of severe self-doubt or a depressive slump? I'm not talking about the occasional mild blah feeling; I mean the sort of blues where it's hard to get out of bed.

In the short run, taking a day off to mope might work. However, if the day stretches into weeks, you'll quickly find yourself in a rut. And here's the killer: allowing yourself to slide into that rut will not only stall your creative life but the extended mope time won't help you feel any better.

Here's a tip from one of my favorite authors, Barbara Sher. Briefly acknowledge your feelings, tell them "We'll talk later," then get to work. After you're done for the day, note your accomplishments in an action/feeling logbook.

Buy a notebook (the spiral-bound ones work well) and keep a log of every action you take towards your dream or project each day. Then note how you felt that day. Chances are good that you'll find, as I have, that your productivity isn't as connected to your feelings as you'd initially thought. If you record your accomplishments regularly, you'll reinforce the fact that you don't have to feel great in order to produce good work. You might even end up feeling better anyway.

During the "wishcraft" groups I've led, I've found that this simple trick works especially well for people who by temperament tend to get bogged down in their own emotions. Participants who seemed to be Introverts and Feelers (Meyers-Briggs temperament indicator), Idealists or Dreamers (the Enneagram personality system) or "Blues" (the color personality system) benefit from following structured action plans and keeping accomplishment logs. Since feeling follows action, you have to act first in order to feel better.

Keeping a log takes only minutes a day but it can make a huge difference in your creative life.