Category: Creativity

Today I cried, sobbed actually in a movie cinema with my friend. I watched one of those movies that as I drove home, the tree’s looked a little different. The orange in their leaves as they fell to the ground looked translucent and otherworldly, I drove home in a haze.

My haze was induced by words from a life that was difficult and unusual but stretching towards finding the meat in his tomorrow.

Me Before You is showing at the cinema’s at the moment and it honestly has been one of my favourite films to date. I laughed, I cried, but mostly I came home and hugged my family just that bit tighter.

Louisa took my breath away with her love of colour, life and tenacity to live loud.

Bumblebee tights, crazy shoes, movies with subtitles and concerts in a red dress. Louisa’s dad said this and it shocked me “You can’t change who people are” and she replied “Well what can we do?” and her Dad said “You just love them”.

I realised that I have subscribed to the notion over and over again that I can change people. But maybe just maybe it was never the intent of love and relationships. We all change, we all grow and we all impact one another in deeply significant ways, but I just want to get better at loving people flaws and all.

Have you seen this movie?

What did you think?

Much teary love

Amanda

Photo by Meg Scerri Creative for Maximus and Liberty

“Far too many creative people have been taught to distrust pleasure and put their faith in struggle alone. Too many artists still believe that the anguish is the only authentic emotional experience.” Elizabeth Gilbert

We all have that friend.

The one when your text message alarm dings and you see their name before the message and your heart drops.

You know the one.

The latest drama, the unfair assumptions; enter our friend negative nelly.

That one.

If you have been reading along with my blog for a while, you would have realised that I am not ashamed, to be honest, open and vulnerable in this forum.

Especially lately I have felt like my blog has become that negative, overly sensitive friend. Each time I have sat down to write, I have dug up words from the deep recesses of my soul and just bled into my WordPress account.

The funny thing is, I have been needing a little writing kick up the butt for awhile, but I didn’t realise it would come in the form of Elizabeth Gilberts book Big Magic. I have been seeking to bring my light, rather than the parts of me that lean towards the grey or black.

I have been metaphorically telling myself to put my positive pants on. The problem is with positive pants is we believe that it is a place, where we are fake, distanced and safe within our walls of protection.

Trusting ourselves to feel positive emotions alongside our negative ones, is one of the greatest ways we can ride the highs and lows of the creative dance.

We can be honest and be happy.

We can be confused and be clear.

We can be satisfied and look for more.

I am learning that I can be both deeply filled with peace, at the same time asking the questions that baffle me.

The greatest trust that leads my creative walk is my relationship with the Creator God. He leads me back when I am unsure whether I can take anymore. He steadies my feet when I am walking the thin paths. He makes me smile in the midst of challenging seasons.

As a creative communicator, I am learning to not be afraid of the questions, the difficulties and the challenging seasons, but also not to trust the struggle as my muse, but to continually reach out to one who knows more than me.

As creative beings let’s not be defined by the suffering, the deep dark moments of contemplation but live lives that ride the tides with grace, mercy and truth, always seeking the higher path in the midst.

My book club question today reflects Elizabeths;

Does your creativity love you?

I am learning that I can feel a whole myriad of emotions in one day and when isolated one can feel overwhelming, but when I continually trust the higher path and the journey of discovery, they do not define me. They are just a part of my expressive flare.

Here’s a toast to a few more laughs around here sometime soon and continually seeking light.

I trust.

Amanda Viviers

This last weekend was one of my year highlights. It was my absolute privilege to spend time with hundreds of women at three events and listen to speakers challenge a company of women to live more courageous lives. I came away so inspired as I met woman after woman, new friend after new friend.

The hardest part of the weekend, however, was my brain sifting through the experience of speaking to hundreds of women and the shame that followed. On Saturday night, my brain whirred with questions like…

“Was I too loud?”

“Did I speak too passionately?”

“Was I too much?”

“Did I embarrass myself?”

These are very honest and raw revelations of the creative pursuits that we step out into, no matter how long we have been in the arena, we all have moments filled with shame and embarrassment.

Elizabeth Gilbert in her latest book Big Magic speaks to her fears this way…

“You’re allowed to have a seat and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you’re not allowed to have a vote.”

This best-selling author, TED talk aficionado, Twenty-five million dollar creative guru, still battles with the pain of imperfection, fear, embarrassment and shame. I think as creative truth seekers, we are wired this way and in fact, if we ever come to a place where we are not questioning the quality, power and effectiveness of our work and we believed we have arrived, then, unfortunately, we will slide down the ladder and fall into a pit of pride.

