Paula Graham, M.A., Creativity Coach, EFT Practitioner

Whether it’s stage fright or page fright, fear of failure or fear of success, I feel the best part of what I do as a creativity coach is help people reconnect to those parts of their creative dreams left simmering on the back burner and reclaim pieces of self lost along the way. By nurturing both the dream and the dreamer, I guide clients through procrastination, distraction, self-sabotage and performance anxiety to playful, passionate, full self-expression. 
I am an artist (www.paulagrahamart.com), EFT practitioner (www.emofree.com) and author of Speaking of Journals: Children’s Book Writers Talk About their Dairies, Notebooks and Sketchbooks. I live in Oxford, PA. If you are interested in learning more about my coaching style, please contact me at pwg@zoominternet.net. Or give me a call 610.998.1912.

 My attraction to color started with a twirlpop at the deli in my Saunders Town, Rhode Island, neighborhood. Not exactly in my neighborhood—across US Route 1, a very busy highway, which I crossed by myself at age 3. Once inside I spied the lollipops in a jar high on the counter top above the cheeses and salamis. I wanted the biggest white one with multicolor swirls. Deli Man said NO.

I didn’t take no for an answer.  Enraged, I started smashing raw eggs on the floor. Next thing I knew my mother was handing me paper towels for the gooey clean up. I never did get that lollipop. But when I got home I got my mouth washed out with soap. My brother Stew, pictured with me above, told me to blot my mouth with a towel, not to add water. Good advice from somebody who obviously knew. 

Fast Forward, Age 7. I’m shopping at Wanamaker's Department Store in Wilmington, Delaware, with my mom. I need a skirt to take to summer camp. And there it is: Lifesaver candies on a black background. Mom thinks the very thing I crave is tacky. She says NO.  I sulk and lobby hard from the store to the parking lot, from the parking lot to the highway. My rebellion pays off this time because she turns back, marches me into the store and buys me the tacky skirt with the colorful candies. I'm over the moon. 

Coming to my art has been a combination of fits and late starts, as well as U turns. Plus lots of swirling emotions.  I’ve had to lobby hard with myself and my inner judge because first there was the legacy of my artist father, a portrait painter, who could barely made a go of it. At least that’s what he said when he left my mother, brother, sister and me to pursue painting. He never looked back, never paid child support or remembered a birthday or holiday. I found him years later, but that's another story for the memoir I'm writing Straight A.

I dared not declare my intentions early on for fear of seeming disloyal to my mother. I assumed that one artist in her life was enough. So I placed my dream on the back burner and got busy teaching kindergarten and rearing a daughter. I was clueless about how to allow art into my life. Turns out that art, the very thing I craved but wouldn’t permit myself to do, has helped me heal family wounds and claim my creative birthright.

PG with sketchbook at Longwood Gardens in Pennyslvania

After my mother died, my art adventure began to unfold. I signed up for a course called The Artist's Way, based on the book by Julia Cameron. Next I enrolled for a class at the School of Art Institute in Chicago. I've been painting ever since. Plus I'm coaching other artists and writers to help them allow full creative expression in their lives.


Purple Mountains, MajesTrees
Watercolor and Thai Unryu Paper Collage
12 x 16"
© 2009 Paula Graham

Color excites  me--a bowl of M and Ms, a sunset sky, my flower garden. The mystery of watercolor inspires me. I love allowing forms to emerge on paper with the negative painting technique. I love watching how it turns out. Like life. For me, art is like riding a wave. The current knows where it’s taking me. All I have to do is risk getting into the water, trust, and allow the energy to take me where it was headed all along. 

Procrastination is always a symptom of something else. It could be fear of failure or, yes, fear of success. Maybe it doesn’t feel safe to be in the spot light.  It’s often related to a blow to your ego, like a teacher ridiculing you in front of the class. People become reluctant to step out of their comfort zone, become afraid to complete projects and therefore be judged or criticized. And oh, the excuses: I don’t know where to start, my studio is a mess, I have to go to Michael’s.

