Eric Maisel

Doing such tiny things would hardly guarantee that I’d turn out a masterpiece, but doing nothing would be a sure guarantee that I wouldn’t.

Take all the necessary precautions. But live intensely and dangerously.

You and I will both know that you’ve been writing your Nobel prize acceptance speech since you were nine. You and I will both know, though we don’t have to admit it to anyone, how absurdly large are our fantasies, appetites, and dreams. I know that about you and you know that about me. It’s one of the laws of our religion about which we have nothing to be embarrassed.

When you recognize these two important truths — that you can pay less attention to your moods and more attention to your intentions and that experiencing no mood or a neutral mood is perfectly acceptable — you rid yourself of a mind-set that keeps you primed for unhappiness.

It is not that the problems do not exist. But only an individual human being can answer them — and only for herself.

It is a grave mistake to make every unwanted aspect of life the symptom of a mental disorder.

That a chemical, an antidepressant, can change your mood in no way constitutes proof that you have a mental disorder called depression. All that it proves is that chemicals can have an effect on mood.

If we want to live authentically, then we are required to employ our existential intelligence.

If your personality stands in the way of your doing what you know needs to be done, you must upgrade your personality. If tradition stands in the way of your doing what needs to be done, you must break with tradition. If habit stands in the way of your doing what needs to be done, you create a new habit. If you know that you are required to take action, you must act.

Just because a thought may be true does not make it necessary. It is only useful if it is useful.

A time never comes when life is settled and anxiety is banished. This is true for life in general, and triply true for the creative life.

Get a clear picture in your mind of what it takes to create a real body of work. Such a body of work is not created piecemeal by doing a touch here and a dribble there; it is only accomplished when you pay attention to one project at a time, project after project.

Creating makes us anxious. There are countless reasons for this, so many reasons that if we laid them all out they would stretch from wherever you find yourself to the door of your studio. Open that door anyway.

Create a lifestyle that supports calmness. This is infinitely easier said than done. Nevertheless, you must start somewhere.

When your sense of who you are does not match your sense of who you ought to be, you experience anxiety. Become the person you long to see in the mirror, and match your reality to your vision of your authentic self.

Vow: I will create, even if doing so provokes anxiety and when it does, I will manage it through the use of the anxiety-management skills and techniques I am learning and practicing.

Creativity is the word we use for our desire to make use of our inner resources, employ our imagination, knit together our thoughts and feelings into beautiful things such as songs, quilts, or novels, and feel like the hero of our own story. It is the way we make manifest our potential, make use of our intelligence, and embrace what we love.