The power of positive thinking

One of my favorite books is Deepak Chopra's The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams. I find new meaning every time I read this small book.

Here's a brief summary of some things I've learned from the book.

1. Law of Pure Potentiality: We are all born free of ego with infinite potential and creativity (pure consciousness, spiritual essence, all possibilities). Acknowledge the pure potentiality of yourself and others.

2. Law of Giving (and Receiving): Always bring a gift to everyone you meet every day: a smile, a prayer, appreciation, or a compliment. Whatever you want, give it and it will be returned to you: blessings, caring, attention, affection, appreciation, compliments. Receive such gifts with gratitude.

3. Law of Kharma (Cause & Effect): Make the right choices to achieve right results. You'll know it's right--if it feels right. If something bad happens, turn it into a lesson or rise above it and change the effect.

4. Law of Least Effort: Do less and accomplish more by working through love, not power and control. Nature is the model--it simply "is." Accept this moment as it is; respond to the situation as an opportunity, without blame; no need to convince others of your point of view.

5. Law of Intention and Desire: Formulate your desire (goal) and use your intention to achieve it to benefit mankind. Center yourself (meditate), release your intentions and desires to the universe.The past and future are in your imagination. The present is in your awareness, i.e., real. Obstacles disappear when you are serenely grounded in the present.

6. Law of Detachment: Attachment is based on fear and insecurity. Detachment allows freedom to create. Uncertainty is fertile ground, the field of infinite possibilities. Preparedness in the present makes you alert and ready to seize opportunity. "Good luck is preparedness and opportunity coming together."

7. Law of Dharma (Purpose in Life): Each of us is here to discover our higher, true Self, our Spiritual Being. We are here to express our unique talent and our own way of expressing it. No one else has it. We are here to serve humanity. Put your talent to use.

-Find your talent. Ask yourself what are my talents? What do I love to do?
-If you have passion for what you do, you are in dharma.
-If what you do serves humanity, you are in dharma.

Ask "How can I help?" (spirit) instead of "What's in it for me?" (ego)

Deepak Chopra's The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams.

Watercolor classes back in session

It felt really good getting back into watercolor mode with my Monday class yesterday. We have a full class of 25, mostly returning students and a few new folks who have painted before. I turned the "oldtimers" loose to paint while I did a brief orientation for the new people. I told them that next week we would "do windows" and I wondered why everyone laughed. I meant "paint windows." I don't "do" windows any more than I have to. Except for Windows XP.

Critique was illuminating. Sylvia put up her best painting ever--a beautiful little church in the Tennessee woods, looking across an old cemetery next to it. Her treatment of the dappled shadows of trees on the sides of the building were marvelous. Linda also showed one of her best. She's ambidextrous and works with both hands. She did a beach scene that was beautifully transparent and showed no signs of overworking. Don painted two little goldfinches on flowered branches. He's good with the birds and wildlife and is learning to pick out a "catch-light" to make the eyes look more lively. Nearly everyone put something up for critique. It pleases me to say that they are all moving forward. In a month I'll be starting a beginners' class for eight weeks. I love getting people hooked on watercolor.

Of course, I showed them The New Creative Artist and, as you might expect, they were more than kind with their comments. What I've noticed when I show this book is different from the reaction to the first book, which was in print for sixteen years. People looked at the original Creative Artist and often said something about not being creative or wishing they had talent. Of course, the object of the book is to debunk those myths. But when people look at The New Creative Artist they seem more likely to say, "I think I could do that." Or "That looks like it would be fun to try." Bingo! Just what I was looking for when I wrote it!

You can draw!

Charley Parker posted a great blog today on Betty Edwards' Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. If you think you have no talent or creativity, read Charley's blog and then get that book. You can use it as a self-study course if you're really motivated to learn to draw. My son taught himself to draw this way when he was in his thirties.

