Daily Ritual & The Art Of Getting Your Shit Together

The Daily Ritual & The Art Of Getting Your Shit Together

There's no doubting the power of focus and daily ritual on the results we produce, you know this only too well.

Remember the last really great piece of work you produced?

It was awesome and you know it. Everyone else knows it too.

So why have you not got more of it?

Ahh, it's the old and tired artist's excuse… writer's block, creative block or whatever you want to call it, right?

Or maybe it's family or financial commitments or your day job that got in the way – Who knows.

Every one of us has an excuse that we latch on to, pulling out of our back pocket every time we're faced with explaining our dissatisfaction with our career.

Well bollocks to that.

I'm calling you out.

These excuses are not good enough. You're better than that and you know it.

Getting In Your Creative Groove

We've got to be obsessed.

Take Conor McGregor for example. Love him or hate him, this guy is an obsessed master of his art. A creative genius.

Everyday he showed up, for years before the Universe yielded to him. And we must do the same.

We must show up. Every. Single. Fucking. Day.

There is no other option if we wish to create our shit, be recognised for it and make a good living.

Now there's the rub of the green right there.

Be careful here because having an ulterior motive is bad news brown, it's got to be from the heart.

If money and big cars n'stuff makes your heart sing then go be a stockbroker or something. If your art makes it sing then be an artist.

We've got to get focused on that and understand that the financial reward will come in it's own time.

A Psychological Strategy

When we are creating something we are it, and it is us. There is no separation, we are completely at one with the creative process.

This is completely necessary in order for any creative individual to make good shit.

No problem there. If you are a creative and you practice your art then you know this.

I don't draw very often but when I do, nothing else exists for me. I'm inside it, looking at the space, watching for different shades and contrasts.

Constantly over the period I'm drawing, or writing for that matter, I'm zooming in and zooming out, analysing progress from different levels.

Ever see those Youtube videos showing the scales of magnitude from atomic level to the level of the cosmos?

Creating stuff is the same thing. Right there in the moment watching things happen with no distraction, no process.

A Process Is Not Creation

A process is not creation, it's merely the apparent structure behind it. The process doesn't come before the creation either, it is an aspect of it.

Our process will come about of it's own once we are dedicated and committed to showing up day after day, simply for the sake of it.

Retrospectively analysing a particular artists success we can observe a process and declare, ahh! that's how she did it.

But that's not the truth at all.

Looking at successful people and trying to come up with a theory of how they did it is misleading because we don't have the full picture.

Besides, our own mental schemas and beliefs can lead us down the wrong path.

All creative genius comes out of now, and what we do now is the most important thing. Looking back at out our process may give us a steer in the right direction but we cannot trust it entirely.

So What Do We Do?

If I can suggest a few things to access your creativity and produce your best work more often it would be this;

1. Get present. Meditate, shut out the noise of everything else going on. Focus and direction of the creative spirit is vital.
2. Forget about results. Having an investment in the result is living outside yourself and will spoil your efforts.
3. Don't question it. Sitting on the fence can be necessary for a while, but fear of getting off on one side or the other will sterilise your work.
4. Create and stick to a daily ritual. There's now way around this one, you've simply got to create every day no matter what. Master your art.
5. Be humble. Drop the arrogance if it exists, it's killing your muse. Arrogance won't let the juices flow.
6. Let people be. You can't change the world by force, resistance blocks the flow. Let people have their views, you can't change them anyway.

As I write this, it is becoming apparent that this advice is not only for others but for myself. After all, there is only one self.

I'm thinking out loud, reminding myself of what worked before and what can work again.

Everything happens now – I figured that out a few years back as I was driving down the M50 motorway.

So let's focus in it more often and good shit will happen.

What you reckon?