Officially, the chapter’s title is “Recovering a Sense of Integrity.” But for me, this is where things start getting real. First off, SPOILER ALERT! This is the chapter where Julia reveals something kinda important. So if you haven’t been following along and doing your morning pages, artist’s date and chapter tasks, you might want to STOP HERE, turn around and go back to Chapter One or wherever you left off. I say this because I’m not sure if finding out this key piece of information without doing the exercises up to this point will ruin it’s effectiveness. Okay?

You’ve been warned. Proceed at your own risk.

“If you want to work on your art, work on your life” ~ Chekhov

That seems to be the theme of Chapter 4. Julia adds this juicy morsel to that, “In order to have self expression, we must first have a self to express.”

So here’s the spoiler, folks. The you that’s been showing up every day in your morning pages, that’s the real you. Yup, the whiny, complainy, angry, irritated one? That’s you.

The one that puts a smile on and says, Everything’s fine; the accepting, nice, tolerant self is just the self you put on for show.

But if you knew that piece of info to begin with and were instructed to write down your real feelings in your morning pages, rather than getting, Whatevs. Just write down whatever pops in your head, no biggie, you’d be editing yourself there too. So Julia comes at this sideways, trying to sidestep our mental editor into revealing ourselves to ourselves. Make sense?

The point of the morning pages is to get us passed It’s okay, when it’s really not. And you know those days when you just don’t want to do them or just don’t do them at all, it’s probably because if you did, you’d gain some unpleasant piece of clarity about yourself. If you’re like me, when you are emotionally triggered by anything at all, you’re not going to want to do the morning pages. I try rationalizing my evasive maneuvers — I’m running late, it’s too cold, it’s too early — by telling myself that wallowing in whatever crap I’m feeling is just going to make it worse anyway. But the truth is that writing all of it down, unedited, is one of the best way to process and then reflect on what’s going on in my internal world.

Here’s the kicker for all of us artists. If we don’t connect with our emotions, there is no art.

Sorry, folks. It’s the truth. I spent the first 36 years of my life convincing myself that everything was okay because I didn’t want to feel any discomfort, pain or suffering. That’s all well and good except that when you block out all that stuff, you don’t feel anything at all. You don’t feel love, joy, connection…. and then life is what? Just sleeping, eating and laundry.

Remember my earlier post about my false beliefs about artists. You don’t have to suffer to be an artist. But you do have to feel something. And that, requires feeling whatever suffering comes along with the other stuff. If you’ve ever watched Finding Nemo, one of my favorite lines is where Nemo’s dad says, “I promised him that I would never let anything happen to him.” And Dori says, “That’s a funny thing to promise. Then nothing will ever happen to him.”

On the plus side, when I consistently do my morning pages, I don’t just get the problems, I usually get clarity and I get answers too. Again, there are lots of people who subscribe to this method of raising self-consciousness. One of my favorites is Janet Conner, author of Writing Down Your Soul.

Now you see why I say everything starts getting real right here in Chapter 4? Thoughts might start to appear in morning pages like “I have outgrown this job/home/marriage/friend.” Eek.

Julia says the process of knowing ourselves involves loss as well as gain. We clarify what of ourselves is real and what is illusory… and this kind of clarity creates change. Does that sound scary to you? That’s okay. I mean, it’s okay to admit that you’re scared of it, you don’t have to say that it’s okay. 🙂

I have no reassurances to offer except that if you keep going, the prize at the end is YOU. For some people, that’s worth it.

Chapter 4’s task: Reading Deprivation. Another eek! I know, right?

Julia says words are like tiny tranquilizers for most artists. If we give up reading, we force ourselves into the sensory world. Another way to think about it is to get out of your head! Reading is a great way to fill our heads with other people’s thoughts so that we can avoid our own thoughts and feelings. So. NO READING! The book was written before the internet (I know!!!) So that means… no Twitter, no Facebook, no Medium. And if the point is to be fully present, I’m making the assumption that this means no media as well.

You can be scared.

Of course, I’m also doing a 5-day cleanse right now. No food, no reading. What the heck will I do with myself?!?!?! Julia has some suggestions:
Listen to music
Wash the dog
Sort closets
Write friends
Repot plants
Pay bills

Okay, I’m sure we can come up with better suggestions!!! Mend. She actually suggests “mend.”
Sorry, I’m a little crabby, I’m at the end of Day 2 of 5.

