Blog

This week I want to introduce you to the following habit: the habit of quick meaning repair. Every day we’re bombarded by small (and sometimes large) threats to our experience of life as meaningful. Maybe you submit your slides to a gallery and get a particularly...

Here’s an emotional wellness tip that may really serve you—whether you’re an artist or not! Say that a feature of your original personality is that you’re prone to sadness. At one time it was assumed that a full quarter of human beings were born “melancholic.” Whether...

This week (April 7 – 9) I’m hosting a completely free virtual conference on emotional healing. I’ve conducted more than a dozen video interviews with some top folks – Alex Lickerman on the undefeated mind, the poet Mark Nepo on healing and presence, Melanie Greenberg...

Are you worried that you may be repeating yourself in your art and not moving forward? Indeed, a creativity coaching client recently said to me, “I just painted something I really like. But it looks an awful lot like something I painted years ago. Is that a problem?...

Mary has sold many millions of copies of her books. There are authors who make such claims; Mary really has sold that many. However tremendous sales do not guarantee happiness and Mary is not happy. She wants to throw out the old and dive into the new but she has fans...

A fellow I know, a New Yorker who lives in New Jersey, makes his living providing businesses with ideas for stunts. He is paid a lot of money to come up with some idea for a stunt—the equivalent of jumping off a building, edging between two skyscrapers on a tightrope,...

I believe it was a ’56 Buick. I know it cost $50. It was my first car and I drove it mostly drunk, as I was drinking quite a bit in the Army. I would leave Ft. Dix sober, it being only Friday afternoon, drive the two hours to Brooklyn or Manhattan, and begin a weekend...

Calmness may not seem like much of a virtue to you. Maybe you prefer a life of excitement, adventure, and risk-taking. Maybe you harbor the suspicion that calmness is very much like premature death. Or maybe you do crave calmness and would love to live your life more...

For you, making art is one of your life purposes and one of your meaning opportunities. Are there others? There probably need to be, because putting all of our “meaning eggs” in one basket causes us to rise and fall precipitously based on how our art making and our...

Last week I chatted about why boldness is such an important attribute for an artist and how you can better manifest boldness by adopting a “seven-word rule”—that is, by training yourself to say what you need to say and want to say in short, strong sentences. It also...