(Or When ‘No’ Becomes ‘Maybe’ and ‘Maybe’ Becomes ‘Yes!’)
Understanding what might be holding you back is the first step in any new endeavour. As we have touched on earlier in this book, one of the barriers to starting any new activity – a career change, a degree, a new business, craft or hobby – is the fear of failure, and worse, failing in front of others. If you have always dreamed of throwing a pot or making a Fair Isle jumper, but have held back because of self-doubt or a mistaken belief that you don’t have the talent, join the club. But the difference between failure and succeeding is having a go. And those who try are 100% more likely to succeed than those who never pick up their needles, book a pottery class, or apply for a new job.
‘Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.’
– Steve Jobs, entrepreneur, co-founder of Apple, inventor
These words from Steve Jobs are often quoted in motivational speeches and have lost none of their power in the repetition. While acknowledging we are focusing on a craft practice in the pursuit of well-being, rather than a radical life change, the point remains that a positive, open, can-do mindset is more likely to lead to new opportunities, as well as equip us with the tools to face challenges with confidence and courage. When we mute the insidious voice telling us, ‘you can’t do that, you’re not talented enough’, the obstacles in our way tend to become significantly more manageable. Fear of failure is no impediment to trying.
NEGATIVE EMOTIONS ARE PART AND PARCEL OF BEING HUMAN, BUT IT’S NOT ALL BAD.
Paradoxically, even negativity has its uses. It has been shown that negative experiences – fears, feelings or difficult events – have a greater impact on our psychological state than positive ones. This isn’t particularly surprising. When we have enough food to eat, and a roof over our heads, we don’t live in a state of constant gratitude. As long as we don’t have to worry about going hungry or being cold, we can simply adjust to our circumstances – even take them completely for granted. However, the memory of traumatic events or nagging fears and feelings of hurt, humiliation, resentment, jealousy can continue to colonise our thoughts long after.
The reason for this disparity is that our biological and psychological response to negative events is hardwired: fear of pain or danger helps to keep us out of harm’s way; bad news signals potential for disaster. While we are far less likely to face the hazards of our evolutionary ancestors, the body and the brain’s magnetic attraction to adverse stimuli is innate.
In other words, a little bit of psychological negativity is healthy and natural. But it should work for us, not against us. We want to be able to limit the impact of negative thoughts on our ability to move on and get on with our lives; to make good choices, dream a little and take chances.
Managing anxiety is one of the key benefits of a daily craft or well-being practice. Our craft practices have, unquestionably, helped us to manage stress and limit persistent, intrusive and unhelpful thoughts. It is not merely distraction, but rather an active engagement with a task that is completely absorbing and creatively stimulating which aids in resetting one’s perspective on how we deal with everyday crises.
Let’s look at how we can quieten those voices of insecurity.
THE PERFECTION PARADOX
Fear can kill success. That might sound like another clichéd statement, but it is worth deconstructing. What is at the root of our fear? Why might we turn away from opportunity? If we avoid taking up a new hobby, learning a new craft, engaging in exercise, then we have already decided the outcome. It might have been a failure, but we didn’t even give ourselves the chance to succeed.
One interesting theory about the fear of failure is that what we really fear is not getting it right the first time. In this book, we are not advocating that the craft practice you engage in or are already pursuing has perfection as its goal. We are trying out new skills: we hope you find one or two activities that resonate with you and go on to bring you pleasure. Admittedly, some crafts are trickier than others, but you may also find that the more fiddly aspects are themselves part of the appeal.
The first time you make a piece of work you are truly happy with, you are also looking at all the pieces you deemed failures. You persisted by correcting previous errors, improving and streamlining the process and you probably did all of this in a state of flow. If you enjoy your practice, the finished item is a display of contentment, commitment and perseverance.
Most of us have some fears about the future, but the greater our fear the more likely we are to procrastinate. Fear is an emotion that we can choose to engage with to a greater or lesser degree. If you’re reading this book, then you are ready to engage with a new chapter in your life, one that includes mindful practice. You may begin clumsily, fail to observe the instructions correctly, produce a piece of work you want to dispose of quickly (and maybe secretly!), but you have not failed: you have taken the first step on the road towards finding a mindful preoccupation.
Challenging certain negative assumptions we have held on to for as long as we’ve had memories is a profoundly empowering exercise. We may realise that doing one thing differently, whether in our work or our relationships, can make a huge impact on self-confidence and thus the faith that we have some control over our lives.
