Season 5 premiere!
What if inside every creative block is an invitation?
Today on the show: a story about what a chance traffic encounter taught me about responding to creative block.
Links:
Season 5 premiere!
What if inside every creative block is an invitation?
Today on the show: a story about what a chance traffic encounter taught me about responding to creative block.
Links:
On today’s podcast, Season 4 finale!
This openhearted, vulnerable conversation with author and knitter Sarah Bessey is the perfect way to tie a bow on Season 4 of Artists for Joy.
In this interview, Merideth and Sarah discuss:
The spiritual nature of creative practice
The important difference between self-care and self-comfort
Processing the grief of losing friend and fellow author Rachel Held Evans
What Sarah does when she's creatively blocked
Merideth shares some of what she'll be doing during the upcoming podcast hiatus and how you can stay updated on what's new with Artists for Joy, so listen all the way to the end!
Buy Sarah’s new book, Field Notes for the Wilderness
Emily P. Freeman is a writer and spiritual space-maker. She is the author of six books, including the Wall Street Journal bestseller "The Next Right Thing: A Simple Soulful Practice for Making Life Decisions" and "How to Walk into a Room: The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away."
In this episode, Emily joins host Merideth Hite Estevez to discuss discernment, creativity, and joy. They talk about how to make every aspect of life creative, how to overcome people-pleasing (the answer will surprise you!), and the most valuable creative inspiration Emily's received lately.
This episode is perfect for anyone looking to create a more soulful and intentional life. Whether you're struggling with decision fatigue, feeling stuck in your creative process, or simply want to learn more about how to live with more joy, Emily’s insights and advice are sure to be helpful.
How to Walk Into a Room (Emily’s newest book)
This week, Merideth offers a self-coaching exercise to help you create your path.
1. Name what’s on your mind before we begin: Is there a fork in the road you see coming around the bend? Is there a question you’ve been asking yourself about your creative practice or life that you want to explore with gentleness and grace? Or take a cue from Emily P. Freeman, in her new book, "How to Walk Into a Room," and ask, "What are the primary rooms of my life right now?" Spend some time naming whatever comes up.
2. Choose one line of inquiry to explore in this creative reflection session. Write the question down on a sticky note or note card and put it somewhere you can see it while creating.
3. Create in whatever medium sounds fun. You are not necessarily setting out to answer the question you’re holding; you are just creating and reflecting alongside this inquiry. Let your mind wander, and invite whatever thoughts that show up move through. Set a timer for half an hour or more if you can spare it.
4. When you finish this session, look at the question again. What came up? Pretend your very best friend wrote that question. What would you like to tell that friend now? How did the creative process help you hold space for the uncertainties and complexities of your life?
5. Email Merideth at hello@artistsforjoy.org or post your creation on IG and tag @artistsforjoy
What scripts are holding you back from creating your own unique path? What would you do if you weren’t so afraid? What parts of yourself have you been ignoring, squashing down, so you can fit in where you are? Are you ready to move forward but unsure of how or where to go?
This week's episode will meet you right where you are.
Inspired by author Emily P. Freeman, Merideth reflects on what role creativity plays in our discernment process and ways we can shift our mindset to become empowered decision-makers and artists creating the most important thing we make: a life.
More than 100 new species of sea life found on ocean mountains off Chile
Join The Artist's Joy Creative Cluster
Pre-order Merideth's book, The Artist's Joy
Pre-order Emily P. Freeman's book "How to Walk Into a Room"
Submit questions for Emily via email: hello@artistsforjoy.org
Leave your question on our voicemail: 302-415-3407
This week, a coaching exercise we're calling "Rewriting the Unhelpful Story."
Take a few moments and fully realize the unhelpful story you’re telling yourself. Write it all down in the third person. What does the rejection mean to her? What is the main character in your story currently letting this rejection mean, or what is he/she/they afraid it means? Spend time writing it out in your journal or speak your thoughts out loud to a safe and helpful friend, therapist, or coach.
