Monday #39: The Power of Art Compels You

Last Friday, on one of those beautiful sunny, city days, I visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art where the featured show, “Great and Mighty Things,” was a collection of “Outsider Art”– art created by individuals who are not traditionally schooled in art (or, sometimes, not schooled at all) and who are often fringe members of our society–the mentally ill, the homeless or those living in remote, rural areas of the country or abject poverty. What struck me most about these artists was that, embedded in their personal stories was what appeared to be an absolute compulsion to create their art.

James Castle, whose assemblage you see here, was born completely deaf to a hardscrabble farm family in Boise, Idaho. He did not acquire the tools of language such as lip-reading, finger spelling, or writing but, over decades, worked with found objects, food packaging and used papers which he adorned with pieces of string. He made marks on these pieces with an ink that he made of stovepipe soot and spit and applied it to the art with a sharpened stick. His colors are muted and soothing and I found his designs simple yet lovely to study, particularly in regards to his use of string.

Emery Blagdon, born on a farm in Callaway, Nebraska in 1907, watched both his mother and father die of cancer and spent the remainder of his life constructing an amazing “machine” for healing the sick. He made hundreds of wire sculptures which were crammed into a shed where they hung among jars full of minerals and small paintings that he lit up with strings of holiday lights. According to Blagdon, anyone who entered the machine would receive the electromagnetic energy of the earth and be healed. The entire installation must have been gorgeous and otherworldly, however, Blagdon, himself, also died of cancer in 1986. The wire pieces are delicate and whimsical and remind me of something you might be delighted to see hanging from a tree branch in a quirky, little garden.

George Widener, who is still alive, is a numerical savant from Cincinnati who can calculate unbelievably long sequences of numbers and dates. He is also fascinated by disasters, the sinking of the Titanic in particular. The piece you see above here was composed of thousands of miniature sequences of numbers on many pieces of paper that were attached with tape to make this large image. The Titanic is featured in the top left and the artist has gone back in and circled a variety of dates throughout the sequence. When I stood in front of it, it felt mesmerizing and unsettling at the same time.

Sister Gertrude Morgan was a street preacher and gospel singer in the French Quarter from the 1940s-70s. She began the Everlasting Gospel Mission in a small building in the Lower Ninth Ward where she created images to support her spiritual messages. With only a third-grade education and using mostly discarded materials with ballpoint pen and paint, Morgan created a menagerie of characters that were a blend of those from her daily life and those from Biblical stories. In 1974 she stopped making art completely at God’s directive. Her works are beautifully childlike and filled with spiritual verve.

These are just a few of the artists from the exhibit. You can find the entire listing, along with slide shows for each artist on the Philadelphia Art Museum’s web site.

I took away a few things from this experience. First, that the creative call must be answered. Whether it shouts loudly inside your skull each day of your life or, like mine, whispers in the corners of your subconscious persistently for years until you begin to listen, it must be answered. Whether you make a life of its gifts or keep and protect it as a place of spiritual exploration and respite, it must be answered. Second, we must trust that our personal, artistic style will reveal itself and we must be open to how that might happen and what it might look like. Each artist in this exhibit had a vibrantly unique voice that clearly sang out from their work. In a moment where we are flush with ticky-tacky commercial art studios and expensive Balinese retreats that teach large groups of people a homogenous method touted as soul-searching creativity, but that result in a class picture of everyone holding up virtually the same painting, this collection of  wonderfully incongruous images was deliciously visually stimulating.

And, finally, there is a part of every artist that no one will ever be able to fully understand. Not their family, not their spouses, not their agents or managers, not their collectors or curators. It is what makes us, the viewer, ask things like: Why do they do that? What were they thinking? What does it mean? This is the compulsion; the thing inside that is so personal, so deeply within the artist’s soul that, often, the artist might not even be able to fully acknowledge or understand it him/herself. In the “outsider artists,” a group that often includes art that is never seen by others until after their death, this energy is unfettered by the need to produce for an audience or a customer. It is like the art of the child who, when presented with a box of crayons or pencils grabs them and begins to draw because she is simply…. compelled to do so.

TRY THIS WEEK: Think about what compels you and honor that.

Monday #38: Get Your Wabi Sabi On

Imperfect, impermanent and incomplete.

That’s wabi-sabi in a nutshell.