When she started bookbinding, Arzu saw only the flaws in her first notebooks – the covers that were askew, the uneven pages, the unsightly glue stains on the spines . . . But after a moment, her focus would shift and she saw not only the time it took to make the book but the mental application and patience that went into measuring, cutting, folding: the pleasure in making. Of course, we might set out to craft the perfect book, but the object in her hands, while not perfect by any means, reflects an investment of time and pleasure.
DEALING WITH SELF-DOUBT
‘Forget talent. It’s a meaningless concern. Maybe you have it, maybe you don’t, whatever. Don’t let this issue become an excuse for not trying what you dream of doing. What matters is valuing yourself and expanding what you can do.’
– Danny Gregory, The Creative License
If you have ever attempted a creative project or craft and felt you hadn’t mastered it as you had hoped (perhaps the project demanded greater manual dexterity, or the finished item wasn’t nearly as beautiful as your instructions promised), you may believe that craft is not for you. You might want to achieve a certain standard in your drawing, for example, and envy friends who effortlessly translate what they see in front of them onto the page with a few easy flourishes of their pen. They are naturally gifted, you assume, and by comparison you see your own efforts as clumsy, childish, embarrassing.
But we have yet to meet a single artist who believes that drawing is a talent you are born with. Quite the opposite: they all enthusiastically encourage continued effort. Keep going, they say, the more you draw, the better you will become and the more you will enjoy it.
We learn by trial and error. It is a cliché, but mistakes are an opportunity to improve.
At times, of course, we all experience frustration when our projects wander up the path of no return, but we don’t very often just give up. Rosemary has recently had issues with some pumpkins, for example. It started with a neighbour’s children helping to weed and dig in her front garden. Within days their friends took part, as did their friends’ friends, and soon the number of little helpers started to expand quite fast. Rosemary then had the bright idea of buying seeds, pots and compost to grow some pumpkins, of the Giant American variety, with the children. A mistake in an order of fresh horse manure meant that an articulated lorry delivered three pallets of best organic matter to her front door, taking up three parking spaces. And the pumpkin plants grew and grew and grew, taking over the front garden, the walls, spilling over on to the pavement. But not a single fruit grew to maturity.
The excess manure and the disappointing lack of monster pumpkins didn’t really matter though. What had been so joyful was the afternoons spent out there with a bunch of curious and wide-eyed local Jewish children all mucking in and delighting in the process of planting, tending and watering during those unusually blistering summer days of 2017. Undaunted, they took stock, composted the barren pumpkin vines, and then started again with some low-maintenance vegetable seeds. And have been chomping the harvest of rainbow chard all winter. It’s even survived the cold snap and Siberian snow. Sometimes you have to take a break or turn to a new idea. Rosemary and her team of junior gardeners are planning to sow some smaller pumpkins, tomatoes, basil, courgettes and some spinach in late spring, early summer.
Occasionally, we get stuck on a project because it involves a tricky step, stitch or techique that we are unfamiliar with and we need to turn to a book or YouTube for instructions. If we get really stuck, we might decide to ask for advice from others or take formal lessons to focus on improving or learning the skills which will make a difference to the work.
The destination is important, but the journey even more so, and we find that the finished piece takes care of itself once we are on the road.
‘My mum taught me how to knit as a child, but I never committed to learning the language of knitting so my skills remained very basic. When I think about it, I don’t think I ever finished a single project. Then, as it is now, my focus was on the therapeutic quality of the exercise, not the functionality. Similarly, it was always the journey that I found rewarding, not the outcome.’
– Jacqui Fink, extreme knitter, fibre artist
WABI-SABI – LEARNING TO LOVE IMPERFECTION
‘I used to be a very impatient person, working in a fast-paced industry in a state of constant urgency. Everything had to be controlled and precise. Ceramics has taught me to let go. I have become a more patient person, more careful and considered in my responses. My pots aren’t perfect. I’ve learned to enjoy the freedom in creativity. Pottery involves a lot of failure, but you have to learn to take it on the chin and the more you make, the more you learn and learn to let go of the mistakes. A lot of your work is left to chance, once your work is in the kiln, it’s also in the lap of the gods. I have learned to embrace the happy accidents.’
– Ranjit Dhaliwal, picture researcher, potter
As we’ve been at pains to point out, neither of us can lay any claim to being an expert crafter. We are self-taught and, while we’re conscientious makers, often the things we produce are far from perfect.
Of course, our intention to craft pleasing objects we can feel proud of is paramount – that’s part of the joy of learning new skills or evolving dormant ones and just generally challenging ourselves. It wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying to have low expectations or to do the bare minimum; that would very quickly guarantee a loss of interest as well as wasting time and resources. But part of our approach to making things is accepting the inevitability of, and being comfortable with, imperfection. Perhaps for us that’s the only way to embark on any endeavour.
