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There is only one certainty in life and that is that everything is in a state of change. And even when we see evidence of this all around us, we spend a great deal of our time trying to control aspects of our lives to provide ourselves with a sense of security – an illusional certainty. Perhaps for a while our efforts even seem to shore us up – at least we feel some temporary relief. Then every once in a while something comes along in life – into our direct experience – that clearly denotes that there is only change and that certainty doesn’t exist. Right now we’re in a time of heightened uncertainty. We feel a sense of loss around the rapid changes and fear of what lies ahead – the unknown future. We are not sure how to cope with what has always been true – change is inevitable – and we may not clearly understand the needs we have as we adjust and adapt to what is happening, and how self-compassion can help us. We are bearing the weight of uncertainty and feeling its full force. How can we move through our lives with this looming over us? How can we make art, be creative, play and experience joy when everything we thought we knew has been turned upside down? It doesn’t seem accessible for us somehow or even appropriate. These thoughts and feelings are a normal response to a crisis and are not to be judged – no one truly knows another’s struggle. What we may be experiencing is nothing like what our neighbour might be going through – it’s personal and each of us is responding in our own way to this. We let go of judgement of ourselves and of others. Compassion is the next natural response. We feel the depth of our own suffering and can also understand the pain that others are going through as well. Our ability to empathize and join others where they are is a gift we share, and a beautiful one. But how easily do we extend compassion towards ourselves? During times of stress do we acknowledge that what we’re going through is hard and offer ourselves love and support for our perseverance and ability to endure? I know meeting ourselves with compassion doesn’t come easily for most of us. We’d rather choose to berate ourselves for not being better at things. We imagine that we should be responding differently than we are, or we should have jumped into action by now and have taken steps to mitigate what is happening. We mostly tend to criticize ourselves – and always in the quiet recesses of our thoughts – when we most need to offer ourselves support and encouragement. Sometimes this criticism has become such a habit that we are not even aware we’re doing it – until we are and then we’re shocked at the fierceness of our self-talk. As Artists we are often working to clearly hear and reframe our inner dialogue. In fact, the majority of the work I do with my coaching clients and Group Program participants is to help them find a way to recognize their inner state, to hear clearly what they are saying to themselves and then work with that. We focus on being mindful of our thoughts and energy and we learn to reframe any unsupportive dialogue into something more helpful and aligned with our purpose. This, along with meeting ourselves with compassion and curiosity, is what The Artist’s Mindset is built upon. When we have a strong, resilient creative mindset we are capable of navigating the emotional labour that art-making can be. We reside in a place of trust with ourselves, knowing that we have a stable foundation and a set of tools to help us face anything that arrives on our creative path. But what happens when everything changes so quickly and with such broad reach? How can we find a place for our art-making and ourselves in a time of deep uncertainty and loss?
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