Valerie: 0:00

I just got back from a walk and I am constantly reminded of how good that feels. It sounds so simple. We know, oh, walking is good for you, but it really is incredible the shift that happens just with the rhythm of your feet on the ground, feeling the breeze hitting your skin. This is the important work I'm always in awe at when I take the time to slow down, relax, be in the present moment, soak up the things like sunshine, the beautiful leaves, the way they're rustling around me, the look of the clouds. Those are not frivolous, throwaway things. Those are the things of life and as an artist and a creative, you get that. You get to indulge in that in this very spectacular way, and it's part of why I want to release artists and creatives from toxic ways of being and hustling and feeling like you're never good enough, because when you do that, you can open up to what is here, feel more like yourself and operate from that place and it truly becomes magical. Thank you so much for being here.

Valerie: 1:43

You are listening to the Peaceful Creative Podcast. My name is Valerie McKeon. I am your host. I am a recovering perfectionist. I am a recovering angsty artist who fell for all of the rhetoric and the cultural talk that artists need to suffer and work hard. The suffering, struggling artist cliche is just so over and done with. I'm over and done with it and I want you to be as well. This podcast is devoted to helping you have a thriving creative practice that literally heals you and is medicine for you, amidst a culture that is telling you you need to work harder and go for all of these goals. When it comes to being an artist, that you just may not subscribe to and that is okay we get to choose, we get to break the rules. We get to tell our own stories. I would much rather tell the story of the peaceful, healed, regulated creative.

Valerie: 3:00

I also want to tell you that oct October, is the one year anniversary of my membership, the Magic Makers membership. I cannot believe it's been a year. It's been an amazing year. We paint, we learn how to paint, there are tutorials, but it's so much more than that. It is this. It's my heart for creatives and your heart, because to me, pretty pictures aren't enough. A pretty painting if it is empty and you struggled through it in the sense that you weren't feeling good and you were angsty and perfectionist through the whole thing and you don't feel like it's good enough. That is not the way of being that I want you to have and the way I want you to be. I want you to have a practice that fills you up. Just as you play with these beautiful, pretty pigments and we learn to paint landscapes.

Valerie: 3:59

We talk a lot about nature and immersing yourself in what I was just saying about going on a walk, you will see the light differently, you will see the trees differently, colors differently, get to express that world around you in a tangible, very real way. We use soft pastel, which is the most tactile medium. It has a somatic element that helps you really work through your feelings. I think it helps you get in touch with those deeper parts of yourself when you can learn to let go and surrender in creativity. So it's really about a holistic approach to being an artist and a creative. It's a way of being in the world. I care about you and your creative heart because when you come at your art from that place, magic is going to shoot from your fingers and you're just going to love your life. So much more is going to open up to you, because creativity and art is a microcosm for life when you can learn to surrender, make mistakes, play, be vulnerable, risk when you don't know the outcome, put yourself out there in that way, it will change everything. Those are skills for a better, lit up life. Oh, and you get to do it with a whole community of kindred spirits who are committed to this and doing art and living this way. So if that sounds interesting to you, all month long in October I am offering a price of $20, only $20 to get in for your first month. Try it out, see if you like it. You get to unlock all of the tutorials. You get to be part of the live calls that we have coming up. I put out a digital magazine every month just for magic makers. You get access to all of them, all of the library, and I would just love it to see you in there Also.

Valerie: 6:12

The Facebook community is such a rich, beautiful, encouraging, nurturing, safe space for artists. There are so many artists in our group who have been hurt, who have been operating in this way of feeling the pressure and perfectionism. They've been told they're not good enough. There's so much healing that is happening in this type of artist community. I've been part of artist communities and let me tell you they are not. This way. There is a support and a safety that is mind-blowing to me and I am so grateful to get to be a part of it, and I would love to invite you into that space. You can go to valeriemckeancom slash membership and get all of the details Again. You can join for just $20. Unlock everything that I said at ValerieMcKeoncom slash membership.

