Making a Date with Yourself — Fueling Your Energy & Creativity

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I’ve been talk­ing about energy, and how when it come to accom­plish­ing our goals, it is actu­ally more impor­tant than how many hours we have in a day.

If we drag our­selves through the day with barely enough energy to com­plete one task at a time, we won’t be able to look ahead and plan our time effi­ciently, or invent short­cuts, or even begin think­ing about work­ing ahead for the next day.

Hav­ing the energy to embrace the day with opti­mism allows us to use our cre­ativ­ity in every­day sit­u­a­tions…see ways to cut time off our chores, com­bine tasks, or out­source to oth­ers. It frees our mind to see the larger picture…what should take pri­or­ity in the day. Maybe one of those chores can wait for another time–or be dis­missed entirely.

In my last blog I gave you a list of sim­ple tips to do through­out the day as you go through your work day. And I have found they do make a remark­able dif­fer­ence in my energy level for each day. I hope you tried them and have achieved great results.

But today I’d like to dis­cuss a larger con­cern that most of us prob­a­bly fall vic­tim to. And that is, not tak­ing the time to do noth­ing–a free day.

In today’s fran­tic soci­ety this some­times feels like a com­pletely for­eign con­cept. And I know what you are think­ing. “How in the world can I pos­si­bly take a day to do noth­ing, when I’ve already fallen behind in my every­day tasks?”  
I know this feel­ing well, because I suf­fer from it as well. It doesn’t mat­ter that I’ve proven to myself over and over that work­ing with­out the ben­e­fits of a “time out” takes its toll. We become burned out at our job, get writer’s block, lose our cre­ativ­ity, turn bit­ter and resent­ful at the hours we have to put our­selves through. We for­get how to have fun.

So I’m here to tell you that I know from expe­ri­ence that most of us will fight against the very thing that can set us free to find more cre­ativ­ity in our life, enjoy our work and find joy every day–tak­ing time for our­selves. We will let guilt coerce us into work­ing longer and harder than we should. How do we break free of this mindset?

Here’s the secret. Make it a part of your weekly routine–just like your diet and exer­cise. Sure it will take some plan­ning in the begin­ning. You’ll have to set a date and promise your­self to hold true to it. But as my Sen­sei once told me,  “It takes two weeks to break an old habit, or cre­ate a new one.” Two weeks. We can do that!

So how do we begin? When I took Julia Cameron’s The Artist Way course, we were required to take an Artist Date at least one day a week. It was a time of being alone with our thoughts and feel­ings, a redis­cov­ery of whom we really are…deep inside.

You see, when we con­stantly put out energy to com­plete our tasks, engage with oth­ers and work toward the future, we are going to need to “fill the well” once in a while–put energy back in. Oth­er­wise we become depleted, empty and discouraged.

So what is an Artist Date? It’s what­ever you want it to be. Here’s a hint: If you plan for some type of activ­ity, you may find it eas­ier to stick to you promise. After all, it’s not like you are just lying around doing noth­ing.
Some­times I just had pure fun, other times I had heal­ing expe­ri­ences. But what­ever I did, some­thing won­der­ful always came out of my day, no mat­ter how small. I came to look for­ward to those dates. I know from expe­ri­ence that they work and I still employ them in my life and work today.

For some inspi­ra­tion, here are a few of the “dates” I’ve taken for myself. Have fun set­ting up your own dates. You’ll see that the more you do this, the more cre­ative you’ll become. You’ll also dis­cover that the longer you do this and make it a part of your life, you’ll find your­self sneak­ing in lit­tle “moments” for your­self, all day long. These are pre­cious lit­tle gems of time…a gift you give your­self. I guar­an­tee you’ll see your energy go up, along with the hap­pi­ness factor.

• Went for a walk on the beach and col­lected seashells – dis­cov­ered a small sand­bar,  
   cov­ered in tiny Sand Dol­lars, I didn’t even know San Diego beaches had them!

• Spent an after­noon in my favorite book­store, brows­ing and read­ing – expanded the  
   types of books and authors I hadn’t yet discovered.

• Went to the toy store and bought myself fun toys (I still have some of them…I play
  with my slinky when I’m writ­ing and thinking).

• Took a sack lunch to the Botan­i­cal Gar­dens – wrote down the names of all the plants,
   trees and flow­ers in the yard at my home and found a delight­ful spot to have lunch.

• Pur­chased a bot­tle of ‘bub­ble juice” –went to a park and blew bub­bles for the
  kids that were there play­ing. Made me laugh.

• When I was in grade school my par­ents could never afford the large box of crayons and
   I always had to have the smaller box. I sooo wanted all those won­der­ful col­ors the other
   chil­dren had access to! So for one of my dates, I bought myself the biggest box of
   crayons there is and a col­or­ing book – and col­ored in it. Liberating!

Every date will give you time for intro­spec­tion, no mat­ter what you do, because you’ll be doing it alone, with your own thoughts. You’ll end it feel­ing refreshed and with a brighter out­look on life. I hope you will give it a try ~