This blog is an invitation for creatives and performers to navigate their life with beauty, love, and grace! Now, I would like to elaborate on what it means to live with beauty, love, and grace. And, why this is the emotional space for creatives and performers…
When we live with beauty, love, and grace not only we have access to the best parts of who we are, we have an increased ability to use ourselves. We become emotionally whole, integrated, and in touch with ourselves. We are more open, alert, aware, and present. Therefore we tend to be more creative, more genuinely connected, and more effective in our performances. We handle frustrations, shortcomings, challenges from a place of strengths to build resilience, connections, and to grow through our challenges. And!, we are also more likely to naturally get into flow states. Creatives and performers know the value of the flow states! Because they understand what is possible in a flow state…
Now, If you are interested how beauty, love, and grace can get us in touch with the best parts of ourselves and how it creates flow states, please continue reading….
Beauty is a subjective, personal and interpersonal, private experience. Beauty comes in so many flavors to touch people in different ways – from music, paintings, movies, to science, and nature …to the beauty of a heartfelt smile. Beauty is everywhere! Beauty has an impact on us that we cannot deny or ignore. When something is beautiful to us, it touches us in ways we almost barely can put into words. When we feel it, we know! It makes us feel alive, connected, open, inspired… And much more!
Love, like beauty, is also a subjective, personal and interpersonal, and private experience. As with beauty, love comes in many flavors…romantic love, attachment and caring love, love for art or a science, love for the nature, love for our careers … love for life… Love is everywhere…and in all of us… We experience different flavors of love at different times. Like beauty, love has an impact on us! When we feel it, we know! We cannot deny it or ignore it! Love not only touches us and makes us feel alive, connected, open, inspired… it transforms us!
Grace, is a different story… Grace is how we move through our experiences. Grace is being and acting with elegance, refinement, dignity, finesse, poise, or honor! Through grace we distinguish ourselves from being ordinary to being extraordinary. Because every time we act with grace we become something more. We may not be able to choose what is beautiful to us or when we feel love; however, we can choose to act with grace – which is acting with dignity, elegance, or poise. While beauty and love is ignited from what we are (our biology, genetics, our experiences, our unconscious…) grace is a conscious experience we can choose.
Yes, we can choose to act with grace! Neuroscience supports the findings that when we act gracefully under life’s stress, pressure, difficult events, or challenges… we balance ourselves. Instead of allowing our unhealthy or less graceful parts to take over, we can consciously act collected, intentionally, with elegance or poise to our life challenges. This is how we have access to the best parts of ourselves. This is how we create flow or ‘in the zone” experiences. Because when we act with grace through our challenges, our right brain and left brain connect, our subcortical parts connect with our higher cortical brain parts, and our heart connects with our mind and body – all at the same time – we become whole, integrated, and in touch with ourselves… almost like a beautiful symphony… creating the very opportunities for beauty and love…through grace.
Have you ever experienced an ‘awe like feeling’ in a conflict that you responded with your best self? Have you ever experienced a good-warm feeling of being effective when you pushed through a challenge… Have you ever experienced being highly efficient in a stressful situation? If yes, these are all examples of you responding with grace to life challenges. This is how it feels to be whole, integrated, and aligned with your best parts. This what it’s possible when we live with beauty, love, and grace…
However, life is filled with events that challenge us! So how do we navigate life challenges through the best parts of who we are? Is that even possible or realistic? Well, it is not unusual, that our worst parts get triggered when we face challenging moments. We have unconscious blocks and defenses, blind spots, automatic response, learned self-defeating responses ready to take over in surprising ways and to trigger our worst parts.
And when our worst parts get triggered, beauty, love, and grace are out of the window! We get stuck in defensive modes, reactive responses, emotional pain, we isolate or retreat! We may not even be aware how these responses take over. We become unwhole, out of touch with ourselves and reality. I am sure you may recall being in this place, as we all do from time to time…
I am not sure about you, but I have to say, l would rather live with beauty, love, and grace! And I know being human may not always be easy. As my own challenges can trigger my worst parts, I would rather face them and let them be my opportunities…. Because, this is my gift to me and humanity… So, I am inviting you, creatives and performers, to do the same! Because, I do believe, this is the place to be for those whose life is about creating and performing… to touch and connect… and bring more beauty, love, and grace into the world!
Contact me to set up a free 15-20 minute consultation to see if psychotherapy can help you further your career and your personal life.
I am Mihaela Ivan Holtz, Doctor in Clinical Psychology. I help creatives and performers with emotional trauma, depression, anxiety, performance anxiety, creative blocks / creative issues, relationships, and addictions – to be and live their own best version. You can read more about Therapy for Creatives and Performers here.
