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Excuses & Negative Thoughts
When you think about learning to draw (or write or whatever) you may have a lot of excuses in your head. Things like:
- I have no talent/creativity
- It's too late to start now (I should have started younger and now I'm TOO OLD!).
- I need to go to school for this - I cannot learn it on my own!
- I don't have the patience
- I don't have the time
- I'm already good at something else (and it's only possible for me to be really good at a few things).
- Nobody will like what I do and people will make fun of me.
- People have told me I don't have the skills for this
The list probably goes on and on. The truth is this is all NONSENSE - really! I thought many of those things and now people ask ME to help them learn to draw or cook or paint! Having excuses keeps you from doing things (see the "Letting the I Can Hope Live" section for more thoughts about this). People who give you excuses may really just be excusing their way of life or what they are doing (or not doing).
Getting rid of them
Don't kick yourself for having excuses and negative thoughts. Everybody has them - it's part of being human. I still have them, even though I've been "doing art" for over six years and have had a good deal of success and a great deal of positive feedback. Creative people who say they never have negative thoughts are probably lying (and may not even realize that they are) or have just managed to deal with them on a day to day basis in such a way that they hardly notice them anymore. In Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" (which I highly recommend) she suggests this is a part of our mind known as the "Censor" - it collects bad things people say to us and spits them back at us when we least want to hear them. I like to think of mine as "The Evil Critic" (and you know they say that you are always "your own worst critic!). If you try to spot these excuses and negative thoughts as coming from a separate part of your mind and label it (Censor, Critic, Monster, whatever) it's a lot easier to deal with it. When your "Evil Critic" spits those negative words at you then you can say back to it "Hey! Shutup! I'm doing this anyway no matter what you say so you may as well get lost!".
Have other ideas on dealing with negative thoughts/excuses? Post feel free to Contact Me with them so I can include them here.
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