An important element of my own process is walking.  I love walking because it allows me to exercise and think at the same time.  When I’m in the middle of an intensive period of writing, and sometimes when my head is so full of things I can’t think clearly, I head out the front door for a walk – it’s something I’ve always done without really thinking about it.  Now I realise that it’s one of those activities that occupies enough of my mind to function (and not fall over) but not so much that there’s no thinking room.  Gardening can be the same, although without the repetitive thud thud of my feet striking the pavement it’s not quite so good.  The walking rhythm is important and provides a kind of backdrop to the mental activity of making connections and new discoveries, seeing things anew, constructing novel images.  It puts me in another place in my head, another part and a different use – set apart almost from normal conscious thought.  In that place – the same place incidentally I access when I’m fully in the flow of writing – I can think creatively.

Sometimes we can make changes in our life to bring it closer to how we’d like it to be.  Or we can change our perspective, shifting our focus to the aspects we are happy with and away from the ones we are not –   making a situation we don’t like easier to live with.  But there are times we may find ourselves fighting against a situation we can’t change, for the time being at least, and living with the stress and exhaustion from wishing and willing it to be different.

Some of the people I’ve coached have wanted to make career changes and my role has been to help them work out their new direction and a possible route for making the change.  In one or two instances they can’t make an immediate switch to their new career – often because their commitments are dependent on their current salary.  Rather than feel miserable and trapped they have to learn  to live more comfortably with their present situation while they take the necessary steps for the longer-term change. They have to accept things as they are – for now.

A friend of mine has a simple phrase for situations she doesn’t like but is learning to accept – she says “when it just is”.  When I repeated her phrase to myself later, while locked in the middle of a ‘worry circle’ of my own making, I found myself sighing and letting go of tension as I did.  It’s a short phrase packed with meaning.  So now when I come across a situation I’m struggling to accept I call it a ‘just is’ moment.  It doesn’t mean that I resign myself to something realistically I could change, nor does it deny the strength of feeling I might  have have about it, but it does put me in a place where I can accept it as it is and for what it is, with the peace of mind that comes with it.

The twenty three hours of the outward journey had been relatively easy and with an empty seat next to me I was able to sleep for about three hours.  When it came to returning I didn’t fare as well and after a long time away from home and family I found myself willing the journey to be at an end.  But then I reminded myself that this time of waiting was as much a part of the adventure as the experiences I’d had in Australia, and that without one I couldn’t have had the other.  This switched me into a zone of acceptance that saw me through to landing.

Not only did this acceptance make the trip more tolerable but it also made it possible to see the hours as a luxury of ‘empty time’ to spend looking back at the weeks away and forward to the homecoming.   I recognised that as on all recent trips I was lucky to be returning home to the life I have; to people I love and to the writing and coaching work I enjoy so much.   Lucky too that I can look forward to other adventures to come.

Waiting to catch the train home after a meeting today I popped into the Runaway cafe at Lewes station.   I used to commute regularly to London and would often choose to break my journey at Lewes so that I could pop into the cafe. It was partly for the coffee – the train trolley provided (and still provides) muddy water – but much more than that it was because the Runaway is a unique and special place.

Today I was shocked to hear from Vic, who has run the cafe with his wife Jackie for the past 22 years, that Southern Railway has failed to renew their lease.  Vic and Jackie have been given only 25 days to come up with proposals to modernise the Runaway and the railway company has made it clear that they have a national coffee chain waiting to take on the lease.   The railway it seems is looking for a ‘contemporary unit’ that will fit in with the surroundings and have advised Vic and Jackie to visit high street coffee chains to see what is required.   If you have visited Lewes station you’ll know that ‘elegant and heritage’ are words you might associate with it, ‘contemporary’ you wouldn’t.

When I finally boarded the train, having said to Vic and Jackie “try not to worry” while knowing they had good reason to, I sat and wondered why I had been horrified at the prospect of it closing in favour of a Costas or Cafe Nero or similar.   Certainly the food and drink in the Runaway are way above average, even though the prices are not.  And yes, it’s always spotlessly clean and warm – particularly welcome on a cold morning.  But by far it’s greatest appeal is the warmth and kindness shown to customers.  Vic will sing opera to you,  read you a poem, quote philosophy, or tell you a joke – some of which are actually pretty funny.  He makes you smile but also he asks how you are, with genuine interest and concern and always remembers a face.   There is a generosity of spirit and human compassion about the place that is invaluable.

