Who would choose to be uncomfortable?
I agree that it is usually the last place anyone would want or choose to go. However, with challenges we also open ourselves up to growth. It isn’t the easy kind where you simply try a new food and you like it or you don’t. It is more the really tough kind where you are out of your elements and every thing you try is new, hard and unsettling. NOT A FUN PLACE TO BE…RIGHT?!?!
Well, think about it this way…
…if you want to grow you should seek out to new things to try. Do you remember encouraging a small child that starting school would be fun? As adults we need to remember to encourage ourselves to jump out of our everyday routine and grow. Without it we are wasting a life that is meant to be lived to the fullest. I don’t think anyone on their dying bed said “Just why did I climb that mountain just to see the vast world beyond!”. Quite to the contrary I think we will wish we hadn’t spent so much time worrying about things that truly don’t matter or yearning for things that were simply materialistic and didn’t enrich our lives at all.
Okay, enough of that as I am not a therapist, but an artist. The whole point of this is to tell you that I am deliberately putting myself in one of those uncomfortable situation…on purpose!
HOW EXCITING!
That’s right I said exciting as I am so looking forward to the growth both as an artist and simply as a person. This time last year I was taking an abstract painting class taught by talented artist Rita Wobbe at the Burren College of Art, in Ballyvaughn, Ireland. This was a very challenging class as my work has never been described as abstract. I found it both instructional and an incredible opportunity to grow my art. To continue expanding my art I enrolled in another abstract painting class, this one with artist Gwen Fox. Once the class had completed I knew I wanted more…I had grown and wanted to continue growing! I decided that this was the perfect year, with being quarantined and longing for growth, to spend time really developing my voice as an artist so I signed up for art coaching with Gwen.
If you’d like to follow my progress and growth over this next year join me on my Instagram and Facebook pages. Amazing new creations will derive from this time in an uncomfortable position! I encourage you to use these unusual time to expand yourself as well.
What uncomfortable position are you going to put yourself in to grow?
My abstract painting instructor, Rita Wobble challenged us to think of our world in a more simplified manner. I’m talking circles, rectangles, triangles and flat colors. I found it to be an interesting but yet a tall challenge to a realist painter. However, by the middle of the week I realized I was starting to get the hang of it.
The world has so much to offer if we will open our hearts and minds to the love, beauty and kindness of who and what is around us.