What began as a Japanese notion that was a more austere and melancholy view of the flawed natural and inanimate world, evolved over thousands of years and, under the influence of Zen Buddhism, became a more lighthearted and hopeful vision of life that celebrates the asymmetric, the slightly off and the rustic or unrefined. Here in the West, our understanding of wabi-sabi keeps the emphasis on the idiosyncratic and the quirky and even extends its criteria to people, to bring this acceptance and celebration of imperfection into our physical and psychological human realm.

As an artist, I know all too well the conflict between my desire to interpret the world in a way that seems loose and playful and the voice of the inner critic who fuels my perfectionism. In nutrition and fitness, I hold the ideal of perfect eating and regimented exercise up against an actual existence that sometimes delights in the hedonistic and lazy.  In my professional life, I try to balance the more channeled, jargon-speak with a need to speak and act passionately and pave a way that is uniquely mine. And, in relationships there is always going to be the misstep, the thing that should not have been said or done and the tendency to beat myself up about it a little bit every time.

So, on a weekend run, I went looking for wabi-sabi and, as I did, I thought about how, as humans, we can internalize this philosophy and bring it to our existence.  How can we use the ways of wabi-sabi to feel more present, more whole?

Can we strive to be content with a simple life, one without the “wanting more”? How does it feel when we want more… how does it feel we believe we have enough?

Can we believe that our lives are journeys, paths, and epic adventures? How does it feel to believe we have not reached the place we thought we would… how does it feel to be engaged in the process of our lives, to savor each moment as we live it and believe that we are always in the right place?

Can we like ourselves as imperfect beings and celebrate that which makes us all different? How does it feel when we focus on what we feel isn’t working… how does it feel when we can see what is?

Can we truly let go of the past but honor its beauty and let that part remain in our hearts? How does it feel to idealize a past and constantly hold our vision in a backwards glance… how does it feel to let our past settle in our selves and be open to what is and what could be?

Have a beautiful, quirky, imperfect, adventuresome and satisfying week, my friends.

TRY THIS WEEK: Get your wabi-sabi on. Let it begin in you.

Monday #37: I Get To

One of the things I do as an artist is participate in street festivals and, because it’s springtime, I’ve had a few gigs over the past couple of weeks. Setting up for one of these events takes a lot of effort. Aside from the time I spend on creating new images, there is printing and packaging to be done, packing into boxes to be loaded into my van, driving to the events (which have very early morning set-ups and are sometimes two hours away from home), unloading, setting up my tent and putting the art work on display.

Then I stay there for the day which, temperature-wise, can be just right but is often too cold or too hot. I’m usually alone so I wait far too long to use the restroom or get lunch, forget my sunblock and get a farmer’s burn. At a busy show, hundreds and thousands of people come and go. Most are really, really nice but some are weird and say weird, and even offensive things, and these days so many of them take photographs of my art without so much as a glance, let alone permission, that I have given up that fight. I watch for unattended children holding sticky cotton candy and drippy ice cream cones and am always on the lookout for unattended dogs who dawdle at the end of a long, slack leash tempted to leave their mark on a print rack or tent leg. Grown adults come into my tent holding a beer or a cigarette in one hand and wiping their other hand all across my paintings while they bark at their kids not to touch anything. People question my prices, asking for deals, discounts and “best prices” in a manner they would never do in any other sales environment. (And, seriously, my best price would actually be double or triple the one I just gave you. Just sayin’.) If I’m not feeling well or have accidentally cut off the tip of my finger with a blade and a straight edge the night before (true story), I can’t call in sick. And then I spend the entire day pacing back and forth, trying not to look eager and swoop in on people or be pushy. In doing all of this, I also hang my heart and soul’s work out there for anyone and everyone to assess, critique and evaluate–or, hopefully, buy. When the day is done, I put it all in reverse and drive home. Exhausted.

There are lots of different people out there–and I like just about all of them– but I’ve identified one particular kind that I try to head off every time if I can. They come, usually not to buy anything, but just to have something to do for the day, maybe get a bite to eat, and to drop casual comments here and there that have a nasty little vibe. If you’re a street artist, you have to be careful not to let what they say get to you because it can put you off your mood in a hot minute, particularly if you are prone to slipping from glass-half-full to glass-half-empty. I like to get all psychological and new age on them–it usually sends them away in seconds– but I’ve watched other artists have an encounter with this type of folk and have seen them go from optimistic to pessimistic in a matter of minutes. This kind of vibe radiates out and, the next thing you know, that artist across from you is sending her pessimism over your way, even though she started off feeling pretty fine! Here are some of the kinds of things you might hear these negative people say (apply appropriate sarcasm or sour tone of voice as you read these):

• Set it up, take it down, do it all over again.
• Another day, another dollar.
• And now, the best part of the day begins.
• Gotta love standing here all day.
• The economy’s had to have been tough on you guys, eh?
• How many of these you think you’ll sell today?
• It must be grueling to set this up and take it down every weekend.
• You do this all year long?

