I worked for several years on an all-consuming project at work.  When it was time to come back to my life, I was burned out from being overwhelmed then surrounded with silence.  Even though I was disoriented, these writing exercises helped me find my way back.  Use these exercises to challenge your current conditions and find more in your present.

Exercise 1: Past Performance
What did you once fear?  What did you have to learn to overcome it?  When did you doubt your abilities, but pressed ahead anyway and succeeded?  List a few of these victories to get you started, then write about one time when you challenged and defeated your own limiting status quo.  What were the circumstances?  What were the steps?  What did you gain?  What did you learn?  Who did you meet along the way?  How did your success feel?

Exercise 2: I would be happy (happier) if only…
What are constraints and conditions that you place on your happiness?  For example, I would be happier if my co-worker wasn’t such a jerk.

Exercise 3: The Best Things in Life are Free!
What are the moments, experiences, things you received for free or gave away freely?  Think of kind words, acknowledgement, recognition, laughing, gifts, favors, prizes…

Exercise 4: Don’t forget to say thank you…
Gratitude brings us into the present.  Be present and say “thank you” by listing all that you are grateful for in this moment. 

“A grateful heart is like a magnet drawing toward it a wealth of abundance.” – Cheryl Richardson    

Again, I would love to hear how these exercises work for you.  See you next month!

OUR MULTIPLE SELVES

This prompt is based on an exercise from a teacher of mine, Rebecca McClanahan.  She writes about it in detail in her great book, Write Your Heart Out.  Eloise Klein Healy also uses a form of this exercise in her poetry workshops.

If you can, please do this exercise by hand.

Take a few minutes to list your selves, your roles.  You could do this as a list or as a brainstorming drawing with bubbles and sticks.  Write down whatever you can think of and get specific.  For example, what could start out as “mom” could subdivide into PTA volunteer, soccer coach, math tutor.

A few brainstorming possibilities could include…

• Your relationships (walk through your family tree)
• Organizations you belong to or products, causes, or people you support with your time, money or energy
  • What’s in your fridge, closet, driveway?
• Your different careers
• Places you’ve lived
• Hobbies, avocations, such as Journal Writing!
• Things you’re good at
• Rituals, ethnicity, religion, practices
• If you can’t think of anything in the present, perhaps mine your past or future identities or even your wished identities.
  • Walk through life (infant through elderly)
  • I always wanted to be a…

Come up with at least 5 selves.

Then, review the list and either

a)      Write about what it feels like to look at this list.

b)     Compare and contrast your different selves.  Maybe have one self write to the other.  “Dear Worker Bee, you are totally cramping my style.  And you’re a time hog too.  Signed, The Artist.”

or

c)      Explore your multiple selves with the 10 questions below.  Every self doesn’t have to answer all of these questions during this session.  You can go deep with one self or skim across all of yourselves with one or two questions.  Just keep writing.  These questions are just appetizers, warm ups.  Chances are as you do this part of the exercise, you’ll break off onto a tangent.  Go with it!

10 Questions for Our Multiple Selves

1)      What does she want?

2)      What’s her secret?  (Be it desire, wish, ability, shame…)

3)      What’s her secret?  Secret desire?  Secret wish?  Secret ability?  Secret shame?

4)      What does she care about?

5)      What does she worry about?

6)      What does she want you to know right now?

7)      What is she good at?

8)      Who does she love?

9)      What do you want her to know?  Maybe give her a compliment or some constructive feedback.

10)   What’s her favorite piece of advice for others?

I’ll post next month’s prompt on Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 12 p.m. (Pacific).

Feel free to send me some feedback through the comment feature below.  I’d love to hear about your experience with this exercise.

I’m often asked, “What’s your five year plan?”  I don’t know.  I am so busy, I don’t have time to dream, I only have time to execute.

Last month, I facilitated a one hour journal writing workshop for some of my friends (artists and non-artists) as a break from the busy holidays.  So, together, my friends and I carved out this hour and started to dream.

The experience of writing in silence surprised many of them.  They walked away feeling focused and refreshed.  One of them said it was so nice to have a few moments where no one asked anything of her.  We decided to meet once a month  and I’d like to open up this free class to my faraway friends.

This experience is about panning for our inner gold, sorting, exploring, asking, wishing, wondering, wandering, changing, creating, cultivating, learning, discovering, being.

This experience is not about making to do lists, planning, doing, right answers, expectations, fixing for others, standards, metrics, performance, supposed tos, shoulds.

I will post a prompt once a month (the first one is on Wednesday at noon, Pacific time) and invite you to set a timer and write for 40 minutes or at least three pages.  Or write until you feel like giving up, then go for another 20 minutes.  (Excellent advice from the writer Ron Carlson.)

Please join us online.  I’d love to hear your feedback.

I don’t remember exactly when I came to writing.  This part of my artistic history is fuzzy, without a logical path or series of connections.  I am not a lover of words or language.  My struggle with both of them humbles me.  But when I read good writing, I can feel it.  I don’t commit prose to memory even though I have been a lifelong reader since the age of four.

I do remember writing in a journal as a corporate frequent flier over ten years ago.  To this day, the sound of ice breaking in a plastic bag dropped repeatedly on the galley floor by the cabin crew makes me want to write.  As I collected miles, the travel changed me and I noted these observations, images, stories, so I could think about them later and understand them.  I didn’t know then that writing was a means.  I just flew, worked, listened, and wrote in the margins of my life – one word after another.

And that’s how I became a writer.

And why do I stay?

This is a fair question.  Today, I live in a busy city with a busy mind in a life with an overflowing inbox, a buzzing BlackBerry, and a long commute.  These and other distractions from writing are my life and I return to the blank page because I don’t understand something unless I’ve written about it.  This practice on the blank page sustains me, makes me laugh, stretches me, and fills in the gaps of my journey and experience.  Writing is for my mind like a deep breath is for my body.  My life without writing is only half-lived.