Every time I sat down at my desk to complete the next drawing lesson in Drawing From the Right Side of the Brain … something came up.

I didn’t have the right plexiglass frame. There were emails to answer. The lighting wasn’t right. The pencil needed sharpening. The kid was too loud.

For weeks I kept at it, trying to make it happen, trying to break through …

Until this morning, when I finally stopped to listen.

Yes, there are thousands of books and blogs and butt-kickers out there preaching on how to break through resistance, how to eat the elephant, how to write every morning or fight a war to create the art or just do the work.

And yes, I agree that many times, the resistance is from ego, the bitch in the corner, the fearful caveperson inside of us who is screaming at us, trying to keep us from not dying. At the expense of killing our purpose and passion and our changing of the world.

But there is another resistanceish message that comes from an opposite inside of us.

This opposite feels completely different than that ego.

She is a quiet whisper.

She is kind yet direct, accepting yet persistent, understanding yet strong.

She nudges.

Honey, that writing book is not the one that will work for you. I don’t care that it got the best amazon.com reviews or that the big writing schools use it in their courses or those other people said this is the one to get.

You need something more fun. More nurturing. More expansive. More gentle.

That other book … the one you bought and it’s sitting on your floor because it seems too informal and unprofessionalish and kind of weird and artsy? Yeah. Use that one.

Oh, and that drawing pad you bought because it was what the book said to get and what looked the most normal when you were in the art store? Yeah, that’s not what you need right now either.

You need a drawing journal. Something you love. With paper that feels good under your fingers, that’s sized so you can carry it around and draw from anywhere, with a blank front cover so no one is tempted to look at your neophyte drawings.

This morning, I listened to her.

To that little voice of wisdom, who knows what is in resonance with our souls.

She knows what is the right option – when we are trying to think ourselves into a should, when we are really close to the right choice and starting to force it instead of waiting for rightness to be received.

She knows when it’s the right time – when instead of spending months to force a manifesto, we could just wait until it’s ready to be written and spend two hours in a coffeehouse getting the thing done, on a lovely Friday afternoon.

She knows when it’s the right person – when we are trying to twist ourselves into a pretzel for this guy, instead of letting it happen with the guy who thinks we’re awesome, just by being ourselves.

She always knows our truth.

All we have to do is shut up and listen.

–

Do you have a little voice in your head that speaks the truth? How do you tell between that voice and the mean/unhelpful voice of your ego/resistance?

Please leave a message below – I’d love to hear from you!

I opened up the Travel & Leisure magazine and just started ripping.

Tearing out glossy pages at random, letting my hands choose relevance without judging or thinking or deciding what each page would be used for.

Then, removing the edges of each piece until it emerged.

The word, the phrase, the tiny pig figurine. Whatever showed up.

Dropping them onto a non-sequential journal page. Securing them with PVC.

Wondering why they fell in that way, how could they be connected, does this make sense.

Refusing to let the opinion of the bitch have any power.

Scribbling with the first pastel that came to my fingers.

Rubbing the streaks, smearing the purple across the substrate, noticing how it caught in the groves of my fingertip, piling pigment at the edge of the page.

Words appeared, numbers, colors of different thickness.

More smearing. More rubbing.

Drawing matte across the surface to seal, to close, to end the five minutes of spilling creation across a page.

I created tonight not for the finish.

I created in remembrance.

Remembrance of when she shows up.

She shows up in the mess.

The surrender. The fellowship of paint and canvas, keyboard and bytes, fingers and the peppermint scented skin of our lover’s back.

That is where Art lives.

Art is not always findable. She is not guaranteed. She is not certain.

She is precious but infinite, rare but abundant, unknowable but everywhere.

She cannot be forced. Only … seduced. Tempted to come out and play.

That is the great secret. Like they said, our only job as writers, artist, inventors, entrepreneurs, fanciful creators of what did not exist before … is to show up.

To show up to play. To worship.

To give up our pride, our know-it-all, the bitch in our heads, the fear that someone will laugh or boo or kill us with a glance from the last row in the seminar hall.

Our job is to show up. To do the work.

And to let her do hers.

–

Do you find it hard to have faith that creation, that art, will show up in your work? Do you have days, weeks, months, when you just want to give up?

How do you keep the faith?

I’d love to hear from you below!

And – be sure to get your copy of the free no-opt-in pdf download manifesto How to Live Your Truth

Words are my media, my language of painting my truth.

Words are how I attempt to compose a symphony of evocation and inspiration and stirring-you-up. Words are how I share myself, whether written or on video or in teaching a live class.

But lately I’ve been doing some creativity cross-training.

Learning to draw with the right side of my brain. Making paper, binding books, taking singing lessons, spending way too much time lost in the aisles of the huge new art supply store in the edge of the Tenderloin, wondering how there could possible be so many brands of acrylic paint and do the other people know that I have no idea how to pronounce “gesso.”