You know what? This actually is what I do! It’s a part of what I do, anyway. And, when I let circumstances that aren’t ideal and people like this influence me, I might forget what I get to do because of what I do.

I get to work outside on the weekends and to be in different places where I can see new things and meet new people from all walks of life. I get to network with other creative people and try to think up new ways to make the world more fun. I get to have a career where I make my own hours and my own choices about what kinds of sales environments I want to participate in. I get to talk about my work and what inspires me and listen to how this affects others who see it. I get to have access to a living petri dish for my art and a direct market test for the direction it is going in at the moment. I get to use my body to set up a big booth display because I keep myself healthy and in a state of being that can do this. Most of all, I get to do what I love, what feeds my heart and soul, what makes me feel connected to the planet and fully human and what also brings joy and beauty to the lives of others. That’s right, this is what I do. I get to do this.

TRY THIS WEEK: Think on this…try turning your “have to’s to get to’s”  now, what do you get to do?

Monday #36: Haiku, To You

Oh my goodness, I love the vibrant yellow, greens and yellow-greens of spring!

It’s springtime now but, at the end of this summer, the 52 Mondays Blog will turn three years old! Wow! As a creative, self-employed person, I often feel the anxiety and overwhelm that can come from this quirky professional life. I work in a variety of genres when it comes to how I make my way: writing and illustrating books, teaching kids and grownups, directing community art projects, public speaking, coaching, graphic design and fine art, just to name a few. I am pretty much all over the place and, while I truly love this way of life, there is an emotional and psychological impact that comes from this that is very different from someone who punches the proverbial clock.

I would say that, overall, it makes me more ambitious, more eager to move forward with personal goals and more aggressive with my artistic vision; and I have been doing it for so long now that I know I would feel a great sense of loss if I went back to a day job. But, some days it can be hard to know where to start or which project to devote my attention to when there are so many things I have to choose from. It can be difficult to get myself going when the deadlines I have are either self-imposed or off in the distance. It often feels tough to summon up my creative mojo when it’s gorgeous outside and I’d just rather take a long run–or it’s rainy outside and I’d rather putter around my house avoiding my creative call because I don’t know what to do first. And, if I’m being totally honest, sometimes I just feel like staying in my pajamas and drinking tea all day long while I play on Facebook or Pinterest, look at new recipes to make for the following weekend and, then, wait for the procrastination guilt and subsequent overwhelm to set in!

So, one of the things that keeping this blog does for me is to add a little structure to my creative life–a life which can often be very unstructured. I’m grateful for that and even more grateful for all my dear readers and followers. Some weeks it is easy to think of things to write, but other weeks, it feels like a real challenge, although I believe I’ve missed fewer than three Mondays overall and maybe, really, only one. While I’d love to have my weekly posts written the night before and up by 8:00 a.m., generally I am racing the Monday morning clock to get them online by noon because, well, that’s kind of how we creatives roll. And, you don’t know this, but I’ve also invented kind of a “free pass” post that I’ve made a personal rule to use no more than four times a year. When I’ve gone through an entire week and nothing out there strikes my fancy, when I’m about to approach a busy weekend with few openings for a blog-writing sit-down, when I get to late night Sunday and my brain is totally fried and nothing sounds inspiring to write (or read!) about, I pull out my quarterly Haiku.

I had a busy, busy weekend and, this morning, I was pretty certain I was going to pull out Spring’s Haiku post. Friday night we attended the annual Pinot to Picasso event held by the Princeton Arts Council where I am a faculty member and a contributing artist to the event’s Tombola Auction (my piece is the tree with the yellow sun, entitled “The Gathering Tree.”). It’s a fancy affair with good food, good wine, lots of schmoozing and a cool art auction. Then, Saturday I spent the morning driving to every corner of kingdom come, gathering up stray paintings, having finished work shot by my photo lab, and matting prints for Sunday’s annual Communiversity Arts Festival in Princeton. Saturday night I was frantically packing up my van with my display booth and still finishing up some small paintings so that they would dry by Sunday morning to hang.

