“Be happy with what you have while working for what you want.” This quote from Helen Keller starts off our episode All About Desire.
Welcome to the modern creative woman. Explain the art and science of creativity. This is the podcast for women who want to elevate their creativity and start applying creative thinking in their everyday lives. I'm your hostess and creativity expert, Dr. Amy Backos I'm a licensed psychologist and a registered and board certified art therapist with almost three decades helping women live their authentic lives at the Modern Creative Woman, we are obsessed with helping you build your creativity and self leadership. Through our conversations and creative insights, I'll provide simple tricks and practices that will update the mystery out of the creative process so you can start each day feeling empowered, creative, and ready to take on whatever comes your way. Let's get started.
“Joy is not the result of getting what you want. It is the way to get what you want. And in the deepest sense, joy is what you want.” That's a quote from Alan Cohen all about how to move towards what you desire with a joyful heart. We're talking today about using your creative mind to understand this deeper perspective of your desires, your dreams, your wishes. We'll talk all about desire, some of the upsides and the downsides of how we've been trained to think of our own desire. And I'll share with you an amazing art project that you can do to really capture your desires and start to see them as possible for you.
Let's start with defining desire. This is a strong feeling of wanting to have something or really just wishing for something to happen. You can think of it as a signpost can also be a direction pointing you towards your values, your future self. And when your desires are in alignment with your values, what you think is most important, really what you desire is for you. It's helping you move to be your authentic self. And there's a lot of really negative connotations, especially for women related to desire. If you think about some of the really unhelpful synonyms for desire, jealousy, coveting something, ambition, envy, spite, resentment, the evil eye being ungrateful. All of these are messages from society that what we want is not worth pursuing, or we should just be happy with what we have. Another thing that happens to us when we have a desire is we start to act in alignment with those negative associations.
If we desire something that someone else has, we might judge them for it. We might look down on what other people want when we feel particularly uncomfortable with our own desire, will project onto others that something's wrong with them for wanting something different than what we want. It can show up in backbiting behavior, gossip, even stealing from others. And this kind of behavior can leave us really just seething with anger, holding a grudge and full of resentment. Let's have a look at some of the really helpful synonyms for desire. Want. Longing. Fancy, like “I fancy that” inclination, aspiration, impulse, preference, maybe even a craving. When we think of desire in this way, it helps us be honest about what we want. It also helps us plan our time. If someone has something that we want, we don't move to jealousy. We go towards admiration. And this positive relationship with the feeling of desire helps us celebrate our friend's success, helps us learn. It even helps us save money.
And sometimes we have to do a little bit of mindset work to remove the judgment related to desire. Once we can let go of what society says about women and desire and move towards what feels authentic about desire, we can really move into both our authentic self and the successful version of ourselves that we want to be. When I think about desire and acceptance and commitment therapy, the goal then is consciously being and acting in line with our values. And it's also about selecting and living a life that we really love.
I've talked a lot about the miracle question, and it's pretty cool. Helps you generate this positive version of your future self. It prepares our mind for looking for exceptions to the problem. And it helps us create a narrative that life is getting better instead of worse. Here's the question. Assume your problem has been solved. What is different? And another way you might raise the question is to assume your problem is gone. What does that mean to you? Now that variation comes from some research from Strong and Pyle in 2009. I want to tell you a little bit of the background.
The question from you 2019. They say it gives you the power to explore hidden resources and find solutions to your existing problems. That sounds an awful lot like creativity. Strong and powerful. Describe it as opening the door to your possibilities for manifesting change. And they're talking about manifesting in terms of making something visible. A miracle question is popular and family therapy or individual therapy. It's used to help people see outside of their current lens. Use a different perspective to understand what's happening. Now, it can be very challenging to answer this question, and it likely requires a new internal vocabulary and an external vocabulary. And it definitely calls forth our creative thinking. We have to use a what if scenario in our mind. We have to imagine what might be possible even though we can't see it yet.
That's the really cool thing about the miracle question is it helps us see beyond our current circumstances. It can also be used repeatedly. You can ask yourself that question for every circumstance that you come across. If a miracle happened and my problems at work were solved, what would it look like? And then you can imagine the solutions. If a miracle happened and my relationship was the way I wanted, what would that be like? You can start to see different ways of relating to both of those situations. Work and love. You see a bigger picture that's possible for you. I'll give you a couple examples of how you might want to use the miracle question. It's really about starting small so you can see how it works and you want to choose a small problem. Nothing too messy.
