Transforming Wellness: Leverage Your Mistakes

Welcome back to my page Cadre family hopping on here with this video today to talk about mistakes and talk about mistakes in light of artwork. Art is something that really connects with me, something that I've engaged in since I was young. In fact, over the weekend here, I was just looking at some old drawings and paintings that I made when I was younger. And it brings me back to this idea of what we set ourselves up with in terms of expectations. Before I get started, just want to say my name is Eric.

I'm a clinical mental health counselor here to provide some tools and resources for you to go along this mental health journey, wellness journey, with some new perspectives, ideas about how we can overcome barriers and truly grow in our lives. So today, what I'm talking about here is artwork and viewing the obstacles, the mistakes we make in our lives, the same way we can view it when we have a blank canvas. This painting right here I did a few years ago, and it always sticks out in my mind, because the way I started this painting, you would never have imagined that it would have turned out to be this.

I remember showing up and getting my materials out and looking at the canvas and putting first just a blank slate of paint. It's like, you know what? Let's just explore what's here. And through that, I started coming about these kind of swirly lines that was like, oh, that's interesting, but it needs some sort of subject matter. And so I started doing some different curves and things like that. And along the way, I had many different ideas of how this was going to turn out. And I can't tell you exactly what those were because it's a couple years ago now, but I remember being at different points and encountering disappointment, encountering worry about, oh, is this going to turn out how I thought it would?

And I be would even have to put it away for a couple of days because I would be a little bit too frustrated or too connected with an idea of what that canvas had to look like. And it wouldn't be until I'd come back a few days later, having let myself focus back on what I have, what's on there, and where the opportunity is that I was able to create what became one of my favorite paintings that I've done. The same thing is with our lives, right? We put a bunch of things out there with some expectations in mind, throw things on the canvas, and hope that it turns out exactly how we imagine it to be.

And often our emotional tension builds when we start to realize it's looking a little bit different. Than we initially wanted it to. If we don't give ourselves a moment to take a step back and recognize the opportunity in what is not expected, that we give ourselves a chance for growth and things turning into what we didn't initially anticipate them to be. And so let paintings, if you're an artist, be a reminder of that. If you're not an artist. This idea, this principle, this kind of natural flow to life, is found in almost every corner.

Can you find a place in your life where the mistakes that came up naturally on your journey contributed to the outcome, or what the process of your journey is looking like now? To look different and maybe even better than you imagined? And if not better, maybe you're at a place of obstacle. In other words, maybe you're at a place of opportunity to look at your canvas and see where those things are, see what you have to let go of in order to lean into what a different journey will look like. Thanks for joining me today on these weekly videos, and I'll see you again soon.