The weather was fine, fine, fine yesterday and it was a wonderful day to see friends, meet the public and talk about my work. The sound of great music and the smell of delicious food filled the air on Nassau Street and people came out in a mob to enjoy all that this annual arts festival has to offer. I even got to meet the people who won my piece from Friday’s auction because they stopped by to tell me! But, after breakdown and cleanup, dinner and a glass of wine (well, OK, maybe it was two), I lasted about nine minutes in front of the TV before calling it a night.

It was looking like a Haiku Monday.

Turns out, you guys actually like haiku and these posts are some of my most-read! Many of you even turn on your own inner-poet and add yours to the mix. In working with children, I’ve discovered that haiku is one of the most approachable poetry formats because it uses the beautifully simple syllabic symmetry of 5-7-5 in a trio of lines that devote them selves to an immediate and rather personal vision of the natural world. I use haiku as a go-to thing, both in my writing workshops and here on the blog, but I don’t even have one single book of haiku. Or… do I?

A couple of weeks ago, Jeff and I stopped by an area school for a huge, local used book sale on the last day for the last hour. You could tell that the volunteers who had worked the entire weekend were exhausted and annoyed by latecomers but we wanted to get in on the deal because it was $5 bag day and we both wanted to feed our book love for a fiver. They handed me a map of the sale layout and I immediately felt overwhelmed by the vast collection of used books laid out on tables in the gymnasium of the school and had no idea where to start. The person on the PA kept reminding us how many minutes we had left… 30… 20… 15… 10… I could feel my anxiety rising with every announcement until I felt certain I would leave with nothing because I couldn’t even decide which section to look in. Children’s? Travel? Novels? Classics? Cooking? I know! Self-help! Sounds good, self-help, that was exactly how I was starting to feel.

Jeff said just pick a section you like and find a few books then move on to another–give each section like five minutes; no big deal. OK. So, I started in children’s, made my way to contemporary novels, then (yes) self-help and psychology and, finally, to cooking, which happened to be next to the poetry section which, oddly, Jeff was cruising.

Now, this guy of mine is as cool as a cucumber. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone as even-tempered and, since we’ve been together, I have truly come to appreciate the influence of being with someone whose calmness and pragmatism provides a perfect antidote to the intermittent buzz of anxiety and attention deficit that we artist types often possess. As the announcement that we had like seven seconds left or all our books would be taken away went off, he calmly hands me this sweet, little Japanese Haiku book.

It is a narrow hardcover book that was published in 1955 and the cover is an aesthetic and simple, two-color print job with a beautiful dustjacket that has the most delicious matte-papery feel to it and is adorned with a weird and wonderful purple insect. The book is a collection of haikus by the likes of Basho, Shiki, Kikaku and Joso and the pages are filled with seventeen syllable poems accompanied by a small, square, geometric, nature-inspired thumbnail illustration in the gray ink used for the cover. It is a lovely little book and the printed price on the inside flap is…. wait… $1.00.

Jeff knew I was looking for books to cut up for altered books and my art journaling projects, but there is no way I am cutting up this little gem. It’s a Life Keepsake.

Check out this April Haiku from Basho:

So, what’s today’s blog all about, my friends? I think that maybe it is about trying to recognize how we can find calm in our lives, how we can deal with whatever it is that rattles our cages, how we can cope with our responsibilities and do so with a sense of joy and grace. It’s about how we can honor the world around us, and the people in it, in the midst of our busy, busy lives. It’s about simple ways to stop, take a breath and, just maybe, find seventeen little syllables that capture a moment of awareness and reverence.

Incidentally, I have not used up one of my Haiku posts. Just sayin’.

Enjoy this yellow,

green and yellow-green spring.

For, my friends, beauty calms.

TRY THIS WEEK: Ask yourself, what’s a small way I can soak up the calmness and combat the overwhelm?

Monday #35: Get Lucky

Sometime last fall I started finding pennies. I know we all occasionally find pennies but I started finding them often. The first one that began my penny finding stint was in a parking lot outside the bank. When I got back to my car, I looked down and there it was. I picked it up and put it on my dashboard, thinking, “See a penny pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck.” Hey, I need good luck! I mean, really, who doesn’t?! After finding that one, it seemed like they were everywhere. I started feeling lucky! Indeed, it seemed that lucky things were happening to me!

So, I told Jeff. And, Jeff’s parents. And his kids, and my kids. I said, “It’s the strangest thing… I’m finding pennies everywhere. I mean, I know we all find pennies but this has never happened to me before quite like this!” I was feeling so lucky.

