Becoming Who You Are: Recent Episodes

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Do you ever feel like you sit down to work each morning to find your head swimming with everything but the task in front of you?

Do you ever feel creatively stuck before you’ve even gotten out of bed?

Do you ever feel like there is so much creative potential inside you, but it’s like the door is locked and you can’t find the key?

You might need to try Morning Pages! This is a journaling practice popularised by Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way. The basic principle is to write three pages (approximately 750 words) each morning. The two important ingredients is that these pages should be long hand (hand-written, rather than typed) and stream of consciousness (writing whatever comes into your head rather than responding to a specific prompt or doing a particular “type” of journaling, such as gratitude journaling). Morning pages are a keystone practice of The Artist’s Way, and something Julia recommends doing for the duration of the 12-week course and beyond.

The purpose of morning pagesWhile morning pages are an aid to your creative practice, they are not supposed to be art in themselves. Julia specifically emphasizes that grammar, spelling, coherence, and so on do not matter. In this case, quantity is more important than quality!

Equally, they’re not really meant to be read and reflected on later, like you might do with other kinds of journaling (although I have to admit I have not stuck to this rule…). Rather, morning pages are about getting your thoughts out of your head and onto the page. This serves a few different purposes:

• Clearing out the mental clutter of the morning. It’s a chance to express and offload any thoughts, beliefs, or feelings that might stifle your creative work later. Think of your mind like a computer: instead of having multiple software, tabs, and documents open at once, taking up valuable space on your hard drive, you’re putting them on an external disk (i.e. your journal), freeing up mental gigabytes and processing speed
• Connecting with your inner voice. Even if writing isn’t your main creative practice, you will still have some kind of creative identity and some kind of signature je ne sais quois that makes your work yours. Finding and strengthening your own inner voice through a daily morning pages practice will translate into your other creative endeavors.
• Quieting the inner critic. Morning pages is a great place for the inner critic to have its say; not so it can take over and run the show, but so that it can have its safe place to vent. With enough time, and a regular journaling practice, you will also be able to take a step back and start recognizing the inner critic’s patterns: what its beliefs are, what sets it off, and what helps quiet it. Stream-of-consciousness writing is also a good opportunity to start noticing where you inner ally might show up too. While we can’t get rid of our inner critics completely, we can consciously nurture a more supportive, compassionate, and realistic inner voice.
• Building discipline and creative momentum. If you can create a regular morning pages practice, you can do it with other things too! Like cultivating your inner voice, showing up regularly and sitting down to write your morning pages will support your ability to show up regularly and sit down to do other things in your life. This is especially valuable if you’ve been experiencing a lot of resistance to your creative work or have been feeling blocked recently.

Tips for Starting a Morning Pages Habit1) Set a time and space. Like any habit, choosing a time and place you’ll do your morning pages will make it much easier to do them regularly. Deciding in advance you’ll keep your notebook next to your bed and do your pages as soon as you wake up each morning (after coffee, of course) makes it much more likely you’ll actually do that, rather than thinking to yourself “I’ll do it at some point tomorrow.”

2) Don’t worry about spelling, grammar, or making sense. Seriously. Forget everything you were taught about writing in school and just go wild.

3) Use it as a brain cleanse, not a performance. Morning pages are not designed to be read by anyone else and it is really important not to censor or shape your writing with an external audience in mind. This might be the one space in your life where you have that freedom, so make the most of it!

4) Be consistent but flexible. The “morning” part is a key component of this practice, but I also think doing this practice at any time of day is better than not doing it at all. Equally, if you miss a day, no worries. Simply jump back in. Three times a week is better than no times a week. While yes, in an ideal world we would be doing this daily, I have found that doing it semi-regularly still helps a lot. Done is better than perfect.

New in the BWYA library: morning pages digital journals!I’m excited to share this brand new addition to the Becoming Who You Are Library: 30-day morning pages digital journals!

These can be loaded onto a tablet and come with handy links to each day, plus questions that will guide you through setting intentions and reflecting on your month of journaling. If you would like to start a morning pages practice and know you could benefit from a bit of structure, I think you will love these journals! Use one for 30 days or use all three for 12 weeks of productive and enlightening morning pages. The choice is yours

To get all three journals (plus 10+ other free workbooks and video classes), join the Becoming Who You Are Library below.

Journals Please!Have you tried morning pages? What was your experience?

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Most of us are juggling creative work with other important responsibilities. I love writing and making things, and I also have kids, am completing a degree, and I have my fair share of everyday “life” stuff going on.

Perhaps you have work, studies, people you care for, health issues, or life situations that mean you’re squeezing your creative work into the corners of your day. Or, perhaps your creative work is your full-time job that pays the bills, with all the marketing, admin, and project management that comes with that. Whatever the case might be, know that you are not alone in the challenge to make time for your creative practice and process. Here are a few things I’ve found helpful for making time and space for my creative work, I hope they are helpful for you too:

1. Focus on consistency over quantityMaking five minutes a day for your creative work might be more doable than making 30 minutes once a week (but if 30 minutes once a week is what you’ve got, that’s totally valid too!). You’re far more likely to be able to find smaller amounts of time than large chunks, and you’ll be able to see more consistent progress over time.

2. Set specific goals…Be clear on what you want to accomplish during your creative time. Break down large projects into small steps. That way, you can dive straight in with less false starts and without spending precious time deciding what to do next.

3. …and embrace slow progressSocial media has distorted our sense of how fast things happen and how quickly we can get results. It can feel like we’re doing something wrong if we’re not making the same kind of progress we see (or seem to see) other people making. But there isn’t a “correct” timeline: you are on your own schedule that is influenced by a number of factors in your life.

Sometimes we can get so focused on all the progress we’re not making, that we overlook the progress we are making. You wanted to finish the sleeve of your knitted jumper, but you only managed a row? That still counts! You wanted to write 1,000 words this evening, but you only did 50? That’s 50 closer to done.

1. Change the way you think about time This might sound like semantics, but I know I feel more optimistic and in control of my time when I think about it in terms of making time rather than finding it. We usually talk about finding the time to do things (hence the title of this post), but that’s passive. Finding time feels like we’re waiting for permission or the perfect moment (spoiler alert: neither will arrive). Thinking instead about making or creating time puts us in the driver’s seat. It primes us to spot opportunities and openings, rather than hoping that someday they’ll magically appear.

2. Look for opportunities to fill your creative wellTake time to explore new ideas and find inspiration for your creative work. Fill your well with artist dates. You can find 52 ideas for artist dates here, plus a planner in the Becoming Who You Are Library.

3. Collaborate with othersConnecting with other creatives can be a great way to find inspiration and motivation. I’ve done this through projects like group blog posts, my old podcast, and contributing chapters to books, and it was a great way to connect with other people, forge new relationships, and have the chance to share advice from others further along the path. Finding or creating a community of people around you who are on the same or a similar creative path can help you feel less alone and create new opportunities for projects and promotion.

4. Be kind to yourselfBe patient with yourself and your situation. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t get as much done as you’d hoped. Keep in mind that progress is progress. Life happens and it’s important to celebrate the small wins as well as the big. If other responsibilities need extra attention and you need to step back from your creative work for a while, that’s fine too. In fact, you never know how taking a break right now might shape your work in the future.

5. Find ways to integrate the things that matter to youHow can you weave your creative work into other areas or aspects of your life? Can you use your commute to listen to podcasts or audiobooks that will develop your craft? Can you invite your family to join you for an art workshop one weekend? Could you start a lunchtime writing club with a co-worker? Doing the things we love alongside honouring other commitments doesn’t have to be an either/or proposition. Thinking of ways to integrate different aspects of our lives gives us the chance to create more room for our creative work and you never know what new opportunities might emerge.

6. Use the “cracks” in your dayI tend to use the “cracks” in my day to work on creative projects: when I’m waiting for something or someone, when I have a moment of quiet, after my kids are asleep (if I can stay awake long enough…), and other “between” times. It might be hard to do focused work during this time, but it’s a good opportunity to do some of the things that don’t require much brain power: research, organising ideas, reviewing projects, replying to emails, jotting down a few ideas for a post or book chapter, and so on. Using these times for important-but-not-urgent tasks means I can use focused periods for deeper work that needs my full attention.

Over to you: What small creative win did you have this week, even if it felt tiny? * What’s one way you can make* time for your creative practice this week (instead of waiting to “find” it?) * What creative tasks can you do in the cracks of your day? * Where might creative integration be possible within your work, daily routines and family life?

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Let’s be honest: in a world of “overnight success” posts and highlight reels, slow progress can feel like failure in disguise. You scroll through social media and it seems like everyone else is launching, finishing, growing, creating at lightning speed, while you’re just… still here. Still working on the same thing you started months ago. Still slogging through.

It can be hard not to compare ourselves to others, feel like we’re lagging behind, and like we should be doing more, faster, sooner.

But let’s think about it:

1. Slow progress is still progress. I can get so focused on all the progress I wish I was making, that I forget to acknowledge all the progress I am making. Life feels much calmer and more manageable when I remember to do that.
2. Your timeline is valid. We often think other people notice and care more about our progress than they actually do. Really, the only thing that matters is putting one foot in front of the other, at our own pace and to our own abilities.
3. You’re not behind. You are living your life, not the life of that person doing those things over there. No one is in front or behind of anyone else, we’re all just here, living our own lives with their own individual trajectories.

I’m currently in the final stages of my master’s degree in psychology. It’s taken me three years to get here. Some of the people I started with wrapped up their studies 18 months ago. And yes, there have been moments where I’ve questioned everything: the timing, my commitment, whether it’s worth it, whether I should just quit and free up some mental bandwidth.

But I chose this course because it was flexible. I knew I’d need the space and time to take it slow (really slow, apparently ). And you know what? I’ve kept going. Sometimes steaming ahead. Sometimes pausing. Sometimes flowing. Sometimes definitely not. But always inching forward. And that feels meaningful.

Why slow progress is secretly a superpowerWe’re so good at noticing what we haven’t done, we often miss the stuff we have:

You only knitted one row instead of a whole sleeve? That’s one row closer to your next finished project (and a cozy jumper). You wrote 50 words instead of 1,000? That’s 50 more than zero (you can’t edit zero, but you can edit 50!). You started a 100-day art project and made it to day 12? That’s 12 more creations than you had before.

We might not get the dopamine hit of something snazzy to show for our efforts, but slow progress builds something even better:

• Patience: No small feat in a fast-paced world
• Resilience: You kept going even when it got boring or hard
• Self-trust: You showed up. Again and again

This kind of progress asks you to recommit, manage self-doubt, and being able to sit with discomfort. It’s quiet, gritty, and unglamorous, but incredibly valuable.

If you feel like you’re moving slowly right nowLet’s celebrate that (with a snail emoji: )! And if it feels hard, here are a few things you can do to shift how you’re thinking about your progress:

1. Zoom out. Look at how far you’ve come, not just how far you have to go.

2. Make a “have done” list. This is one of my favourite exercises when I feel like I’m not making enough progress. I wrote more about it here, but the gist is keep track of what is happening, not just what you still need to do.

3. Shift the stories you’re telling yourself. Instead of “I’m behind,” try “I’m building something with care,” “I’m learning a lot along the way,” “I’m focusing on sustainability over speed,” or “I’m thinking of this as a marathon, not a sprint.”

Over to you:

• What strengths does your slow progress highlight?
• What are you learning through this process?
• How would it feel to trust your timing more?

Further reading: How to Deal with Perfectionism (and Keep Creating Anyway) & Planting and Harvesting in Your Creative Practice

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We’ve all heard that gratitude is good for us. But for those of us who cringe slightly at the idea of having a daily gratitude practice (#blessed), there are alternatives! I am a) British and b) not an especially “woo-woo” person. So things like this collide with my cultural upbringing and my own internal scepticism. You can have too much of a good thing, and sometimes the pressure to be grateful can slide into toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing territory. Even so, it’s well documented that gratitude is connected to emotional wellbeing and a more optimistic outlook on life, as well as decreases in things like anxiety. I read about all the benefits and I want to experience those benefits, but I also find the idea of doing a gratitude practice… fluffy.

Forcing myself to do something I don’t really believe in while inwardly rolling my eyes sky high is somewhat antithetical to the whole spirit of being grateful. At the same time, I do believe it’s valuable and important to appreciate what we have, value the small realities instead of chasing after the big hypotheticals, and generally focus on the good. And I know that writing about these things can be super helpful. Here’s what I’ve found (and I wonder if it’s the same for you): My past feelings around practising gratitude don’t stem from truly believing gratitude is BS (I don’t), but rather because I need to take the core message (focusing on the good) and find my own way of making it feel relatable to me. With that in mind, here are a few ideas for focusing on the good in our journaling that fall somewhere outside the box of a regular gratitude practice. I hope they’re helpful!

