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Do you ever feel guilty about some of the bad habits you have?

One issue I have been having lately was not being able to get up in the morning at the time that I want to get up. So I typically plan my day to start at 10am. I set my alarm for 10am. I wake up in morning to that annoying buzzing sound coming from my iphone. I hit the snooze button and proceed to sleep for the next 10 minutes. The buzz goes off again and hit the snooze again and it goes this way till 11am, and I’m embarrassed to admit, sometimes even till noon. I force myself out of bed with that guilty feeling in my head. I should have been up at 10am. I slept through half the day. I didn’t get anything done. I’m a bad person….blah, blah blah…

I stay up late and part of what I love about that time of the night is how peaceful it is. There are less distractions and my creativity levels are at their highest.

So how do I deal with this? I can continue on this pathway and feel more and more like crap and constantly fight with myself. I will continue to stress out and feel worse and worse about myself for not having enough discipline to get up in the morning when I said I would.  At the same time, I am not willing to force myself to go to sleep early. That just doesn’t work for me either.

And no matter what I tell myself before I go to bed, I know deep down that I will get up and do the same thing again.

I can try to force myself to change. Try to come up with some crazy scheme or technique that will train my brain to do what I want. Or read some blog article that will show me the way. But the truth is, I love staying up late and I’m a lazy person. I hate work. There I said it. And truth be told, doesn’t really work anyways.

Yet the guilty feeling persists and stresses me out.

So what did I do? I gave myself permission to get up at noon. And I write in my planner that. That is the time I will start my day. Stop resisting what will probably happen anyway and just let it be. The moment I did that, I already felt my tension dissolve and I suddenly got a lot of peace of mind around my schedule.

Now that I have some space, I can create a schedule that really works with my natural rhythms and embrace my night owl self. I have never been a morning person and probably never will be. I have tried changing it in the past. And there were periods of time when I really forced myself to do it. And sure there are days when I have to get up early for some occasion. But those phases come and go. And there is no sense in fighting the natural flow of things.

I’ve learned that the more I resist something, the more it persists. So I stopped resisting getting up late and being lazy.

Who said I had to get up at 10am anyway? I said it. I made it up based on some stupid idea that to be successful you have to get up early.  Hack, one of the reasons I chose to be  self-employed  is so I have the freedom to set my own hours and make up my own rules.

This might seem obvious to some of you. Like seriously…duh….

But As human beings we play these kinds of games with ourselves. We make up stupid rules or expectation about something and forget that we made it up. And than we stress out and freak out when it doesn’t go the way we want, telling ourselves that we are worthless failures. Then we resist the thing that we made up and resist the outcome. And that’s just nutty.

“The unexamined life is not worth living”–Socrates

One of the most fundamental gifts I have ever received was the capacity to examine my own life over and over. It is not always easy to look at oneself and be honest about who you have been in the past. Sometimes the nasty stuff rears its ugly head threatening to rock the very foundation of what you built your life upon. No one ever wants to admit where they have not been cause in the matter of their own lives or where they have been in denial.  But I consider it a gift to be able to see those things because once I’m present to my own lack of integrity than I can do something about it. I can take new action and get different and more desirable results. What comes next is more freedom and power to deal with whatever I need to deal with.

What it means to be a student of life is to constantly grapple with one’s own view on life and always be flexible to new ideas. Out of this, I get the opportunity to create—to create new opportunities, new results, new relationships and new realities.

Life is just a wonderful experiment.

I am  starting to understand that building my illustration business is about having fun and playing.

This month I am committed to finding pathways to creating financial stability for myself. So some of the actions I am taking involve looking  for a part-time job and/or freelance projects and creating new ways to promote the hell out of my art.

In the past, due to the how it occurred for me, I have always seen these steps as boring and unfulfilled.  To me it occurred as competing with more qualified artists than myself and getting constantly rejected or being completely ignored.

Now I am choosing my quest for income to be fun and enjoyable. I am shifting the way I a see it.

Now I see it as an opportunity for me to explore different venues, meet new people, learn new things, develop relationships and expand my creativity.

I am starting to look at it as a game.  When it’s a game, it’s suddenly not so crucial anymore and I am not so emotionally attached to the outcome.

I had a breakthrough last week. I realized that I have a set of perceived limits, imagining what I can and cannot do. I know what is reasonable for me, being able to visualize myself already doing what I have planned. If my plan is to produce a certain amount of artwork a week, I will usually go for at least one that I know I can complete. This can be both a benefit and a hindrance. I will explain now why it has been a hindrance in my entrepreneurial journey.

If I already know what I can do and I know what I cannot do, than I am already limiting my potential. I am not actually pushing myself beyond what I have been able to do in the past. This just keeps me stuck in one place. A little annoying and critical voice inside my head immediately talks me out of doing anything too challenging. Doubt and fear keep my reasons alive for why I cannot do it. My most pressing issue is time. I tell myself that I don’t have time for it. And that is how I have been conducting myself in my career.

Why? Fear of failure. Fear that I will not be able to achieve everything I said I will do. Not following through on my commitments. What this really means is that I am more committed to not failing than I am to succeeding. How ridiculous is that?

So I decided to pay attention to my actions and take notice when I begin to hold myself back from bigger commitments. And than I take on whatever the opportunity is to take on and I look for areas in my routine where I can expand myself. Instead of just calling 5 business contacts today, how about I call 10? Instead of just one painting a week, how about three? With more on my plate, there is a chance that I might fail more often. But that is the whole point. More failures just mean that I am playing out more and taking bigger risks. Bigger risks mean bigger rewards and faster results. Expanding further will allow for more opportunity for breakthroughs and exciting new business prospects

One of the breakthroughs that I have always needed in my work was completing projects that I started and finishing work quickly. Since I began to distinguish where I am holding myself back, I have become much more productive and effective in my workflow. At the end of the day, I am actually satisfied with what I have accomplished. I am able to accomplish more than ever. I was able to finish 2 illustrations in one week. That is something I have never been able to do before.

