This presentation is based on my own experience.

At various times in my life I have found myself frozen, afraid or unable to advance. Whether the issue was the inability to be creative, fear and anxiety about my place

in the world, or more existential issues such as the meaning of life, what I have learned is that forward movement in any one of these areas

applies to the others as well.

Working to develop a “cognitive life raft,” as it has been called, I have learned that positive psychology, leadership development and other evidence-based humanistic

disciplines offer many important lessons to build upon.

During the course of the past year, I have self-published a book, Drawn from Life, and created a website that contains artwork and writing on this and related areas.

This talk is drawn from the book, and illustrated by my own artwork.

www.walterwwright.com

“who am I?”

“Who am I?” is the primary question that we must confront at different phases of our life, as we seek to “know and be known.”

For me, taking on the challenge in learning to see myself accurately is in many ways parallel to learning to draw. Earlier this year, as I

simultaneously began work on my book and the study of Positive Psychology under Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, I was struck by the common

lessons in both: developing a more internally-based motivation and locus of control; engaging in activities which build on the experience of

"flow;" overcoming inertia by developing creative routines; and associating myself with other creative and positive people for mutual

support and accountability.

“We are not one but many selves” Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity

“We are not one self but many selves.” Dr. Herminia Ibarra, in her book Working Identity: unconventional strategies for reinventing your career, postulates that much of what we do in the service of

career or self-awareness is fundamentally flawed – instead of there being one, inner “true self” that we find only in reflection, she asserts that we truly discover ourselves by “trying on” many

different possible selves. We can’t know if we have leadership ability, for example, until we’ve tasted the experience. Similarly,

we don’t truly know if we have the ability to be a creative person, to teach, or to parent, until we have had the opportunity

to engage in these unique experiences.

“Doing comes first, and knowing, second.”

As a child, I loved to draw. Like many people whose preferred mode is drawing, I am highly visual (and maybe dyslexic); my strength in

the visual cortex, may be at the expense of other skills. Reading and math were difficult for me, and school was often confusing, and

therefore, boring.

But I was never bored when I could draw, and I did so at every opportunity. Perhaps obsessively.

“breakthrough”

Everyone who learns to draw passes through sequential developmental stages – first there is scribbling. Then, the scribbles are organized into shapes. Finally, symbolic drawing emerges – resulting in stick figures, circles and lines that mean “this is a person.” Very few

children, even adults, progress to the next level, that of being able to see and draw accurately. Learning this skill necessitates “unlearning” the symbolic way of seeing and

drawing, and “re-learning” to observe edges, shapes and relationships in space – seeing and drawing the “contours” of what is before your eyes.

So - when I was about 7 or 8, during a visit to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s famous Armor Court, I experienced a breakthrough. As I stared intently at a helmet on display,

the contours of the form suddenly seemed to “pop out” from the background. This made it easy for me to see the relationships of the parts in space, as a three-dimensional object.

Can you see that visor of the helmet is turned at a slight angle? This results in a non-symmetrical shape that can be confusing to draw. Through this spontaneous experience,

what had seemed impossible suddenly became more conceptually concrete, and therefore, easy.

Also, during the time I was drawing, there was a shift in my consciousness that was almost trancelike and magical. I had experienced “flow.” But I had no idea how I entered this

state, nor how to re-create it. Hoping for this “feeling” to come upon me, I drew more and more, with increasing ability and public recognition.

“Walter Wright – a first-grader who likes art, most of the time…”

In first grade, my teacher presented a one-man show of my work, with a banner that said:

“Walter Wright, a first-grader who likes art most of the time…”

When I was in the right state of mind, art was magical. However, if I couldn’t “feel” it, and could not access this new conscious state, I could

not do it; and I would become frustrated. So I experienced both the danger of “easy success,” and the disaster of the “creative block.”

Or, as psychologist Alfred Bandura said:

“If people experience only easy successes, they come to expect quick results, and are easily discouraged by failure.”

“you look at me but do not see me”

As I entered my teen years, I became alienated.

My family experienced trauma, divorce and dysfunction, and I become socially withdrawn, secretive, and unhappy.

My reliance on being thought to be “artistic” became a trap, a self-esteem drug that I was dependant upon.

Since being an artist was better than being a weirdo (which I secretly suspected I might be), the identity “the artist” become part of the

protective image I created for others. My attempt to compensate for a lack of confidence in other areas – social, athletic, and emotional –

became a trap. It became false, and ultimately, I lost the thing I cherished most – my ability to draw. As I focused more and more on

what I thought others might be thinking of me, I became less and less able to access

my inner experience.

I became blocked - frozen, closed off, unable to access my inner self or even connect with others.

“pain”

This caused pain.