When we went skiing, there was one on the stairway I went down, when we went to a restaurant, there was one on the floor next to my chair, when we got on a subway, there was one on the seat, and on and on and on. I’ll admit, my luck felt so good that I started looking for them. And, maybe, I thought, these pennies have been here all along but now I am just noticing them! Then I wondered if that might wear off their luck so I started to pretend I wasn’t looking for them because, man, I was feeling lucky, lucky.

I began collecting them on the top of my bathroom vanity cabinet in a neat, little row. I figured that because this was the place where I got ready, the luck from them would kind of sprinkle down on me each day before I faced the world. And, of course, I didn’t want to let them mix into the change bin with all the other unlucky pennies so I needed a really special place to put them! Every time I found one, onto the vanity it went. Fall turned to winter, winter turned to spring and, pretty soon, I had nearly twenty lucky pennies. I was a lucky girl, that’s for sure. I believed it was true.

Now, speaking of believing for a moment, I want to talk about my childhood a little bit here. And, since I know my parents read my blog (they are, perhaps, my most dedicated readers) I just want to say that I don’t want them to feel bad about what I’m about to tell you because, the truth is, I think I’ve worked through all the psychological trauma they caused me with this one: They told me and my sister, from the very beginning, there was no Santa Claus. Yup. You heard it. No Santa. Christmas presents came from the mall, got wrapped by mom the night before and were plopped under the tree in the morning. No Santa, no behavior throughout the year that might influence him, no reindeer, no cookies and no milk. You might think this took some of the magic out of Christmas for us but you have to understand they were liberal 70s parents and trying to do their best to raise independent thinkers, not magical thinkers. And especially not magical female thinkers who believed in some benevolent man who showered us with gifts. Jeez, what kind of woman would want that?!

So, back to Santa. Or no Santa, as the case was. At some point in my life, I have to say that I began to feel cheated. I thought, when I grow up and have my own kids, I was going to DO SANTA. I was gonna do Santa like no mom had ever done Santa. And I did.

I found the best Santa impersonator in the world at the Bridgewater Mall and we stood in line to sit on his lap. We wrote the letters, addressed them to the North Pole and took them to the post office with the special Santa mailbox. We made the fanciest cookies and put them out on the plate with the glass of milk with handmade Christmas cards (Santa absolutely can eat cookies at everyone’s house, don’t ask how, he’s probably just really hungry). We even left small gifts for Santa next to the fireplace below our narrow chimney where he came in (don’t ask how he fits, he just does). We filled little bags with oats for the reindeer with little tags to tell Santa what the little bags of oats were for (even though Santa knows everything, but who wouldn’t want to make little tags for Santa?). And then we hurried off to sleep because Santa never comes to houses where everyone isn’t sleeping (and you can’t pretend that you are sleeping because he will know that, don’t ask how, he just does). After I was sure they were asleep, I wrapped all the gifts, threw away the oats, crumbled the cookie crumbs onto the plate, poured the milk out, and put their little Christmas cards in the keepsake place. Then, I went off to bed, myself, to try to get a few hours of shuteye before the crack of dawn when both of them awoke with such amazement, such joy, such blissful wonder at what had taken place in our house while we all slept. I had my kids so into believing in Santa that, when they misbehaved throughout the year, all I had to do was pick up the phone and say, “That’s it. I’m calling the North Pole right now and telling Santa how you are acting and I can tell you, he’s not gonna like it. Not one bit.” It worked every time. I never even had to dial the number.

I was so determined about keeping their belief in Santa that I committed to never ever admitting he wasn’t real. Even when I knew they knew. It was just unspoken. Now that they are both really young men, I’ve asked them how they felt about my Santa intensity. My oldest, who is deep in the throes of college preparation, responded quickly with, “It was great! It was like this amazing time in your life, the only time in your life, when you believe all this crazy good shit is really real!” His brother agreed, Santa belief was pure magic. Sigh. A mother-job well done.

About a month ago, I’d returned from the supermarket and was putting the groceries away. In the refrigerator, in the front corner of the fruit drawer was… you know what… a penny. A few days later, I got into the shower and there, on the floor at my feet… a penny. I told Jeff again about all the pennies I had been finding and, one night after a few glasses of wine, I lovingly cradled all my lucky pennies in my hands and practically sang to him, “Can you believe this? I am so, so, so lucky!” He just smiled but I was feeling the mega luck, that’s for sure.

