9/29/27 Daily Video: Hope isn't magic, but its result really is

Creative, you do not reach competency overnight.

You do it by repeating your efforts, correcting mistakes, and not giving up no matter what comes.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT

Creative, no amount of your anxiety or stress has ever helped your art. Hi, my name is Ruthanne Reid. I'm an author and stroke survivor and I'm here to help you get out of block and into a daily habit of creation. Creative block comes from two things. There's the physiological portion where you are not in the habit of creation and that means that your brain and body are not primed to do it. They have not preserved energy for it. You do not have any practiced tools. You are not ready to do it. So, it's hard. It's hard. But there's also the psychological portion and that tends to be a very big part of what happens here. Rain agrees. I don't really know how this happened. My guess is it has to do with going back to culture through Protestantism and all kinds of things like that. But the point is that we, no matter how secular you may be, tend to venerate feeling bad. We think if we stress enough about the thing that we care about the thing. That is not true. But that's what we think. So we feel bad if we see children without food. We feel bad if we didn't finish our novel. None of that actually helps. And unfortunately, if you feel bad about your art, well, that means you are associating negative experiences with creation. So, you are even less likely to do it cuz it hurts. Rain doesn't want you to hurt. I mean, we all know how powerful hope is. We've all read the stories of people in impossible situations. Hope doesn't do magic. It's not like that. But if you have hope, you are going to keep fighting, finding a way forward, looking for an exit. You will not give up if you have hope. That's where the magic is. Stressing about your art is not going to help you make art. And I know there's no turn stress off button. It doesn't work that way. But you can start to train your thoughts. When you find yourself putting yourself down, putting your art down, you need to stop and say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. What am I doing? I don't have to attack this. Yeah, it's it's a mess. This is not the story I wanted. It's not going anywhere. That's okay. I'm learning. You're learning. You're practicing. It's going to be messy. It's all right. You do not get to the point of competency overnight. You do it by practice. You do it over time. You do it by repeating that thing over and over, correcting mistakes until you really have it down. Creative, don't feed your anxiety. It will not help you. You can do this. You and your art deserve hope. You can do this. Sit down with me and together let's make something new.