When you are an expansive musician and a curious soul, sometimes your energy can get lost in the ether.

To maintain a whole and healthy existence as an artist of any type, one has to master the art of balancing the inspired with the mundane, the sacred and the profane, the expansive nature of the soul with the containment fields of the body and individuated, ego-self.

You can think about this balance act as the art of self-containment. (This is especially for performers and extroverts).

So what are the skills and how do you practice them?

There is no ultimate way to achieve this balance, and no single set of behaviors, but here are seven creative practices for self-containment you can try:

1. Keep your own council
2. Channel your passions
3. Relax into the decisions you make by seeing the limitless opportunities available in each moment
4. Allow fear and despair to disperse before taking action
5. Work with life around you as it is (not as you think it should be)
6. Expand and specify
7. Laugh (especially at yourself)

Listen to this SOS podcast as JP takes a look back at the past four months of his life and the lessons he has mined from his adventures.

 

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