You might have a small problem like, oh, my laundry needs doing, my house needs cleaning, my car needs cleaning. It might be that you're you don't have the money to go to an event. You might have a list of unscheduled appointments you need to make. You might want to do something, but you don't know how. These are small problems. And I would say while you're working through the miracle question, avoid like really big problems until you master it. So if you pause and write down some small problem with just a little bit of detail, why would you want to change the situation? What would it look like if a miracle happened?
What's really powerful about this is that it can be done in conjunction with others. And of course, we are unable to rely on others to change to solve a problem. However, by imagining that the problem has been solved, for example, a challenge in the family, but imagining that it has been solved allows you to think of new ways that you can relate to the circumstance. Of course, you can make artwork about this, and I think it's quite genius to do so. It's about identifying the problem, then the solution, and then the steps to get there. And you could do that in writing. It goes in that order the problem, the solution. And then bridging the two. How you get there, except when you do it.
In art, you'll find that the solutions flow more easily for you. You'll see more possibilities. And if you don't want to do art, you can do collage. You can pull pictures from magazines or Pinterest. There's no wrong way to do it, but I really want to encourage you to use visuals to draw, paint, scribble. The visual is really important in adding the creative thinking, so some small problems might be my piggy bank is empty. I spent all my travel funds, but if a miracle happens then what would I imagine are I'm planning my next trip with my family. I picked a set amount to save each month. Those are solutions that are kind of getting us to the next trip.
So when the solution is happened in your visual, you might find pictures in a magazine of the places you want to travel, or the fine dining you want to go to, or the beauty of nature where you're going to go camping. You visualize when everything's lined up. And the solution comes next. How do I go from the problem? My piggy bank is empty and my travel budget is low to high in Paris. This is where you use your creative thinking, and so it's going to involve a little bit of writing and a little bit of art, and you can go in either order. I do think the art first is always better. So if I want to start focusing on the solutions, I could think about getting support from family and planning together. I could think about a different way of funding my adventure fund. I could focus on shared responsibility. I could also focus on spending and saving in alignment with my values, building a more positive relationship to money.
And I could also start planning further ahead, buy my tickets a year out, etc. when you work out your small problem and draw it, remember to always give your artwork a title. Write a few words to describe it. When you imagine the solution, your mind might try and fight you. You might say, I won't have enough to take this trip, or I won't be able to focus on saving money. But the solution is the solution. It's where you want to go, and I want you to feel free to embrace those desires without judgement. Every time that you're judging yourself around a wish or a dream or a desire, you can rephrase it in your mind. Oh, that's an old story. Or that's something I learned from society about women and desire. Let me see what is true for me. It's okay to have those thoughts that pop into your head. It's gonna happen.
Acceptance and commitment therapy helps us shift from the judgment and thinking it's true, and stopping us to just relating to thoughts for what they are. One neuron firing across a synapse to another neuron. They're just thoughts. They're not facts. It's true that we learn particular judgements about women and desire from society. However, when we're running them through our head, those aren't facts, they're just thoughts so we can relate to them however we like. Just allowing them to be there and keep moving. When you focus on solutions, you'll find that your mind will begin to evolve. You will. Instead of looking for problems, you'll look for solutions. And our brain loves to find problems. It loves to find fear. It's adaptive. But solution focused work is a very specific. There's a whole field of therapy that's solution focused therapy, and it's about getting where you want to go without all the fuss of going through the problem over and over again.