1. 3 good things/Small joys list: Write down 1-3 small things each day that brought you joy, like a warm cup of coffee, a funny joke or meme, or anything that gave you the warm and fuzzies. The point of this list is that they are small things. Sure, if you happen to win the lottery that day, why not include it?! But the point is to focus on the small things that happen consistently, most days, and cultivate pleasure in those.
2. A gratitude snapshot: Describe a moment from your day in which you felt particularly content or fulfilled. Go into as much detail as possible: where you were, what as happening, what made that moment so special in its own way. One great way of honing in on these moments in writing is to capture the sensory details: sights, sounds, smells, textures, temperature, and so on. Evoking these details not only helps evoke a sense of that moment while you’re journaling, but it can help you relive it any time you read your journal entry back too.
3. A commonplace journal: This is a notebook or journal especially for tidbits of advice, wisdom, quotes, and ideas that capture your attention and imagination. There are lots of different ways to keep one (like most things in journaling, the “right” way is the way that works for you). You can create themed pages or sections, keeping all notes, quotes, and advice about, for example, relationships in one, parenting in another, and so on. Or you can work chronologically through the notebook, keeping an index at the front for future reference. You can find more ideas for different ways to set up a commonplace journal here and here.
4. Write about one thing you love: Parent and educator Susy Allison suggests this as a way of encouraging kids to practice gratitude. While the concept of feeling grateful can be a little abstract for some kids, instead she suggests asking them to think of things and people they love. I think this tip is helpful for adults too!
5. Start a gratitude alphabet: Start at the letter A and challenge yourself to come up with something for each letter all the way to Z! Whether you decide to complete an alphabet a week, one a month, or fill it in as and when, it’s a fun way to invoke a more positive mood. I think this is really useful for reflecting on the more mundane aspects of life that end up blending in with the background because we take them for granted (b for blanket, c for car, for example). It’s also a good way to have a little fun!

Further reading: 5 creative journaling techniques for non-artists & 3 useful questions to take your journaling deeper

Photo by Finde Zukunft on Unsplash

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We all have bad days where we experience self-doubt, we compare ourselves to others, we wonder if we’ll ever get it right, the stuff we’re producing doesn’t match the vision we have inside our heads. And it’s easy to let this heaviness take over.

But what if there was another way?

Self-doubt, comparison, etc. are natural, especially when we’re stretching ourselves and trying something new. We all experience these feelings at some point or another, so you are are in good company, and I think this experience becomes much easier when we acknowledge that these feelings are present.

But we run into trouble when we let them take over.

One way of thinking about these feelings is that they can ride in the passenger seat as we keep moving forward on our creative journey, but they can’t take the wheel (hat tip to Caroline Leon for this analogy). When that happens, we end up driving around in circles, getting stuck in this process of feeling bad, ruminating on why we feel bad, feeling worse, ruminating more, and so on. Round and round.

So in today’s post, I want to share a very doable tip that helps us shift those thoughts and feelings from the driving seat and move them back over to the passenger seat where they belong. Remember: this is not about pushing down those feelings or pretending they don’t exist. Rather, it’s about hearing them and acknowledging them, but not letting them determine what we do next.

Take a few moments and ask yourself: In an ideal world, how would you feel about your creative work? Would you like to feel relaxed? Playful? Skilled? Accomplished?

Now imagine you are someone who feels that way about their creative work? How does that person show up? What kinds of thoughts does that person have about their work? About themselves? How do they deal with challenges? What advice would they have for you in this moment? How would they tackle the situation you’re in right now? What would their next choice be? What would be the very next step they would take?

And go do that. Take one step closer to being that person today and see what happens.

Photo by Lubomirkin on Unsplash

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Hi! It’s really good to be back writing here again! Thank you so much to everyone who has read posts, downloaded books, registered for courses, and reached out over the past 12 months, I so appreciate it. This time last year, I took my own advice and put this blog in maintenance mode in order to make some meaningful progress with my masters degree in psychology (which I did; one more project to go, then I’m finished!). I have missed writing though, so I’m dipping back in Restarting anything after a break can feel kind of awkward, so I’ll just get on with it…

I used to be big on goal setting and I still like to think about my intentions for the upcoming year. Over the last couple of years, however, my focus has shifted away from thinking about goals to achieve and thinking more in terms of progress to make. Life is pretty unpredictable right now and I found myself getting into a pattern of being over-optimistic about my time, setting too many goals, then not feeling great when I didn’t meet many, or any, of them. (As I was writing this, I remembered a post I wrote several years ago about focusing on the process, not the outcome. Apparently I need to learn some lessons over and over again…). In order to break this cycle, I’ve shifted my focus away from creative goals towards creative habits. Because while having a goal can feel expansive, inspiring, and exciting, it’s the habits that will help us achieve those goals.

The Problem with Focusing on GoalsGoals can be helpful. They give us a sense of direction and something to aim towards. Having a sense of trajectory and an end point can be useful when we’re right in the middle of a project.

But goals can also create pressure, overwhelm, and subsequent frustration or creative paralysis. If the end point feels too far away, we might abandon the work in progress, shelve the book, procrastinate on adding more to the canvas, drop a composition mid-way. To add to that, we can become so focused on the outcome, that we end up stifling our sense of joy and fulfillment in our quest to reach it. In the pursuit of reaching milestones and meeting our self-imposed deadlines, we can become disconnected from our sense of experimentation, a productive and necessary (and fun!) part of the creative process.

The Power of Creative HabitsIt’s not that goals don’t serve a purpose; they absolutely do. But, somewhat counter-intuitively, when we focus on the habit, we’re more likely to reach our creative goals.

Creative habits build momentum. Small, consistent actions compound over time and snowball into real progress, while staying sustainable. 100 words a day is 3000 words a month. 15 minutes of sketching each day is 7.5 hours of exploring ideas a month, just doing something once per day equates to an extra 30 or 31 times per month of practising that thing. We achieve our big goals from making progress one step at a time, and that happens through habits.

Habits reduce decision fatigue. I truly believe one of the hardest parts of creating anything is getting started and staying started. If we get embroiled in an internal “Should I or shouldn’t I do this today?” debate each day, it gets exhausting. Committing to a habit removes this debate altogether.

Creative habits make a creative life. Your creative work becomes another thing you do like brushing your teeth, drinking coffee in the morning, or having a shower. It’s part of your day, and it’s more likely to be internalised as part of your identity. You’re likely to feel much more like a creative if you’re, well, creating.

Making the shift from Creative Goals to Creative Habits Here are a few practical steps I’ve found helpful for cultivating creative habits:

1. Start small: define a manageable habit that fits into your current life. If you have a full-time job, family commitments, chronic illness, or other things that make life unpredictable, factor that in. Start with just 10 minutes, five minutes, two minutes each day. Two minutes a day was where I used to ask coaching clients to start. It might not sound like much, but it is extremely effective for overcoming initial resistance and practising the hardest part (sitting down and starting the thing).
2. Try anchoring your habit to an existing routine. This is a tip from BJ Fogg, Stanford researcher and author of Tiny Habits. He suggests taking something you do as part of your routine already (morning coffee, brushing teeth, etc.) and attaching the new habit to that. For example, When I have my morning coffee, I will write five sentences. Straight after I brush my teeth, I will spend 15 minutes with my sketchbook, and so on. The point is to find something that you already do and attach the new habit to that.
3. Track progress: Keep a journal or use a habits app to track your progress. Celebrate consistency and progress, not results.
4. Stop nine times, restart 10: If you miss a day, a week, a month, try not to attach any meaning to it (I’m lazy, unmotivated, not consistent enough to do this). Yes, that’s easier said than done, but I have found that getting mired in self-judgement does not make me feel more motivated to continue—if anything, it’s the opposite. Instead, focus on picking up where you left off and keep going.
5. Reflect and review: After a week or two of trying your new habit, review how it’s going and adjust as necessary.

Over to you: What small habit can you commit to that will further your creative practice today?

More reading about habits:

Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Atomic Habits by James Clear

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An important aspect of developing our own creative practice is noticing and embracing our personal rhythms. Not everyone creates in the same way. None of us have the same lives, routines, commitments, and so on. While advice about the practical side of creative routines and practices can be helpful, this is glaring limiation. You are the one living your life. This is why I believe an important part of having a creative practice is developing an awareness around how we live, how we work, how we think and feel and the forces that influence all of the above.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about maintenance mode as an antidote to feeling like we need to be doing more and doing it bigger, and I’m sharing something related in this post.

Enter: the gardening analogy. We don’t harvest our veggies the same day we plant our seeds and often this is true for our creative work too. The creative process is akin to gardening in three key ways:

There are times for planting seeds and times for harvesting crops

The creative process is often cyclical. Just like spring is a time for planting seeds and later summer and autumn are times to harvest, you might see a similar pattern reflected in your creative process. You might have periods of research, gathering new ideas, artist dates, developing new skills, returning to old ones, and so on. And you might also have periods of prolific output, finishing energy that enables you to wrap up open projects, and lots to show for your efforts. Both parts of the cycle are equally important and necessary.

Roots before shoots

We might go through periods when it feels like nothing is happening. But is that really true? Or is there something growing just out of sight, waiting for the right conditions to emerge? Seeds need to send out roots before shoots. The roots help keep them anchored, fed, and sustain their growth. Our personal roots might include ensuring our basic needs are met and we have the physical and mental bandwidth for our creative practice. They also require giving ourselves permission to hang out in the “planting” stage for as long as we need to. It might not seem like we have anything to show for our efforts, but great things can be happening just out of sight.

We need to tend to what we’re growing

Very few plants (that we want to be in our gardens, anyway) will thrive unattended. They need watering, supporting, pruning, and more. Our creative practice also needs tending to. This means paying attention, following our curiosity, carefully unwinding threads that come up, seeing projects through (even when it gets hard), and showing up to our creative practice, even if it feels like nothing is happening. We need to at least check in on it once in a while to make sure the soil isn’t getting too dry, maybe to build a little something around it to prevent it from being nibbled on, and so on. Draw the parallels with your own creative practice as you will

Reflective questions for you:

– When have you noticed the planting/harvesting cycle in your creative work?
– What counts as “planting seeds” in your creative work? What needs to germinate before you can begin a project?
– What are the roots you need to grow before the shoots of your creative work can emerge? Are there any that need attention right now?
– How do you tend to your growing creative practice? In what conditions does it thrive? How do you protect it from outside forces?

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Among the challenges that people tend to face with their creative work, perfectionism is one of the most common. As radio host Ira Glass explained in this video, most people are drawn to creative work because they have excellent taste. Not being able to create work that matches that taste (yet) can be deeply frustrating, even without the addition of perfectionism. Add a dose of perfectionism into the mix, however, and it affect your ability to show up consistently, not to mention enjoy your creative practice. Perfectionism is a huge topic, but in this post I’m going to share a little more about how it can show up and a couple of ways you can deal with it in the context of your creative work.

Perfectionism involves holding ourselves to (often unrealistically or unattainably) high standards. But whereas traits like confidence, a desire for growth, and healthy ambition have a positive driving force behind them, the foundations of perfectionism are often built on self-criticism and a fear of failure. Perfectionism can drive us to be high achieving, detail orientated, and constantly improving, but it is also highly likely to lead to procrastination (partly because, on some level, we understand that what we are aiming for doesn’t exist). It can make us rigid, reluctant to take risks that might lead to new opportunities, and controlling. And, of course, it can lead to a whole host of physical and mental health issues brought on by stress, none of which are conducive to creativity.

Sometimes, perfectionism is obvious, but sometimes it manifests in more subtle ways that are harder to recognise in ourselves. Here are some of the ways perfectionism can show up in our creative work. Do any of these resonate for you? (N.B. some of these will happen from time to time. What you want to notice is a pattern of behaviour or thinking that affects most or all of your work).

• Setting impossibly high standards for ourselves
• Setting impossibly high standards for peers or collaborators (and damaging relationships with them in the process)
• Feeling our worth is determined by our work and that imperfections in our work will lead to personal criticism and rejection.
• A hyper focus on the outcome of our work and what people will think of it, to the point where we are afraid to try something new or take a risk
• A hyper focus on the details of our work at the expense of meeting deadlines or finishing the overall project
• Difficulty making decisions in relation to our creative work because we fear we will make the wrong choice
• Stopping ourselves before we’ve even started because the concept or idea doesn’t feel “good enough”
• Using “When… then…” thinking (e.g. “When I have the perfect website, then I’ll start sharing my work.”) or waiting until conditions are just right to take the next step

Ultimately, perfection offers the illusion of safety. If we can just get it all right, we’ll be safe from (criticism/self-doubt/rejection/instability/insert experience here). In reality, you probably will be embarrassed by earlier versions of your work. That’s good! It shows you’ve grown and improved. But that growth and improvement is hard to come by in isolation; we need to go through the act of making, iterating, and sharing again and again in order for our work to evolve.

I want to emphasise that perfectionism isn’t the same as wanting to create good work. Wanting to create good work is, well, good. Wanting to improve is great. Wanting to create the best thing you can create right now is an excellent goal to have. What you might notice about the statements above, though, is that they involve pursuing excellence at the expense of other things: wellbeing, relationships, deadlines, finishing a project, mental and physical health, even getting started in the first place. High standards raise us up, perfectionism holds us back.

How to deal with perfectionism in your creative workPerfectionism is a huge and complex topic that we each have experience differently, so covering the different nuances in a single blog post is impossible. If you notice perfectionism affecting your creative work, however, a useful place to start is by focusing on self-compassion and being kinder to yourself. Part of this involves noticing and reframing perfectionist thoughts when they come up.

For example, you might notice that you are comparing yourself to someone you follow online who does similar creative work and notice that you feel you can’t compete. Your work is so mediocre in comparison, an internal voice chimes in, what’s the point? You’ll never be that good. One way of reframing this way of thinking might be acknowledging that everyone starts somewhere; the more you practice, the better you will become. You might also remind yourself that everyone develops at their own pace and has their own style. What makes your work unique is that it comes from you, not from this other person. You might also take a moment to refocus on the things you like about your way of working, your small strengths, and how far you’ve come on your creative journey so far.

Another example of how we can be kinder to ourselves in our creative work is setting achievable and realistic goals, especially if you feel under self-imposed pressure to constantly more, achieve more and be more. What happens if you consciously walk it back? How does that feel different?