But, then there was a penny perched on the top of my computer monitor. And one on the rim of the toilet seat… and, finally, unbelievably, one with its shiny, copper edge peeking out of my bar of soap! I felt my belief becoming shaky. It was once of the oddest feelings, feeling it change like that. I went to Jeff and said, “This is just too weird. This can’t be random. Someone has to be doing this.” He cocked his head with a guilty smile and said, “I knew, we all knew, but I just couldn’t tell you.”

You see, I have the best kids in the world. They know I’m a grown-up, know I’m deeply flawed, know I have all kinds of things I think are right but that they disagree with, know I’m optimistic to a ridiculous degree and believe in stuff like meditation and the power of happiness, but, you know what? They get me. I’ve long told them that I’ve been “studying” them their whole lives but I daresay they have also been studying me. We don’t always get along but we are people who share all sorts of things, we have the same sense of humor, and we tease each other and poke fun at our faults. I have long, philosophical talks with my oldest son, Ethan, when we run together and I am always the first person he calls or texts for coaching when things aren’t going right for him. And my youngest son, Caleb, still wakes up almost every morning and gives me a hug, still begins the day by asking me “How’re you doing, Mom?” This year I learned to ski and when, on our very last ski trip, I reluctantly decided to brave the black diamond trail, Belleayre Run, he stayed on the mountain with me, always about ten feet from where I was, cheering me on, telling me I could do it, for the entire 20 minutes it took me to get down.

Jeff said he didn’t want to tell me because he didn’t want to ruin it, didn’t want to spoil the magic, but he asked me if I feel cheated now that I know. Like Ethan, when I asked him about Santa, it didn’t take me more than a second to respond. I said, “Are you kidding? No way! I’ve got kids who want me to be lucky! I’m the luckiest mom in the whole, wide world.” I am so, so, so completely lucky.

But, I do wonder how in the heck they got that penny into the bar of soap. Maybe Santa helped them.

TRY THIS WEEK: Get lucky. Believe you can.

Monday #34: Get Out Of The Loop

I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of questions lately. Last year, I wrote a post about how much our brain likes questions and how they can help us get into more creative, higher level thinking if we let them. In fact, a question we ask ourselves need not even have an answer for it to work its magic on our cerebral cortex.

But, lest we believe that all questions are created equal, they are not. I’d like to introduce you to the “Rhetorical-Why-Loop questions.” We are all familiar with RWL questions because they creep up on us when we are feeling low, helpless, angry, frustrated and jealous–which might give you a clue as to why these questions aren’t so great as they prey upon some of our most unpleasant, uninspiring and undesirable emotions. Here are some examples of RWL questions:

• Why me?
• Why did this happen to me?
• Why did you/they do this to me?
• Why do you/they always ignore me?
• Why does this only ever happen to me?
• Why can’t I ever….?
• Why, God?

Just trying these questions out for a moment, you can probably begin to see how they can hold your mind and your imagination prisoner. And, because we tend to ask them when we are feeling bad, the “answers,” if you can even call them answers, generally render us either a loser or a victim (for example, this happens to me because I am lazy or this happens to me because people don’t like me). Often accompanied by absolute adverbs like always, only and never, RWL questions also make sweeping generalizations and can keep us in a negative thinking vortex.

So, what are we to do about it? Well, I say run your Whys through the What If Machine. I think of the What If Machine as one of those crazy cartoon contraptions, like the ones that Mrs. Jetson always had to make her domestic life easier or the one that put the stars on the bellies of the Sneetches. I’ll show you what I mean by using a real example I encountered just recently. I was talking with a friend about her creative life and the things that are blocking her from living this part of her life fully. She suddenly began focusing on her daughter who, in her mind–at least for this moment– was more laid back about being creative and less hung up on stress and anxiety. “I look at my daughter,” said my friend,”…she has such an easier time than I do with everything…and I think, why can’t I just be more like her?” 

Putting this Why through the What If Machine might look something like this:

• What if I could be more gentle with myself?
• What if I could learn what makes my daughter so laid back?
• What if I could be more laid back?
• What if my creativity looked different than hers?

Immediately, you can really feel the opportunity that these question provide for more expansive thought and less negativity. What Ifs also open the door for communication between people in a way that the Whys do not. They get us out of the loop and into the flow of possibilities.

To read more about RWL questions, check out the three-part series of articles by Dr. Athena Staik at PsychCentral.

TRY THIS WEEK: Ask… What If?