Lifestyle of an artist: Three Rituals for Creative Living

In a previous post I've written about the heart of the Artist. I'm following it up with another post, this time about the lifestyle of an artist. Often people think that as creatives, we are slaves to abstraction and are out of touch with reality. The opposite is in fact true of many who have chosen creative expression as their vocation and career in life. As a visual artist, while I deal with a lot of visionary ideas, I also engage in daily routines, which lead up to the final piece of art.

These routines are unglamourous backstage work. But every thing you do or not do on a daily basis adds up to the creative process and the final creative product. Sometimes, as a creative I find it hard to make schedules and stick to them. But as I grow older, I am realizing that these tools are not my enemies. If done in a way that compliments my creative flow instead of inhibiting it, I find that schedules and routines help me hone my creative energies better, thereby producing more thoughtful and quality pieces of work.

It’s good to re-evaluate your lifestyle on a regular basis and make a list of the things you normally do in your creative practice. That way, you can assess your inventory of daily practices and improve on some things and get rid of other things.

Here are 3 Rituals I do on an everyday basis. My lifestyle is centered on keeping these basic rhythms most of the time.

Quiet time:

The first thing I do when I wake up, is carve out my quiet space. I do not engage with or talk to many people before I do this. I shut the door to my home studio and try to center my mind. I first learnt about the practice of centering from the Benedictine sisters at St. Benedict’s Retreat Center. A lot of soul and mental healing has happened in the 7 years since I started this practice. Making it the first thing I do every day has, over time, become a daily detox or a cleanse from any negative residue from my sleep, or worries, and anxieties carried over from the previous day.

My daily quiet time involves hearing and seeing the Spirit move over my imagination. Some days, I light a scented candle as I sit in quietness before Him. It helps me ground myself in the physical reality that this is a sacred time, a sacred place. I have also noticed that you can relax and concentrate better when you don’t do this on an empty stomach.

You don't have to be religious or spiritual or whatever to do this centering practice. Art Markman’s article THE IMPORTANCE OF RITUAL TO THE CREATIVE PROCESS, gives more ideas on how to imbue ritual into one’s daily practice. My sacred practice is what works for me; I encourage you to find the rhythm which works for you best. But the point is this: carving out quiet time is a great practice to remind us that there is more to life than getting things done. It grounds us on the fact that we are more than human doings – we are in fact, human beings.

Art of Gratitude:

I started really going after this practice only this year. There have been some really tough days when it was the farthest thing from my mind, but there have been other tough days, when this practice kicked in automatically.

Most of the time, I mentally list off things for which I am grateful in a particular day. I start off being thankful for the simple things in life, like the air I breath, the ability to see (even as I do), and gradually make it to more specific people, things and instances. I noticed that once you start being grateful, your perceptive also shifts, and you begin to see how truly blessed you are, even during difficult times.  

I took this mental practice a step further when I developed my social media strategy for 2015. Now I post my Gratitude List every Friday morning; in the course of the week, I add to it the things I am grateful for. This practice is helpful to counter fear and worry which have the tendency to propose the worst possible scenarios for my life, and thereby inhibit my imagination. Gratitude is a key component for visionaries and dreamers, because thankfulness for what is, opens up a whole new world for what could be. Gratitude shifts your perception to a place where you’re ready to grab hold of possibilities and turn them into opportunities.

For me thankfulness and gratitude are always centered on the One who loves me the most. But even if you don't have a particular expression of faith, there are ample amount of people you encounter every day, whom you can choose to be appreciative of and thankful for.

Love is Kind:

Today, one of the most important words in our culture is the word Love. In Greek, unlike in English, there are many words to define different kinds of love. There is agape love or unconditional love, often used in the sacred texts of the Christians to refer to the heart of the Father; phileo love, a platonic warmth and tendency which exists between comrades; storge love depicting closeness between kin, and friends; and eros love, which is characterized by romantic, passionate, and often physical expressions of love (Source: The FourTypes of Love – Greek Style).

In our culture we just have one word to cover a range of meanings, levels of affection, and commitment. But whatever the context, and no matter the person, I take my cues from 1 Corinthians 13 and consider the attributes of love when I evaluate whether my actions are loving or not. One of the key attributes that the writer talks about love is that it is kind.

Some years ago, while listening to Jason Upton on YouTube, I was really moved by a simple proposition he made. He challenged his audience to see the beauty in whoever they came in contact with, and reflect what they perceived back to that person. He said, and I am paraphrasing here, “This is how you become Jesus to them.”

Talk about shifting and expanding your perception. What better way to grow as an artist! Since I took up Upton’s challenge, I now find myself, automatically looking for and inevitably finding a beautiful feature, a captivating stance, a graceful movement, something simple yet spectacular, about the person in front of me. I make it a point to convey what I see to them, trying not to appear too weird. Often I find that people are not used to that level of honesty and are sometimes taken aback. But when I tell them about Upton’s challenge and my response to it, they are always moved. This is not flattery. When you take the time and effort to see beyond appearances, and to search for the faintest hint of goodness in even the most difficult people, you’ve happily sailed past flattery long time ago.

Sometimes we meet people who don’t need anything material from us, but the most precious of all things – love. And depending on the context and nature of our meeting, it’s not possible or appropriate to embark on a relationship based on any of the previously mentioned kinds of love. In this case, the simplest form of love we can extend to them is kindness.

Your expression of kindness will probably be different from mine. But whatever it is, know that you have the possibility of seeing and expressing beauty. Know that you can make someone’s day a little more bearable. Know that every time you choose to expand your perception, your creativity and innovation also expand. In fact, you see creativity and innovation for what they are – they are not some innate gifts given to some, but are in fact skills, which like muscles, only develop with use and exercise.

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