It also feels important to point out that the process of overcoming perfection doesn’t have to perfect Start small, notice where perfectionism crops up in your work, and practice reframing in a way that feels right to you.

Finally, one of the biggest ways to combat perfectionism is to take action. Action doesn’t come from confidence, confidence comes from action. The more experience you have in committing to imperfect creative work and discovering the world doesn’t end, the more you strengthen your courage and resilience to keep going.

Since perfectionism shows up in different ways, here are some questions you can ask yourself about your own creative process:

1) Where do I notice perfectionism showing up in my creative work?

2) What effect does this have on a) my creative process; b) how I feel about my creative process, and c) how I feel about myself?

3) What would “good enough” look like?

Mantras for overcoming perfectionism in your creative workHere are a few sentences you can use to start reframing perfection-orientated thoughts. Feel free to adapt these to work for you:

• Done is better than perfect
• Progress over perfection
• My creative work does not have to be perfect to make a difference
• I am learning and growing with each project
• I am willing to make bad work so I can make great work
• Mistakes help me learn
• I learn from failing at new things
• I am committed to the process more than the outcome
• Confidence comes from action
• It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough
• I am committed to creating imperfect work

What have you found helpful for addressing perfectionism in your creative work? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image by Georgi Cobbs

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If you’ve been around the personal growth/self-help or online business worlds any amount of time, you’ve probably noticed the undercurrent of more. You should constantly be growing, healing, trying to do more, achieve more, think big, earn more, optimise your life more. Reached one goal? Great, now it’s time to make an even bigger goal. No, bigger. BIGGGGGGER!

Like many self-help tropes, this approach can be helpful in some contexts, at the right time, and in the right situation. Sometimes we need an extra push to get started (or get finished) with a project. We need an extra dose of courage and someone to believe in us while we struggle to believe in ourselves. Sometimes, there are ways of working we need to address and improve. Often, we have thought patterns that are not helpful to us or our work that we need to reframe. We might go through periods of extreme growth, which take most of our focus and energy.

But it’s not sustainable to stay in this place all the time. We can’t always be growing in every single area of our life. Stuff happens. We get sick, someone we love gets sick, we get divorced, we get married, we move house or even country, we start a family, a degree, a new career… all manner of things can (and will) happen that require a lot of our time and attention. And we might be able to keep going and growing with our creative work during these times, or it might feel like too much. When it feels like too much, we might stop our creative practice altogether. It can become another item on our to-do list, something stressing us out and weighing us down.

Sometimes, stopping completely is the right choice. Other times, it’s not. Once we stop, it can be hard to start again. The creative work we’ve stopped can become a “should” in our minds, an open loop, that can take up almost as much headspace as it did when we were actively pursuing growth. Instead, during these times, it can be more helpful to enter what I call “maintenance mode.”

If growth is “on” and doing nothing is “off,” maintenance mode is the space in-between. It’s maintaining your practice and projects, but not actively growing or developing them. It’s giving our creative work* a place in our lives, while accepting that place, right now, is minimal and taking a backseat to other things. Its treading the line between feeling overwhelmed and stopping altogether. It’s making space to keep going while giving ourselves permission to scale back and do the bare minimum to keep our creative projects ticking over while we are dealing with other life stuff. It’s popping in to check on your house, run the taps, let some fresh air in, and check everything is still standing a couple of times a week, even if you aren’t living there full-time right now. It’s trusting that your creative practice will be there, waiting, when you are ready to devote more time and attention to it again.

If you’re reading this and you know if your heart of hearts that you could benefit from embracing maintenance mode right now, this is your permission slip. Your creative work will be there when you’re ready and able to invest more time and energy. You will also have a stronger foundation underneath you than if you set big goals you can’t reach and stop your practice altogether because it feels too overwhelming.

We think of doing the bare minimum as a bad thing, but sometimes it’s necessary so that we can keep doing the things we love. For many of us, our creative work is more than just a fun hobby (although fun hobbies are valuable too!). It’s something that gives us a sense of meaning and purpose, something that supports our emotional and mental health, and something that helps us feel like us. But that doesn’t mean we need to be trying to grow it all the time. Our work works for us, not the other way around. If maintenance mode is what would work best for you right now, embrace it.

*I’m writing this specifically about creative work, but you can apply this principle to pretty much any other practice or habit too.

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If you’re anything like me, you probably have a category of thoughts that go around in your head filed under something like “Things I need to do but don’t really want to, so I keep putting them off,” or “Things I should be doing, but aren’t urgent so I don’t make time for them.” Activities that fall under these categories can include:

• New habits
• Becoming more consistent with certain aspects of our creative work (making, marketing, planning, etc.)
• Learning new skills
• Making a push for progress towards a specific goal
• Finishing the last 10% of a project

…and more.

Today, I want to talk about an effective, even fun (!), trick that can help you make meaningful progress towards all of the above: the 30-day challenge.

A 30-day challenge is a great way to make time for the “important but not urgent” things you are struggling to make time to do. It’s an opportunity to focus on learning new techniques, to face your fears, to tackle sticky projects, and more.

30-day challenges are especially effective because they have a nice container around them: a calendar month. 30 days is long enough to get over initial hurdles and make meaningful progress, but not so long you end up hating the process and quitting prematurely. It’s a month… but it’s only a month.

30+ Examples of 30-Day ChallengesI keep a running list of ideas in my journal that sound fun and/or useful to me, which acts like a kind of menu when I’m ready for a new challenge. Once you get into the swing of thinking about ideas for 30-day challenges, you realise the possibilities are endless! If you need a bit of inspiration to get started, here are 30+ ideas you could use for your own 30-day challenges:

Art1. Daily sketch: Create a new sketch or drawing every day. 2. Photography: Take and share one photo each day. 3. Hand lettering: Create a new hand-lettering piece each day. 4. Doodling: Doodle something new each day (if you need extra inspiration, you can find plenty of tutorials online) 5. Abstract art: Create daily abstract artworks using different techniques. 6. Color palette challenge: Create a piece of artwork using a specific color palette each day. 7. Art journaling: Practise expressing your thoughts and ideas through creating a new art journaling spread each day.

Writing1. Short story: Write and complete a short story every day. 2. Character profile: Create a new character profile (description, background, motivations, etc.) each day. 3. Creative writing prompts: Respond to a daily writing prompt. 4. Daily Blogging: Write and publish a short blog post each day. 5. Book ideas: Outline one idea for a potential book each day.

Other creative areas1. Music composition: Compose a short piece of music each day. 2. Jewellery making: Make a small piece of jewellery each day. 3. Motif design: Design a new motif for fibre arts (knitting, crochet, etc.) patterns each day 4. Jewellery making: Make a small piece of jewellery each day. 5. Comic strip: Develop a short comic strip each day. 6. Crafting: Create a new craft or DIY project every day.

Creative Business1. Social media: Increase social media presence by engaging with followers daily. 2. Content creation: Develop and share valuable content related to your business each day. 3. Testimonials: Reach out to one previous customer for a testimonial or quote each day. 4. Networking: Connect with a colleague, peer, or potential client daily. 5. Market research: Research a specific aspect of your creative business each day. 6. Collaboration: Reach out to one potential collaborator each day. 7. Customer appreciation: Reach out to one previous customer each day to express your appreciation. 8. Website sprucing: Do 30 daily small tasks to spruce up your website and/or storefront. 9. Product ideas: Come up with one idea for a new product or service each day.

For fun/miscellaneous 1. Language learning: Spend 10 minutes practising a new language each day. 2. 10 ideas: Come up with 10 ideas around different topics each day (hat tip to Claudia Azula Altucher for this idea). 3. Reach out: Reach out to a friend or acquaintance to say hi. Bonus points if it’s someone you haven’t connected with for a while!

Health & Wellbeing1. 10,000 steps: Walk 10,000 steps each day (or as close to 10,000 as you can get). 2. Yoga: Complete 30 days of yoga practice. 3. Meditation: Meditate for 10 minutes each day. 4. Morning pages: Try writing 750 words (a la Julia Cameron) for 30 days in a row and see what happens

Do you think you’ll try a 30-day challenge? If so, what would you choose to focus on? Leave a comment and share your ideas.

Photo by Nik and Sen on Unsplash

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After I shared the 2024 Reading Challenge for Creatives last week, a couple of people asked for a list of suggested books. Here they are! (Please note: this post contains affilate links)

A couple of caveats: the term “creative” covers people who do a wide range of activities in a myraid of ways, so the books below are about general creativity or aimed at a generally creative audience. I will be seeking out books that are more specific to the kinds of things I like to do and make, and I encourage you to do the same for your craft(s) too if you want. This list is also a working list for my own reference and contains some titles that I have yet to read but that look interesting/useful, so I can’t vouch for all of them Finally, the latter months of the year are a little thin right now as it’s still early days. I will add more titles related to those themes as I (re)discover them.

What are you planning to read this year? Leave a comment and share your suggestions! Alternatively, you can follow along on Instagram and share your favourite reads there.

January: Creative Identity* Create Anyway – Ashlee Gadd * The Crossroads of Should and Must – Elle Luna * It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again – Julia Cameron * The Gift – Lewis Hyde * A book about an aspect of your creative identity (this could include memoir, biography, poetry, advice, etc.)

February: Health and Self-Care* Atomic Habits – James Clear * Set Boundaries, Find Peace – Nedra Glover Tawwab * Burnout – Emily Nagoski * Resilience – Mark McGuinness * A book about an aspect of self-care you’d like to focus on this year

March: Working Environment* The Creative Habit – Twyla Tharp * Stolen Focus – Johann Hari * A book about making your working environment as appealing and productive as possible

April: Time and Energy* 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals – Oliver Burkeman * The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working – Tony Schwartz * Mind Management, Not Time Management – David Kadavy * Find Your Unicorn Space – Eve Rodsky * Essentialism – Greg McKeown

May: Community and support* Belong- Radha Agrawal * Steal Like an Artist – Austin Kleon * Show Your Work – Austin Kleon * The Artist’s Way – Julia Cameron (N.B. this is a guided 12-week course)

June: Daily Routine* Manage Your Day-to-Day – Jocelyn K Glei * The Power of Daily Practice – Eric Maisel * Daily Creative – Todd Henry * Daily Rituals: How Artists Work – Mason Currey * From Chaos to Creativity – Jessie Kwak

July: Mindset* The War of Art – Steven Pressfield * The Long Game – Dorie Clarke * Turning Pro – Steven Pressfield * Overcoming Creative Anxiety – Karen C. L. Anderson * Big Magic – Elizabeth Gilbert * Start Ugly – David duChemin * Motivation for Creative People – Mark McGuinness

August: The Past* The Power of Regret – Daniel Pink * The Creative Cure – Jacob Nordby * Why Smart People Hurt – Eric Maisel * A book of your choice related to an aspect of your past and/or creative experience

September: Growth and Learning* Finish What You Start – Peter Hollins * Make Your Art No Matter What – Beth Pickens * Mastery – Robert Greene * A book of your choice based on improving your craft

October: Money* You Need a Budget – Jesse Mecham * The Psychology of Money – Morgan Housel

November: Life Outside Your Creative Work* The Listening Path – Julia Cameron (N.B. This is a six-week programme) * Dare to Lead – Brené Brown * A book of your choice about whatever you feel drawn to (apropos of this month’s theme, it doesn’t have to be related to your creative work)

December: Reflection and Planning* The 12 Week Year – Brian P. Moran * Start Finishing – Charlie Gilkey

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

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Happy New Year! As we head into 2024, I want to share a fun reading challenge for the next 12 months

This challenge is themed around and complements my book, The Year of You for Creatives: 365 Journal Writing Prompts for Doing Your Best Work, but you will still get a lot out of this challenge even if you aren’t following the prompts.

Below you’ll find two versions of a list you can download and check off as you complete each month’s theme: one for digital use and one for printing. I’ve also added a new book review PDF to the Becoming Who You Are Library that you can use to organise your thoughts, favourite quotes, and takeaways from each book.

I’m aiming to read one book from this list per month because my number one reading goal for this year is to get back into reading… fiction! I don’t think I’ve consistently read fiction since I finished my literature degree back in 2009, so it’s been a minute. But I’m doing a lot of heavy reading for my psychology course and want something to balance it out. I would love to see what you’re reading too, so please tag me on Instagram (@hannahbraime) if you feel inclined to share!

Here are the themes for each month:

January: Creative Identity

February: Health and Self-Care

March: Working Environment

April: Time and Energy

May: Community and Support

June: Daily Routine

July: Mindset

August: The Past

September: Growth and Learning

October: Money

November: Life Outside Your Creative Work

December: Reflection and Planning

Here’s a digital tracker and a plain background tracker for printing

I hope you enjoy this reading challenge!

Photo by Florencia Viadana on Unsplash

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If you’ve been anywhere on social media the last few years, you’ve probably seen the gorgeous journaling layouts that sometimes look like they belong more on the walls of a gallery than in a personal journal. From skilled mixed-media collages, to perfect calligraphy and beautifully illustrated spreads, art journaling seems to have become more mainstream, and I love it! As I started seeing more of these creative journaling pages, I wanted to try it myself, except I struggle to even draw a convincing stickman. The good news is that even if, like me, you are not artistically inclined, you can still make your own creative journaling pages—no fundamentals of art required Here are a few creative journaling techniques for non-artists to get you started, plus four different types of journals you can start and make your own:

(N.B. This post contains affiliate links. If you use these, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support!)