The About Me page is a homework assignment for the Blog Triage Class I'm taking with Alyson Stanfield and Cynthia Morris. Truthfully: my LJ bio suffers from stage fright. Using myself as a case study, I’m going to show you how EFT/energy tapping might help shift procrastination energy from stuck to flow. Or from being stuck to getting started. For sure, from being resistant to becoming lukewarm to the idea of writing an About Me page.

I’ll begin with a round of tapping on my resistance . . .
First I rate the intensity of the feeling between 0 and 10, with 10 being the most intense. When I tune into my body, I feel a stuckness in my upper chest.  (it’s an 8) It’s like words are trapped at the base of my throat.
While tapping the Karate Chop point:
Even though I need to write an About Me page¬— and I want to do it for my blog—and I’m not doing it, I deeply and completely accept this reluctant part of me.
Even though I’m afraid to reveal things about myself because what I say might sound lame and people will laugh or ignore me,  I deeply and completely accept these fears.
Even though I don’t know what to say or where to start, I’m doing the best I know how at this moment.

Next I tap one round using the reminder phrase Resistance to Revealing Myself and variations.
Top of the Head: This resistance
Eyebrow: Can’t get started
Side of the Eye: Don’t want to post it and make it public
Under the Eye: Don’t want to appear stupid
Under the Nose: Can’t write an About Me page
Chin: I’m avoiding it
Collarbone: This stuckness
Under the Arm: This congestion in my upper chest
Top of the Head: This resistance

After I tapped, I took a deep breath and rate the intensity, which shifted to a 5. There is still more stuff between 0-5 and I’ll dig around later and see what else might be contributing to the procrastination.
Now for a positive round:
Top of the Head: I allow this to be easy
Eyebrow: I ask for clarity and conviction to complete this project
Side of the Eye: I’m ready to begin
Under the Eye: I believe I can write this
Under the Nose: I give myself permission to write a first draft
Chin: I love knowing I can do this
Collarbone: I risk revealing myself to my readers
Under the Arm: I visualize myself sitting down to write
Top of the Head: I honor my artist by taking a little step forward

I feel better. Now to get started . . .

If you are new to energy tapping here is a diagram illustrating the energy tapping points. Need a bigger version? Try clicking on it to make it bigger. This poster was produced by Rick Wilkes at Thriving Now  www.thrivingnow.com and Cathy Vartuli at The Joy-Connection www.joy-connection.com It's a great chart to post on your bathroom mirror or carry in your wallet until tapping gets into your finger tips.

 
 

Kids are starting back to school this week. In August? What happened to the days when school started after Labor Day? So I decided to go back to school, too. I didn't have to buy new shoes, but I did anyway-blogging boots– and a funky new notebook. My class Blog Triage: Maintaining a Healthy Artist Blog meets on-line—in emails, blogs and mp3s. I listened to my new teachers via computer this morning. One teacher's coffee hadn't quite kicked in. They say I'll have about an hour of homework per day for the next four weeks.  Blog Triage is taught by Alyson Stanfield http://artbizcoach.com and Cynthia Morris http://journeyjuju.com Check them out.  I'll let you know what I think, and maybe you can let me know if my blog gets better.

Our first assignment is to post an entry describing the types of readers we hope to reach. As an artist and creativity coach, one who specializes in using energy tapping to increase creative vibration and flow, I want to share my experiences using meridian tapping with clients and on myself, as well as guide readers to resources in the exciting field of energy tapping. I'll share tapping tips, too. Tapping is leading-edge. My readers are leading edge. They want to live with passion and pizazz. They want to thrive. Especially they want to create a life of meaning.  Tapping makes it all easier.

I know I did this once upon a time: sit outdoors with a sketch board, pencil and paper drawing scenery. I'm thinking it's something I did at summer camp many years ago. Last weekend I had the chance to paint en plein air with artist Steve Roka who has been painting this way for 60 years. En plein air is a French term meaning in the open air. Steve's instructions: look at the scene, choose your subject, work fast, use bold colors.