Valerie: 7:15

The last episode I talked about the worst advice given to artists, which is, I believe, you have to work hard. We hear all of these statements thrown about. You have to be disciplined, you have to work hard, you have to put blood, sweat and tears into your art. I feel like this is a toxic way of being and thinking for artists. I want to present yet another way, because I think this topic is so important, because it's so pervasive. We just have this in our faces all the time and it's never enough and it's never going to be enough.

Valerie: 8:01

There's another way for artists to thrive, and it has to do with the seasons. Now, as a culture, we have the ability to sort of forego the seasons. We can get anything in the grocery store all year long that we want. We've sort of ignored these normal cyclical rhythms of nature and I think we've ignored them in ourselves as well, because you follow those same cycles as nature. But it's really easy in our culture to ignore that. But I feel like when we get back a an external output productivity type of way of being, as well as a culmination, rest, recovery, planting seeds way of being, we don't hear a whole lot of the latter in our culture when it comes to talking to artists about what they need to do, need and in quotes, because you have these people saying this is how you become a successful artist.

Valerie: 9:35

When we try to override this way of cyclical, seasonal being, especially for a creative, then problems start to happen, burnout starts to happen. You might wonder what's wrong with me. I'm not good enough. That is something I hear all the time from creatives. That's one of the biggest problems that a creative faces is feeling that they are not good enough. But when you're operating from this place of being where you are going for an external look of success, whatever that is, internal look of success, whatever that is without going inside, you're falling for that advice of you must work hard, blood, sweat and tears. No creative can possibly live up to all of that because it's not how we're made. You are made for a cyclical way of being.

Valerie: 10:38

The very nature of creativity follows a cycle where the seed gets planted and nurtured and watered and then it is brought to fruition and harvest and there's a culmination and then there is a rest period before more seeds become planted. That is normal. I think we need to normalize this idea of a creative's natural cycle and way of being and I believe you can have the success that you want. That is true to you, not the external cultural version, but a version of success that's true to you. And it's going to come when you can honor this way of being. It's going to allow you to get into flow. You're not going to burn out. You're going to be able to go into deeper forms of expression because you're going to have the space to be open to it. It's a wintering, it's an allowing for seeds to come in and bloom. But if you're constantly on the hamster wheel of productivity, you're only ever going to be as good as your last project and your last piece and it's going to become chasing, constantly proving chasing, working harder. There's not going to be a point of relaxing, of resting, of pausing, of filling your vessel before outputting. It's a dangerous way of being that is just going to lead to burnout, lead to being disconnected with yourself, connected with yourself.

Valerie: 12:43

We need to have more conversations, as creatives, around this idea of being cyclical. It is how we are made as human beings. It's how our bodies are made. We are in cycles. If you think about even just male and female have female menstrual cycles. Males have more of a 24 hour cycle, but we have the seasons, we have the moon phases. I mean every single part of our, our being here in this world follows rhythms and follows cycles and development. We look at nature and gardening and you sow the seeds and the harvest is a part of that.

Valerie: 13:24

But yet, as artists, we're told we need to be in perpetual productivity, perpetual harvest, and if not, that's not deemed as externally successful. And I just want to let everybody off the hook that it gets to be cyclical, because that's who you are, that's how you are made as a human being. So doesn't it make sense that, instead of giving artists all of this advice to be in perpetual harvest all the time doesn't it make sense that we need to be nurturing and fostering the creative spirit and the creative heart in a way that follows these natural rhythms, and maybe those rhythms are something that is. It's just followed through the week. I mean we can break it down into monthly, where you are not beholden to producing all month long or all week long. It's building in those periods where you can be satisfied with what you've created. Let a project come to a culmination, rest, take stock, have it come to that full circle of a creative cycle, instead of just being on to the next and on to the next and then, before you know it, you lose yourself or you burn out or you feel constantly overwhelmed and maybe you don't know why.

Valerie: 15:06

So this is another answer, another piece of advice that I would give to creatives that goes against the toxic advice that we have of our culture that you must work constantly, never stop. You must be disciplined. I heard somebody say recently, instead of the word discipline which I agree, I do not like that word she said think of the word devotion. To have a devotion to something just feels so much better. It feels wonderful and light and life-giving. So to have a devotion instead to your creative being, to your art, what a difference that makes than saying you must be disciplined to your art. It makes it feel like, no matter how you feel or how you're feeling, you can't take care of yourself. You need to have a discipline to this output and to this way of productivity. But instead, if you think about having a devotion to your creative self and your creative heart, your creative practice, what does that change?