Creative Journaling Techniques1. Use layouts (also called spreads)A journal layout (or spread) describes the way a page is designed and structured. This could include headings, images, boxes, dividers, and more. Even the simplest layouts can add creative flair to your journaling and it is amazing what you can create with a few boxes. The best part of layouts is that they allow you to customise your journal page and truly make it yours. You can use different layouts for many different kinds of journal pages—truly the sky is the limit! If you’d like some inspiration to get started, here is a great book of journaling layouts. You can also find 49 ideas for bullet journal spreads here.

1. Include photosIf you don’t have the time or desire to improve your art skills, why not try adding a few photos to your journaling? Photos are excellent ways to record memories of special days and events. You can also use them as springboards: visual prompts to inspire and guide your writing. If you use a digital journal, importing photos from your phone usually takes just a few seconds. For pen and paper journaling, you might find a pocket photo printer like this or this handy.

2. Decorate favourite quotes, sayings, poetry or lyricsWords that hold meaning or significance for you are an excellent gateway into creative journaling. Experiment with writing them in different styles, surround them with doodles or images that visually represent the words, or simply write a few reflections on why they are meaningful to you.

3. Experiment with zentangle and mindful doodlesZentangle is a relaxing and easy-to-learn drawing technique based on simple, repetitive patterns (“tangles”) that are some combination of dots, lines, curves, and orbs. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas as a way to practice mindfulness through art. You don’t pre-plan your design, but create patterns in small sections and let them unfold as you go. Similarly, mindful doodling is free-form drawing, without a specific goal or design in mind. It’s less structured than Zentangle, but can be just as relaxing.

4. Make a collageGather magazines, old books, or printed images and create collages in your journal. This can be themed or random, focusing on colours, moods, or specific topics. Collages are an excellent creative journaling technique as they allow for creative expression without the need for drawing skills and there is also something quite satisfying about making them

4 Types of Creative Journals1. Keep a scrapbookArtist Margarete Miller describes a scrapbook as something you use to tell a story, for example of a holiday, relationship, or other period of time in your life. Scrapbooks can include images, writing, or any pieces of ephemera that help you craft a narrative and go on a visual journey.

1. Try junk journalingJunk journaling is similar to scrapbooking, except you use found and recycled materials to make and decorate your journal. You can source items to include, design and make your own from scratch, or use one of the many junk journaling kits available online.

2. Start a glue bookAs the name suggests, a glue book is quite literally a book you glue things into. Unlike scrapbooks, which have a linear beginning-middle-end progression, glue books don’t have to tell a story. They can be based around themes, topics, letters, numbers… anything. You could glue labels from tea bags, candy wrappers, train tickets, stickers, anything you want!

3. Create a treasured trash journal I first heard about the concept of a treasured trash journal through Austin Kleon. Combining elements of all of the above, a treasured trash journal includes items that might be trash to others, but are treasure to you. Ticket stubs from memorable events, a receipt from a lovely meal, something your kid picked up off the ground and presented to you (eek), all these things and more can go in your treasured trash journal.

I hope these ideas help you get started with your creative journaling. Enjoy!

Photo by Rachael Gorjestani on Unsplash

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Have you ever wished for more time to work on your creative projects? Me too Chances are you also have plenty of other things vying for your attention and making time for a consistent creative practice might feel like a herculean task. If this sounds like something you grapple with, know that you are not alone in the challenge to make time for your creative work. There are plenty of articles out there that cover productivity and time management tips, so in this post I’m focusing on the psychological and emotional side of this issue. Here are a few things I’ve found helpful for making time and space for my creative work, I hope they are helpful for you too:

1. Change the way you think about timeThis might sound like semantics (or perhaps a bit woo-woo), but language matters. I know it leaves me feeling more optimistic and in control of my time when I think about it in terms of making or creating time, rather than finding time. We usually talk about finding the time to do things (hence why that’s in the title of this post), but finding time is passive and conjures feelings of being out of control, maybe even overwhelm. Making or creating time is more of a reflection of reality and gives us a sense of agency over how we spend our time. We might not be able to find the time for things that are important to us, but we can create that time—even if it’s just a few minutes.

2. Set containers around distractionsThis is obvious, but worth a reminder. Turn off your phone, close unnecessary tabs on your computer, and avoid interruptions during your creative time. We all have our own pet distractions; mine is social media. When I have a deadline approaching or I want to make significant progress with a project, I remove all social media apps from my phone. Otherwise, they are like a siren song, especially when I’m working on something that is outside my comfort zone or not particularly exciting. Social media is my distraction, but your personal distraction might be different. Whatever it is, first identify it. Be honest. Then, figure out how you can set a container around it. Most distractions are distractions because we can’t or don’t want to eliminate them completely. So maybe you decide you’re only going to respond to emails on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or only between 9-10am and 4-5pm. The boundaries you set will be specific to your circumstances, but they stop the constant invitation to distraction and the exhausting “should I/shouldn’t I?” decision that comes with each invitation.

3. Use the “Yes/No” decision-making metricWhenever we say yes to something, we are saying no to something else, and vice versa. When you say “Yes” to your creative work, what are you saying “No” to? And when you say “No” to your creative work, what are you saying “Yes” to?

Think about these answers now and use them to shape your decision-making about how you want to spend your time.

1. Focus on momentum, not motivationMotivation is overrated as a driving force for action. We give it too much power over us, while also expecting it to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to overcoming our internal discomfort around getting started. Instead, focus on building momentum.

This is why I encourage my coaching clients to start with just two minutes of creative practice. Two minutes isn’t much (everyone can do two minutes), but it’s enough to do the hard part, which is get started. It’s also makes it easier to keep coming back day after day. Lots of things can affect our motivation—the weather, what we ate yesterday, how much sleep we got, other things happening in our life, and so much else that might or might not be in our control. Momentum, however, is in our control, as it simply requires showing up—even for just two minutes. A helpful question to ask is: If I spend the next three years in the same way I’ve spent my time today, what will my life look like then?

1. Focus on the things you have done, as well as the things you haven’tI’ve written a few times before about the power of the “have done” list, and that applies here too. If you’re struggling to make time for your creative work, chances are you’re hyper-focused on all the things you want to be doing or feel you should be doing, and haven’t.

Instead, also take time to think about the time you have spent on your creative work (however short—anything is better than nothing!) and the things you have accomplished or progress you have made. It all counts and it all contributes to the sense of momentum I described above.

1. Commit to your creative workDecide you are going to do this. Decide on a schedule and stick to it. Even when it’s hard. Even when you don’t feel like it.

It sounds obvious, but when you decide you’re going to do something, it becomes a lot easier to just do it. When you commit to your creative work, you are sending a message to yourself that this is important, it’s worthwhile, and that it matters. Which it does! If it’s important to you, it’s worth spending time on. Show up for your work, show up for yourself, and see what happens.

What do you find most helpful when making time and space for your creative work? Leave a comment and share your thoughts!

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Can you hear that? It’s the faint jingle of festive bells just around the corner, which means it’s also time for the Becoming Who You Are Advent Calendar!

The Calendar is a set of 25 daily journaling prompts delivered to your inbox in the lead up to December 25th. It’s a review of the year that has been and an opportunity to dream and scheme for the year to come. It’s a chance for you to add some reflective time to a busy period and create space to review 2023 while exploring what you want from 2024.

The calendar series starts on 1st December. It’s free to register and much better for you than chocolate, so I hope you’ll join us in saying farewell to 2023 and exploring possibilities for the next 12 months.

Click here to register.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

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Have you tried to start a regular journaling practice? Have you found that, after a few days, your enthusiasm wanes or life gets in the way and, before you know it, you’ve gone weeks without putting pen to paper? Or, do you find it hard to take that first step?

If you’ve answered “Yes” to any of these questions, this is the post for you! Below, you’ll find suggestions to help you overcome the five most common obstacles to journaling, plus a link to a free video class that covers more.

The best way to start journaling is to start, so I’ve designed this blog post and accompanying class to not only give you a few suggestions that will help you work through your obstacles, but also included journaling prompts for some of the obstacles you might be facing. If you come across an obstacle that resonates for you, I invite you to pause reading or watching and spend a few minutes writing about your experience.

Try not to over-think the journaling aspect too much; if it helps, think of it as an experiment, a discussion, or an exploration rather than “a journaling session”. There’s a well-known Buddhist saying: “Suffering is discomfort multiplied by resistance.” The longer you spend thinking about these obstacles, the bigger they will feel, but the sooner you can start journaling, the sooner you will be able to work through whatever might be holding you back right now.

Here are five common obstacles that might be stalling your journaling in the meantime. You can find the video class with all 10 obstacles in the Becoming Who You Are Library, which is free to access here:

get your Free video class1. “I don’t have enough time”This is one of the most common obstacles I see—and one of the easiest to overcome. And, chances are, if you’re saying “I don’t have time” about journaling, you might be saying this about other activities or areas of your life too… and potentially missing out because of it.

First of all, ask yourself:

Is it really true that I don’t have enough time?

Is there anything else I’m spending my time on right now that isn’t serving me?

We might think we don’t have time for something when, really, we’re not making time for it.

Next, remember that journaling is flexible and you can adapt the kind of journaling you do depending on how much time you have. Journaling doesn’t have to involve pages of long-hand writing. It could involve lists, photos, short answers to prompts, and more Think about what your priorities are:

What do I want to get out of my journaling practice?

What would be most useful for me to focus on today?

Identifying your answers to these questions will help you create a journaling practice that’s right for you, no matter how much (or little) time you have.

1. “I don’t know what to write about”A blank page can present a challenge, but it’s also filled with opportunities. When I have no idea what to write about, I start by writing about the fact I don’t know what to write about and how I feel about that. This in itself is usually enough to get me started and helps me overcome any writer’s block I might be experiencing.

Something else you can try is to shift your focus away from the page in front of you and take a higher level perspective. Two of my favorite journaling prompts that help me do this are:

What are the big questions I’m facing in my life right now?

Which topics or areas of my life currently contain an air of possibility, uncertainty, or a desire for resolution?

If I could write about anything at all right now, what would that be?

Nothing is too mad, bad, banal, big, or small. This prompt is about giving ourselves permission to turn down the volume on our inner censor and write what flows out of us.

1. “I find it hard to just sit down and write” When we’re new to a practice like journaling, it can be tempting to wait until the time is “just right” to start. We want to wait until we’re in the right environment, using the right tools, and experiencing the right frame of mind… and we find ourselves waiting for a long time.

Remember that action beats perfection. The first time we journal will probably feel a little awkward and underwhelming but doing it is much better than waiting for circumstances to conspire towards our idealized expectations.

If you take the plunge and sit down to write, it will become the right time and the right environment, and the right frame of mind will follow in due course.

When I sense I’m avoiding or resisting something, I find it helpful to journal on these two questions from Karla McLaren:

What is being avoided?

What must be made conscious?

1. “I’m nervous about what might come up”When we journal, we step into the unknown areas of our internal landscape. For some of us, this is an exciting prospect, for others it might feel anxiety-provoking.

If uncertainty and trepidation around what might come up when you journal has been an obstacle in your journaling practice so far, be gentle with yourself. Use your journaling to practice self-kindness and empathy rather than forcing something that might not yet be ready. Try asking:

What would I say to a friend who was telling me they felt this way?

What advice would the 80-year old version of myself have for me about this?

Remember you are the king or queen of your castle; you don’t have to go anywhere you’re not ready to go. And when you are ready to go to those places with your journaling, remember that there’s no obligation to take action on anything you write about. The primary aim of journaling is self-expression and self-exploration, and it’s OK for any thoughts, ideas, and feelings you express to stay on the page for now if you want them to.

1. “I feel self-conscious”When we have negative or ambivalent beliefs about journaling (or about what it would mean about us if we were to journal regularly) that leave our ego feeling threatened, it’s going to be challenging to maintain a journaling practice.

If you find yourself feeling self-conscious when you think about journaling, take some time to explore the following questions:

What are my beliefs about journaling and writing? Are they my beliefs or beliefs I have picked up from other people at some point?

What would my journaling practice look like if I thought no one would judge me? What would it look like if I stopped judging myself?

If you’d like to learn more about these obstacles, plus get suggestions and prompts for dealing with five more challenges, you can access a video class (plus 20+ other resources) in the Becoming Who You Are Library for free.

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If you’ve been journaling for some time, you’ll know there are days when the words come effortlessly and it feels like your thoughts flow faster than your writing or typing can keep up with. Sometimes, however, it can be hard to know where to start. Even when we’ve been journaling for years, there will be days when we’re faced with a blank page and have no idea what to write. This is where journaling prompts can be useful. As well as giving you a place to begin your writing, they might also encourage you to think of new topics or perspectives you haven’t explored before.

Over the last few years, I’ve shared several different posts with journaling prompts on different topics, and I thought it might be useful to put them all in one place. Below you’ll find the links to the relevant posts, I hope they are useful! If you enjoy these prompts, you might also like my series of guided journaling books, which each contain a year’s worth of daily journaling prompts:

The Year of You: 365 Journal Writing Prompts for Creative Self-Discovery

The Year of You for Mothers: 365 Journal Writing Prompts for Self-Reflection, Self-Care, and Self-Discovery

The Year of You for Creatives: 365 Journal Writing Prompts for Doing Your Best Creative Work

Topic-Specific Journaling Prompts15 journaling prompts to level up your work life

15 journaling prompts to inspire travel and adventure

15 journaling prompts to explore your spiritual side

20 journaling prompts to improve your relationship with money

20 journaling prompts to improve your relationships

20 journaling prompts for self-discovery

Creating a Level 10 Life: A journaling exercise

Free journaling template: the new project deep dive

End-of-Year Journaling Prompts24 journal prompts for end-of-year reflection

10 end-of-year journaling prompts for creatives

10 end-of-year journaling prompts for parents

Other journaling-related posts:How to start a daily journaling practice

Paper versus digital journaling

How to take your journaling practice deeper

Photo by That’s Her Business on Unsplash

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Criticism. It’s inevitable, but the fear of receiving it is something that can make us pause before sharing our work. The thing is, with criticism of your creative work, it’s not if, it’s when. If you haven’t already noticed, people have opinions. Often strong opinions. And at some point, if you keep sharing your work (which you should if you feel called to!), those opinions will be directed at what you’re creating, perhaps even at you.

