This has got to be the #1 plague of all performers, artists, writers, chefs, singers, dancers, teachers – anybody that has to create and execute in the now.
However, before we (attempt to) answer how to get out of your head, can we first ask “How Did You Get Into Your Head,
Anyway?”
Take your time with your list, but stop at 10, please.
Done? Good!
Now take that exceptional list of traumas and mentally set it on fire. Watch it burn to ashes.
Blow it away.
We can’t do anything about the past and how it distracted, dismayed, damaged, dysregulated your artistic instrument of mind/body/energy.
What you have right now is what you got.
But before you rewrite that list and reapply it to yourself, can we take a moment to simply stay in neutral? Perhaps take a moment to occupy zero for all the nothing it is worth?
Here’s one of the truest bits of advice ever offered to an artist, “Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.”
You can look up the attribution later.
The most exciting moment in a young artist’s life is finding the art in themselves. It’s a discovery that embodies love, joy, passion, hyper-focus, energy bursting from your fingertips, satisfaction…
You remember it well. It was the first step in your extraordinary journey.
It was a baptism where, once you jumped in, you stayed underwater because you were so comfortable and happy. You didn’t need air. You could breathe water. And after you came out of it, all you wanted to do was get back into it.
It was that primal, singular, huge moment where you were not watching yourself and in your head, you were awake, alive and present.
And you didn’t know how you got there.
(Hang on, don’t pull back into your list of what went wrong. It’s not helpful. Stay here at zero. Stay in the water and underneath the surface.)
That single moment of inner recognition was the beginning of your artistic process. For one of my students, it was when he played Pumbaa in elementary school. After that, he knew he could never do anything else.
The new path that opens up means discovering even more, taking the infinite art existing inside of you and generating it outward by putting it on a canvas, an empty page, a stage, a pan over an open flame. It’s like a synaptic tie in your brain that suddenly opens up a whole new awareness of being. It is an energetic process that has no end because it involves giving your creative energy to others and sharing it continually.
The creative output you generate is refined by your continual growth and discovery. It never ends unless you stop pursuing it.
There’s no right, no wrong, no good, no bad, just creative output.
You let the critics judge your output because who cares what they say anyway? By the time critics get ahold of it, you’ve already grown beyond it, so it doesn’t matter what they have to offer. They are not a part of your process unless you make them part of your process and good luck with that.
Judging your process, comparing your path to others, constantly defining “success,” do nothing for you – unless you enjoy paralysis and being in your head.
Because that’s not what started the process, is it?
What started in you was a spark that begat a flame.
A gate opened and suddenly you could see a destination at the horizon and you knew you had to go there.
Therein lies the answer.
Keep that flame alive by continually looking outside yourself toward your destination. Nobody else can take your path because nobody else is you. Nobody else can judge your path because nobody else is you.
Whether you dance, write, cook, act, sing, paint, draw, practice putting 100% of your focus outside of yourself and into the joy of your creation. That’s how it started for you, isn’t it?
Practice this enough and you will not have the time, space or energy to “get in your head” again.