Making something as well as we can and being ambitious, however, is satisfying. The care, concentration and focus and the time spent purposefully in the process is rewarding on so many levels. But part and parcel of our ‘craftfulness’ ethos, our tao of making, is being prepared for mistakes when they happen, to take a deep breath when all is not going to plan and to accept that veering off the path occasionally may lead to interesting avenues of creative diversion. And, crucially, to not give up or feel dispirited by blotches, blobs of glue and dropped stitches; but instead, to live with some irregularity and consider how these imperfect pieces reflect something of ourselves in their asymmetry. We’re not machines, after all.
Acceptance of imperfection and learning to appreciate beauty in the unevenness and sometimes very simple, rustic feel of our everyday craftworks is key to our wabi-sabi approach to craft and to making.
Wabi-sabi is a Japanese concept that originated in the customs and rituals of the Zen Tea Ceremony and the Tea Masters. Part aesthetic and part philosophy of life, wabi-sabi has an elusive definition and no exact equivalent translation in English. The best introduction to the idea is in Leonard Koren’s Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosphers, in which he writes; ‘Wabi-sabi in its fullest expression can be a way of life. At the very least, it is a particular type of beauty . . . of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. It is a beauty of things humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional.’
Sabi, Koren explains, is an ancient word dating to eighth-century Japan, derived from Chinese poetry, when its meaning was ‘to be desolate’; it then evolved to mean ‘taking pleasure in that which is old, faded and lonely’ and to describe the beauty of things that are worn, incomplete, imperfect and mismatched. Wabi, like sabi, is also an ancient word that originally meant ‘to apologise deeply, humbly’ and only later assumed the ‘poetically positive connotations’ of feeling lonesome and forlorn. The meanings of the words evolved to such a degree that they are today more or less interchangeable: wabi frequently meaning sabi, and vice versa.
Associated with Zen Buddhism, there are also spiritual and metaphysical aspects to wabi-sabi. And Koren suggests the term could even be called ‘the Zen of things’, as it exemplifies so much of Zen’s core spiritual–philosophical tenets.
Wabi-sabi is being comfortable with the passing of time and the impermanence of things and people and as Koren so beautifully puts it: ‘All comes to nothing in the end. Everything wears down. The planets and the stars, even intangibles like reputation, family heritage, historical memory, scientific theorems, mathematical proofs, great art and literature – all eventually fade into oblivion and nonexistence.’ In its acceptance of the inevitable, Koren says, wabi-sabi ‘forces us to contemplate our own impermanence, our mortality, stirs a bittersweet comfort since we know all existence shares the same fate.’
‘Even the failures that come off the wheel are not a waste of time or materials. With clay, up until the moment you decide to fire your piece, you can reclaim and reuse it. Growing up, God forbid you should attempt something that might not work. If you failed it would be a disaster, everything had to be a success. Clay reconstitutes and provides a learning experience, there isn’t waste. It doesn’t have to be permanent until you decide it has to be permanent, you don’t have to use lots of resources to then see it as a failure.’
– Clare Spindler, potter
The wabi-sabi aesthetic or way of life chimes with our craft ethos and the spirit of ‘craftfulness’ in several important ways. Primarily, in that it is about finding beauty and value in the imperfect and the very ordinary, wabi-sabi redefines beauty as a matter of perception: unassuming, modest, coarse objects, ugly things, if you like, become beautiful on deeper contemplation. Beauty, like happiness, and like creativity, is a state of mind – this is an incredibly comforting concept and guiding principle, when you think about it.
So, too, is the idea that irregular or old, used and worn items that are rusty, eroded, patched, glued or repaired are all the more beautiful and precious because of their imperfections. The glitches, tears, loose threads, holes, cracks, smears or dents on an object, along with marks of age and use, carry a memory of the hands of the people who made them; of those that have used, reused and repaired them; and of time’s ineluctable march.
‘I make functional pottery out of clay. I like the idea of it being used, the sense that someone will like the piece enough to take it home. It might be just another cereal bowl to you, but it was made by me. I like the thought of the constant presence of these handmade objects. The idea of making something beautiful and functional. The use of these objects is key, and the cracks and chips they accumulate along the way tells their story in the household.’
– Clare Spindler, potter
‘Craftfulness’ is not just about making new things, new objects from scratch. Careful and mindful consumption, the spirit of ‘make do and mend’, recycling and finding use and beauty in things that others might reject, discard, overlook are important principles, too.