Our subject was the covered bridge spanning the Octoraro River. First we sketched then set to work with watercolor. In less than 2 hours, Steve had a completed painting.



Mine? A first draft, unfinished, that I'm embarrassed to show. But as I tell my clients, it's good to be a beginner. So here it is:

photo by P. Cleary

Last year on the first anniversary of my husband's passing, friends and I planted a butterfly bush in his memory.
Here it is on July 3, 2009, the second anniversary--festive with blooms--just how Bob would love it.

Marking the second year was harder than the first. Of course, I wasn't numb this time around. A widow pal who had lost her husband of the same cancer called on July 3 around 4 p.m. (the date and time of death) to check in and let me know she was thinking of me. I told her I was doing okay, but my body had another reality. I cried myself to sleep around 7 p.m. and except for a few phone and bathroom calls, plus the noise of fireworks on Saturday night, I slept for 36 hours.

I've been walking my borough of Oxford, PA, pretending to be a tourist, with the intention of seeing it with fresh eyes.

This morning I walked by a professionally-printed sign standing in a lawn: Home Repairs, No Job to Big or to Small. I thought about taking down the phone number to request that the owner repair the sign. A small job, adding those missing O's. For me, it would inspire more confidence in the repair person. Then again, the errors reminded me, a recovering perfectionist, to lighten up.

Do you ever have a critic sitting on your shoulder, telling you what not to do, what not to paint? what not to write? what not to express to the world? My inner critic often sounds like my mother, who has been dead for 18 years. She was the mistress of the one-line zinger-- comments that could cut me off at my childhood knees. Two of her favorite sayings: don't rock the boat and don't give me any of your back talk.

The other day my sister and I were creating a list of our mother's zingers. One I had forgotten and my sister's favorite: We're Used to Hardships. This was my mom's standard reply whenever we asked (begged) for new clothes or dessert. It followed her No, as in No you can't; we're used to hardships. My sister says it turned out to be good training for these economic times. I say it blocks the flow of abundance and stunts creativity.

Now I have a long list of her sayings and can identify where many of my limiting beliefs came from. Yet, while awareness is key, it's only part of the struggle won. While we can wish these critical voices away and silence them for a spell, it seems they have a sneaky way of stopping us when we want to move forward in our creative self expression. So how do we talk back to them? What language do we use?

Try tapping with the set up phrase Even Though I don't know how to talk to my critic, don't know what language to use, don't know what words to use, I only know that I want to be heard.

See what comes up for you. For me, tapping on this topic is helping break a life-long silence and stand off with my mother. At last she's getting some of my back talk. She 's also getting some compassion. Opening the stuck energy has helped me understand her struggles as a single working mom rearing 3 kids. She didn't want her boat rocked any more than life had already done.

Even better and more delicious is how I'm going back to talk and listen to my younger me. I want to hear her back talk, all the way back to early childhood. I want to hear it all, no matter how it is expressed or in what language. I'm making a list of her complaints and will tap on those, too, as the energy pulls me.

About a year after my husband died, I noticed that the emerald from my ring was missing. I searched the house many times, turned up rugs, even dug through the vacuum cleaner dirt. I feared it had gone down the kitchen sink drain or down the toilet. I gave up my search and let it go, grieving again and hard because of its deep connection to Bob. He had worked with a jeweler to design the setting, chosen an emerald because he knew green is my favorite color. I blamed myself for being careless. I knew a prong was defective, but refused to take off the ring to get it repaired.

Recently came more loss and disconnection: A week ago, the kitty I had rescued for Bob when he became ill, died suddenly and without symptoms of congestive heart failure. She was only 3 1/2 years old.

This past weekend I went away to the Delaware shore for some R and R. And I began to find things. First my attention was pulled to a grassy patch by the driveway where I found a four-leaf clover. I tucked it into my wallet on top of my driver’s license. Later that day, while walking the beach and searching with intention for beach glass, I spied a well-worn piece of light green glass in an area of crushed shells and stones. I was delighted, even though I find 4-leaf clovers often, beach glass less frequently, and usually brown, not green.

