the art of self-observation
week six: life as a creative process
If you’re new here, paid subscribers receive Story Work exercises every Sunday night at 8 pm et. Story Work is the name of my new book which is forthcoming from Broadleaf in November 2025. The term describes my signature process of reflecting, reclaiming, and reimagining the stories of our lives. It involves looking at your life experiences as creative material that you have the power to shape. For the next eight weeks, our story work series is focused on life as a creative process.
look at yourself honestly and gently:
“The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.” - Pema Chödrön
I have a question for you.
Have you ever set an intention or goal and even aligned some action steps with it and as soon as you deviated from the plan, you made assumptions about your character and capabilities and gave up?
I have. Many, many times, I have.
I have made my dreams smaller. I have beat myself up for making mistakes. I have doubted my ability to be disciplined, my capacity to finish things, and the value of my gifts. None of these punishments brought me any closer to who I wanted to be or the live I wanted to live.
If you recognize this pattern in your life, this series is for you.
For the past few weeks, we have been walking through a different approach to setting goals. We have been setting soulful intentions and taking our time to understand what the different parts of ourselves need and want and why.
Here is what we’ve done so far:
Week One: Soulful Intentions - Instead of fixating on specific outcomes, soulful intentions focus on how we want to feel and the values we want to embody. Soulful intentions are about progress, not perfection. They allow you to adjust your expectations through life’s changes and evolutions. They allow us to incorporate habits that don’t just check off boxes but truly enrich our lives.
Week Two: The Deeper Why - If we want to align our actions with our soulful intentions, we need to integrate all parts of ourselves and consider their motivations. Getting clear on your why - and the different factors that affect it - will give you the courage and conviction to make choices and develop habits that align your parts to cooperate with your values.
Week Three: Creative Embodiment - Soulful intentions are not to be rushed. They are not to be determined by an intellectual strategy and then executed. They are seeds that need daily attention and nurturing in order to bloom. They need slow, devoted love. Soulful intentions need to inhabit our whole essence, not just our minds, but also our bodies.
Week Four: The Power of Vulnerability - We are all creative beings and our willingness to be vulnerable and honest about who we are fuels are creative callings. The action steps you choose to align with your intentions create ripple effects across all areas of your life. Are you ready for that? Are you ready for the soul-baring steps you will take as you follow your heart? By avoiding vulnerability, we suppress our creative power.
Week Five: The Power of Habit - Now that we have nurtured the energy of our intentions on the inside, it’s time to take action and give it shape on the outside. This is how we show Life that we are ready for what we are calling in. This involves establishing sustainable creative practices that nurture us mind, body, and soul. Having a trusted creative process — that is built on life-affirming habits — will give you the courage to act in alignment with your intentions and build a creatively fulfilling life.
Taking action is where so many of us get stuck. We either get stuck in our heads and don’t take action at all or we are too hard on ourselves when we don’t get immediate, perfect results. This week, we are going to learn how to take the pressure off.
Here is what I’ve learned as a recovering perfectionist.
Rejection is data. Failing to follow through is data. Lack of preparation is data. “Not feeling like it” is data. Everything that could go wrong—it is all data. Instead of giving yourself an F and then crawling away to feel bad about it, let’s become scientists and examine our data. We can think long-term instead of short-term and develop the attitude that everything is figureoutable.
Instead of self-denial, we can cultivate self-honesty.
Instead of self-criticism, we can cultivate self-compassion.
Instead of self-doubt, we can cultivate self-efficacy.
Self-efficacy is an individual's belief in their capacity to act in the ways necessary to reach specific goals. We foster this belief by observing our efforts and making adjustments instead of giving up when we don’t immediately get the outcome we want.