Mending, darning, repairing and recycling are absolutely key to our way of thinking. As mass-market production has driven down the cost and value of everyday items, we have become used to discarding things that are no longer quite perfect and simply buying more new disposable things. We rarely take the time to fix anything anymore – it’s so easy to buy new with just one click. Learning how to darn a jumper or re-sew a seam or a hem might sound painstakingly laborious and irksome, but from experience, and as we will explore later, once mastered there is the reward of feeling intense satisfaction when a cherished wardrobe stalwart has been rescued by your own efforts.
Artist Celia Pym has turned darning into an art form. ‘I love seeing damage and holes. Making mending invisible doesn’t make sense for me: things happen, stuff changes, holes appear. Let the darning grow into the old bit so that the garment can be seen to change and age.’ The same applies for mending any household item – it takes a little bit of time and care, but with some sturdy glue or the wonder product that is Sugru, most things can be given a new lease of life. The loom building and weaving and visible mending projects featured in Part III will show every keen crafter how easy it is to make patches and creative darns for beloved and worn clothes.
Sometimes, old and threadbare garments are simply so damaged as to be beyond repair, or some, annoyingly, get ruined by accidents on the hot cycle in the washing machine, but they, too, can be repurposed; shrunken jumpers can be used in felting or as stuffing for cushions, toys and ragdolls. Threadbare sheets, children’s hand-me-downs or old shirts can be cut up and used in quilting and patching – or, as a last resort, used as rags for cleaning.
If a bowl or teacup is cracked or broken, the Japanese have another wabi-sabi tradition called Kintsugi (also called Kintsukuroi), in which the pieces are first glued back together, and ceramic gold paint applied over the fissure to create something unique and useful. And, if it is leaky, then use it to make a little indoor succulent garden, for example (see ‘Make a clay pinch pot’).
Making things more consciously has helped us to appreciate the cost of the beautiful things we see in shops or on Etsy – not just the price of the materials, but the human expenditure of labour, of skill and of time. Rosemary is now less inclined to buy mass-produced items that she doesn’t really need – in fact, she thinks there’s another side-effect to crafting in that it’s partially cured her shopaholic tendencies. Maybe it’s the upside of the mindful and meditative nature of knitting and pottery, but these days she has less want or need to boost her mood with small gifts to herself. She is too busy knitting socks, so spends less time idly looking at online shops or becoming fixated by the sales. Instead, she now gets weirdly excited by the prospect of an evening of Swiss darning!
‘Crafting for me is a tiny little action against mass consumption and mass production. If you feel like you can make your own things, you can realise your own creativity and power to make, rather than buy. It can also make you appreciate the work that does go into handcrafted things and feel more connected to objects around you.’
– Emma Smith, publisher, stained-glass designer
FIND YOUR INNER CHILD
You may believe you are not a creative person; maybe your previous attempts led nowhere and you became discouraged. Some level of effort is required to learn any new skill, and as we have seen in the digger rats’ experiment in Chapter Two, this can be hugely rewarding. While in the past, you may not have committed fully to learning the techniques required to reach a standard you are happy with, to be happier with your work, it is important to value the challenge of learning and improving. With craft activities, our heads and hands have to find a way of working together, which for many of us is easier said than done; patience more than skill is essential to achieve incremental progress. Sometimes, adopting the mindset of a child at play can unleash the courage to simply have a go. Picasso’s observation is key to understanding how our beliefs about our own abilities and talents should be challenged, ‘Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.’
As we saw in Chapter Four with Csikszentmihalyi’s flow study, as children, our creativity is encouraged and stimulated, but as we move up through education, there is less time for messy play, making ‘stuff’ and writing stories; we have fewer opportunities for expressing ourselves through arts and crafts. The freedom to indulge our imaginations is often curtailed by a parent’s academic expectations, the curriculum, pressures of exams, making a life plan or choosing a profession, but none of this should exclude the value of play.
Ken Robinson’s 2006 Ted Talk, ‘Do schools kill creativity?’ has been viewed online over 40 million times and seen by an estimated 350 million people in 160 countries, making it the most viewed Ted Talk of all time. His contention is that creativity is as important in education as literacy. As children, we aren’t scared to have a go at things, we take chances and don’t worry too much about being wrong. By the time we’re adults, however, we have lost that capacity and Robinson asks, how will we come up with anything original if we’re not prepared to be wrong? He says that schools are partly responsible for steering children away from subjects they enjoy which are unlikely to lead to a fruitful career; he believes that many brilliantly creative aspirations are stifled because they are undervalued in our education system. This is not to blame parents or teachers, but rather to look at the system which puts so much emphasis on academic achievement.