Now this is the part of the green trilogy that has me mystified. On my way home Sunday evening, I stopped at a friend’s house. Sitting at the kitchen table, I opened my wallet and took out trip receipts. (I had picked up something for her and charged it.) After I had closed my wallet, my attention was pulled to the table, and there by my right arm sat a very familiar green gemstone. I’m still in shock. It is my emerald—it fits the empty setting perfectly. Assuming it fell from the wallet compartment where I keep receipts, bonus cards, business cards and grocery lists, how did it get there in the first place? Why had it not fallen out before? I’ve made hundreds of transactions from that compartment during the previous year. Why now?

I’m still puzzling over the incident. I didn’t find my emerald. It found me. It appeared suddenly and unexpectedly, as if out of nowhere. Yet all the while it had been tucked safely in my wallet, in my pocketbook, connected to me, but hidden. Like Bob is connected to me, but not in a visible or physical way.

I lost my muse and good pal Moxy yesterday. At age 4, she died of congestive heart failure after a short and happy life.

I had rescued her as a tiny kitten. The daughter of a field cat, she had been brought into a feed shop where she was hanging out with other sick kittens, waiting for homes. As I stood at the counter, she walked up the pant leg of my blue jeans and into my hands and heart. She came with lots of medical problems--fleas, ear mites, worms and a respiratory infection, which responded well to treatment and TLC. I didn't know about the heart disease. She seemed perfectly fine Sunday. Then gone on Monday. I'll miss you, girl. Now go find Bob and Fanny.

A blogger at artellawordsandart.com recently wrote a post about welcoming the freedom to make messy art and to embrace all the messy feelings in her life. She decided to make a painting with colors she usually avoids and let go of any standards of how it should turn out.

I love how she was allowing herself to become vulnerable in self-expression. What is creativity if not the expression of our unique selves? Yet sometimes it doesn't feel safe to show our vulnerabilities, fears, anger--the rainbow of feelings we experience inside. We are afraid to reveal our messy selves to the world.

Were you allowed to make a mess as a child? Were you allowed to play? Or did you have to assume adult responsibilities to win love and approval from your parents?

Engaging in creativity can lead us to the very healing our inner child needs. For example, we decide to play with paints and find we can't even allow ourselves to mess around. We fear we might waste supplies, make something below our standards of perfection. What is going on? After all these years it still doesn't feel safe. So we stop.

How can we make it safe to make a mess? Tapping on your inner child with an EFT process called Matrix ReImprinting works wonders. Bring to your awareness a specific time in your life when you learned it was not okay to play. Invite that younger you to be present with the adult you. Assure the inner child that you have guidance and love to share. Then use EFT to tap on the child during that specific incident.

Freeing the stuck energy will help you flow more energy to your creative life. For more on Karl Dawson's Matrix ReImprinting process visit www.thrivingnow.com and find the audio Echoes of the Past: http://www.thrivingnow.com/for/Health/karl-dawson-matrix-reimprinting/



I

Is your inner critic a perfectionist? If you want to release the stranglehold of having to do things perfectly, then you’ll want to read on. Why? Because so many times perfectionism leads to inaction and then we feel really plugged and sluggish. I’ve discovered a great tool for soothing the power of perfection to paralyze. It’s the emotional freedom technique, called EFT or Tapping. It’s easy to self-administer, though working with a tapping buddy is fun and rewarding, too.


First thing you’ll want to do is find a chart with the tapping points. Until I upload one, take a look at founder Gary Craig’s website: www.emofree.com. Next, you’ll want to do a little detective work. What are the underlying causes of your perfectionism? Where did you learn you had to be perfect? Who told you? Let’s say it was a teacher or one of your parents. Or maybe you feel you need to be perfect to be loved. What ever the cause, and there may be several, let's start with a general approach and see what comes up for you.


First we create a SET UP phrase. For example:

Even though I think I have to be perfect and this causes me _______, I deeply and completely accept myself. (Fill in the blank with your own words and feel free to change mine as we go along.) When you think about the role of perfectionism in your life, how much distress is it causing you? Give it a rating from 0 — no distress at all — to 10 — tons of distress.