Chances are you already know the above on an intellectual level. You know it’s part of being visible, you’ve seen it happen to other people and you know it will happen to you at some point, you know that certain kinds of criticism can even be helpful. Even so, many of us go out of our way to avoid it. Being on the receiving end of criticism (especially destructive criticism, which I’ll talk about more below), can deal a blow to our confidence. It can also trigger a fear of failure, which makes it harder to take creative risks and try new things. If we already struggle with negative self-talk, criticism can feed into this and make it harder to see the value in what we’re doing.

But criticism can also be helpful. It can help us see areas for improvement. It can offer a new perspective and open up new ideas and possibilities we haven’t considered before. It can help us reaffirm our commitment to what we’re doing and why.

As you can see, criticism—although it might not be easy to hear—isn’t always negative. The same piece of criticism can also affect different people in different ways. How we receive it depends on our temperament and current mood, the spirit in which it is delivered, and how we filter through and decide which aspects we want to work on and which to let go. Being able to handle negative feedback is a necessary part of growth and success as a creative, so in this post I want to share actionable tips on how to deal with criticism of your creative work.

Understanding the different types of criticism First, let’s explore the two main types of criticism, as being aware of these two categories can help you better identify which criticism to pay attention to.

The first kind is constructive criticism. This focuses on helping someone improve their work or performance. It is usually specific, objective, and actionable. Examples of this kind of feedback include a teacher sitting down with you and walking you through where you could improve your essay paragraph by paragraph; someone emailing you about a factual inaccuracy on your website and linking to the correct information; someone encouraging you to try something new with your art that would enhance your work, and so on. The intention behind constructive criticism is positive: someone offering this kind of criticism wants to help the recipient see their work from a different perspective and provide guidance on how to improve it. It stems from an underlying belief in someone’s potential and includes positive feedback and recognition for what they’ve done well too.

Then, there’s destructive criticism. This has a different flavour to constructive criticism and focuses on finding faults, mistakes, and flaws. It is often vague, subjective, and it can often be hard to draw out tangible action steps you can take to improve. Think of a teacher giving you a poor grade and a single comment: “Try harder,” someone emailing you about a factual inaccuracy and calling you stupid while not telling you what the inaccuracy actually is; someone telling you to stop making art because no one is going to want to buy it. While the goal of constructive criticism is to help, the goal of destructive criticism is to tear someone’s work down and make them feel bad about it.

How to respond to criticism of your creative work As you can see, criticism comes in different flavours. Being able to tell the difference between constructive and destructive criticism can help lessen the sting, but in this section I want share a few additional ways you can deal with criticism of your creative work:

1. Recognise that criticism is a normal part of the creative processAlthough none of us like criticism, having to deal with it is part of doing creative work, and the sooner we can accept that, the less power it has over us. We can’t control whether someone criticises our work, the manner in which they deliver that criticism, or what their intent is when sharing it. What we can control is what we do next.

That might include taking time to reflect on the criticism and considering if there is any truth to it. If we’re unsure about the meaning of the criticism, it might include asking for clarification. It might also include trying to take the perspective of the person giving it. It might include ignoring the delivery and cherry-picking part of the message underneath you find to be helpful. It might include acknowledging you’re not wrong and they’re not wrong, you just have different ideas about what good art/writing/music/knitting/(insert craft here) looks like. It might include ignoring it completely and utilising the “block” button.

1. Decide now how you will respond — to yourself as well as the other personCriticism can leave us with hurt feelings, which can provoke a range of understandable but often unhelpful responses: defensiveness, anger, a desire to one-up the other person, a desire to hide. Responding to criticism in a way you feel good about is much harder in the heat of the moment if you’re unprepared. Decide now, while you’re calm and collected, how you will respond to constructive and destructive criticism.

Our own internal dialogue and the things we tell ourselves about our work and what it means to receive negative feedback often makes us feel worse. So what will you say to yourself? How will you respond to the person giving the criticism? What will you do afterwards? How will you take care of yourself? What will you not do? What coping mechanisms would you rather avoid? Thinking through these questions now doesn’t guarantee you will respond well when criticism comes your way, but you stand a much better chance of responding in a considered and conscious way, rather than engaging in a knee-jerk reaction.

1. Separate work criticism from personal criticism There is a train of thought that, of course, we take criticism of our creative work personally: it is personal. While I understand this, I think for our own sanity and emotional wellbeing, we need to separate out our personal identities from the work we create. When the lines between the two blur, criticism of our work (constructive or destructive) can feel like a personal attack.

But it’s not. And it might even be helpful. Just because someone offers criticism of our work doesn’t mean they don’t like us, that they are a “hater” or similar (yes, those things might be true, but they’re not a given). Feedback—positive or negative—is data. Negative feedback, as criticism, points to potential opportunities to grow and improve, just as positive feedback points to opportunities to continue and lean in to what we’re already doing.

1. Remember, criticism is subjectiveIt’s something we all know, but forget in the face of criticism: not everyone will like your work, and that’s OK. As burlesque performer Dita Von Teese reportedly said, you can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world and there will still be someone who hates peaches. While some criticism might contain an element of truth, it’s still subjective, and what one person doesn’t like, another person might love.

2. Set boundaries around your exposure to criticismAs an author, I rely on readers leaving reviews of my books for social proof, algorithms, and so that other potential readers can decide if it’s right for them or not. Reviews are also helpful for me to determine how and why a book resonates with readers—or doesn’t. While reading critical reviews can be helpful, destructive criticism doesn’t leave me in a great frame of mind, so I set boundaries around how often I read individual comments. One way I do this is to gauge reader enjoyment using the aggregate star rating rather than through individual reviews. As long as the aggregate rating is good, I’m happy. It can be hard to walk the line between taking useful feedback on board and feeling like we should hear everyone out who takes the time to get in touch and/or comment on our work. That’s where boundaries around criticism come in.

While we can’t control whether people criticise our work, we can control how much and how often we expose ourselves to that criticism, especially on platforms that use comments, likes/dislikes, and aggregate ratings. If you know there are platforms on which you share your work where people can be harsh, it’s OK to decide you won’t read those comments. If you want to get a sense of how your work is landing, instead go for aggregate feedback: views, likes, star ratings, and so on. If there is someone who frequently sends you unhelpful or “concern troll” criticism, it’s OK to not respond or block them. Ditto for personal criticism, comments about appearance, lifestyle, or anything else that isn’t relevant to your work. Boundaries are personal, so what works for me might be different for you, but it’s worth thinking about which boundaries might be useful for you and your creative work.

1. Keep a list of positive feedbackI’ve talked about negativity bias before, and that certainly applies to criticism. Our brains are hard-wired to dwell on the negative, so out of 10 pieces of feedback, we’re likely to remember the one that was critial rather than the nine that were glowing.

One way we can counteract negativity bias is to keep a list of positive feedback. This might be a folder of nice emails, screenshots of positive reviews or comments, and so on. The way you collate these doesn’t matter, what does is doing it. We are excellent at remembering criticism and terrible at remembering praise, but attempting to flip that bias can make all the difference to how we feel about and perceive our creating work.

1. Keep creatingSo you’ve received one or more critical comments about your work. Now what?

It’s simple: keep going.

Criticism is not a reason to stop. While I think we should be serious about our work, I don’t think we should take our work—or criticism about it—too seriously. It’s just one person’s opinion, so don’t let discourage you from continuing to create. And if it’s more than just one person’s opinion, that’s useful information too. This is one reason I think it’s important for us to step back and focus on the body of work we are creating over years, rather than on a single project. We all have projects that fail, that don’t land the way we thought they would, where we unintentionally make a faux pas, where we draw criticism from others. It happens, it’s OK, the main thing is to take any lessons that need to be learned and keep going.

Ready to face critcism head on and become a more confident creative? Try the free Creative Confidence Challenge! This seven-day email course offers inspiration and practical advice for overcoming obstacles to creative work and making creativity a habit. Register here.

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As a creative, you wear many hats. Not only are you responsible for your craft, but you’re also often required to take on other roles (that you might not have bargained for…) too. One of the most common of these is project manager. This is especially the case when you’re working on a larger project, whether that’s a book, an album, a review—anything that requires multiple pieces coming together at the same time. While some of us might love this aspect of creative work, for others of us, it might not be something that comes naturally. In this week’s post, I want to talk about a cognitive bias (an error in thinking) that can affect this aspect of creative work—the planning fallacy—and share a few practical tips you can use to overcome this issue in your creative work.

What is the planning fallacy?The planning fallacy is a cognitive bias that describes our tendency to underestimate the time, resources, or effort required to complete a project. This might not matter much in some situations, but when you’re working to a deadline, budget, or in partnership with others, it can wreak havoc. One factor that contributes to the planning fallacy is having limited information about a project when starting out—and if that doesn’t describe most big creative projects, I don’t know what does. Yes, we might create an outline for a book, but it’s not uncommon to reach a certain point and have to go back to rework that outline. Many creative projects evolve as we work on them and the finished product can look quite different to what we envisioned when we started.

Another factor that contributes to the planning fallacy is being over-optimistic about our ability to get things done within a certain timeframe. We might also be influenced by group dynamics: if someone else wrote a book in a month, we can do it too, right?! This is the rub with creative communities. While it’s great to have support from people who are walking a similar path, we also need to be wary of modelling our creative working life on theirs when that approach doesn’t actually work for us. We might feel pressure to conform or to present a positive image to other people in the group, both of which can override our common sense and cause the planning fallacy to kick in.

How to deal with the planning fallacy in your creative workThe good thing about cognitive biases is that, for the most part, once we’re aware of them, we are more likely to be aware of when we’re engaging in them. If you’re reading this and have experienced the negative effects of the planning fallacy in the past, here are a few ways you can approach a project differently in the future:

1. Break projects into smaller tasksOne way to summarise the difference between a task and a project is that a task is a single action step, whereas a project is anything that requires more than one action. One of the most common causes of time management issues is when we treat projects like tasks, realise there are far more steps involved than we previously realised, then wonder why everything is taking longer than we thought it would. Examining each project and breaking it down into its component tasks (i.e. single action steps) makes it much easier to estimate how much time things will really take. It’s helpful to get into the habit of making sure a task really is a task and not a project in disguise.

2. Use a project management tool or task managerBefore I begin a new project, I break it down as above using a task manager (I use and love this one). Being able to visualise all the different components involved in a project makes it much easier to see in which order I should do things and make an estimate of how long things will take, what I need to budget for, and so on. You can also keep track of deadlines and milestones, so if there is a delay or something is taking longer than planned, you can see this and course correct early on.

3. Set a realistic deadline and stick to itAnother factor that can influence the planning fallacy is Parkinson’s Law, which states that work expands to fill the time available. If we want to write 100 words of our novel and we give ourselves 20 minutes, it will probably take 20 minutes. If we give ourselves five minutes, we’ll probably get it done within five minutes. Setting deadlines can help can help counteract this and prevent projects expanding into infinity. The realistic part is important though, as consistently setting then missing deadlines won’t help. A handy rule of thumb is to decide how long you think something will take, then add half that amount of time again. That’s your realistic deadline

4. Do a “Pre-Mortem”Imagine that your project has failed, overrun, gone over budget, and ask yourself what went wrong and why. Thinking about these potential pitfalls (and solutions) now makes it less likely they’ll take you by surprise if they crop up further along.

5. Learn from past experiencesReflect on past projects and consider what worked well and what didn’t. Was there a particular point in the creative process you got stuck? Was there something that took more time than expected? Was there something that took less time? Was there anything you should have started earlier in the process? If you worked with other people on part or all of the project, how did this influence your time and budget estimates? Use this information to improve your planning and time management for the future.

Ready to create habits that will help you become a more confident creative? Try the free Creative Confidence Challenge! This free email course offers daily inspiration and practical advice for overcoming obstacles to creative work and making creativity a habit. Register here.

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“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

Sylvia Plath

Most, if not all, creative people struggle with self-doubt and insecurity. Yes, you are in good company. As you probably know, left unchecked, self-doubt about your creative work can hold you back from taking risks and pursuing new ideas and opportunities. It might stop you from working towards your creative goals and leave you feeling unsatisfied, unfulfilled, and stuck. Over time, chronic self-doubt and insecurity can also erode your mental health and seep into other areas of your life.

One of the tricky things about creative self-doubt is that it creates a vicious cycle. When we feel doubt, we tend to avoid doing the thing we feel doubt about, or we don’t do it as well as we could because we’re so distracted by worrying about whether we’re good enough. This avoidance or distraction reinforces the self-doubt (“See! I knew I couldn’t do it.”) and the whole cycle deepens and begins again. At the other extreme, advice to just stop doubting ourselves doesn’t help either. For many of us, self-doubt isn’t just an internal switch we can flick on and off at will. Trying, and failing, to follow this kind of advice can leave us feeling like there’s something wrong with us and—oops—more self-doubting.