There's no benefit to repeating the problem. There is benefit to imagining the solutions. And you can practice this all day long. You're sitting in traffic. You could imagine a better solution for the crosswalks or the light sequence. If you're at a meeting, you could imagine you know a better way to structure the meeting or rearrange the tables. All the things that you see, you can start to imagine a solution for. And I want to draw a contrast from solution focused thinking to a mind that's just looking for problems to fix. What I'm suggesting that you can do though, is look around and see where you can practice making solutions. You don't want to get stuck in the problem finding you want to get. Enamored with finding solutions. We don't go looking for problems. We go looking for solutions. I
talked a little bit in episode 41 about stages of change, and how we can move from the problem saturated story to the solution. It's really about making contact with the present moment. It's admitting what you want, just allowing your desire to show up and not judge it. If you want to wear a particular outfit but you judge yourself for it, you're kind of denying that desire. If you want to go on vacation in a particular place and you say, no, no, that's not for me, you're denying that desire. It then requires us to decide and really commit to just being curious about our desires. Nothing bad will happen if we entertain thoughts about what we want and about solutions, and in fact, decides on and committing is how we start to take steps on that gap between the problem and the solution. The third step is really action. It's preparing, which is often the missing piece when people decide they want to make a change or add a new habit. If we fail to prepare adequately to move towards the solution, we can really struggle and then start to judge ourselves.
So before we take action, we make some plans, we get some support, but then we have to start before we're ready. Another important piece when you think about going for solutions is recalibrating and persisting. If your solution is going on a vacation or getting a new job, or working on your health. If the solution is your vision of those things, we hold the vision in mind, but we recalibrate how we get there. It may be that travel shows up in a different way. Maybe you travel for work, maybe the gym you like to go to doesn't keep going. They decide to close. You just recalibrate and persist. You don't give up.
Another essential piece of moving towards our solutions is acknowledging the progress we make and really celebrating it. That space between where we are and where we want to be is pretty much where we always are. There's always something more that we want to go for. And celebrating while we're in that liminal space just allows us to keep going forward. It's a really important part of relating to our thoughts is telling ourselves we did a good job. I would love to hear from you about what's most exciting or interesting or surprising for you when you start reflecting on your desires. If you use the Miracle Question drawing series, what came up for you? Please let me know. You can DM me in Instagram. When your mind shifts to solution focused thinking, you'll notice that your mood improves tremendously.
I have a quote from Lila Delia. When you wake up to your power and snatch it back, miracles happen. I love that quote. So I want to encourage you to make a commitment to yourself. And it's choosing an action that's in line with your values. And if you're valuing your own personal growth, then go ahead and sit down and work on the three parts of the miracle question in art. Take action on it. And a committed action is really just behaving in a way of your choosing that's in line with what's most important to you. It's how we make behavioral change. I want to give you one last idea to think about. Sometimes we have a block, or we feel frustrated, or we go into the valley of despair where we now know more and we're struggling because it feels really challenging to make the change. If you can prepare for these blocks in advance, you will be more likely to succeed. That's part of the preparation that I mentioned.
Preparing for what obstacles will interfere with your path? Allows you to move through the obstacles with much more ease. That space between where we are and where we want to be. Has lots of obstacles. Many things could potentially get in our way, and only we know which ones will kind of personally push our buttons or feel particularly challenging to us. So before you launch into your solution focused actions, figure out two things. One is the why. Why you want to take this action. Why is it important to you? The second thing you want to figure out is strategies for overcoming obstacles. I think having support is essential. Taking time for yourself to journal, to reflect, to recalibrate is essential.
So when an obstacle comes up, you have a list of what will help you move through obstacles and allow you to persist. Have a wonderful rest of your week. Now that you know about the importance of creativity, what will you create? Want more? Subscribe to the Modern Creative Woman digital magazine. It's absolutely free. Comes out once a month. I know you can get a lot out of the podcast, in the digital magazine, and when you're ready to take it to the next level, you have options inside the membership. And if you're interested in a private consultation, you can book a call with me. Even if you just have some questions, go ahead and book a call. My contact is in the show notes and you can always message me on Instagram. Do come join me in the Modern Creative Woman on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest at Doctor Amy Backos. If you like what you're hearing on the Modern Creative Woman podcast, I want to give you the scoop on how you can support the podcast. You could be an ambassador and share the podcast link with three of your friends. You could be a community supporter by leaving a five star review. If you think it's worth the five stars, and you can become a Gold Star supporter for as little as $3 a month. The link for that is in the show notes. You can grab your free copy of the 21 Day Gratitude Challenge. The link is in the show notes, or I'll email it to you when you subscribe to the digital magazine. Have a wonderful week and I cannot wait to talk with you in the next episod