While tapping the karate chop point, say your set up phrase out loud and with emotion 3 times. Really get in tune with the frustration perfectionism can cause.

Next, make the round of the tapping points, saying out loud “this perfectionism.”

For the second round of tapping, try the following script. Remember, feel free to change my wording.

Eyebrow: I’m ready to make peace with perfectionism.

Side of the Eye: It’s time to relax.

Under the Eye: It’s okay to make mistakes.

Under the Nose: Happy Accidents are welcome in my life.

Chin: No they’re not!

Collar Bone: I accept all of me, warts and all.

Under the Arm: I can laugh at myself.

Top of the Head: Here I am world.

Take a deep breath. Did any insights pop up? How intense is the feeling of limiting perfectionism now? What still stands in the way of getting you to zero?

If you want to be inspired to rise at 5:30 a.m., hail a taxi for a ride to your local gym, eat hard-cooked eggs for breakfast, read only top-notch literature and collaborate with highly accomplished people, let choreographer Twyla Tharp be your guide. In her book The Creative Habit Tharp shares her best tips for establishing a rigorous work ethic and productive creative lifestyle.

From preparing to create, to organizing one’s time and projects, engaging the world deeply and climbing out of ruts, Tharp shares stories about her own creative process and activities for the reader to try. Her book brims with artist anecdotes—how John Lennon and Paul McCartney got the idea for their song Eight Days a Week to Igor Stravinsky’s getting-started ritual of playing Bach fugues.

Tharp's Getting-Started Ritual: Every morning she hails a taxi to take her to the Pumping Iron Gym. It’s not the two-hour workout that constitutes her ritual. Tharp says her ritual is over after she’s told the driver where to go. According to Tharp, rituals eliminate the question of why am I doing this and erase the question of whether or not I like doing it. In addition, a ritual helps cut through the fog of pessimism, fear and distraction. For Tharp, the beginning is when an artist is most at peril for turning back, checking out, giving up or going the wrong way.

Don't know about you, but my inner artist screams at the idea of such a rigorous work ethic. I've seen 5:30 a.m. and it isn't pretty. Small rituals like lighting a candle, playing my favorite music, flooding my studio with essential oils or wearing a special hat or article of clothing, makes the transition from not working to working a lot more fun.

Tomorrow I'll let you in on what really does the trick. Hint: EFT.

An inspiring newsletter arrives in my email box twice weekly. By Canadian artist Robert Genn, it always delights, informs and inspires. Take his recent advice on creating habits for artistic success:


"Favourable habits reap favourable results. It seems that simple habits contribute more to success than luck, happenstance, or even a favouring economy. Further, recent studies on the nature of genius indicate that self-generated habits are mighty muscles indeed. While all of us who wish to master specific skills need to tailor our habits accordingly, here are a few for starters:

Squeeze out paint in the morning before your coffee is cold.

Program creative work balanced with rest, exercise and study.

Train yourself to be regular, punctual and workmanlike.

Shoot down your lazy tendencies before they shoot you.

Do whatever it takes to honour your personal perception of quality. This may mean slowing down, speeding up, multitasking, single-tracking, going back to basics, being risky, being cautious, dreaming, concentrating, winging it or even reading the instructions. Apparently, one of the most common bad habits these days is not reading the instructions. This can apply to artists. We need to regularly refresh the habit of truly looking, truly seeing and truly understanding. No big deal. It's just a habit."

You can subscribe to his free newsletter by going to the website www.painterskeys.com. Even if you don't want to subscribe, visit the website. It's a treasure trove of information for artists.
Or visit Robert Genn on Facebook where you can follow him as a fan.

When I think of habits, my mind goes to breaking bad habits vs instilling new ones. I wonder if the resistance to both breaking and instilling habits stems from the same energy. I'll be exploring this topic with Thriving Now in a team call on Monday, March 23 at 2:30 EDT. I'll update my blog after the call.