‘The message from my childhood was that we kids should be good at maths and science. My father was an engineer and my life was very much focused on the objective success which came from exams and tests. I learned to follow careful sets of instructions which in turn led to specific goals. Pottery has been a release from the expectation that everything has to be planned and thought through and even more the expectation that I have to be good at those things.’
– Clare Spindler, potter
GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION
Danny Gregory, author of The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to Be the Artist You Truly Are, believes that you can express yourself creatively if you give yourself permission and take some risks. Gregory’s views on creativity are stimulating. He argues that we all have a powerful creative energy and if we continually suppress it we risk narrowing our worldview, shutting ourselves off to new ideas and people.
Gregory suggests that waiting for the muse to arrive might take a very long time, and that getting into the mood to make comes from action, believing that once you put pen to paper you are most of the way to filling the page.
We can think of a million reasons not to engage with any well-being pursuit, but we also know that lacking faith in your own potential is an unrewarding experience, leaving us feeling low and depleted of energy. It is also habit forming and can spread to every area of our lives if we let it.
Sometimes taking the opposite view can surprise you in the best way. When you are feeling stuck, it can be helpful to consider new ways of resolving familiar or recurring problems. Some of us find positive thinking very easy; the natural inclination is to look for the upside in a bad situation or to use a bad experience as an opportunity. For others, it takes some work. The tools to help form new and better habits are all around us now, but we have to take that first step. And with that step comes momentum, leading to the second and third steps, and before long we are walking with confidence. This might sound clichéd and like a tiresome positive thinking slogan, but it is only our own initiative which determines how we approach the obstacles in our lives.
Julia Cameron, in The Artist’s Way: A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self, offers various and inspiring tools to help unlock your creative nature. She suggests there are many reasons why we don’t engage with our creative pursuits, such as the fear of what others will say or that creativity is a luxury. However, she believes that when we decide to quieten these voices and do what we love (or grow to love), we unlock potential. Negative beliefs, she asserts, are just that: beliefs, not facts.
You may have forgotten the skills you once mastered or feel too clumsy to take up embroidery or woodworking again. But it is important to remember there is no audience and no teacher to grade your work. You may judge your own work harshly, we’re only human after all, but that is no impediment to creativity. By deciding what you would like to do, by making the time to do it, you will feel a sense of achievement and experience the gratifying knowledge that you followed your heart and made something yourself.
There is joy in discovering the right craft pursuit for you and using your imagination to create the things you only dreamed about. To finish a craft project, you have to start a craft project. You have to pick up the pen, thread the needle and dust off your sewing machine. You must devote some time to a discipline, which will soon feel as natural a part of your life as watching TV!
By giving yourself permission to try, you are halfway to establishing a creative routine. In order to take up any new activity, you just need to believe that no one is holding you back.
BE PREPARED
In his book, Finding Your Zone, sports psychiatrist Michael Lardon describes his work with athletes to help them achieve their potential. He suggests some great techniques for athletes to get in the zone and achieve a flow state in their sport. Lardon’s work with athletes also provides valuable insights into how we all can build self-confidence and aim higher.
We have tailored his tips for embarking on a new project or learning a new craft:
Build on mastery experiences: pay close attention to the process and not necessarily the goal. It takes time and a keen focus to improve our skills. Dedication to process, while richly rewarding in itself, leads to projects you are proud to share with others. The more time you put into your practice, the more pride you feel when your project begins to resemble the image in your head, not to mention the pleasure gained from concentration and the flow state.
Apply vicarious learning: research your chosen craft project, and use examples and instructions from your reading or internet searches to inspire your own efforts. Join craft forums, ask questions, set up informal craft groups. Expanding your ambition is rewarding, not just for your craft, but also for your confidence and energetic engagement with others.
Find a model that inspires you: This is Colossal (www.thisiscolossal.com) is a wonderful website which inspires us daily with a plethora of intriguing art from around the world. While we might only attempt to incorporate a couple of ideas into our own work, poring over such beautifully crafted pieces has an overall impact on our perception of ourselves as makers. We feel part of the narrative. Visit galleries and museums, follow inspirational Instagram accounts, start a Pinterest board, treat yourself to a couple of new art magazines or inspiring illustrated craft manuals.
Believe in positive reinforcement: starting any new activity, whether learning a new language or taking up a sport or a craft activity, requires a degree of self-belief which only you can initiate. There are many reasons not to add another activity to your life – restrictions on your time, lack of belief in your abilities, the hurdle of starting from scratch – but these are what we call full stop thoughts. They shut down a conversation and negate opportunity.
Which pretty much sums up everything we’ve looked at so far.