In this post, I want to provide a different perspective on self-doubt. I’m going to talk about what it means to experience self-doubt in relation to our creative work (the silver lining, if you will), and then share some practical strategies you can use to deal with your self-doubt. These won’t necessarily help you get rid of your self-doubt altogether, but will hopefully strengthen other parts of your internal dialogue that have greater self-belief and self-trust in your ability to grow, learn, and evolve.

What creative self-doubt really means First, as I just mentioned, self-doubt is a very normal part of the creative process. It isn’t evidence that you are no good, that you shouldn’t be doing this, or that you aren’t cut out to meet your creative goals. As Ishita Gupta explained in The Entrepreneur’s Inner World, “New level, new devil.” Our flavour of self-doubt might change as our creative work evolves and we reach different levels of competency and success, but it doesn’t disappear completely (sorry). Experiencing creative self-doubt is OK, it’s expected, it’s even good. It’s how you respond to the self-doubt that matters, as you’ll discover below.

Second, experiencing creative self-doubt can be a positive sign. While self-doubt can show up when we are doing something that isn’t wise or doesn’t fit with our values, we can also experience self-doubt because we care and because we are doing something that’s important to us. If you didn’t care about your creative work and if it wasn’t meaningful to you, chances are you wouldn’t experience these intense feelings about it. It would be much easier to shrug off any concerns.

Still, it’s no secret that self-doubt is super effective at putting the breaks on meaningful progress. So, with that in mind, here are some strategies to help you deal with creative self-doubt so you can keep going and keep creating. These are all things I’ve found helpful, and I hope they are helpful for you too.

How to deal with self-doubt about your creative work1. Normalise itI’ll say it again: almost everyone experiences creative self-doubt. It’s a natural part of the creative process. It is not evidence you can’t do this or don’t have a right to do this. Normalising self-doubt related to your creative work can make it feel less heavy. Rather than infusing it with meaning, we can accept it as par for the course and as just another feeling that pops up when we’re working on something new.

1. Counteract negativity bias with positive habitsWe have a hard-wired negativity bias, which means we are far more likely to remember and be affected by negative feedback and events than we are with positive feedback and events. This happens even if the number of positive incidents vastly outweighs the negative; if you showcase your work to 10 people in a room and nine are passionately enthusiastic about it, it’ll be the 10th person who was neutral or negative that you’ll be lying awake thinking about at 2am.

Even though we can’t change the negativity bias (it’s been a necessary part of humans’ survival up to this point), we can take steps to mitigate it and incorporate a more balanced perspective. Specific examples include starting a folder in your email specifically for positive feedback and comments, writing down three wins at the end of each day, keeping a have done list, and taking time to celebrate successes and milestones (they might not seem like much compared to bigger goals you have, but they are evidence you are making progress). Keeping track of the positive, and making a habit to review it when you’re experiencing self-doubt, can help you reconnect with your confidence and remind you that you can create successful work.

1. Practice self-reflectionSelf-doubt is uncomfortable, so most of us have a knee-jerk internal response. Either we believe it (see above) or we tell ourselves we shouldn’t be feeling this way and get frustrated with the fact we don’t seem to be able to just turn the feeling off and get on with life. But the solution to self-criticism isn’t more self-criticism. Instead, it’s time for compassionate self-reflection.

First, explore your doubt. What specifically is provoking your self-doubt about your creative work? Where is it coming from? When did you first notice this feeling? What were you doing or thinking about immediately beforehand? Is this self-doubt pointing to a genuine issue with your work, or is it a generalised fear that’s being channeled into this particular situation? Is this something that is specific to your creative work, or does it show up in other areas of your life too? If so, do you notice any patterns around when and how it shows up? Asking these questions might provoke some internal judgments, so try to use this as an opportunity to practice self-compassion. If compassion feels like too much of a stretch, aim for self-neutrality—pretend you’re a scientist, making observations without yet drawing conclusions.

Sometimes self-doubt can highlight an actual issue. If you think this is the case for you, take time to think about the areas in which you could improve or skills you know you could work on. Again, this might provoke some internal criticism, so be mindful not to dwell on the doubt. Instead, turn this insight into action.

1. Limit social media timeThis is tricky for a lot of creatives. On the one hand, social media can be a source of support and inspiration, as well as an opportunity to connect with your audience and reach new people. On the other hand, I think we all know what the drawbacks are… comparison, harsh criticism, getting stuck on metrics that don’t matter, feeling like we’re not good enough, and so on. You might not be able, or want, to ditch social media entirely, but if you’re struggling with self-doubt about your creative work, you can still limit the downsides. You are allowed to unfollow or hide anyone who provokes “less than” feelings. Yes, even if they are popular and you feel you should follow them. You can also limit the time you spend consuming other people’s content, instead focusing on sharing your own and interacting with your community.

2. Set realistic goalsOne thing social media is superb at is hyping “success.” Advice to think big and stop playing small comes from a well-meaning place, but the reality is that for 99% of us, progress is incremental, unglamorous, and doesn’t match the “crushing it” facade broadcasted online. For 99% of us, it will take months, if not years, of quiet, consistent, diligent work to reach our biggest goals, whether related to output, money, reach, professional recognition, or something else.

While big goals with short timelines can motivate some, they can also set us up to feel like failures if we don’t meet them. We are working to live, not living to work. Stress hinders creativity, so if you think your self-doubt is related to unrealistic goals, scale back to focus on slow and sustainable progress rather than trying to pull off a moonshot every few months. You don’t need to keep up with anyone else’s timeline; the only one that matters is your own.

1. Learn from past failuresFailure is a natural and necessary part of the creative process. It’s not fun, it’s not easy, but it is inevitable. Failures—real or perceived—can provoke self-doubt. In the immediate aftermath, we might doubt our abilities, our judgement, our decision-making process, our worth, or all of these. But, just like self-doubt, how we respond to failure is more important than whether we experience it.

The best way to move forward from failure is to learn from it. A good place to start is getting clear about which factors were within your control and which weren’t. Several years ago, I experienced what, at the time, felt like a huge creative failure when a project I had worked on for months in partnership with a larger platform fizzled out. When I examined what happened and what I could learn from it, I could see that part of what happened (the creative partner shuttering their business without warning right before the project launched), wasn’t within my control. At the same time, I was responsible for the fact that I had prioritised this project over others and individual client work, which left me in a more precarious position than I otherwise would have been. I also learned useful lessons about partnerships that have come in handy since then. With past events that have felt like failures, think about what, with the gift of hindsight, you could have done differently. It helps to write this down, especially if you tend towards self-blame or, at the other end of the spectrum, holding a grudge. This way, you can refer back to these lessons and apply them to similar situations in the future.

Finally, reflect on what you got out of the situation, even if it didn’t turn out the way you hoped. With the project above, I got to connect with a group of people I really admire, I made new online friends, and was able to repurpose the work I’d done to take advantage of new and meaningful opportunities. While there were definitely things I would have done differently, I’m still glad I did it.

1. Seek out supportive communities of other creatives who can offer encouragement and adviceThe creative journey can be lonely and, in isolation, self-doubt feel overwhelming. Seeking—or creating—a supportive community of other creatives with whom you can share and offer mutual advice and encouragement can make all the difference. As I mentioned above, everyone experiences self-doubt, and sometimes it can help simply to hear someone else say: “Me too! You’re not alone.”

There are plenty of paid groups and mentorships out there, but it doesn’t have to be one of these. Your creative community might be a couple of local friends; it might be people you don’t know IRL but have connected with online; it might be role models or mentors you listen to/read/follow and admire from afar. And if you can’t see anything obvious out there that fits what you’re looking for, why not create a group yourself? Chances are there will be at least one other person looking for a similar support system.

It’s also worth saying that if you feel your self-doubt is preventing you from doing things you love, dulling enjoyment of your daily life, interfering with your sleep, or impacting your overall mental health, please consider talking to a coach or therapist who specialises in this area.

1. Keep going!Self-doubt about your creative work is inevitable, but that doesn’t mean it defines you and your work. Self-doubt can be a passenger on your creative journey, but don’t let it take the wheel. The more we let our self-doubt steer, the less we will take action, and the stronger that doubt will get. But when we recognise that self-doubt is part of the process, we explore it with compassion, and we create habits and networks that support our creative work, we reinforce the parts of us that believe we are capable, and we are more than our doubts and insecurities. By taking action and continuing to move forward, you won’t get rid of the doubt altogether, but you will learn how to live with it and keep going, whatever the weather.

Ready to deal with self-doubt and become a more confident creative? Try the free Creative Confidence Challenge! This free email course offers daily inspiration and practical advice for overcoming obstacles to creative work and making creativity a habit. Register here.

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Do you want more creative confidence? If the answer is “Yes!” I’m excited to share a brand new week-long challenge I hope will help

The Creative Confidence Challenge is a free 7-day challenge designed to help you create a consistent creative practice and boost your confidence. Whether you’re an aspiring artist, writer, musician, or simply looking to inject more creativity into your daily life, this challenge is for you. Each day, you’ll cover a different topic that pertains to your creative practice, from finding inspiration, to dealing with time and situational constraints, to the inner critic.

By the end of the week, you’ll have a newfound sense of creative confidence and a fledgling creative practice you’ll be able to continue long after the challenge is over.

All you need is 10 minutes a day and a willingness to begin.

You can join the challenge here or using the form below:

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I hope you enjoy it!

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“your calling will never demand that it be the way you pay your mortgage. It is simply begging you for some amount of expression in your life.”

Tara Mohr

Have you ever wanted to start something, but found yourself thinking, “It’s too late?”

Whether you feel you’ve missed the curve on a certain trend, you feel there is too much competition or market saturation; you feel you’re too old, or you feel you can’t devote the time and effort needed to make it happen, this is a feeling I think we can all relate to in one way or another.

A recent time I experienced this was when I thought, yet again, about trying to finish a novel. I’ve finished National Novel Writing Month a couple of times and ended up with a few shitty first drafts, but that’s always been where the process has ended for me. Part of this is practical; between kids, work, studying, and life, I have next to no spare time. But there is also the thought: I’m too late; it’s so much time to spend on something not work- or family-related; the learning curve feels too complex; I should have done this ten years ago; does the world really need another bad novel? And so on, and so on.

At the same time, when I ask myself what I’d regret more: trying and “failing” or never trying, the answer is obvious. And this is the rub with this kind of belief: it holds us back from pursuing creative interests and passions and stops us before we’ve even started.

This is a shame, because whatever the outcome of a new creative project, there are many benefits we can gain from starting one: personal growth, greater mental and emotional well-being, the potential for new opportunities and connections, the things we don’t expect that end up contributing to our lives.

When I look at writing a novel in those terms, I feel a lot more optimistic than when I look at it purely from a time/money/market perspective. Those things do matter if you want to make money from your project out of the gate, but as coach Tara Mohr says, “your calling will never demand that it be the way you pay your mortgage. It is simply begging you for some amount of expression in your life.” Also, I know that if I feel like I should have started 10 years ago now, I’m really going to feel that way in another 10 years, so there’s no time like the present

If you’ve been wanting to start a new creative project, but feel it is too late, here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• Why do you think it is too late? What is the belief underpinning that thought?
• Are you placing constraints on this project (such as needing a certain amount of time or money in order to do it) that don’t really need to be there? (Sometimes we feel it is too late because we have a vision in our heads of what a project would look like if it were done “properly” (which is often a codeword for perfectly).
• What is another way you can approach it that relieves those constraints?
• How would you feel differently about this project if you approached it as an experiment rather than with a fixed outcome in mind?
• What would it look like to start by spending just 10 minutes a day on this project? When could you do that? How would it feel?
• Knowing that the time will pass anyway, how will you feel in a year if you start this project today, and how will you feel if you look back and you haven’t?

If there is one thing I want you to take away from this post, it’s in the title: it’s never too late to begin. There might be lots of reasons not to start something new, but this isn’t one of them.

What’s the first step you can take to begin today?

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You’ve probably heard plenty about decluttering your physical environment. From Marie Kondo to minimalism, books to whole Netflix series, it’s been hard to avoid the tidying trend that’s surged in the last decade. Doing a digital declutter less talked about, but the same issues that come with having too many physical things also apply to our digital lives. A crowded and disorganised digital space can be just as overwhelming as having a cluttered physical environment. In this post, I’m going to walk you through how to declutter your digital life so you can experience less stress, overwhelm and chaos, and greater ease, calm, and focus.

In the last 10 years, most of us have spent more and more time attached to some kind of device, a trend that has catalysed since the pandemic started. Many of us now spend longer than ever before in front of a computer, and more time doing so at home. Our digital lives have become an extension of our physical lives. Even if you don’t work online, you probably conduct a significant proportion of your daily activities using technology and rely on a laptop or phone to store personal files, correspondence, photos, entertainment and more. Whereas the amount of digital stuff we could hoard used to be limited by the size of our hard drives, thanks to increased storage and the mass rollout of cloud services, those restrictions are gone and we can hoard away. We have more information than ever before at our fingertips, and it’s hard to filter out the noise and prioritise what’s really important.

A couple of years ago, I felt overwhelmed by how much digital “stuff” I had. Sure, it was tucked away on a computer or in the cloud and invisible most of the time, but the issue reared its head each time I opened up my laptop. From the files I knew I had somewhere but couldn’t find amongst all the things I’d kept “just in case”, to the 2000+ unread emails in my inbox (mostly subscriptions I never read), to a general sense of unease each time I opened Google drive, saw my desktop, peeked in my documents, and was reminded that what I could see directly in front of me, what already felt too much, was just the tip of the iceberg. For every file hanging out on my desktop, there were 100 more lurking just out of sight, but always in the back of my awareness.

