There are many parts of our personalities that we would rather not deal with or let out at times.  For me these parts are like labels that I had pinned on during my teenage years, some have stuck to me ever since (I picture them as little pieces of paper, like name tags pinned to our clothes).  They are myths about my personality that I just figured were permanent or unshakable and I have a tendency to see these parts as "broken" or dysfunctional. 

I had a teacher in art school give me a little demonstration once about these "labels" that we ALL carry around sometimes unknowingly.  During a one-on-one interview this teacher asked me, "How tall are you?"  I was kind of surprised by the question and replied, "Five foot seven and three quarters, why?"  He looked intrigued and said, "How tall do you think I am?"  I immediately stood back and made a quick assessment, he had always struck me as a short person so I guessed, "five foot three".  He laughed and said "lets compare."  We stood back to back and measured.  "Just as I thought," he announced, "we're the same height."  I was stunned by my miscalculation.  He proceeded to tell me a story about how when he was a child he was always the short kid in school.  He carried this perception of himself all throughout his life, and continued to project himself as "short".  I had always been the tall, lanky kid in school having grown much before my classmates, to this day I project "tall" to others even while I am of average height.  We were both holding on to something about ourselves that no longer applied, something that we were taught was negative. 

The example demonstrated by my teacher gave me some great insight into our personal mythmaking.   For years I had been carrying a whole variety of other myths about myself that I thought were incredibly dysfunctional.  They had the effect of sabotaging my attempts at being a highly functional artist and person.   I really didn't like this feeling of being "broken", a belief that I feel was encouraged by many teachers during high school, (and by reading one too many psychology books during my formative years.)  A lot of psychology teaches us to search out our issues by exploring our past, identify them, and 'fix' them, implying that indeed we are broken.  The dark side of our personality should be "explored and remedied".   Which tends to dismiss that dark stuff as valuable.  Here's what I was extremely excited to discover...Your dark side is incredibly valuable in your creative endeavors.  Some of the things we have been taught are negative are actually our greatest strengths.  The key for me was in shifting my perception of them and starting to really USE THEM in my life and work.  We all have the power to reinvent our personal myths by transforming our perception of them. 
 
 

a formula for reinvention...

Embrace the "so called" bad stuff,  by shifting your perception of it.  Is there another way to view it?  What if you experienced this same trait in another person?  Would it be as negative?

Use it to your advantage, (let it become a part of your new myth).  Don't fix it, feature it.  Let it play a starring role in your creative life.  Go deeper into the "bad stuff".  
 

Here is my own example:

The dark stuff that became a large part of my myth (some were taken directly from teachers comments)...

messy
never finishes anything
naive
moody
procrastinator
short attention span
too serious

The shifted perceptions, new translations...

messy  -intensely creative, uses right brain techniques, I now encourage messiness at times.
never finishes anything  -through this belief I learned to create projects that were quick, this gave me a much better chance at finishing, i.e. instead of a novel write an essay.
naive  -trusting, one of my great gifts.  I now believe it is a source of good karma.
moody  -it is very common in highly creative people.  The soul needs some down time to recharge, I let it rest when I sense some cranky moments.  Mild depression is necessary in the creative process, let it happen, go deeper, retreat.
procrastinator  - I never limit my play time now, I never know when it will lead to my next big idea.  In fact it usually always leads to something wonderful.
short attention span  -again, I learned to "do it quickly".  This is accepting a part of my personality and using it to my advantage.  I get a lot more done when I take on small chunks.
too serious  -intense, passionate, trusting

A helpful analogy to use here might be that of some the more defensive martial arts.  In Tai Chi for example the when you are defending yourself you don't actually fight against your opponent, you use your opponent's own energy in their defeat (transforming their own weight and momentum from a negative to a postitive).  The effect is quite effortless.  When you allow your true nature to be a part of your life, and work with it instead of against it you create much less struggle.

The human psyche is so wonderfully complex.  This seems to me another example of how everything happens for a reason.  I can't begin to express how powerful I feel to know that some of the previously perceived "failures" in my personality are actually leading me into my greatest successes today.  I recently had an old high school friend say to me, "It's so great that you are doing so well now, remember how you never finished anything when you were in school?"  I just smiled to myself  knowing that this is my little secret.  I was never really an underachiever, maybe just a bit misunderstood. 
 

Keri Smith is a free-lance illustrator and native of Toronto.  A graduate of  O.C.A. she has a wide following of clients in North America and Japan.  She currently resides in a “magic” cottage in Flesherton, painting, illustrating, creating, writing, and living out loud.  Her first children's books, entitled Story in a Box have just been published by Chronicle Books.
 

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