In my column a few months back about nonnegotiables, I talked about Julia Cameron’s concept from The Artist’s Way of the “artist date” — where you make a playdate with yourself to do something creatively enriching. I am following up with a whole column about it because this is a powerful spiritual tool. While she was suggesting it specifically for people in creative professions, it’s useful for everyone. So, I want you to make a weekly date with yourself to do something creatively stimulating.
I described it in the earlier column as, “a culturally enriching activity… two hours a week for a museum, show, hike in nature, stroll and dinner in a new neighborhood. Consider buying the subscription, not just individual tickets, to a local classical concert series.”
Dates with yourself can be spiritually useful in several ways. First is the obvious enrichment of whatever you are exposing yourself too, whether it be art or nature. We all can use more beauty in our lives. Much, though certainly not all, art touches the transcendent. It can be so easy to go from home to work to gym to home, dividing time between job and chores and people in our lives, looking after the maintenance of our bodies but not our souls, letting week after week go by without any creative activity.
If you need a little practical encouragement, consider this: whether you apply creativity directly in a job or not, exposing yourself to creativity can stimulate new thinking which can help with any kind of problem solving. This was the principle behind the liberal arts education, and it remains as valid today. The best project leaders, and not a few CEOs, are not MBAs or highly technically trained specialists, but rather, the leading students from liberal arts programs, who’ve read the Greek tragedies and Shakespeare, learned foreign languages and studied philosophy.
… Continue reading What Works: Solo playdates