Decluttering my digital life helped me feel more in control, more focused, and calmer. Instead of being reminded of how disorganised my digital life was each time I opened up my computer or phone, I could just get on with what I needed to do, which was a lot more enjoyable (and more efficient). This isn’t something that comes naturally to me. It’s something I have to think about and requires self-discipline. But it’s worth it.

Why declutter your digital life?Decluttering your digital life can feel like a mammoth task, so if you are still on the fence, that’s OK. This section is for you. Perhaps you think it’s no big deal, or that it doesn’t matter if we have a few extra files hanging around. But it does: it matters for the same reason we like to keep our environment clean and tidy (-ish). When our digital lives are cluttered, we might deal with one (but probably a few) of the following issues:

• General low-level stress (and who needs more of that?)
• A sense of disorganisation
• A feeling of overwhelm and being out of control
• A lot of time being busy, but not much time being productive
• Not being able to find things we need
• Forgetting we have things that would be useful and/or spending money on things we forget we already had
• A sense of pressure to sort it all out and “use” things we haven’t yet used.

So even if you don’t think it’s a big deal, even if you don’t think it matters, why not try it? It won’t make life any worse, and it might even make it better

Before we begin, I want to clarify: starting to declutter your digital life isn’t the same as becoming a digital minimalist. I don’t think there is a “right” amount of stuff to have, digital or physical. It depends on your personal preferences and lifestyle. When I talk about too much, I mean too much for you. And when I talk about clearing out and organising your digital life, it’s always with the intention that you do so in a way that works for you. You know what your needs and habits are far better than anyone else, so please take what works from the sections below and leave what doesn’t. With that in mind, let’s move on to the practical steps involved in a digital declutter:

How to declutter your digital life1. Identify the areas of your digital life that need attentionIs your desktop a disaster? Does the number if unread emails in your inbox make you gulp? Do you feel overwhelmed by the number of social media notifications you get?

Chances are some areas of your digital life are affecting your mental well-being more than others. Let’s start by identifying which have the biggest impact so you can address those first. Make a note of two to three areas that need attention. These might include (but aren’t limited to):

• Email
• Desktop
• Downloads
• Documents folder
• Cloud storage
• Mobile devices (phone and tablet)
• Social media
• Photos
• Bookmarks/saved articles and posts

Depending on what your digital life looks like, you might be tempted to tackle all the above and more in one go. I suggest not doing this: it’s a lot to take on and if you’re already overwhelmed by your digital life, adding more overwhelm to the clean-up process won’t solve that. Choose the two to three areas that will make the biggest difference first. Then, once you’re done, you can return to your list and choose two more areas, complete those, choose two more, and so on. If you’re struggling to identify obvious areas or just want to do a general cleanup, I’ve included some pointers below.

1. Set specific goals for decluttering each area Create a plan for decluttering each area, including deciding which items to keep and which to discard, and how to organise the remaining items. Specific goals within this plan might include:

2. Reducing items on your desktop to essentials only

3. Achieving inbox zero
4. Deleting apps you haven’t used for more than 3-6 months
5. Unfollowing certain accounts on social media
6. Renaming and reorganising the file structures in your documents

The exact goals you have will depend on what you’re decluttering, what you normally use that space for, and how you want to use it.

There are a couple of decluttering principles that are helpful to think about at this stage as you set your goals.

The first is to identify the purpose of each digital space. In our home, we have three types of places for our things: where they are left (for example, shoes kicked off by the door), staging areas and permanent homes. Permanent homes are where the stuff lives, while staging areas are places (like the kitchen counter) we put something temporarily while we’re waiting to put it away. The problem is that staging areas can gradually become permanent homes (ahem, my kitchen counter), which creates extra mess and extra stress.

The same principle applies to our digital lives, especially files. If you’re like me, you might find your downloads folder becomes cluttered on a weekly basis. The problem with this is that it isn’t a “home” per se. When I keep files in my downloads folder long term, it’s harder to find them (especially because they are often named helpful things like 3nejnvjnei83runefwi.pdf). Instead, I find it more useful to think of my downloads folder as a staging place: each file in there needs to be deleted or re-homed. For each file you come across on your desktop, in your downloads folder, in the cloud, or in your documents, think about where it really belongs, and put it there. The same principle can apply to email (some people use their inbox as a staging area, rather than a permanent home), and other digital clutter, too. Think about which of your digital areas accumulate clutter; chances are these are staging places. Before you start decluttering, make a plan for where your digital things need to go to be in their permanent home.

This brings us to the second principle, which comes from Marie Kondo: everything should have a home. Let’s say you’ve cleaned out one of your staging areas (like your downloads folder), and identified a bunch of files that need to go into your documents. Among them are some work files, a couple of free downloads you thought might be useful at some point, something you saved to show your kids, and an audiobook you downloaded. Dumping these things straight into your documents folder isn’t as bad as keeping them in your downloads (at least they are all things you want to keep), but it is the digital equivalent of having that cupboard you shove everything into, thinking “I’ll sort it out later.” Because, as we all know, we probably won’t sort it out later. Instead, start creating a filing system using folder hierarchies (folders within folders). This might start with “Work” and “Personal,” then become more granular from there. You can do something similar with email. For example, I have separate folders for things like tax deductible receipts so I can easily pull up the information if I need it.

Once you’ve identified the purpose of each digital space and decided on a home for everything, it’s time to begin your digital declutter!

1. Begin to declutter your digital life by going through each area and following your planFirst, think about the tools and strategies you can use to declutter efficiently, such as bulk deleting emails or using folder and labelling systems to organise your files. The exact steps you take to declutter your digital life will depend on the areas you are addressing, so review your goals from above and think about how you can do this as efficiently as possible. Go for easy wins first: if you are tackling your downloads folder, scan through and delete any files you know you don’t need before sorting out those you want to keep. If you’re tackling your emails, ditto.

You probably won’t get this all done in one session, and that’s OK. If it feels overwhelming, break the goal down into manageable milestones and focus on doing a little each day (e.g. processing five files/10 emails/1 sub-folder per day).

If you’re still not sure where to begin, high-impact starting points include:

• Unsubscribing from emails you never read
• Deleting apps you don’t use (or know you overuse…)
• Clearing your desktop and dock/shortcuts
• Cleaning out your email inbox
• Emptying your trash folder
• Clearing out your downloads folder
• Uninstalling software you no longer use
• Updating software and operating systems to the latest versions

If you notice you’re finding it hard to start, you might be overthinking things. Choose one area above (it doesn’t matter which one; any area is better than none!), set a timer for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, or 30 minutes, and make a start. The longer you delay, the worse the problem is going to become, whereas the sooner you start, the more you get to enjoy a greater sense of peace and freedom in your digital life. Decluttering your digital life isn’t particularly exciting, but it’s also not difficult. I promise: you can do and have done much harder things.

1. Create a maintenance planNow you’ve started decluttering your digital life, keep going! Stay motivated by reminding yourself of the benefits of decluttering, such as increased productivity and reduced stress. Return to your plan and goals regularly and imagine how great it’s going to feel when you have an empty inbox, a clear desktop, a more organised file system.

It’s also worth thinking about how you are going to maintain and protect your newly zen space. Maintaining your new system is just as important (if not more so) than doing a digital declutter in the first place. The good news is it’s also easier. If you’ve started decluttering and have a plan to continue, you’ve already done the hard part. Processing 20 emails from your inbox requires much less willpower than processing 2000. Deciding where to put five files you want or need to keep requires much less brain power than doing the same with 500 files.

What you do for maintenance and how often will depend on your personal circumstances. A good place to start is to take the list of tasks you created to do your initial digital declutter and turn them into daily, weekly, or monthly recurring tasks. For example, you might decide to process your emails at the end of every day. You might empty your downloads and trash every week, and you might review your devices for unused (or overly used) apps each month.

1. Avoid the temptation to accumulate more digital clutterAs well as creating a maintenance schedule for your goals, give yourself a helping hand by addressing the problem at its source. We live in an age of information overload and, while there are amazing benefits to having so much information and so many resources at our fingertips, there are big drawbacks too. It can lead to “digital hoarding,” where we hold on to things we don’t really need and will never use “just in case.”

One of the biggest challenges associated with digital decluttering—and I think harder than doing the decluttering—is changing our mindset and habits around digital clutter. Like most of this process, the same principles apply here as to getting rid of physical clutter.

The first step is the maintenance schedule above: regularly processing, archiving, and deleting your digital “things.” There is an important step that comes before that, however, which is digital discernment. Being selective about what you download or save in the first place will give you less to maintain in the future. Whenever you go to save, download, or subscribe, ask yourself:

Is this useful?

Do I really need it?

Do I have anything like this currently?

Have I saved/downloaded/subscribed to anything like this in the past? If so, did I actually use/enjoy it?

Finally, celebrate your success! Even if you haven’t fully met your digital decluttering goals, chances are you’ve made significant progress and can already notice the difference. There will probably always be more to do, but you will already notice a difference and that’s worth celebrating

Tools to help you declutter your digital lifeTo finish, here are a few tools and apps that might be helpful as you declutter and maintain your digital life. Some of these are Apple/Mac-only (sorry), but there are likely to be Windows/Android alternatives.

Utility tools like Daisy disk, which shows you which files are taking up the most space on your hard drive; Gemini, which identifies duplicate files, and Clean My Mac, which does what it says on the tin.

File management and organization tools, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, or Evernote, which can help you store and organize your files and documents in the cloud.

Task and project management tools, such as Trello, Asana, or Notion, which can help you manage and track your to-do lists, tasks, and projects. My personal favourite task management tool is Things.

Calendar and scheduling tools, such as Google Calendar or Fantastical, which can help you plan and schedule your appointments, meetings, and events.

Email management tools, such as SaneBox, Boomerang, or Unroll.me, which can help you declutter your inbox and manage your email more efficiently.

Password managers, such as 1Password, which can help you securely store and manage your online passwords and login information.

I hope this post helps you as you begin your journey towards a more peaceful and productive digital life!

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“The work we do works us.”
– Cynthia Morris

When should you give up on a project, and when should you persevere? The obvious answer is: it depends. It depends on a lot of things: time, energy, priorities, progress, cost, and much more. Perhaps most of all, it depends on personal history. Do you have a drawer of abandoned first drafts, a stack of not-quite-done artwork, a cupboard of works in progress that have been in progress for, ahem, quite a while while you’ve been drawn to shiny new projects? If so, it’s time to finish something.

Yes, sometimes the things we start don’t turn out to be what we thought they’d be. Something that seemed like a good fit before we really knew much about it unfolds into something that isn’t. Something we thought would be doable isn’t—at least not in the way we envisioned it. Sometimes realising the vision in our head requires more than we can, or are willing to, give. Sometimes it is wiser to give up, avoid the sunk cost fallacy, and quit while we’re ahead.

But even when these situations arise, we gain a lot from finishing—or at least finishing a particular stage of the creative process and reaching a natural point of completion.

It builds confidenceCreative work is hard, it’s uncertain, it’s full of problems to solve and things that aren’t quite right that we need to figure out. It rarely looks as good as the version in our head. And when we’re in the middle of these issues, it’s easy to give up and say that it’s going nowhere. But creative confidence doesn’t come from producing masterpieces, it comes from facing these problems and difficulties and figuring out ways to solve them. That problem-solving aspect of the work is uncomfortable, but it’s a skill we need to develop if we want to do good work. Sticking with a project when it gets hard and uncomfortable, showing ourselves that we can get through it and come out the other side, builds confidence. Dropping projects because they have become hard does the opposite.

It teaches us things we wouldn’t otherwise learnThere is also so much we can learn in that hard, uncertain bit. As a writer, I feel that my writing benefits most not from sitting down to write, but from editing what I’ve written. This is also one of my least favourite parts of the process. I want to be a good writer and having to face several hundred words of rubbish challenges that. What helps me learn, however, is figuring out why it is rubbish and how I can make it better. Will the finished product be good? I don’t know. But I think the process of seeing a creative cycle through, of starting, working through the sticky middle, and coming to some kind of natural finishing point, is necessary to get better.

It’s a gateway to (hopefully) better workSeth Godin emphasises the importance of what he calls “shipping” early in our creative journeys. As he writes, “The job (of the early work) is to open the door for the next round of work.” We learn, we grow, we develop through starting, trying, finishing, then starting the process all over again.

Over to you: What do you need to finish? What can you do to make that happen this month?

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It’s almost a new year and, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been thinking about plans for the next 12 months. That includes what I want to read. This year, I did a year of War and Peace, reading a chapter a day for almost the entire year. It was fun! And now, I’m ready for something different. This year, I’m returning to a reading challenge I did a couple of years ago based on the themes from my book of daily journaling prompts The Year of You: 365 Journal Writing Prompts for Self-Discovery.

A few notes about this reading challenge:

• I’m aiming for 12 books (one per month) because that feels doable for me. Feel free to adjust your goal based on what works for you.
• The topics are based on the monthly themes in The Year of You. These are deliberately broad so you can find titles within each topic that speak to you.
• If a topic doesn’t feel relevant, feel free to substitute it for one that does! Life is too short to read books that aren’t useful or enjoyable, so feel free to adapt your list of topics to suit your preferences.
• If you’d like to explore each topic in more depth, you can get a year’s worth of daily journaling prompts in The Year of You, which is available in ebook, paperback and, new for this year, auto-narrated audiobook!

The 2023 personal growth reading challengeJanuary: A subject related to your identity (what makes you you, personality, authenticity)

February: A subject related to your past

March: A book related to your environment

April: A book about fun (or that feels fun to read!)