Valerie: 16:25

To me, a devotion to something means you are going to do what's best for that thing and you will know. You will know when it's time because of the devotion that you have to your creative being and practice. You will know when it's time to kind of get your butt in gear and make something. You'll know that. You'll feel that. It will feel like, okay, I've and may be facing fear, but I know that I have this to get out. I know that I have this project to complete. It is time for me to output and have this level of productivity and get to experience that season, that season of harvest and producing. You will feel that.

Valerie: 17:18

But it's also listening to that other part of you that's saying I need to fill the vessel, I need to regroup, I need to maybe play without it doing anything, without it producing an outcome in any way that you can sell or even that you may want to keep. You could be in a period of just sowing seeds and seeing what, what happens for the pure devotion of your creative self to do that. That is normal. You may be in a period where you're just not feeling it. You can just feel it within yourself that this is a time that you need to take care of yourself and, just like me taking that 20 minutes today to take a walk, even though I have my entire to-do list, I could sense in myself that that is what needed to happen. That period of just rest. Let's input a little bit, let's feel the breeze, instead of saying, nope, I got to be disciplined to my craft, let me get in there and not listen to myself.

Valerie: 18:35

So really, I guess the bottom line is getting to know yourself and understanding that it's not an if you have cycles, you do have the cycles. It is, you are human. It is in getting to understand what that looks like for you and knowing and relying on the fact that you are okay, perfectly human, beautiful, incredible, amazing, creative soul with your cycles, instead of maybe what we hear culturally for artists that they have to do to be considered a successful artist. You get to honor your cycles of creativity and actually, in doing that, you are going to be so much more creative. How much more are you going to be able to produce and create when you have honored those rhythms you feel good, it's going to flow. That's when you're going to be in flow state. You're actually going to be able to do more, honoring the rhythms, than if you just go with this wisdom of be disciplined, work hard, go at the grindstone regardless of how you feel it. Just it doesn't make any sense.

Valerie: 19:57

But I don't hear a lot of people talking about that cyclical nature of it, the rhythmic nature of it, but it really is about getting to know yourself and what you need. And again, there is a period and a time to actually make something happen and bring something to life. That is what a creative does. If you feel all of the inspiration and you're filling yourself up and it's so amazing, but you never actually materialize or express anything, that defeats the purpose too. That's why we need all of it and there's no one size fits all. It's honoring that within you that is going to produce as well as is going to input and plant the seeds and be in a place of activity that might not necessarily be viewed as productive. So I hope that this is helpful to you and just a new way of thinking about your productivity. As a creative and an artist, you get to honor all parts of you. You get to be in a seasonal rhythm with yourself and know that that is okay and that's more than okay. That is normal, that is a way of being. That is is how you are designed.

Valerie: 21:39

So the sort of a part two to the last episode uh, about the worst advice given to artists and just another way of thinking about this concept of working hard, that there is a time for the output. But we have to think about the other seasons as well and going through those cycles and really, on a fundamental level, what is success for you anyway? Because if success is required, being on the grindstone, working so hard, constant outputting does that sound good? Is that a feeling that you want to have? Then it doesn't have to be that way. So I hope this episode was helpful to you. Please let me know.

Valerie: 22:38

I always love hearing from you. My DMs are open on Instagram at Valerie McKeon. We're going to continue to have lots of conversations about this. I really want to equip creatives and artists with the tools to help them come from their creativity, from this peaceful way of being that aligns with you, not with an external factor, but with what is true to you, because, as a creative, you are the magic, you are the creator, the masterpiece is you. So I want you to feel the best that you possibly can and come from these places that honor you, your rhythms, your creative heart. So stay tuned for more episodes that are coming, if this is helpful to you. I would also absolutely love if you would leave me a review that really helps other creative souls find this podcast and a new way of being. Thank you so much again for being here and I'll talk to you next time. Bye.