Julie Ann Shahin's Inspiration For Generation C

Wow! It's been awhile since I've posted a tip for you.

As seen on the Art Biz Blog:

Creativity coach Dr. Eric Maisel will be Alyson Stanfield's very special guest in a free, 30-minute teleseminar next Wednesday, June 6. Register for “Avoid Art Career Overwhelm with Ten Zen Seconds.”

In the meantime, Eric has graciously allowed Alyson to interview him for Art Biz Blog readers.

Alyson: What is your book, Ten Zen Seconds, all about?
Eric: It’s actually a very simple but powerful technique for reducing your stress, getting yourself centered, and reminding yourself about how you want to live your life. It can even serve as a complete cognitive, emotional, and existential self-help program built on the single idea of “dropping a useful thought into a deep breath.”

You use a deep breath, five seconds on the inhale and five seconds on the exhale, as a container for important thoughts that aim you in the right direction in life—I describe twelve of these thoughts in the book—and you begin to employ this breathing-and-thinking technique that I call incanting as the primary way to keep yourself on track.

Alyson: Where did this idea come from?
Eric: It comes from two primary sources, cognitive and positive psychology from the West and breath awareness and mindfulness techniques from the East. I’d been working with creative and performing artists for more than twenty years as a therapist and creativity coach and wanted to find a quick, simple technique that would help them deal with the challenges they regularly face—resistance to creating, performance anxiety, negative self-talk about a lack of talent or a lack of connections, stress over a boring day job or competing in the art marketplace, and so on.

Because I have a background in both Western and Eastern ideas, it began to dawn on me that deep breathing, which is one of the best ways to reduce stress and alter thinking, could be used as a cognitive tool if I found just the right phrases to accompany the deep breathing. This started me on a hunt for the most effective phrases that I could find and eventually I landed on twelve of them that I called incantations, each of which serves a different and important purpose.
[Eric will share the twelve incantations in the June 6 teleseminar.]

Eric: Overwhelm is generally a function of not being happy and of having to do too much just to keep meaning afloat. One artist may be able to go on for hour after hour painting and selling, painting and selling, for two essential reasons: that her paintings satisfy her and that they are selling. That is the ideal and actually the antidote to overwhelm; the antidote to overwhelm isn’t doing less, because quiet time can be painful time, it is feeling (and being) successful.
The incantations help a person feel less overwhelmed, manage her time better, and get to her routine (and perhaps boring and unpleasant) business tasks by promoting “mindful success,” that is by promoting a way of life where action is valued over inaction, where challenges are articulated and met, where work is named and done, and where joy is permitted. There is actually more to be done in life, not less, including the boring things, but in a context of passionate meaning-making.

Find out more when you join us for Avoid Art Career Overwhelm with Ten Zen Seconds--a complimentary 30-minute teleseminar on June 6.