Here are some questions you can start considering:

Instead of, “what can I do?” Reframe from using the word “Can” in your speech if at all possible. Instead ask yourself, “What do I know to do?” and “What have I not done yet?”

It’s all in the language.

Where in your life have you been stopped? Where are you holding yourself back? What are you really committed to? Examine where you might need to step out of your comfort zone and take a chance.

I had a breakthrough last week. I realized that I have a set of perceived limits, imagining what I can and cannot do. I know what is reasonable for me, being able to visualize myself already doing what I have planned. If my plan is to produce a certain amount of artwork a week, I will usually go for at least one that I know I can complete. This can be both a benefit and a hindrance. I will explain now why it has been a hindrance in my entrepreneurial journey.

If I already know what I can do and I know what I cannot do, than I am already limiting my potential. I am not actually pushing myself beyond what I have been able to do in the past. This just keeps me stuck in one place. A little annoying and critical voice inside my head immediately talks me out of doing anything too challenging. Doubt and fear keep my reasons alive for why I cannot do it. My most pressing issue is time. I tell myself that I don’t have time for it. And that is how I have been conducting myself in my career.

Why? Fear of failure. Fear that I will not be able to achieve everything I said I will do. Not following through on my commitments. What this really means is that I am more committed to not failing than I am to succeeding. How ridiculous is that?

So I decided to pay attention to my actions and take notice when I begin to hold myself back from bigger commitments. And than I take on whatever the opportunity is to take on and I look for areas in my routine where I can expand myself. Instead of just calling 5 business contacts today, how about I call 10? Instead of just one painting a week, how about three? With more on my plate, there is a chance that I might fail more often. But that is the whole point. More failures just mean that I am playing out more and taking bigger risks. Bigger risks mean bigger rewards and faster results. Expanding further will allow for more opportunity for breakthroughs and exciting new business prospects

One of the breakthroughs that I have always needed in my work was completing projects that I started and finishing work quickly. Since I began to distinguish where I am holding myself back, I have become much more productive and effective in my workflow. At the end of the day, I am actually satisfied with what I have accomplished. I am able to accomplish more than ever. I was able to finish 2 illustrations in one week. That is something I have never been able to do before.

Here are some questions you can start considering:

Instead of, “what can I do?” Reframe from using the word “Can” in your speech if at all possible. Instead ask yourself, “What do I know to do?” and “What have I not done yet?”

It’s all in the language.

Where in your life have you been stopped? Where are you holding yourself back? What are you really committed to? Examine where you might need to step out of your comfort zone and take a chance.

Why do we artists have to wait for inspiration to hit us in order to get our projects done? If I am passionate about what I do, wouldn’t I be inspired 24/7 and naturally find myself working on it non-stop? Shouldn’t I be getting up every morning fired up and exploding with creativity to get started on those projects?

In all honesty, inspiration used to be a rare thing for me. Sometimes it came upon me strongly and prompted me to accomplish many things in a short time. Those were usually the days when I would feel like I was “in the zone.” I like to call it being, “In the Flow.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t always understand how this phenomenon occurred. Most days I experienced the same old, same old. Just getting through the task list was hard enough. Some days, I “just didn’t feel like doing it right now” and so I don’t. And I might have told myself that the reason I was not working on my projects was because I was feeling uninspired, using that justification for why I couldn’t get started. The worst part was that after spending 3 hours playing video games instead of working on my art, I ended up feeling guilty and began to doubt whether I was the artist I claimed to be.

And the cycle continued over and over.

So what is it? What causes inspiration and how can it be leveraged so that we have real power instead of using it as an excuse for why things get done or not? After years of battling procrastination, I have realized a few important things.

There is no power in relying on inspiration. It comes and goes. It is like that friend who always shows up late, stands you up, cancels plans at the last minute and never apologizes. They might say they’ll be there. But you know there is good chance they won’t. So let’s first admit something. Inspiration is a flake.

When procrastination hits, usually caused by stress, worry, uncertainty, fear of failure, self-doubt and any other sort of negativity, I begin to convince myself that I am not inspired. I hear an inner voice inside my head telling me how worthless I am. I am overwhelmed. The task suddenly seems rather daunting rather than exciting. It’s almost like I can already predict how it’s going to go, how long it’s going to take, what I am going to feel like in the process and the result that will follow. I do not anticipate a reward for my actions and see very little pay-off at the end. I am too focused on the outcome rather than the exciting process of creativity and the possibilities it will bring.

I believe that inspiration can be generated. Here is what I do to generate inspiration so that I start working on those projects and get a lot more done.

First I distinguish when I am getting that, “I don’t feel like it” thing, and try to listen for what I am telling myself afterwards. Usually I will hear guilty self-defeating thoughts. I just become present to that inner dialogue, that little voice inside my head. Sometimes that voice is referred to as the “inner critic.” Every artist knows about that voice. It is the voice that is constantly berating, criticizing and comparing. It tells us we are not good enough and we need to strive for perfection. It stops us from taking risks and moving forward in our careers.

Once I become aware of the voice, I distinguish it and allow it to be present without judging it, and eventually it dissolves when it doesn’t have anything to sustain it.

A space is cleared. Now I can create. Here is what I do….

1. I start even if I “don’t feel like it”. Usually once I start, I get into the flow and I might even begin to wonder why I was so resistant in the first place. Starting is the hard part. Once I’m past “Starting,” I am well on my way.
2. I talk to someone positive. Have you ever had a conversation with someone at which you both were really excited about something and the more you talked about it, the more exciting that subject matter became until you were both ea
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