I thought I had carefully protected myself with my elaborate image-making. Ironically, the more self-protected and false I became, the

more pain I experienced. I experienced depression, anxiety and unhappiness.

But, as Kahlil Gibran said:

“When I weep, it carves out a deep well within for joy.“

When at last I began to be able to experience my emotions, working through my difficulties, I began to re-experience authentic joy. But it

didn’t come overnight.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – Lao Tzu

“By far the biggest mistake people make when trying to change…is to delay taking the first step until they have settled on a destination.”

Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity

The thing that I needed, most of all, was to simply get started.

Alfred Bandura, in developing his theory of self-efficacy, noted that “one route to depression is through unfulfilled aspiration.”

But he also said, “the most effective way of creating a strong sense of efficacy is through mastery experiences…a resilient sense of efficacy

requires experience in overcoming obstacles through perseverant effort. Some setbacks and difficulties in human pursuits serve a useful

purpose in teaching that success usually requires sustained effort.”

Since I had experienced both easy success, and later difficulty with being creative, I decided that re-learning to draw was an essential part of restoring my personal integrity. Perhaps it was symbolic too of the

deep regret and longing for something that I knew, deep inside, I could do. Like so many other aspects of our personality, every part is

related to the whole.

Adaptive Challenges

I needed to learn to be both disciplined, and relaxed – to learn to enjoy a challenge, and not become overwhelmed and give up.

Ronald Heifitz, a leading theorist in organizational change and leadership, has postulated that there are two kinds of challenges – technical, and adaptive.

Technical challenges respond to technical solutions. A nail simply needs a hammer. Adaptive challenges require grappling with difficult and emotional issues, and

require systemic changes in the way we both see and do things.

The key to confronting an adaptive challenge is to stay in the area of learning, just on the other side of the comfort zone of work avoidance, just at the limit of your

tolerance, where you become overwhelmed.

My challenge in re-learning to draw, was to regularly set myself stretch goals, but to also allow for release before I became overwhelmed. Establishing rituals and routines was a key part of accomplishing this – so I began setting times to draw,

maybe sharpening pencils, even just sitting quietly at the chosen time. Even if I did nothing else. But more often than not, I would draw.

Previously, I had generally depended on the magic of “inspiration,” which often never arrives.

“Flow”

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi became interested in the experience of artists, musicians, and athletes, who often referred to their preferred

state of heightened focus, loss of self in the activity, even rapture, as “flow.”

As Csikszentmihalyi noted,

“the best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult

and worthwhile.”

Follow each shape, edge to edge. Look at each part, how it

interlocks with adjacent parts, like a big jigsaw puzzle.

By focusing, in turn, on each part, the whole emerges, and you learn

a new way to see.

Developing a mindful way to experience seeing, enables you

learn to control your own perceptual process - how fast you

see, and what you focus on.

It is a new way of seeing; a new way of experiencing the world.

It is a form of meditation, and of experiencing “flow.”

Early on in re-learning to draw I discovered a book that had a powerful effect on me, as it helped me to re-experience and understand my

early success with drawing the helmet.

Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain devotes much of its method to the discipline of “contour line drawing” – systematically

and mindfully focusing on edges and shapes as they interlock, one piece to the next. Learning to draw in the manner creates a shift in

perception – shapes seem to “pop out,” and during the experience of flow, it becomes easy to see and draw them. Instead of drawing stick

figures and happy faces, it is possible to draw objects as they actually appear.

I now understood the mode of seeing and drawing I had inadvertently stumbled upon when I drew my helmet in the art museum. This was

powerful!

“Joy”

“Who am I to be brilliant, talented? Who am I not to be? – Marianne Williamson.

One of the hallmarks of the experience of flow is a feeling of joy.

Ironically, this grows out of a deep focus on nothing but the activity itself, and a loss of the sense of self. It is a deep kind of joy that is hard to describe

afterward, since it is so tied to the experience itself, to the moment.

Conversely, focus on the whole – see the gesture of the movement, the thrust of movement in space. Draw quickly, without over-thinking. Experience the movement in your own body, and

mirror the movement in your drawing.

Once able to enter the flow state, and successful at contour line drawing, the next step is to capture the essence of movement in

space in quick “gesture” drawings of two minutes or less.

Art students who have taken a Life Drawing class will be familiar with this as the warm-up – the model takes a series of quick two-minute poses for the first fifteen minutes of the class. In some ways, this is

the opposite of contour line drawing – now, instead of slowly focusing on what you are drawing part-by-part, you are trying to

experience the whole Gestalt of the gesture – employing the “mirror neurons” of your brain, which are firing in sympathy with movement

of the model, as if you, yourself, were taking the pose. And now draw that.

I believe learning this skill reinforces the ability to be empathetic in other ways.

Be open to emotion. Look for it, feel it flow through you – feel as well as

observe.