May: A book related to your career

June: A book about relationships

July: A book that is relevant to your personal growth (and whatever that means to you)

August: A book about money

September: A book about travel and/or adventure

October: A book about an aspect of your health

November: A book about some aspect of spirituality

December: A book that is relevant to your future

Download the checklistRight click to save and/or share the checklist below and keep track of your progress:

What are you reading this year? Leave a comment and let me know!

Photo by David Lezcano on Unsplash

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This month, I’ve been sharing journaling prompts via email through the Becoming Who You Are Advent Calendar, and I wanted to include a set of prompts specifically for creatives here too. The end of the year is the perfect time to take a step back from your creative work and take a broader view of what you’re doing, how it’s going, and where you’re heading next. Here are 10 journaling prompts to get you started with that process. I hope they are useful!

1. What went well this year?
2. What didn’t go so well this year?
3. What surprised you most about your creative work this year?
4. Who did you connect with through your creative work this year?
5. What helped you most in your creative work this year? (This might be a person, place, tool, service, software experience… if it helped, it counts!)
6. What was the biggest hindrance to your creative work this year?
7. What hard skills did you improve this year? (Craft, business, etc.)
8. What soft skills did you improve this year? (Networking, customer service, etc.)
9. As you look back to the beginning of this year, how has your creative work changed since January? And how is it the same or similar?
10. What is the one thing that, if you could create it next year, would make you proud?

If you enjoyed these prompts, I invite you to check out my book The Year of You for Creatives: 365 Journal-Writing Prompts for Doing Your Best Creative Work. Inside, you’ll find 365 daily journaling prompts that guide you through different elements of your creative work so you can build a strong foundation, improve your craft, and develop a practice that works for you. Every month, you’ll explore an important aspect of your creativity, from mindset and growth, to your working environment, community and support, money, self-care, and much more. Find out more and get your copy here.

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At this point in the year, you might be reflecting on the year that’s almost over and looking ahead to the next 12 months. With this in mind, I want to share 10 end-of-year journaling prompts for parents from my book The Year of You for Mothers: 365 Journal-Writing Prompts for Self-Reflection, Self-Care and Self-Discovery. I hope the next year is your most fulfilling year of parenting yet

1. What are you most looking forward to next year?
2. What are your top 5 goals or intentions for your family next year?
3. What experiences would you love to have with your family next year?
4. What experiences would you personally love to have next year?
5. What memories do you want to create next year?
6. What would you like to do as a family in the next five years?
7. What do you imagine your kid(s) will be like in five years time? What do you think will be the same? What will be different? What are your hopes and dreams for them?
8. How would you like to feel over the next month? What can you do to make that happen?
9. What do you feel most optimistic about when it comes to the future?
10. What is one thing you would like to be different about your life on this day next year?

Further reading: 8 (helpful!) books for parents

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Journaling is a useful tool for personal growth, but there might be times when our practice can also start to feel a little stale or stuck. I’ve shared lots of different prompts here on the blog before (and I have three books of prompts, for mothers, creatives, and everyone!) Sometimes, however, it’s not about introducing new ideas, but taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture of how you’re approaching journaling and integrating it within your life. In his book Opening Up by Writing it Down, psychologist and researcher James Pennebaker shares three useful questions we can use to take our journaling deeper: 1. Are you using writing as a substitute for action? Most of the things we journal about can be divided into things we can control (or influence) and things we […]

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I’ve written a lot about the benefits of journaling for mental health and wellbeing, but did you know it can help your creativity too? Even if you’re not a writer and writing isn’t related to what you otherwise enjoy making, journaling is a useful side practice that will support and develop your creative work. Below, I’m sharing five ways a regular journaling practice can help your creativity. This list isn’t exhaustive, but if you’re new to regular journaling, I hope it encourages you to give it a try 🙂 1. Practice creating a habit  If we want to create a body of work, improve, explore our creative identity and evolve, we need to show up and make things on repeat. We need to make creating a habit. It’s much easier to fall out of habits than […]

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It’s that time of year again… the BWYA advent calendar is back for 2022! The Calendar is a set of 25 daily journaling prompts delivered to your inbox in the lead up to December 25th. It’s a review of the year that has been and an opportunity to dream and scheme for the year to come. It’s a chance for you to add some reflective time to a busy period and create space to review 2022 while exploring what you want from 2023. The calendar series starts on 1st December. It’s free to register and much better for you than chocolate, so I hope you’ll join us in saying farewell to 2022 and exploring possibilities for the next 12 months. Click here to register.

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It’s that time of year again… the BWYA advent calendar is back for 2022! The Calendar is a set of 25 daily journaling prompts delivered to your inbox in the lead up to December 25th. It’s a review of the year that has been and an opportunity to dream and scheme for the year to come. It’s a chance for you to add some reflective time to a busy period and create space to review 2022 while exploring what you want from 2023. The calendar series starts on 1st December. It’s free to register and much better for you than chocolate, so I hope you’ll join us in saying farewell to 2022 and exploring possibilities for the next 12 months. Click here to register.

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Books have been a lifeline for me as a relatively new parent. I’m incredibly lucky (or unlucky, depending on your perspective) to be raising kids in the age of the internet: I have a question, tippity tap tap, and voila! I have several answers of varying quality and/or accuracy. What counts as a fever in a baby? Answered. How do you begin weaning? Answered. When do toddlers start sleeping through the night regularly? Answered (but apparently my kids didn’t read the same articles about this as I did). But books offer me something else, because (based on my very limited experience) I don’t think the most important part of being a parent is so much what you do, but how you do it. And that’s the really hard part. In her book Raising Good Humans […]

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Books have been a lifeline for me as a relatively new parent. I’m incredibly lucky (or unlucky, depending on your perspective) to be raising kids in the age of the internet: I have a question, tippity tap tap, and voila! I have several answers of varying quality and/or accuracy. What counts as a fever in a baby? Answered. How do you begin weaning? Answered. When do toddlers start sleeping through the night regularly? Answered (but apparently my kids didn’t read the same articles about this as I did). But books offer me something else, because (based on my very limited experience) I don’t think the most important part of being a parent is so much what you do, but how you do it. And that’s the really hard part. In her book Raising Good Humans […]

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Journaling is a wonder-habit that holds many benefits for those who are willing to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) on a regular basis. For many of us, though, getting started is the hardest part of the process. Journaling is a huge topic that covers many different kinds of activities, and with so much choice it can be difficult to know where to start. Your journaling can be whatever you want it to be. It doesn’t need to be grammatically correct, or even make sense. You also don’t need to stick to a particular style of writing; some people enjoy stream-of-consciousness journaling, while others prefer making lists, collages, drawing, or a combination. You can find out more about different journaling techniques in my book, The Ultimate Guide to Journaling, however below I’m going […]

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Journaling is a wonder-habit that holds many benefits for those who are willing to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) on a regular basis. For many of us, though, getting started is the hardest part of the process. Journaling is a huge topic that covers many different kinds of activities, and with so much choice it can be difficult to know where to start. Your journaling can be whatever you want it to be. It doesn’t need to be grammatically correct, or even make sense. You also don’t need to stick to a particular style of writing; some people enjoy stream-of-consciousness journaling, while others prefer making lists, collages, drawing, or a combination. You can find out more about different journaling techniques in my book, The Ultimate Guide to Journaling, however below I’m going […]

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In this post, I’m sharing an excerpt from my book The Year of You for Creatives: 365 Journal-Writing Prompts for Doing Your Best Creative Work. This template is from a bonus section at the back of the book. I hope it’s helpful! If you’d like to use journaling to explore your creative work in more depth, you can check out the book here. How do you start a new creative project? Dive right in or take time to map out the initial steps first? Whatever your approach, if it works for you, then keep going! If you’re like me, and fall into the latter category, below you’ll find a new project deep dive template you can use in your journal. This will help you get clear on a few key points before starting and provide […]

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Journal writing is deeply personal and each of us has our own way of keeping and using our journals. As I’ve said before, there is no “right” way to do it—the best way is what works for you. Having noticed my own journaling practice evolve over the years and talked with different people about the way they use their journaling practice, it’s clear there are many varied approaches—all of which serve a purpose. Reading James Pennebaker’s excellent book Opening Up By Writing It Down, I was interested to hear what he discovered when looking at the journal-writing habits during his research. If you’re not familiar with James Pennebaker, he is a psychologist who studies, among other things, the use of language and has written several books on journaling. One of the things that struck me […]

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This post on JOMO is adapted from my new book “How to Be Kind to Yourself: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Daily Challenges with Self-Compassion, Self-Acceptance, and Ease,” which is available now! Find out more and get your copy here. You’ve probably heard of FOMO: the fear of missing out. It’s that pang we feel whenever we get a sense that others might be doing or experiencing something that we are not part of. But that’s not what this post is about. Today, I want to talk about JOMO! “JOMO”, aka the Joy of Missing Out, is FOMO’s much underrated counterpart. As a dyed-in-the-wool introvert, this has been one of my favorite aspects of addressing how FOMO shows up in my own life. Rather than feeling anxious about missing out on an opportunity, event, or […]

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This post on how to be kind to yourself when bad things happen is adapted from my new book “How to Be Kind to Yourself: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Daily Challenges with Self-Compassion, Self-Acceptance, and Ease,” which is available now! Find out more and get your copy here. One of the chapters in my new book, How to Be Kind to Yourself, is about self-compassion when bad things happen. When writing this chapter, I wanted to offer suggestions that went beyond “Stay positive!” while also acknowledging that I am one person writing this from my perspective. I don’t know what you’re going through, what “bad things” might look like to you, nor do I assume that I can provide the one piece of advice that will fix things—that probably doesn’t exist. For the purpose […]

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This post on creating a sense of purpose is adapted from my new book “How to Be Kind to Yourself: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Daily Challenges with Self-Compassion, Self-Acceptance, and Ease,” which is available now! Find out more and get your copy here. You’ve probably heard the phrase “finding your purpose,” but this phrase is misleading. It’s unlikely you’ll be walking down the street one day, stumble over something, and look down to realize: Hey! It’s your sense of purpose. Instead, a kinder way of thinking about where purpose fits in your life is that it’s something you create. As I talk about more in How to Be Kind to Yourself, this involves getting out into the world and trying lots of new things. It involves experimentation, openness, and permission to be wrong. Some […]

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I’m excited to share that my latest book How to Be Kind to Yourself: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Daily Challenges with Self-Compassion, Self-Acceptance, and Ease is available now. Each chapter of the book deals with a different experience or situation that might challenge our self-kindness: rejection, making mistakes, judgement, illness, not doing what we’re saying we’re going to do, and much more. You’ll find practical and doable suggestions and practices for deepening self-acceptance and self-compassion in the face of common life challenges, as well as tools to use in situations in which it’s hardest to be kind to ourselves. To celebrate the release of the book, you can get your copy for just $0.99/£0.99 until this Friday (29th July). Here’s what the back cover says: “When do you find it hard to be kind […]

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This post on how to change your mindset is adapted from my upcoming book “How to Be Kind to Yourself: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Daily Challenges with Self-Compassion, Self-Acceptance, and Ease.” The book is out on Monday 25th July, so jump on the Becoming Who You Are mailing list to be the first to hear more about it (you’ll also get free access to all the worksheets, ebooks, video classes and more in the Becoming Who You Are Library and are free to unsubscribe at any time). When I worked with coaching clients, one of the most common issues that would come up was a version of: “I want to do {insert thing here}, but I’m finding it hard to get motivated/I don’t feel ready/I don’t feel confident.” The specifics varied, but the basic […]

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This post on bounce back/bounce forward is adapted from my upcoming book “How to Be Kind to Yourself: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Daily Challenges with Self-Compassion, Self-Acceptance, and Ease.” I’ll be sharing more details, including the release date, soon, so jump on the Becoming Who You Are mailing list to be the first to hear more about it (you’ll also get free access to all the worksheets, ebooks, video classes and more in the Becoming Who You Are Library and are free to unsubscribe at any time). From grief, to illness, to post-partum bodies, chances are you’ve heard someone—or yourself—talking about “bouncing back.”  This well-meaning phrase is meant to evoke a springy optimism that the situation will return to the normal you once knew. Yes, things might not be how you want them to […]

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This post on how to be kind to yourself when you don’t like how you’re feeling is adapted from my upcoming book “How to Be Kind to Yourself: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Daily Challenges with Self-Compassion, Self-Acceptance, and Ease.” I’ll be sharing more details, including the release date, soon, so jump on the Becoming Who You Are mailing list to be the first to hear more about it (you’ll also get free access to all the worksheets, ebooks, video classes and more in the Becoming Who You Are Library and are free to unsubscribe at any time). Although we all know we should accept our feelings, sometimes that’s easier said than done. Our emotions can be deeply uncomfortable, even akin to physical pain. In those moments, it’s tempting to want to push them down, […]

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This post is adapted from my upcoming book “How to Be Kind to Yourself: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Daily Challenges with Self-Compassion, Self-Acceptance, and Ease.” I’ll be sharing more details, including the release date, soon, so jump on the Becoming Who You Are mailing list to be the first to hear more about it (you’ll also get free access to all the worksheets, ebooks, video classes and more in the Becoming Who You Are Library and are free to unsubscribe at any time). Like most personal growth-related topics, the subject of self-worth is much discussed because it’s important. When we are lacking self-worth, we feel it. This lack influences not only our self-perception but our decisions and behaviour too. Yet this topic is also more nuanced and complex than social media posts that read […]

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