Self-Acceptance
I’ve always loved being creative and last week had the chance to be part of an on-line art class within a membership site. When I added the event to my calendar I had no idea what the class would be creating even though I had an inkling it had to do with self-love. I’ve been connected with the artist since the beginning of the year and have always been drawn to her artwork. We were instructed to come prepared with three sheets of paper, a pen or pencil and markers, colored pencils or crayons.
Our art instructor, Stephanie Chinn, began by asking the group to get creative and dig deep into the assignment. She also stated we were all artists even though we think we’re not. We can lose our artistic self-confidence when we start comparing ourselves to other’s abilities, and we step back from our creative yearnings. Art is subjective and the truth of the matter is people care more about the feeling it invokes and not the technique. Not only when consuming art but when creating it as well. We learned we’d be designing a self-acceptance tree.
She led a short meditation to center our minds and hearts, and wanted us to visualize writing ourselves a permission slip to let go of expectations. We’re already equipped with everything we needed to create a personal piece of art. We focused on where we were right then and gave ourselves credit for showing up.
The lesson started by asking the group to list five to seven things we’re currently working on to accept about ourselves or things we were already proud of having. I’ll admit, it was hard to get started, but I began with the list of items I’m critical about and need more work on accepting. Those words were much easier than the things I’m already celebrating.
As a prompt, you could ask yourself, what am I working against? Or what do I love about myself? In my experience, women find it’s easier to find flaws and more difficult to find the good. For me, one of my topics I’d like more acceptance on was my body image or another was my perfectionism. Then ask, what feelings do I want to experience after I’ve accepted these things? Or perhaps what do I keep hidden from myself I need to uncover?
Stephanie went on to teach, once we’d written five to seven items, to grab a blank sheet of paper and draw a tree, of any shape, or kind you connect with. If a tree didn’t resonate, draw anything that speaks to your individual creativity and heart. It’s your personal piece. Add the items to the drawing using your supplies.
I ended up using both the topics I wanted to create more acceptance on as well as the ones I’m proud of. I designated the elements I was working on accepting as pink hearts that weren’t quite ripe yet, and the ones I’m already celebrating as red hearts with green leaves that were ready to pick and available to me now. My goal was to eventually create a self-acceptance tree with all red hearts.
I encourage you to lean in, dig deep, draw intuitively, and use your beautiful self-expression to create your own personal story. Think about the feelings you want to attract into your life as it pertains to your items as a result of accepting them. I’d love to see your artwork or even learn about the items you selected for your one-of-a-kind tree of self-acceptance masterpiece.
xoxo…..Sheryl
PS…Thank you Stephanie for creating a memorable art and soul chat hour.
PSS…We also created a personal piece of artwork on the feelings and qualities we aspire to possess when we are our highest and best self, living our best life. I’ll leave that story for another day. Stay tuned.
To connect with Stephanie Chinn and her inspiring artwork.