A few weeks ago, knowing that I was going into a season of many new audiences and speaking engagements, I asked a couple of people ahead of me in the journey to give me honest feedback on my speaking. I asked them for help in this season of the journey and the task was not an easy ask. I may look super confident on a stage, but I have many questions, fears, and insecurities that I constantly need to lay down.

It’s not easy to follow through and ask for help.

It’s not easy, to be honest in the areas that we fall down.

It’s not easy to reach out to those ahead of us.

The power of persistence is finding a new normal for those dreams is being courageous enough to have a go and humble enough to accept feedback but be wise enough to know who is honest and safe. 

Every time we try something new and every time we put our work, out in the public sphere, when we do something we have never done before when we publish a blog

when we dream…

when we speak…

when we start a new job…

when we enter a new season…

We will always have questions, we always feel fear, we always are bombarded by the little thorns that are our stumbling block.

Like shame, embarrassment, timidity, intimidation…

The list swells.

What I love about the theme of persistence in Elizabeth Gilberts latest offering Big Magic, is her encouragement to have a go and also to keep moving forward with persistence, even when we are unsure.

“So take your insecurities and your fears and hold them upside down by their ankles and shake yourself free of all your cumbersome ideas about what you require (and how much you need to pay) in order to become creatively legitimate.” Elizabeth Gilbert

My heart is a little tender today from giving out and putting myself in spaces of vulnerability, but I am recalibrating, refining and trusting a source beyond my own strength.

Here is my book club question…

What is a reoccurring block in your persistence? is it fear? is it a shame? is it people’s opinions?

Keep on keeping on my creative friends, even when the little doubts of your worth and value creep in. Just have a go, my friend. Dream Again. Dream Again dreamer.

Amanda

Courage in the past has always come easily to my risk taking personality. From a young age, I traipsed across stages, travelled to unknown places, sung in front of thousands, performed, lead and coerced a life of inspiration. I am not sure if it was the combination of a legacy from a Mother who was an actor, designer, and baker or dancing classes four times a week for twenty years. Maybe it was just my natural creative energy, but I expect it is a combination of them all.

Courage in creativity has always come naturally. In fact, I would be as bold to say that I was addicted to its adrenaline charged satisfaction.

Until recently.

Recently I have become a little reticent. I have had this conversation with myself “Maybe I should remove myself completely from social media.” “Maybe next year should be my year of unplugged.” “Maybe I should pull back from writing, speaking and leading altogether.“

“Maybe a new me is emerging” one who disappears as Gilbert describes of the poet in her opening paragraph of our focus book for this month “Big Magic”. My life has felt somewhat reminiscent of a natural disaster zone and it has not been one huge seismic crack, but the culmination of lots of little ones. I feel like a small child sitting in the midst of a huge pile of rubble, trying desperately to find my house in the midst of it.

Courage in creativity often finds itself hiding. Courage in creativity can be easy in some seasons and downright difficult in others. Courage is not a once off cloak that is placed over our shoulders with a badge like a girl guide ranger. It is a daily piece of clothing that needs to be found amidst the pile of clothes on the floor, washed, dried and redressed again.

And then I found this book.

I have known I was meant to read it, ever since it first hit my internet feed, but the timing of its appearance on my bedside table is perfect. It has found me in the midst of a “rubble all around me” season and I believe its purpose is to help me rebuild again.

Gilbert asks this question…

“So this, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?”

I know that the greatest stories of a resurrection of courage come from those who have loved and lost, have failed and got back up again and those who have allowed beauty to arise from the ashes. I know it was not a coincidence that I went to Nepal this last month and spent time with many different, beautiful people who sat in the midst of their world that had been rocked by an earthquake. I know that courage is found often in the very bowels of circumstance.

But today I sit with manuscripts unpublished, a list of emails to reply to, an office with boxes filled with my belongings, right in the midst of a massive transition. I could have put off this post, claiming that it is all too hard. I could have written to my dear friends and said this project in May, sorry it’s just all too unsteady. I could have withdrawn, regrouped and found my courage card again.

But once again, I am here, I am uncertain, I am unsteady but I am showing up with my unfinished projects awaiting, my children eating their lunch and I’m grabbing the tail of the inspiration tiger and yanking it into my today.

My question for our creativity sojourners is this one…

“What is the rubble in your season and how is it speaking to your courage?”

Till we meet again in the midst of our very ordinary,

May you live inspired despite the challenge my friends.

Amanda

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