Just like the gymnast who lifts weights, the football player who swims, the cellist who writes morning pages when he wakens each day, I’m doing that which is not my discipline, in order to take myself out of comfortable and exercise down a different vector.

Creativity is a practice.

A muscle to be stretched. To be grown. Trained.

Without that practice, our “expertise” acts as a comfortable shield, protecting our vulnerable parts under the guise of professionalism and skill and what has worked before.

The more we shake ourselves up, the more we push ourselves in a different direction, the more we are willing to be a beginner and get messy and look like an idiot …

the stronger, more naked, more honest we become.

So … how are you getting messy today?

The diagnosis of osteoarthritis in the middle knuckle of my right ring finger – stiff, swollen – necessitating aleve and rest and splint and ice and the sticking of my flesh with needles.

I couldn’t type. Couldn’t write. Was stuck with videos and hunt & peck and voice recognition technology that couldn’t keep up with my chewing of words and streaming of consciousness.

Then, weeks later, when I finally sat down to write …

I didn’t have the right pen.

I didn’t have the perfect unlined square sketchbook with a red cover and a smooth ribbon to mark my page and a stretchy loop to keep it all perfect inside my backpack.

The laptop was too heavy.

My back hurt. I didn’t get enough sleep. I needed a snack. There was too much light. It was too noisy. That other thing has a deadline. I didn’t feel like it.

What’s coming out isn’t good.

This stuff is depressing. Simplistic. Been said before.

What’s the point. I’m doomed.

Etc.

So at 7:39 this morning I pulled the zipcar into the parking lot of Safeway and went inside to buy anything to write on.

One of those generic composition books with a place for your class schedule and the tables to convert square yards and cubic feet.

Pens. Whatever they had in stock. In black and blue and red and purple.

And I decided to write in here, this imperfect journal with a childish purple pen, every day for the month of February.

Twenty-eight days.

I write here to get back into practice.

To not judge.

To seduce the resistance.

To find my voice which apparently was squished in between sofa cushions or fell behind the headboard or misfiled itself in the banker’s box labeled “stuff to be organized later.”

I write for twenty-eight days to remember how.

Here are a few things I learned.

Writing every day is necessary.

To keep the lines of creativity open, to keep me in the feminine, to remind me that it’s not important to write only things that are publishable or strategic or epic.

Like any creative endeavor, the important thing isn’t about what comes out or how it looks or whether it’s useful or amazing.

The important thing is to just write.

I need self care systems or I will fall apart again and again.

That I’m still recovering from my daughter’s brain tumor, as much as I fell lame and guilty for needing more time. I realized that I was drained down to the pits of negativeness and even on days when I feel great, that’s just because I’ve barely moved past “fine” into “happy!” … not because I’m all the way back.

I must heal myself and fill myself up and create space. First. Before I can do.

The most inspired ideas can only come when they have someplace to be.

That I can’t decide what to offer, create a business plan, set prices, write copy, promote new programs – that are expressions of my soul – if I’m not in touch with who my soul really is.

And I can’t be in touch with my soul if I’m continuously drowning in the endless weight of tasks and have-to’s and to do lists.

I can make money while not launching anything.

Not quite as much as a launch, but about 1/2 as much. That when I’m totally myself, just sharing ideas of what is coming and letting people buy that stuff from me, some people will.

That it actually doesn’t have to be hard.

I need sabbaticals.

That I must have time, on a regular basis, to just write. To not be forced into creating programs on deadlines or launching big campaigns or completing projects. Time without specific results and/or due dates – both of which put me in masculine “get things done” mode.

That I need time to be purely in the feminine.

Time to just be myself.

So, I’m putting sabbaticals on my calendar for 2011.

And I love that I have absolutely no idea what I’ll receive.

Want to join me?

–

Have you ever taken time off from doing and producing and making thing happen … to just be?

To just write, create, allow? (Even if just a day?)

If so, what happened for you? If not, why not?

First thing in the morning – sometimes 4:30 AM, sometimes 7:15 AM – before any other work, before errands, sometimes even before coffee.

It may take 20 minutes. It may take 3 hours.

I may write 200 words. I may write 1500.

Now … I’m fascinated that I can actually do this.

Writing used to be painful. A chore. Something I would have to force myself to do.

I would spend hours brainstorming topics that my readers may be interested in, that might be good for SEO or lead to a upcoming promotion, that people needed to hear or I needed to say. A lot of thinking and analyzing and planning.

Writing was something I forced.

Not any longer.

Here’s what I do now.

Don’t Judge, Just Write.

This brilliant advice (from my BFF Allison Nazarian) means that I don’t decide if the post is going to get clicks or comments or be good for SEO or be a necessary step for my next launch. I don’t worry if it will suck or alienate people or cross over some line.

I just write.

And later I can decide if I will publish. Publishing is a separate decision, a business, ethical, and personal decision (and yes, I have two posts that have not and will likely never be published – because they are about other people).

In this moment, our job is not to think. Our job is only to write.

Write the Truth.

