On Becoming an Artist: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity

Forget everything you thought was required about becoming an artist. In this provocative book, On Becoming an Artist: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity, Langer invites the reader to question their preconceived ideas of what it takes to be an artist. She espouses that the reader throw out the rules and the fear along with it. The first step to becoming an artist is to just begin! Creating any new work of art whether it’s writing, painting, poetry or making music will never be created if you don’t put yourself out there. There are no pre-conceived rules or requirements required to create art. When we follow the “rules” it becomes a mindless activity with a lack of passion and rigor. Instead, she offers research to substantiate a mindful approach to creating - one in which there are no rules. The exploration of one’s passions and perceptions allows one to be in the flow while being mindful of one’s creation. “If we are mindfully creative the circumstances of the moment will tell us what to do.” (p.98)Oftentimes, we get caught up in the fear that we’ll make mistakes or that the artwork we create will be judged negatively by our peers if we don’t create the perfect work of art. As Theodore Roosevelt once said: “Comparison is the thief of joy.” There is an opportunity to create new life experiences for ourselves by allowing the creativity to flow through us to express itself as a mindful and joyous act. Release the fear, the comparison to others, any and all roadblocks, and the belief that there are rules in the art of the creative. Embrace the not-knowing and allow it to guide you step by-step through a mindful and authentic self-expressive approach. When we become mindful of the creative that wants to unfold within us, by following these simple techniques, we become artists. Trust the process, but most importantly be in your JOY as you create your next masterpiece.

The Magnificent Maiden of MindfulnessFrankly, I've now read all of Ellen Langer's books - intentionally - not due to a college curriculum requirement or anything like that. I chose to. Well, almost chose to. After reading her first book, one is inhabited by a thirst for more. For me, Harvard's Ellen J. Langer is unequivocally The Magnificent Maiden of Mindfulness.This book is densely populated by the insights of one who has spent a lifetime exploring (social research) this topic, and applying these same principles to her own life - a rarity in and of itself. As expressed in the Introduction to this book, this is why I read Ellen Langer:"Mindlessness, instead, typically comes about by default, not design. When we live our lives mindlessly, we don't see, hear, taste, or experience much of what might turn lives verging on boredom into lives that are rich and exciting." P.xviiThis particular book shares her personal journey in becoming curious and interested to being recognized as a renowned painter. I loved it.Langer discusses the topics of refraining from judgment, comparing ourselves to others, that the creative pursuits are available to all, experimenting, making mistakes and going public - for the joy of it.A few particularly poignant gems for me, included the following:"Many of the limits we impose on ourselves are illusory." (p.165).We think of uncertainty as a problem to be overcome, and our desire for certainty may be what leads us to accept prepackaged choices rather than deal with an unbounded set of possibilities. (p.223)."Painting by numbers, literally and figuratively, where there is a rigid expectation that things will be a certain way, is not likely to advance the individual or the culture." (p.97).The capacity for creativity is resident within each and every life. It takes a book like this to move one from thinking about that to doing something about it.An amazing book - Period!

To start with, I am a big fan of Ellen Langer and her work, including both research and writing and so know that this isn't her best book and I highly recommend her other works. As she stated, On Becoming an Artist was written more for her and her personal thoughts and was less based on research than her previous works. Because of this, it lacked the strength of her other writings, but gained a lot more personality. She has a lot of great things to say, and so even though this isn't a masterpiece, it is definitely worth the read.This book is about finding yourself and becoming who you really want to be, but not judging yourself based on others. Ellen accomplishes this by sharing her own experience at becoming an artist. Therefore it's more anecdotal and for the most part that adds to the work. And while she can seem to say the same thing over and over, her style prevents it from becoming redundant and instead is a way to show something complicated from different angles so that we understand.It is a very easy read and I was definitely inspired reading it. It is a varied view on what can seem like common advice and in that she creates a useful work.

Ellen Langer provides another route to understanding and doing mindfulness, meditation not essential, just trying to comprehend the, to me, difficult ideas and rational processes and implement the suggestions. This all against a background of her attempts to oil paint, and now I'm having a go too. Very difficult to summarise the messages in this lovely book that deals with the detailed nitty gritty of everyday lack of attention and the easy route of automatic thinking and the possibilities of attending in different ways, looking for differences you don't expect and similarities you don't expect either, looking at the spaces between things I guess attending to the ground as well as the figure. Well worth reading and it will draw you to all her other books, if only to try and fully understand the subtleties of her message.

Read her book "Mindfulness" and thought I couldn't be more impressed. I was wrong this is even better and comes at the same subject from a different angle. Even if you have no intention of becoming an artist it's worth the read.

A great book, mostly aimed at those who don't yet paint but after 20 years as an illustrator it was great to be reminded of the pleasure creating mindfully can bring! :)

A bit late delivery, awesome book!

I purchased this book in the hope that it would give me pointers to rediscovering the creativity I possessed in my earlier days. There were the occasional gems of wisdom (which seemed to boil down to not worrying about what others thought of your work, and learning not to be negatively critical of your own work) but these were padded out with many self promotional anecdotes about research done by the author, and references to mindfulness which were not explored nor explained adequately. Presumably you will need to buy the authors books on mindfulness to get the full story. I will probably re read this book again in the future but on the first go it was a frustrating and rather irritating read.