Blog

Sigmund Freud had many culturally-based, biased ideas (for instance, about “hysterical women”), many weird ideas, many off-base ideas, and many brilliant ideas. One of his very smartest ideas was the notion of “defense mechanisms,” a subject that his daughter Anna...

Life is certainly paradoxical. We can darken our mood if, as we are engaged with a creative project, it isn’t going well. If we don’t like what we’ve just written, painted, or composed, that hardly lifts our spirits. On the other hand, when we’re in a blue mood, doing...

When I first started out as a family therapist, I created a very simple, quick “mindfulness meditation” that I employed between client sessions. Beginning therapists generally find their first sessions highly stressful, because they imagine that they are supposed to...

It is much easier to catch an idea by sitting quietly than by trying to chase it. It is easier to come up with the idea for your next novel by walking around the lake than by banging your head against a wall. It is sometimes more productive to not produce anything new...

Many creatives are juggling more than just their art and the rest of life. They are also juggling their multiple art interests. How do you find time in a real week to take care of all of your duties and responsibilities, work on your current novel, and also get to...

The Benefits of a 100-Day Creative Project I preach the value of maintaining a daily practice (or multiple daily practices) as the key to living our life purposes and achieving our goals. We do not get our novel written, our business built, or our body in shape if we...

I grew up very much aware of the phrase “the rat race,” which seemed primarily to have to do with men in suits endlessly shuffling by commuter train back and forth between Scarsdale and Manhattan. I intuitively understood what “the rat race” meant and why I didn’t...

I attended Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, a public high school specializing in math and science. One of our mandatory shop classes was telescope-making, an ironic idea for a New York school: as if you could see the night sky in Manhattan! We ground our own...

An amazing number of creatives and would-be creatives are deflated, derailed, and defeated by the opinions of others. The negative opinion may be offered by a marketplace player like a literary agent or gallery owner, by a peer like a writer in your writing group, by...

Fatigue is a real problem. Physical fatigue, mental fatigue, and emotional fatigue are plaguing just about everyone. This is especially true for creatives, who may work a full day job, have all sorts of other duties and responsibilities as well, and then are supposed...