Be Kind to Yourself
How often do we get frustrated, angry, irritated, impatient with ourselves? More often than we’d like to admit, right? Most of us are raised to be kind to others, but does others include ourselves? Our next watercolor wisdom - lessons I’ve learned through watercolor that can be applied to life – is…
Be kind to yourself…
“I promise to be kind to myself.” This is part of the oath recited in each watercolor painting tutorial by Sarah Cray, a watercolor artist and teacher at Let’s Make Art. Kindness matters, right? Yes! It does. But it’s hard, especially being kind to that person in the mirror.
As an artist, it’s easy and tempting to compare ourselves and our work with other artists. There is no advantage to comparison… sometimes it might make us feel better but most of the time we feel less than as if we don’t measure up and aren’t good enough. And that leads to imposter syndrome. It’s a vicious cycle. We also can get frustrated when we paint and we aren’t seeing the results we envisioned. Again, we get irritated and angry with ourselves and feel we aren’t good enough.
But painting as with any creative outlet is a process… a journey… an experience… an experiment. And it doesn’t always go as we’d like. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t good enough. It might mean we aren’t in the best headspace at the time, or we need to practice a technique a bit more, or we just need to try again. We need to understand that every attempt won’t produce the desired result. Every attempt is just that… an attempt. It’s an opportunity to create… to enjoy the process… to lose track of time… to experience the joy of the water and pigment and paper. What’s most important is to make the attempt and to love ourselves… to be kind to ourselves… as we do so.
In life, it’s the exact same situation. Things aren’t going to go as we’d like all of the time. We might not make the grade we desired or treat someone as we know we should or have the body type we’d like or use the best words to express ourselves or be patient with someone else. But getting angry and frustrated and irritated at ourselves isn’t going to help. As long as we keep trying… keep pushing forward… keep making the attempt, we’ll be ok. And we’ll learn and grow with each attempt. So giving ourselves a little kindness and understanding, just as we should with everyone around us, will make our world a better place.
So look in the mirror, my friends, and say words of affirmation and kindness to the person looking back. “You are enough.” “You are beautiful.” “You are greatly loved.” “That was a great attempt; let’s try again.” “You’ve got this.” “You are strong and courageous.” “You are kind.”