Welcome to The Habitual Creator!
Lessons in building good habits for your creative life - and changing bad ones!
What would you answer if I’d ask you what’s standing between you and your creative work, between you and the creative life you say you’re dreaming of?
Perhaps you would say it’s time. Or your mindset.
Sorry to break it to you, but it’s never the first one. The second one, yes. Maybe you also feel like you don't know where to start and how to go on about it.
And chances are very big that upon examining your circumstances, we’d uncover some habits that aren’t aligned with what you say you want to do, be or have.
For example:
You say you want to make an album with your original songs, but at the same time you can’t seem to get yourself to be consistent with your songwriting.
You say you wish you be more energetic so you can show up better for your creative work, but at the same time you’re getting too little sleep.
You say you wish you had more time for your creative work, but at the same time you’re spending time every day mindlessly scrolling on your phone.
You say you wish you had more money, but at the same time you’re not tracking your finances and looking at ways to save money and increase your income. (And the reason that’s keeping you in that habit is your mindset that tells you there’s no way you can save money or increase your income because you’re an artist…it’s a vicious mindset-habit circle).
Your habits can help you make your dreams come true - or they can sabotage even the best plans and strategies.
These four examples are all real-life examples from myself and from artists that I have coached. At times I’ve been in the role of the coach and mentor, helping other creatives become clear on what habits are helpful to their creative work and which ones are sabotaging them from getting their creative work done and keeping them from making their dreams come true. But simultaneously I’m also in the role of the artist, the perfectly imperfect human who struggles with the obstacles on her own creative path and who is dedicated to practice what she preaches.
I’ve managed to change many bad habits into good ones over the years, and I’m constantly uncovering new areas to work on.
Here’s what I wrote in my journal after my morning meditation the other day:
“Your habits shape your life,
and right now,
not all your habits are helpful.”
Wow…what a slap-in-the-face insight..!!
The next day, similar guidance continued to flow through my pen on the pages of my journal.
“Change your habits, change your life.
Start examining your habits thoroughly.”
This topic continued to show itself in my morning journaling, so it became clear to me that it was an important one, needing to be dealt with. Knowing the voice that was writing through my pen came from my higher self, and knowing that you never should negotiate with this voice, I decided right there on the spot to begin doing exactly what it was telling me to do.
From my work as a coach I also know that accountability is a key ingredient in seeing actual progress and results on your goals. So instead of examining and trying to change my habits quietly by myself, I decided to do something that will make sure I can’t escape from following through with it:
…share my progress and insights publicly, while at the same time documenting what I’ve learned from my training and experience as a creativity, productivity and mindset coach for other artists, and from the techniques and resources I turn to in order to change the bad habits that are keeping myself and the artists I coach stuck in certain areas of their creative work & life.
Enter - a new section of this blog and newsletter:
The Habitual Creator
Lessons in building good habits for your creative life - and changing bad ones!
Next to being lessons in how to build helpful habits for your creative life, The Habitual Creator is also linked to one of my personal creative goals, which is to develop a consistent writing practice.
By subscribing to The Habitual Creator posts, you'll get:
Bite-sized lessons in building good habits for your creative life - and changing bad ones!
Creativity Coaching tips to help you be consistent in your creative practice.
Real-life insights from myself, artists I've coached and from my artist friends.
We’ll be covering all aspects of your creative life - because as you’ve might have heard me say before, creativity is not something that exists separate from the rest of your life.
For now, the posts will be available for free, and later this year, when I have built this new creative habit and proven to myself that my writing practice is consistent, I might put the posts/lessons in The Habitual Creator behind a paywall - simply because there’s a lot of time, energy and expertise going into crafting them, they are related to my work as a creativity coach, and because a paid subscription also creates the opportunity to share more personal experiences and bonuses with a community of dedicated readers. (I’m thinking things like live Zoom classes and more 😊).
So this is my invitation to join me in The Habitual Creator, to finish your creative work and accomplish your creative dreams one habit at a time! As you build good habits (and change bad ones!), you’ll also uncover the outer and inner (mindset) obstacles that are standing in between you and your goals. Once uncovered, those obstacles can be overcome and transformed. Everything starts with awareness.
Be warned though: habit-changing is damn confronting! You gotta be totally honest with yourself. You gotta stop deceiving yourself - even in the subtlest little ways - and dare to look straight at the ways in which you’re fooling yourself, blocking your authentic self from expressing itself, keeping yourself from receiving your highest good, saying one thing and doing another. Very often we’re not actually willing to look straight at the ways in which we’re blocking ourselves from our goals, blocking ourselves from change. We rather just brush it away with “This is my personality”, or some other explanation, which is actually an excuse to not being 100% honest with yourself.
Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already done so. By subscribing you’ll receive the lessons in The Habitual Creator straight into your inbox and make sure you don’t miss a single one!
I’d love to hear from you! What habits would you love to learn? What habits would you love to change? How would learning/changing those habits benefit your creative work & life? Let me know by commenting on this post or by joining the chat.
XO Katja