I don't have a lot of respect for talent. Talent is genetic. It's what you do with it that counts. --Martin Ritt

The idea that creativity is a potentiality which all people possess to different degrees is now generally accepted by researchers in the field. They consider creativity as more than the manifestation of a unique talent possessed only by gifted artists.... It is also believed that the individual's potential creativeness can be stimulated and fostered by providing conditions which allow and force it to happen. --Hastie and Schmidt

Creativity--it's what you do

I wrote about talent a couple of days ago. You don't need talent to be creative. You may or may not "have" talent, but creativity is something you do, not something you have. You're born with creative potential and what you do with it is up to you. What is creative for one person is "all in a day's work" for another. I was leaving Curves after my workout the other day when I overheard one of the assistants say she didn't have a creative bone in her body. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I can't stand it when people say that. So I asked her a couple of questions and found she likes to experiment with cooking and gardening and makes fringed blankets for friends, picking out fun fabrics and colors that go together. She never thought of any of those things as creative, but in my view, they all point to creative thinking that can be channeled in many directions, including into art or writing or music. As I left, she said, "I never thought I was creative, but since you put it that way...." And I smiled all the way home.

Talent and self discipline

I'll bet you were a scribbler when you were a tadpole. So was I. Isn't everybody? I've never heard of a child prodigy artist who could draw well as a toddler. Andrew Wyeth and Pablo Picasso were both precocious and drew and painted well at a young age, but neither was born drawing. Both had artist fathers who took an interest in their training. Note that word "training." When you get that much support, you take it for granted you're talented. When you're motivated by praise, desire and single-mindedness, you can accomplish wonders. But it isn't enough just to believe you're talented--you have to work hard to develop your talent to its full potential.

Einstein said, "I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent. Curiosity, obsession, and dogged endurance combined with self-criticism have brought me my ideas."

It also takes self discipline. Sydney Harris wrote, "Self discipline without talent can often achieve astounding results, whereas talent without self discipline inevitably dooms itself to failure."

Do you have talent?

There's a powerful belief that people with talent can achieve beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. Talent implies that everything is easy for a chosen few and difficult or impossible for everyone else. Those who believe they lack talent feel they are outside a charmed circle with no magic way to get in.

Well, as Richard Bach says in Illusions, "Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours." "No talent" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Saying it makes it true.

What is talent anyway? Here are three definitions: A special natural ability or aptitude. A capacity for achievement or success. An inborn characteristic that has to be cultivated. The first doesn't amount to much without the second and third. Talent is a potential, not a guarantee of success. There's no real test for talent--it's a matter of faith and experience. Talent consists of wanting to do and believing that you can.

It requires the relentless pursuit of your creative goals. Practice, patience, perseverance. When you feel disappointed about your progress, remember that it took Beethoven twenty years to compose his "Ode to Joy."

Flaubert said, "Talent is long patience."

Vincent van Gogh's illness

I've just finished reading a fascinating book about van Gogh. There are numerous theories on the cause of his erratic behavior and suicide. A cursory search of the Web suggests that research done in the 1980s and 1990s holds the key to his illness--and it wasn't epilepsy, bi-polar disorder or schizophrenia. According to Dr. W.N. Arnold, Professor of Biochemistry at University of Kansas Medical Center and author of Vincent van Gogh: Chemicals, Crises, and Creativity, the illness of Vincent van Gogh was a congenital disease, acute intermittent porphyria (AIP). This debilitating genetic disease is characterized by sensitivity to light and other neurological abnormalities, including psychoses, hallucinations, convulsions and paralysis. The disease can be aggravated by poor nutrition, smoking and use of alcohol. There is substantial evidence that van Gogh drank absinthe and took excessive doses of camphor oil to relieve insomnia and pain. When he was institutionalized, his diet and habits improved and so did his symptoms. It's clear from his letters to his brother that his episodes of illness were extremely painful and something he dreaded, which may have been what led him to suicide. Another theory is that he was in the grip of an attack of AIP and accidentally shot himself, but there are no medical records to support either theory. There are some indications that his brother Theo and sister Wil may also have suffered from AIP. Dr. Arnold maintains, "He was wonderfully creative because of intelligence, talent, and hard work. He was a genius in spite of his illness - not because of it."

I hold to the doctrine that with ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable. --Thomas Buxton