Be aware of micro-expressions that flit for a moment across a person’s

face, almost too quickly for you to be aware of them.

Learn to observe emotions as they come and go; you are not your

feelings. There is always an observer who is watching what happens.

Attempting to capture the “essence” of a person in portrait means learning to see (and feel)

their emotional state in order to better capture this on paper.

Again, mirror neurons help you to gain empathy as you observe others.

And for me, becoming more open to others created increasing openness in myself.

“Wonder”

As I became better able to draw – to experience flow, to see the part and the whole, the movement, gesture and emotion – I became a more open

person.

I could witness my own success.

I began to see the beauty in others, and in myself. I became better at “seeing” reality, and aware that what I “think I see”

may not be true at all.

I also learned that emotions are momentary, and may not define me, or others. There is a central tenant in Eastern thought, “you are not your

emotions.” Learning to observe, objectively, as an artist, also enhanced my ability to observe my own feelings and thoughts more objectively,

as temporary artifacts.

Over time, happiness replaced depression, and openness replaced fear.

“Another aspect of this component is being aware of one’s inherent polarities, or, as Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman (1951/1965) put it, being

aware of both “figure” and “ground” in one’s personality aspects.”

Does learning to draw, or mastering any other demanding, flow-centered activity make you a better person? Is it automatic? No, I don’t think so.

There are many talented artists, musicians and athletes who are not happy, who are not kind. Perhaps some people are only able to be their “best

selves” when they are in the “doing” part, and the rest of their lives are disconnected. But I do believe that an intentional approach to mastering

difficult skills can increase one’s personal sense of mastery and efficacy.

Done well, I think these can also lead to increasing awareness of healthier approaches to life. As Michael Kernis put it, in Toward a

Conceptualization of Optimal Self-Esteem:

“I propose that authenticity as an individual difference construct may be particularly important in delineating the adaptive features of optimal self-esteem. Authenticity can be characterized as reflecting the unobstructed

operation of one’s true, or core, self in one’s daily enterprise. As I describe, authenticity has at least four discriminable components: awareness,

unbiased processing, action, and relational orientation.”

Inspirational Quotes

“Who am I to be brilliant, talented? Who am I not to be? – Marianne Williamson

“The most personal is most general” – Carl Rogers

“I am the text” – Unknown

Seek to “know and be known,” – David Schnarch

“When I weep, it carves out a deep well within for joy, “ – Kahlil Gibran.

And Notes from Tal’s Lectures

“Integrity means integrating “what I say” with “what I doBeing a leader means “being yourself” …there’s no one type of leader:

Author/Authority/Authenticity all have the same root

This presentation was developed as part of the requirements for the completion of a Certificate in Positive Psychology with Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar,

the Wholebeing Institute, and the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health.

My thanks to all of the individuals and institutions who have developed this program collectively, and to all of the individuals who were in my cohort, especially my friends Amy, Rose, Andrea, Bonnie, and Nani;

and our advisor, Jane Anderson.

During the course of this year, I have self-published a book, Drawn from Life, and created a website that contains artwork and writing

on this and related areas.

This final presentation builds on the ideas in the book and website, citing relevant research materials that may help point the listener

towards their own practical engagement with overcoming limitations.

To access the book, other art and writing, or to contact me, please visit:

www.walterwwright.com

So, what’s next?

I’m thinking music. That’s me and my friend Steve at our first, and so far only, public performance.

I’ve actually devoted a lot of time to this over the past few years, and I find it very rewarding and complementary to the process of making art. However, it

has its own skills and vocabulary, and I am progressing slowly.

Much more slowly than I would have thought when I bought my first guitar, 20-plus years ago.

But it is definitely the journey, not the destination, that matters for me.

Bibliography

Bandura, A. (1994). Self-efficacy. In V. S. Ramachaudran (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human behavior (Vol. 4, pp. 71-81). New York: Academic Press. (Reprinted in H. Friedman [Ed.], Encyclopedia of mental health. San Diego: Academic Press, 1998).

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, (1990, Harper & Row).

Edwards, Betty. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: A Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence. (1979, Tarcher). Heifitz, Ronald A., and Laurie, Donald C., Mobilizing Adaptive Work: Beyond Visionary Leadership. (Reprinted by Wiley and Son, 1998).

Ibarra, Herminia (2003).Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career (pp. 1,2, 16, 94). (Harvard Business School Press, 2003).

Kernis, Michael H. Toward a Conceptualization of Optimal Self-Esteem. (Psychological Inquiry 2003, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1–26)

Lyubomirsky , Sonja. Pursuing Happiness: The Architecture of Sustainable Change. Review of General Psychology Copyright 2005 by the Educational Publishing Foundation (2005, Vol. 9, No. 2, 111–131)