Drawing by Jenna van den Berg (Illustration from my book Upbeat)
The realisation of a project can be a struggle or it can be a joy.
In this article I want to share some experiences on how to get or stay in a flow while doing a project, especially in the first phase of it. How to create a healthy mindset towards it which will benefit both your project and your mental health. The actions are small, but the influence on your wellbeing is, in my personal experience, tremendous.
NB: I also recorded this video on the topic.
Capture ideas
- Inspiration is precious. Do not take it for granted. When an idea comes write it down. The inspiration is now. In other moments you may be occupied with the practical realisation. Using this energy not only gives you the idea itself but you also reconfirm yourself as a creative being. You acknowledge that your ideas are worthwhile. A positive feedback loop.
- Your memory is unreliable. You might think: ‘I will remember this’, but the actual spark of inspiration passes by very quickly and what remains is a vague remembrance and often a lot of doubts: you can trust upon your dragons to appear. So timing is important. Write down (or record) your ideas and do this immediately.
Set your mind to the project
Now start doing little actions. This is food for the mind, food for your inspiration. The inspiration itself cannot be commanded, but you can set the circumstances for it to appear. By doing small actions regularly you avoid that your project completely vanishes in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Even in periods that you are busy doing other things you can feed your inspiration like this and there is not much time involved.
Think of actions like making an appointment with somebody (I don’t mean the actual meeting, but just the setting of the date), making a reservation for a room to rehearse, telling a random person you meet about this new idea that you had yesterday, looking at your visualization or moodboard of the project for five minutes while having a coffee. Perform these actions without having the intention of immediate result. Nothing needs to be decided, nothing to be added to your project. Om the contrary: trust the digesting qualities of your mind and let time do the work. Decisions will come by themselves.
Surfing on mental energy
You can compare this way of working with wave-surfing: by steering the right way you can stay on top of the wave of your mental energy, generated by your desire to do the project. Actions are little. As long as you stay up, the wave does the work. If you fall off, by postponing actions and giving in to your doubts rather than observing them (see my dragons-related videos), you will have to climb back on the board over and over again and you will lose a lot of energy. Better spend it on the project itself.
So basically what we talk about is mental energy, or mental health. Not as a separate subject to take care of in order to be able to do your work, but as an integrated part of it: working the right way makes or keeps you healthy. This is a choice you can make: what do I feed? The yes or the no? Inspiration or doubts? What you feed will grow: it’s up to you!