The Artist's Way Challenge

Greetings Fellow Artists,
Julia Cameron has said it best with her book "The Artist's Way!" In this 12-week program she details a lesson plan that involves morning writings (3-pages daily of written thoughts!), sense of identity, power and integrity, a long with many other lessons. Julia's program is a challenging one that has most assuredly opened my artist block. Her program has helped me step outside of the box and into what I thought was impossible.

Working with many life coaches I've done the wheel of life exercise, that has you draw a circle and divide it into six pieces of pie, then label each one areas like spirituality, exercise, play, work, friends, romance, etc.. You are to draw a dot at the degree which are fulfilled in that area (outer rim indicates great, inner circle not so great). Then connect the dots to show where your pie is uneven. This is a very useful map in finding out the areas of which you need to improve in your life.

Julia furthers this by suggesting you create a map to help you protect your most sacred imagination! She suggests you draw a circle on a piece of paper. Inside the circle place the topics that you feel you should protect. Outside the circle place the names of those things and people that you must self protect your ideas from. Add names as appropriate to the inner and outer circle. I find this most intriguing, to write down the things that are important to you Sometimes without writing things down, we all forget what is important and what we should and shouldn't protect.

Maybe we all should try both of these exercises to find out what areas of our life we need to adjust to become more balanced, and what areas need to be protected.

Another challenge is the morning writings of thoughts. You are suggested to write 3 pages every morning with your thoughts, or maybe doing the book's homework. I've decided that writing on my blog is more useful to me and so expect to see more writings as it is my challenge for the year!

Ciao!
Misty