Forcing is impossible to do day after day. The only way I can write a blog post in less than an hour is to be completely in the flow, to have the words flow directly from my soul into my fingers, without being analyzed by my brain.

The only way to be in the flow is to speak the truth.

So instead of thinking about – what should I write today or what’s on my editorial calendar or what is timely in the news – I ask myself one of two prompts:

What’s the most true thing I could write today?

What do I not want to write about?

And either way I’m coming at it – I’m writing the truth. What’s inspired in that moment. This is more powerful than anything I could think my way into – because it’s coming from my feminine power – and because it flows out of me.

(The only difficulty or stress happens is when I resist.)

Write Every Day.

I write even on Saturday and Sunday. Even when I’m traveling or in a conference. Even when it’s hot or I don’t feel good or I am really really really! not in the mood to write.

Every. Day. No. Matter. What.

Sometimes what I write is kind of crappy. Or it’s unfinished, just the first 1/3 of a blog post. Or I write in my journal instead of my laptop. Or instead of writing in bed I write on a bus or in a plane or at the airport or in the hotel bed or at the coffee shop or in the mall food court or sitting on a bench at the pier or curled up under a tree at golden gate park.

What’s important is – no excuses. No rationalizations. No “just taking one day off.”

No compromise.

(And yes, the compromise is not about my business or about my goals or about you. It’s much more profound. It would be compromising on myself. On my truth.)

So that’s my truth today.

Even though laundry is piled up on this bed, even though my daughter may wake up at any moment, even though I have a zillion emails and dishes and bags of recycling, even though I had no idea what this post would be about when I put fingers to keyboard.

Regardless of anything … I’m here. In this moment.

And I’m writing.

First thing, as soon as I get up in the morning. Before any other work projects, before I leave the house to get my coffee (!!), before I do the dishes or indulge in any other excuse to not get the writing done.

Write. First. Every. Day.

And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a publishable blog post. It could be a journal entry of unbloggable content, just for myself, or to share with that one special person. An email blast to my list. A guest post. A subsection of The Live Your Truth Manifesto.

I don’t even have to know ahead of time.

Anything. Just the truth. Just what pours out of me.

Just. Write.

It’s already been amazing – I’ve been publishing tons of great content, I feel like I’ve already been productive by this time every morning, I’m doing the most important thing even before coffee (!!), and I have been working through tons of feelings (writing is amazing therapy), accessing ideas that didn’t have the space to surface.

But today the resistance monster paid me a visit.

She said: “oh, Elizabeth, you can take the day off, you have a lot going on. You wrote a little bit already. You made a video yesterday that you can post today, you don’t need to write something for your blog. You’ve been posting so much lately, there is a theory it’s better to post just every few days, so maybe you’re reducing your web traffic and comments. You don’t feel like writing. You don’t know what to write about. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone, I’ll keep your little secret.”

So, in response to her polite assault, I sat down to write.

Not about what I had planned to write about, not what wasn’t working.

But what flowed out of me. What was already leaking from the tips of my fingers.

Just like the bitch in the corner, the resistance monster always strikes when you are about to do something amazing.

When you are making a change. Instituting a new habit. Taking a risk. Speaking your truth.

The voices in your head have a conspiracy to keep you safe.

To keep you small. To keep you the same as everybody else.

But I think the secret isn’t to resist her. It isn’t to fight her. It isn’t to beat her down or make her leave. (She’s not going anywhere anyway.)

The secret is to dance with her. To seduce her.

The secret is to write her.

–

How do you deal with resistance?

What happens when you are “trying” to be creative, when you are “trying” to change or create a new habit? What gets you stuck/unstuck?

Check out the live show each week on Thursdays at 3:00 PM Pac / 6:00 PM EST.

I answered emails and blog comments and returned phone calls and made appointments. I coached a client and ran a twitter chat and wrote copy for my new consulting page.

I let my personal trainer kick my butt. Did the dishes. Unpacked boxes. Tidied the living room. (Well, I tidied it just enough so I was not mortified when the babysitter came.)

And then I sat down to write.

And found that today … today, I am boring.

I have two blog posts half-written. Full of facts. Full of detail.

But no story. No feeling. No epicness. No truth.

So, in a brilliant stroke of procrastination, I went on twitter.

And a tweet from my BFF Sarah Robinson came across my screen:

To which I replied:

And there it is.

That’s where the truth is. That’s the story. That’s always where the realness is.

In this moment.

And in this moment, I feel boring.

Productive, but boring.

Such is the ebb and flow of creativity. Some days the genius outside of us just ain’t showing up.

And our job is not to worry about the apparently lack of epicness. It’s not to lament the absence of inspiration.

Our job is to be in this moment.

As boring, as ordinary, as pedestrian as this moment may be.

To write. To create. To show up.

To do the work.

#thatisall

Think you’re not in a creative industry?

Think again.

In this video I share my realizations from the polarizing manifesto “Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity” by Hugh MacLeod (@GapingVoid).