The Art of Enough

Re-Remembered is a story about fathers and sons, baseball, and mental illness.  It is in the form of a one act play that describes how I used a creative, photographic process to reconnect with my estranged and long-deceased father.

This podcast is an appendix of the previous four podcasts, containing over 20 simple guidelines that can help you in your life, art practice or in some cases, both.   

 This podcast is in two sections: 

 Section 1 – Good Enough Guidelines – For anyone, whether you are an artist or not, who wants to slow down, stop being an overachiever, and enjoy the moment instead of always climbing the highest mountains mountains.  

Section 2 -  Creative Process Guidelines- For those who are interested in creative process and especially how it can facilitate psychological and emotional change. 

Note that this podcast has titled chapters that can be accessed through the podcast player you might to look at those first and jump to the places that most interest you.  

Tea with Demons explains how I use creative process to transcend the feeling of not being enough.  This podcast explains two steps:

1) making peace with negative, inner voices 

2) creating new, more empowering voices.     

This podcast features interviews with playwright and author, Jean Claude Van Itallie and therapist, Bob Szita and the work of self-help author, Tony Robbins.

In this podcast I detail another technique for accessing the subconscious and mining the wealth of memories  and emotions that reside there.   

Breathing.  Yes, breathing.  Featuring New York based voice, breath and Alexander Technique coach Jean McClelland and psychologist and author Dr. John Arden this episode details the art and science of using the breath to reduce anxiety, access the subconscious and increase creativity.  The breath and its relationship to the subconscious is the foundation of meditation, a tool of psychotherapy, and an integral part of the performing arts.

The subconscious is an important part any artistic and psychological practice because the conscious brain can only hold 6 or 7 pieces of information at one time whereas your subconscious brain holds a lifetime of memories, emotions and behaviors.   Accessing the subconscious increases self-knowledge and gives one more options for solving any given challenge. 

In the first podcast we explored how my adult feelings of not being enough started in childhood.   I explained that when I was a young child my father had a series of bipolar episodes that forced him to leave the house.   The five year old me thought it was my fault and it caused me to adopt a pattern of behavior that I naively thought would keep it from happening again --- namely my drive to be better, to do more, to climb the highest mountains. 

In this podcast.  we are going to explore awareness, specifically how I became aware, over the course of many years,  of the impact that my father’s mental illness had upon my life and it causing me to be a habitual mountain climber.   

I’ve followed many different paths to gaining awareness from reading books on neuroscience and attending Tony Robbins seminars to going to immersive 10 day transformational retreats to experiencing re-birthing and dance therapies to many many more.   In this podcast I’ll explain how several of these paths ---- mediation, psychotherapy, and art making --- all gave me meaningful insight into my mountain climbing addiction during The Art of Enough and led to positive emotional and psychological change.  

Are you a perfectionist in some area of your life?  Your parenting, your relationships, your art, where no matter how hard you try, no matter how much progress you make, it doesn’t feel enough?

Welcome to “The Art of Enough”, a podcast and art series that can help you understand the causes of feeling not enough and provide some guidance on how psychology, neuroscience and creative process can help you transcend this and other problematic emotions.

In this episode we hear how my compulsive drive to be more, to be better (what I call being a compulsive mountain climber or overachiever) started in childhood, primarily when my father had a series of bipolar episodes and had to leave the house.  Therapist Bob Szita explains how it is almost universal that a child blames themselves when a parent leaves the home.  Meditator and playwright Jean Claude Itallie explains how these types of controlling "demons" are instilled in childhood and live in our subconscious as adults.   Psychologist and Author Dr. John Arden details the neuroscience behind being addicted to any behavior --- which includes always climbing the highest mountains --- and how my father's bipolar disease most likely affected my art aesthetic.  Finally I describe a creative process of looking for daily "Small Surprises" as a way of curbing my need to always do more and enhance my ability to live life at a slower and more satisfying pace.