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MomfulnessTM by Denise Roy Painting practice So there I was last week, standing at an easel in an “Acrylic Painting” class, waiting nervously for the teacher’s instructions. I was amazed at how quickly I felt like I was right back in high school. I signed up for this class because I wanted to integrate more art into my life. In college, I had considered majoring in Art but ended up choosing an English major instead. Since that initial passion for painting hadn’t gone away in 30 years, I now found myself in this local artist studio with seven other middle-aged women. The teacher waited patiently for us to set out our paints and brushes. He seemed to be a kind man – white hair, grey eyes, soft voice. But then he did the unthinkable. He didn’t give us a specific subject matter. He invited us to paint anything we wanted. “What?!” I thought. Without a clear structure, I noticed all kinds of fears popping up:
At that point, I panicked. Maybe I could just drop the class. I took a deep breath and decided to stick it out until the end of the first class. During the next two and a half hours, I watched all kinds of Internal Rules holler out their instructions inside my head. I suspect these operate in me a lot, but they became even more evident during Painting Practice. Here are just a couple of those rules; see if you can identify with either of them: Rule # 1: Don’t Make Mistakes. You’ve Got to Be Perfect. Was it the cost? I laughed at myself as I realized that the canvas cost $2.50, the tubes of acrylic paint maybe $10. So my total “risk” was $12.50 – actually less than that, because I wouldn’t use all the paint! I suspect that even if I had been using a 25 cent piece of newsprint and a child’s watercolor set, I’d have gone into panic mode. But as I shined a light onto my fear, I began to let go and give myself permission to be wonderfully imperfect. That’s when I took the first step and put color on the canvas. Our fear of making mistakes keeps us small, crimpy, anxious, and does not serve us – or the world – very well. What if we decided to take more risks, played with new ways of living our lives, even practiced being imperfect on purpose? Rule #2: Stay Within the Lines. I dutifully put some yellow paint on my brush and started to color inside the lines. After three minutes, I noticed that my shoulders were tight and my stomach was in a knot. “Are you having fun?” I asked myself. “No!” part of me snapped back. “What do you want to do?” I asked my gut instead of my head. “This feels too much like paint-by-number! I want to apply thick yellow and orange paint all over the picture.” “Go for it!” I heard myself reply. That’s when I gave myself permission to break whatever rules I thought were governing my painting. I applied some paint, asked myself how it felt, and let the process, not the final outcome, lead me. I checked with my intuition and my body, and let that part of me lead instead of my intellect. I gave myself permission to “go with the flow” instead of moving according to a predetermined plan. Funny how revolutionary that can feel! What if we asked ourselves routinely, “Am I feeling alive? Energized? Scared – but in an invigorated sort of way?” What might change in our lives if we allowed ourselves to break a few rules, to go outside the lines? Even if you don’t sign up for a class like I did, try this experiment: Paint (or do some other creative endeavor) for the process rather than the outcome. Find out which guiding rules you have in your head, and then break them and watch what happens. You just might discover that, as you take a few creative risks with something as “insignificant” as newsprint and paints, the effects will spill over into other areas of your life. And then watch out…There’ll be no stopping you!
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