The coffee at the Runaway is good, but even if it weren’t this particular station buffet has something special that no amount of frothy coffee could possibly equal.

Driving to meet my friend Karen I stopped at a set of traffic lights.  With the window wound down I could hear the unmistakeable Whitney Houston from a nearby car.  She was blasting out ‘Greatest love of all’ – one of many schmaltzy songs I love.   Along with Whitney, and from the same car,  was a man’s voice singing with great gusto and joy.  I smiled, then laughed, then looked around to see him, but at that point the lights changed and another car blocked my view.

Seconds later I continued the journey, full of energy and delight at the unexpected.  Spring sunshine and singing – ‘the greatest gift of all’.

To begin with allow your creativity a space … let your painting, designing, dancing or poetry become part of what you are and what you do – perhaps think of it as a creative breath, or heartbeat.   In this way your creativity isn’t an addition to your life but is as intrinsic as eating and sleeping.

My friend Karen has incorporated a creative heartbeat into dog-walking.  She takes Puck to the nearby park and observes the world within the park gates, noticing changes each day in flora and fauna, and human activity.  These observations spin thoughts of their own,  turning into ideas for poems or other writing.  On a practical point it’s worth carrying a notebook (or voice recorder) around with you rather than end up with the inevitable scraps of scribbles collecting in your pockets.

While you may not have a dog you can begin to look for that space and find opportunities within your own day to take a creative breath.

Make a start

Keep going

Enjoy the process and let the outcome take care of itself

More to follow ….

It’s useful to check on reality when fear is getting in the way of our creativity. We may fear we lack talent or ability but the reality is that we’re rarely instantly brilliant at anything new and usually it’s only through practice that we improve.   We may think others will regard our creative work as a waste of time, and we know that relatively few earn their living or win prizes or fame this way, but we know too that creativity is important for many reasons that have nothing to do with money or fame and isn’t it true that people will think what they’re going to think?   Finally, yes, we might start and then abandon our creative project, but there are ways to manage creative practice to keep it going.  If we never begin?…..

Perhaps the better reality is the one that lets desire outweigh the fears so that we can give our creativity a chance, discover our abilities and experience the fulfillment that comes from pursuing our creative dreams.  What I’m not sure about is if this better reality also includes a dog.

Swap the word reluctance for resistance and it starts to make sense.  We resist our creativity, not simply because we fear the blank canvas or page, although those are pretty scary, but in facing those we have to face ourselves and our fears.

One of our big fears is that we won’t be any good at it -  that we try again something we did as a child: painting, playing an instrument or writing stories; and have held as a dream since, but find that we’re not that good at it.  We fear what will happen to that dream if we neither achieve the results we’d hoped for nor discover a great talent or gift.

Mix that with the fear that our friends and family will think we’re wasting our time, that they’ll laugh at us for ever thinking we could play in a rock band or write poetry.   Then last but not least, in this small selection of possible fears, is the whispering voice that reminds you of the projects you’ve begun but abandoned.   You fear that even if you manage to start singing lessons you’ll lack the motivation to keep going and  give up as soon as it becomes difficult.

Those are a few of our fears – now perhaps we should throw some realities into the mix?

But if you were planning to start (or re-start) a creative activity of some kind, the unexpected time at home, with plans postponed, will have been a good opportunity to begin and I hope that many of you will have felt able to do so.   I say this because I know it’s not always easy to move from the ‘intending and planning to’ stage to actually doing something about it.

We say that time and opportunity are our obstacles.  Work, children, partners, the house and the dog, all get in the way of us trying to paint, or learning to play the piano, or putting that ‘great idea for a film’ into a film script.  Ok, I may have made up the dog excuse, but it is true that when it comes to avoiding our own creativity we can all be very creative indeed.  And this is the case even when time and opportunity appear in front of us.

But why?  It doesn’t make sense that we would avoid something we’ve “always wanted to do”.  Or does it?