Zoom in again and focus on the main character of your story. Write about him/her/them for a second. What is she like? What is her creative potential? What do you like about her? Personify the lead in that story, and write 3 to 5 compassion-filled phrases or truths you want her to know.
Flip to a new page and write a new story. Make the ending good, surprising, outlandish, even fanciful. Be as creative and generous as possible, write a new tale as unbelievable as you can, and fill in all the details you are longing to know.
Read last week's podcast on Substack
Submit a question or comment to Merideth
via email: hello@artistsforjoy.org
via phone: 302-415-3407
This week's episode explores the challenge of persevering through creative disappointment. We meet Ian, a musician whose band falls apart, and learn the tool that is helping Merideth cope with a recent and painful rejection. Listen for encouragement to embrace your sensitivity and vulnerability and to find ways to move beyond disappointment to create with more joy and freedom.
Read last week's podcast on Substack
Submit a question or comment to Merideth
via email: hello@artistsforjoy.org
via phone: 302-415-3407
Join the next “The Artist’s Way” Creative Cluster
This week on the podcast, Merideth offers three simple (non-judgmental!) steps for taking action when faced with chaos. This episode will help you accept the invitation that life's raw material offers and find more creative joy.
Submit a question or comment to Merideth:
via email: hello@artistsforjoy.org
This week on the podcast, the final word-of-the-year installment (less word, more motto): "Order the Chaos."
What freedom awaits when we stop resisting the chaos of life and instead embrace it as an invitation to creative possibility and joy?
Merideth explores how this mindset shift is helping her leave guilt and doubt behind and find a more hopeful and gentle way of being in 2024. Plus, she'll share stories of 18th-century buildings mended with legos, a deep truth she learned from a 5-year-old, and the tale of one Holy Goose.
Submit a question or comment to Merideth:
via email: hello@artistsforjoy.org
Coaching Questions:
1. Think of a time when you transitioned or crossed one of life’s thresholds. What was it like for you? Who did you become in the "after"? What gifts were waiting for you on the other side?
2. What creative offerings have you released into the world? And what chaotic trajectory did they take? How did it surprise you?
3. What are you feeling led to give away, to release from your hands, in this season? How can you love yourself well during the vulnerable, sometimes scary process of opening your hands?
Nathalie Duflos Open-handed painting
Submit a question or comment to Merideth:
via email: hello@artistsforjoy.org
This week on the podcast, the second installment of my words of the year: Open-handed. What are we missing when we hold on too tightly to our expectations? What role does letting go play in the creative process, and how can we get better at opening our hands and releasing work into the world? Merideth answers a listener's question about staying well and inspired on social media and shares a powerful story of an artist seeking joy.
Episode 2.20: Who do you create for?
Join the next “The Artist’s Way” Creative Cluster
Submit your listener question: hello@artistsforjoy.org
3 ways to cultivate abundance in your life today:
Enjoy what you have. Say out loud what you're grateful for and what delights you.
Give away more than you get.
Believe in benevolence. Feed Life's algorithm and watch what happens.
Where is the line between the power of positivity and foolish denial?
How do we become more comfortable asking for more, hoping for more, believing there’s more?
Merideth lets us in on some of her inner chatter this week as she launches a big project, and she'll answer a listener's question about the spiritual nature of creative blocks.
Join us for the Word of the Year Workshop on January 8th or get the recording
Submit your listener question: hello@artistsforjoy.org
This week on the podcast, Merideth helps you choose your word(s) of the year. Grab your journal and earbuds and explore the prompts paired with meditative music to craft an intentional, creative year with joy.
Reflect on 2023: looking through your phone at photos of the last year, ask yourself: what do I wish there had been more of? If you had a word(s) of the year, in what ways did you see them reflected in your life? If you didn’t, based on the last twelve months, what words might you have been living by?
Now looking forward: Answer this question with a stream-of-consciousness list–This year, regardless of my circumstances, I want to feel… Write as many words as possible about how you want to show up in 2024.
