Today’s post is a guest post from Rebecca Hass. Rebecca is addicted to Brazilian rhythms and bringing joy to others through music. Her brand-new debut album of original compositions and arrangements in Brazilian styles, Florescer (Bloom), will be out October 24, 2018. She supports other musicians and artists in their creative habits through wellness and mindset coaching and blogging about these topics at rebeccahass.com. Can’t wait for you all to read Rebecca’s five tips below! – Lucia
Wellness and creativity. Creativity and wellness. They’re friends, right? I would even dare to say that they’re one and the same. But I also know that as someone working in a creative field (I’m a musician), it’s easy to get caught up in the requirements of daily life and lose sight of both of them, especially if you’re self-employed! If you struggle to make wellness a priority, you’re definitely not alone, and you’re in luck: I have five helpful tips for you to bring more wellness back into your life.
1) Ask yourself what you need.
This sounds really basic, but when I’m super busy, I can go for days without asking this question. We creatives, especially the self-employed and/or Type A ones, can have a tendency to work ourselves into the ground. So, we have to get intentional and make a practice of it. I set a daily reminder on my phone for 7am that simply says “What do you need today?” It’s actually not always easy to answer, but I attempt to untangle my brain and find an answer on my morning walk each day. (Shout out to Mara Glatzel (for inspiring this practice – Mara’s podcast Needy, about identifying, honoring, and advocating for your needs, is amazing.)
You can also check in with yourself regularly to see how things are going. My weekly check-in is really simple, only three questions:
- What’s working?
- What’s not working?
- What did I learn?
I’ve discovered that if I try to do a lengthy regular check-in, I just won’t do it, but this short one seems to work well, and most importantly, it allows me to change things that aren’t working.
You have permission to do wellness any way that you need to, however it works for you. It’s really easy to read about what we “should” be eating/exercising/doing, but if that serves to make you feel overwhelmed and worse about yourself, it’s not helpful! What works for me might not work for you, and that’s totally fine.
2) Practice self-compassion.
This one has been a total game-changer for me – when it comes down to it, whenever things seem difficult, it’s usually at least partially because I’m being too hard on myself. When we have really high expectations of ourselves, it’s so easy to fall short, and then to beat ourselves up about it, but we don’t have to. I really love the self-compassion meditations from Dr. Kristin Neff, which are available on her website and on the Insight Timer app.
There’s even a 5-minute meditation on there – we’re all busy, healthy habits can be very small, and they still work!
3) Rest is not only allowed, it’s required.
As the descendant of Midwestern farmers who also went through music school (where everyone bragged about how much they were practicing, and how little sleep they were getting), hard work is a value that’s baked into my DNA. But, as many of us have found, working all of the time leads to burnout! I’ve experiences burnout enough times to make rest a huge priority. Resting used to feel like losing time, but now I know it’s a critical part of the human energy cycle – we can’t work (or live) as well if we don’t rest! Even when things get very busy and I have to work more than I want to, I allow for breaks when my energy is waning, and I actually schedule rest times on my calendar. (Mine say CAT/COUCH DAY, but do it however it works for you.)
4) Make time for your creative habit, in a way that’s just for you.
On paper it sounds like creatives get to have fun and make stuff all of the time, but in my experience, it’s really hard to carve out time for our personal creative pursuits, the kind without the pressure that may accompany doing that for work. Maybe you’re a graphic designer who wishes they had more time to draw, or a music teacher who wishes they had more time to play music… whatever it is, you can make time for it. It doesn’t have to be a lot. Try starting by scheduling a small block, like 10-15 minutes. Maybe you’ll be inspired to do more, or maybe not, but it doesn’t matter, because you showed up and did something enjoyable, just for you.
5) Make an “ideal day” list and try implementing one (yes, only one) small change from it.
It might seem funny that I mentioned this one last, but that was intentional. I’ve done many an ideal day exercise and decided to completely overhaul my life, only to fail days later, because making change that way doesn’t actually work. We don’t even have to change more than one thing at once, and it can be a tiny change. This might feel insignificant, but it’s not – last year I did 100 days of writing 8 measures of music a day (usually about a 15 minute commitment), but I ended up finishing many pieces over that period of time. Consistent small bits of work add up to big things.
Want to talk more about balancing wellness in your life as a creative? Rebecca offer Virtual Office Hours appointments, a free 30-minute chat that could help you get some new perspective, and she’ll be launching coaching offerings starting October 2018 as well. Rebecca also has created an amazing free resource to share – The Habit Tracker For Creatives. Grab it now from her site!