Your Feelings are Trying to Tell You Something

I have a habit of wanting to breeze through my creative work.

I used to want to sit down and experience the words to flowing out of me when I'm writing or the images to snapping into place when I'm editing a film.

It is the case that my video editing process feels very fluid now AFTER having put in over 10,000 hours of practice.

Writing is still new to me so my process is less fluid. 

So what does less fluid look like and how can paying attention to your feelings help you? 

What Our Feelings are Telling Us

Often when I write, at some point I get stuck.

Initially I fought the feelings that would arise when I got stuck.

The first feeling I notice is frustration.

That is usually the top layer feeling.

Under the frustration is usually a feeling like embarrassment.

If I dig deeper I would see that I was stuck because I didn’t know what to write. The embarrassment is associated with an expectation that I should know what I want to write.

When I was young if I didn't know the answers my nervous system learned to go into flight/fright/freeze.  

I discovered that even as an adult, when I encounter moments of not knowing I close down and go blank.

By uncovering what was beneath the feeling of frustration, I have been able to stay open when I come to a point during my writing that I don’t know what to write next.

Instead of shutting down, I get curious. 

Acknowledge Your Process

When I started writing my first book, I had followed an author who uses a very research driven approach to writing. Step one is to completes the research using notecards to capture ideas. Step two is to organize all the research into categories or chapters. Step three is to write but only once you already know what you are going to write based on the research and organization.

That sounds good on paper.

But it turns out my mind doesn’t work that way.

Instead, I discovered that I learn what I’m thinking during the writing process.

The Benefits of Feeling

This is where the benefit of paying attention to my feelings paid off again. 

After collecting a large amount of research I felt I needed to start writing in order to organize my thoughts. I felt like after writing I could fill in the holes in my research.

In terms of the paradigm of writing a book that I studied, this was wrong.

But in terms of my own impulses, this felt right.

Only midway through this process did I discover the term generative writing.

The memoirist Gregory Pardlo teaches a course on Coursera called Memoir and Personal Essay: Managing Your Relations, where he shared the definition of generative writing stage as the free writing stage where memories get on the page and the writing is intuitive and messy.

I love this idea of having permission to be messy to get the initial first impression on the page. 

In finding research on the generative writing process I felt less self judgement and I embraced my own writing process.

I could now see, like in the case of writing my chapter on possibility in, How to Be Curious, that while I used the word possibility frequently I was uncertain of the mechanism involved in cultivating a sense of possibility.

So I gave myself permission to write forward and then stop and do research.

When Feelings Become Productive

I now link a feeling of frustration as a sign that I need to do more research. 

That has inspired me to deepen my writing practice.

My creative process has revealed many of patterns in my nervous system that I've been able to deprogram as I feel the feeling, investigate, and get curious about the underlying issue. 

Acceptance and curiosity have enriched my creative practice.

For some artists, they may look for a feeling of fun, joy or a sublime state of consciousness.

As someone who works in realm of ideas, first as a documentary filmmaker and now as an artist and writer, I work best when I am curious and open to new ideas and information.

I'm looking for other truths beyond my own and wish to capture these truths from ephemeral moments and to give them shape and form.

Believe in what is Possible

For me the idea of limiting beliefs is not helpful.

Nervous system patterns that happened in a precognitive phases of life are not based on beliefs. 

Our nervous system wasn’t thinking thoughts when those patterns were programmed. But it was intelligent.

Today, when my nervous system is activated I think, wow, okay, I am stressed. What is causing me stress and how can I remove the stress?

We can shut off the response if we look under the response and learn what our neuro-intelligence is telling us 

Our feeling is an indictor, it is our mind that tries to ascribe meaning to the feeling such as “I can’t feel uncomfortable” or “This should be easy.”

The reality is, there is something amiss that we need to address.

Maybe we need to try a new approach to our work. Maybe we need to rethink our goals. Maybe we need to try a new direction. Or maybe we need to take a pause and let our mind rest.

When we respect the feelings that arise in us and get curious we can make shifts that help us feel better and get into flow.

The Practice of R.A.I.N.

A practice that has helped me get curious is R.A.I.N. by Tara Brach. You can find a description of her process here.

Let me know if you find that investigating your feelings helps you identify a productive pathway forward the next time you get stuck.