Read your list and circle the words that resonate most. Look especially for verbs or action words. Take the list of circled words and make a fresh list. If anything is missing, add it now.
Sit with this list of words for a few days. Talk to a loved one, therapist, or coach about it.
What activities, deadlines, trips, and events are coming up in 2024, and which of these word(s) will help you show up as you most want to, regardless of the outcomes or circumstances?
Narrow it down to one (or more) words you’ll live by this year.
Please share yours with me on Instagram on the post for this episode @artistsforjoy so we can cheer you on.
What if all your feelings were welcome this season? This week on the podcast, Merideth offers a meditation on persistent joy, an invitation to a wholehearted holiday where grief + excitement or sorrow + joy can coexist. She'll share a story of when joy appeared in the most unlikely place and answer a listener's question about maintaining creative routines when everybody's home. Wishing you and yours a joyful holiday, whatever you're carrying.
Join the February’s FREE Artist’s Way Creative Cluster
Have you felt a spiritual stirring during a long walk or a workout? What connection do creativity and movement have? Why did so many famous artists throughout history take long walks in the afternoon?
This week, Merideth explores how movement helps us connect to something larger than ourselves and invites us to practice self-acceptance, deep listening, and completing the stress cycle.
Submit your question: hello@artistsforjoy.org
Let us know what you think of this episode on IG
Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts
Sign up for the February Artist’s Way Creative Cluster
This week on the podcast, Merideth offers three ways to thrive this month. "Gigmas," or the holiday creativity vortex that hits freelancers like a polar express, is upon us. Listen for things you can do to keep your head above water during "the most wonderful time of the year."
Email Merideth: hello@artistsforjoy.org
This week, Merideth chats with writer Heather Lanier about creating in the cracks, why she writes, and how to become more comfortable with the inherent uncertainty of making a new work of art.
Heather's bio:
Heather is a poet, essayist, teacher, speaker, and thrift-store shopper. An assistant professor of creative writing at Rowan University, she is the author of the memoir, Raising a Rare Girl (Penguin Press, July 2020), a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, along with two award-winning poetry chapbooks, The Story You Tell Yourself, and Heart-Shaped Bed in Hiroshima. She is the recipient of a Vermont Creation Grant and an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. Her full-length poetry collection, Psalms of Unknowing, is forthcoming from Monkfish Publishing.
Heather often writes at the intersections of spirituality, motherhood, and feminism. Her essays and poems have been published in The Atlantic, TIME, The Sun, Salon, Brevity, Vela Magazine, Longreads, and elsewhere. Her TED talk, “’Good’ and ‘Bad’ Are Incomplete Stories We Tell Ourselves,” has been viewed three million times and translated into 18 languages. Her essay, “Out There I Have to Smile,” was among the top 10 most-read Longreads essays of 2021.
With an MA in Teaching from Johns Hopkins and an MFA in Creative Writing from Ohio State, Heather has taught Shakespeare to ninth graders in Baltimore, conversational English to housewives, ship workers, and executives in Japan, and expository and creative writing to undergraduates at places such as UC Berkeley, Miami University, and Southern Vermont College. After seven years in the Green Mountain State, she is learning to live—and drive—in New Jersey. If you follow her on Twitter or Instagram, she vows never to post a post-workout selfie… although if you do, she’ll cheer you on!
This week on the podcast, something we all need to remember: no creative act is wasted. If you find yourself wondering what the point of all the tiny efforts are or if you need a reminder of the long game that is being an artist, this one is for you.
email Merideth a question for the show: hello@artistsforjoy.org
Leave us a voicemail 302-415-3407
This week on the podcast, a Mini-Joys episode all about something that's really helping me recently: an off/on ramp!
Listen to learn more and tell us on Instagram if this worked for you!
Design your own off/on ramp:
Think of something you’ve been avoiding or dreading, something you've been worried about starting or finishing.
Ask yourself:
What might future-me need?
Is there a task, activity, or decision that will help to do or make before or after?
How do you want to feel?
Make space and set boundaries to give yourself what you need.