Have you ever heard of the book, The Artist’s Way?
It’s a 12-week course, created by Julia Cameron, designed to help you reconnect with your creativity—in your art, your work, your relationships, your everything. Simply put, it’s about unlocking creative potential and rekindling curiosity. But for me, it did something bigger: it helped me face things I didn’t even know I was avoiding.
I didn’t just “unblock.” I unraveled some long-held stories about what’s allowed, what’s possible, and what it means to take up space as a creative person. The Artist’s Way gave me a structure for exploring uncertainty and a way to move through resistance without waiting for the stars (or my brain chemistry) to align.
Now I lead others through it—not because I have it all figured out, but because I know what it’s like to lose your creative spark, and how powerful it can be to connect with a group of people who are also looking for theirs.
If you’ve got a buried idea, a restless itch, or just miss feeling curious—this might be the thing. Let’s find out. Here are ten lessons The Artist’s Way has taught me:
- We often resist what we most need. Resistance is a tricky gremlin. It can look like doing a favor for a friend, cleaning a stove, or, yes, doom scrolling, when instead we could be sketching in a park, going to see a movie, or baking brownies. Sometimes indulging our inner child (which is what artists are) is the best thing you can do for yourself.
- Anger is meant to be acted upon, not acted out. We are nice people, and most of the time, when we feel angry, we ignore it, deny it, bury it, medicate it, hide it. But what we really need to do is listen to it because it is showing us where our boundaries are, what we don’t like, and what we’d rather be doing. Follow the anger, and you’ll find yourself staring at the very thing you need to do.
- Stop saying NO, and start saying MAYBE. Whenever you say NO to an idea, an impulse, or something fun, you are allowing fear to close the door to creativity. Opening yourself up to gentle, low-stakes exploration enables you to lean into creative expansion.
- Many of us equate difficulty with virtue. Have you ever resisted something because it felt like you were taking the “easy way out?” I think most of us were raised to believe that hard work makes us better people, but why does it have to be so… hard. Doing something we already have a talent for feels like we’re cheating at life because it’s so, well, easy. Now that I’ve said it that way, doesn’t it sound a little ridiculous? Yeah, stop forcing yourself to do everything the hard way. Follow the easy path when you can — especially if it makes you happy.
- Creativity is about process, not product. If we focus on product (as our consumer-based world encourages us to), we believe we will always need to have something to show for our labor, and that’s just not always how art works. If we focus on process, our creative life retains a sense of adventure. “I am writing a screenplay” is way more exciting to the soul than “I have written a screenplay,” (which mostly feeds the ego).
- Large changes occur in tiny increments. Creativity requires activity — we must always be moving forward. And a creative life is built by taking many small steps rather than large leaps. Taking one small action each day — the next right thing — is how we find our way to the larger movement in our creative lives.
- Be nice to yourself. The thing that blocks artists is fear; fear of not being good enough; fear of not finishing; fear of failure (and success); the fear of starting. The antidote to fear is love. Stop yelling at yourself for not being great and just be.
- In order to make good art, you have to be willing to make bad art. Never judge a new piece of work too quickly — your lousy painting may be pointing you in a new direction. Art needs time to incubate so that it can emerge as itself. Steer clear of instant gratification, show up to work every day, and allow yourself to play, judgment free.
- As an artist, you must surround yourself with other artists. Find people who nurture your artist, not people who judge it, or make demands on it.
- If you want to make art, make art. If you are happier writing than not writing, painting than not painting, singing than not singing, acting than not acting… then for goodness sake, do it.
Here’s the bottom line: The universe gave us the gift of creativity, and using our creativity is our gift back to the universe.