Episode 3: On Being a Courageous Beginner

9/3/21
The Growing Creative Podcast
S1E3: Beginners

In today's episode, Jane dives into the unnerving & courageous act of being a beginner - and reframes how we view our own amateur experiences .

Resource Links:

Deep Play  by Diane Ackerman

See the full transcript of this episode here.

Jane Boutwell is an artist & creative coach based in Atlanta, Georgia. She loves to nurture and empower others to pursue their creative callings.

"I am an artist with an inquisitive mind, a heart connected to nature and a soul yearning towards God…a child of dirt and dance…a beauty bringing blessing writer… a poetic painter and potter.

Starting with mud pies as a child in the backyard, my creativity includes tactile, intuitive, and deeply-in-touch-with-nature ways of being in the world. I see myself as an apprentice in God’s art studio of the natural world that is full of metaphor, imprinted with the character of the Maker.

It is my passion to share the shimmering beauty and deep truths I find in the creative medium that seems most fitting. Those creative expressions include gardening, quilting, writing, painting, sketching, ceramics, dancing, creative coaching, podcasting, and family life with my husband and four children in Tucker/Atlanta, Georgia."

Join the email list to learn more about special offerings : https://www.janeboutwellstudio.com/contact
Free Sketchbooking resource here: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/5f7b3597322e6ae12d5c774e

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Transcript

As I talked to a friend the other day about this experience of trying to create a podcast out of, you know, doing it for the first time she asked me how it was going. And I told her about some of the fears that were coming up, the S extreme self-consciousness and insecurities, all the things that arise when you're trying to do something new.

And I told her, you know, finally realized there's no way to get past being an amateur other than serving your time as one. And I really think that having that realization has freed me to just be a beginner. You know, the only way to not be a beginner, that place of feeling awkward. Like you're the one who doesn't know what's going on,

they're baking mistakes, for sure. The only way to not be a beginner is to never try new things, to stop taking the risk of exploring something new. I found this quote by Diane Ackerman who wrote a book called deep play. It's a rich book with it's. It's a richly written beautiful book. I recommend it. I'm still making my way through it.

Then one of those books you read with a pencil in hand, and you just have a few paragraphs and lots of thoughts that come along with it. So this is a rather long quote, but I think that it really makes a point so well, so I'm going to share it with you. Diane says on the other hand, one can turn Bronca writing and into drudgery.

One can create mildly one can live at low flame. Most people do. We're afraid to look foolish or feel too extravagantly, or make a mistake or risk unnecessary pain when fear's intensity, but given something like death, what does it matter? If one looks foolish now and then, or try too hard or cares too deeply, a shallow life creates a world as flat as a shadow in that half light,

the sun never burns risks. Recede safety becomes habit and individuals have little to teach one another. I think that this quote, you know, really stirs up something in me that says, no, I don't want to live a half-life a half lit life, never seeing the extremes of sunrise and sunset. I'm never seeing the sun blaze with brightness. And if me trying to stay safe and keep everything risky away,

leads to a life that's just gray without color, without boldness, without beauty, then bring on the risk. And as those who have known me, well, especially from early childhood, they must be shaking their heads and saying, who is this person? I have lived my life with so many fears. I've gone to, you know, amusement parks and been the one who never got on a ride because she was too scared.

And yet, as I've pushed myself over the past couple of years to, to lean into things that feel scary in order to grow and experience life, instead of sitting there trying to protect myself with, from death, which is inevitable, I even have found myself imagining what it would be like to skydive as someone with an extreme fear of Heights. This is ridiculous and absurd.

And I don't think that I'll really do it, which I'm sure my husband is breathing a sigh of relief to know, but it's been something to just imagine that I could just take that thing. I've been morbidly terrified of all my life and jump out and just experience life to the fullest and not let fear hold me back. But we started this whole conversation about beginning being a beginner and starting a podcast.

Surely that's not something that could be compared to skydiving. What is it about being a beginner? That is so scary. Part of it, I think is that there's, there's this kind of wobble and uncertainty you feel when you're a beginner, you don't know what's coming next. This is the beginning of the school year. And I've been watching my kids,

the four of them each start a new school year. Some of them at new schools, all of them with new routines, new teachers, children have to be beginners over and over again. And maybe as adults stepping into the shoes of being a beginner at something, being an amateur brings up a sense of shame and a feeling of childishness. I think that it's,

it's unnerving and it takes courage to become, to step into those shoes. And instead of recognizing the courage that people are having, when they're willing to try something new as a beginner, we're just getting flashbacks to our childhood experiences and we're just have attached this sense of, of shame. And I'd for us to reframe what a beginner and an amateur is,

especially for adults. You know, adults have the ability, they're not children. They're not having to start over and over again that usually you've been a career for a while. You've been driving for more years than you've not been. You know, it's easy to get really secure and feel like, you know what you're doing almost all the time. If you choose to pick up something new and therefore start as a beginner in that it's an active deer and courage and bravery,

a willingness to sit in that wobbly, uncertain place of not knowing exactly what you're doing, feeling insecure. And I would love for us to just give ourselves, give ourselves credit when we are willing to try something new, change the conversation inside of our head. When we pick up something that we're unsure about, that we're doing for the first time, maybe,

and instead of listening to that voice in your head, that's making you feel silly and childish and a sense of shame for what you don't know. Let's recognize the courage. That's there. The willingness to take the risk. And instead of seeing childishness as something negative, let's embrace the playfulness of children and regain that sense of play because everything I've studied about the science of creativity,

especially is that you can't have of real vibrant creativity without keeping your sense of playfulness alive. When creative work becomes drudgery and loses that sense of risk and play. And that's when them saying risk and play because as I've looked in and learned more about play in order for something to be considered play, there has to be some element of risk. You might lose the game.

You might fall off the bike. There's all kinds of examples, but a sense of riskiness is inherent in play and playfulness. And so I would just love to encourage us all to change the story in our mind about what it's like to be a beginner, what it's like to step into something unknown and brand new and feel childish. Let's see that childish feeling as something that's play positive,

powerful play that brings about creativity brings liveliness and that sense of risk that's there let's acknowledge the courage and daring that it takes to show up and take that on. I hope that you can find some small ways today to be a little bit more playful. It's easy to find myself feeling like I need to be sure to look like the adult so that everybody around here respects me.

But when I'm willing to just get on the ground a little, be a little sillier, do something that's just playful with my kids or with my friends. There's so much more connection. There's so much more that makes life worth living. Can we all just take a minute, shake our shoulders out, turn on some music, get on a bicycle, try a Cartwheel,

do something that gets you out of the stodgy, stayed protected. I know everything adult status that we cling to, to have a sense of control and safety around us. Let's see that for the lie that it is. And instead let's engage in random acts of playfulness and defiant creativity as bold beginners, unwilling to stay within the borders of what we already know.<inaudible>.