Check in if you wish… how many days have you done your morning pages? Artist’s date? Any experiences of synchronicity to report

I’ll signing off the blog until next week’s check-in… since you won’t be READING until next week, right? 🙂

The Artist’s Way Posts

Week 1: Recovering a Sense of Safety
Week 2: Recovering a Sense of Identity
Week 3: Recovering a Sense of Power
Week 4: Recovering a Sense of Integrity
Week 5: Recovering a Sense of Possibility
Week 6: Recovering a Sense of Abundance
Week 7: Recovering a Sense of Connection
Week 8: Recovering a Sense of Strength
Week 9: Recovering a Sense of Compassion
Week 10: Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection
Week 11: Recovering a Sense of Autonomy
Week 12: Recovering a Sense of Faith

In Chapter Two, one of Julia’s “tasks” is to make one small change.

As much crazy as I’ve created in the last six years, I’ve also very deliberately and consciously created a lot of joy, personal fulfillment and true aliveness. This, I also attribute to boundaries. If you are interested in this conscious creation stuff, I highly recommend the book, The Not So Big Life by Sara Susanka. When I was blogging for My Mommy Manual I got a chance to do a skype interview with Sara. This book was pivotal in my life design. Sara is an architect and is credited for the Not So Big movement in house design. Her whole premise is that we don’t need McMansions, we need spaces that fit our lives. Of course, this requires that we know what’s important to us. She wrote the Not So Big Life in response to understanding that your inner space, ideally is reflected in our outer spaces.

I’m not going to go into that book here but just as an example, I’ll share one of Sara’s anecdotes from the book. Sara loves writing (obviously). But prior to her life overhaul she would spent 14 hours working and in the fading moments of the day, sit down to write. Her passion wasn’t getting the best Sara, but rather , the dregs.. What she did getting her best attention was the flood of emails that would come into her inbox first thing in the morning. Only when she had responded to all of the fires could she begin her work day and on and on until right before bed when she could barely squeek out a few sentences.

I can’t recall how she got to this point, whether she made a list of her priorities, passions, etc. but she made a small adjustment to her daily schedule: instead of checking her emails first thing, she checked them twice a day, at 10 and 4 and devoted the first hour or so of her day to writing instead. Doing the thing she loved first thing meant 1) it got done and 2) to her surprise, she discovered that most of the fires that came to her via email resolved themselves before she ever got to them!

Now that is an everyday miracle right there! For me, it was a tangible example for how making a small change that aligns yourself with your values can make a HUGE DIFFERENCE.

So my “small” change was cutting out television. Small is in quotes because I cannot tell you what a profound impact that had on me. 1) I didn’t have to pay for cable 2) my kids stopped fighting over what shows to watch after school 3) I found hours upon hours in my day/week and 4) without all those ads, I was clueless about the things I was supposed to want but didn’t have yet 5) I was so much less stressed out by not watching LOST and Law & Order.

Okay. Your turn. Can you think of one small adjustment you can make in your life that will align yourself with your values/passions/creative life?

Affirmations. Yes, that is what people call those things I wrote in Monday’s post — the things we use to defend against our negative beliefs. Perhaps you’ve used affirmations before and maybe they make you think of Stuart Smalley but there’s actually something about affirmations and how our brains work that make them pretty darn powerful.

In preparation for a class I teach, I did a bunch of research on the science of storytelling. I could go into a whole long thing but I did that in the last post. Haha!

To quote the great post-modern Stephen Sondheim in Into the Woods “Careful the tale you tell. That is the spell.” 

So as you write your affirmations, here are a couple of things to keep in mind:
• Write them in the present tense… I am, I have, etc. rather than I want, I will etc.
• Write them in the positive... I am abundant, I am safe… no hidden negatives like I am not poor, I am not scared etc.

And if you just can’t find the time, I have a little gift for you. I’ve written 10 affirmations that you can just adopt for yourself.

Bonus… let’s have some fun with this!
1. Download the PDF of affirmations here. I left lots of blank spaces so you can fill in your own.
2. Print them out and cult along the dotted lines
3. Roll them into little scrolls and put the scrolls into a bowl.
4. Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and pick one!

This will be your affirmation for the rest of the week/chapter. Say it out loud before you do your morning pages. Say it out loud before you go to bed. Put it in your wallet, tape it to your steering wheel or your mirror or your computer monitor, put it above your kitchen sink, on your refrigerator — anywhere you will see it often throughout the day.