Part 1 - How To Draw And Be Happy

You might think it's hard to get hurt sitting in a room moving a pen around, but the reality is, many people do, some worse than others. I had to completely stop drawing for 3-4 weeks after a period of intensive working left my hands shaking from pain.

That's just the physical aspect, there is plenty of mental stress to go around being an artist too, that's because artists are, you guessed it, human beings. Human beings are squishy on the inside, that's just how we are.

“So what's the problem?” you ask. Just use better posture, do some stretching, take more coffee breaks and take up yoga, problem solved, right? Well, these can all be good solutions, if they’re adopted at the right time, but how does one know when and which to adopt? That’s the real question. When I went to investigate it, the answer turned out to be a kind of bad news, good news situation.

The bad news is, there are some physical pains to be expected when you're an artist. Stiff joints, sore neck and back, pain in the hands and wrists, all are common issues artists and computer users encounter. When you don't pay attention to these seemingly trivial things, they can develop into more serious conditions that might keep you away from your favorite hobby or your livelihood for a long time.

Another bad news is, there are some mental pains to be expected when you're an artist, or are just a human being. It can feel painful when your skills are not what you think they should be, when a drawing is not turning out the way you want; it can feel painful when people don't react to you how you would like them to; it can be painful to see someone else who's better than you, or younger than you, or whatever than you. These can, in the long run develop into anxiety, doubt, or other forms of emotional issues which in turn can lead to harmful habits in an attempt to cope.

The good news is, there is a common answer to both these problems, since they’re both forms of pain, one physical and the other mental. We need to find out what is the source of pain. Is it something out there or something in ourselves?

The common-sense answer, the one usually assumed by default, is that pain comes from out there. When I hear people talking about issues of health and happiness, the answer is usually in changing one’s tools, posture, work schedule, job or client, or friends and companions. It's assumed that something out there is the cause of my problems, and if I can just fix that, then I’ll be content.
The problem with depending upon things outside of ourselves to be happy is, we have no control over them and they keep changing.

Fads in fitness come and go, software and tools evolving rapidly, popular styles and subjects shift, and how people react are least predictable of all. Chasing after these can make you feel like a hamster in a wheel.

“How can I change the way I react to things so that I can be happy?” is the question I don’t hear, yet it’s the one that leads to the answer. How do I know this? By doing the wrong thing so many times and going through so much pain that the only thing left to do was the alternative.

The wrong thing I did was trying to:

First make something “good”, and then allow myself to be happy having earned it..

When I turned that approach on its head, it became:

First allow myself to be happy, then make things driven by joy.

The difference was dramatic, and the truth it revealed about the source of pain was eye opening
.
What I learned was this:

When your mind has dissatisfaction in it, it reacts to external phenomena by chasing after the things it wants, and pushing away the things it doesn’t. This mental grasping creates tension and pain in the mind. It’s painful to not get what one wants, or to lose what one has. It’s painful to get what one doesn’t want, or to be stuck with what one dislikes. Tension in the mind creates tension in the body, resulting in physical injury over time, and in negative mindsets and harmful habits designed to cope with the stress. These in turn feed back into the dissatisfaction, and reinforce the reactionary behavior that started the whole cycle.

What we can do to reverse this situation is to find the weak link in it, which is the physical tension, and do the opposite of what we usually do, which is to relax that tension.
When we do that, we use the causal link between the mind and body to release the tension in the mind, and in the process stop the emotional chain reaction that is the result of a lifelong habit, and the real source of our troubles.

How does that work? Here is an example to show you:

Sit back, close your eyes and relax for a while.
Observe your mental state.

Now pull up the corners of your mouth, make a smiling face and stay smiling for a while.
Observe your new mental state.

Chances are you felt a little bit happier, a little lighter, more uplifted.

How did that happen?

Despite being called the most sophisticated thing in the universe by scientists, our brains are remarkably...simple in some ways. When your brain looks at your mouth and see that the corners are lifted, it'll go “hmm, the corners of my mouth are up, well I guess I’m happy then.”
And whether you’re happy or not at the moment, the brain will go and produce all the necessary neuro-chemicals to make you happy, because you decided to smile.
This is the two directional causal link between the mind and body.
You can smile because your mind is happy, or you can become happy by smiling.
Similarly, when the mind is tense, the body is tense. When you relax the body, you relax the mind.

Now we just apply this property of the two directional causal link to the cycle of emotional reaction and stress. Every time your mind emotionally reacts to a sensation, be it physical or mental, tension and tightness arises in your mind and in your head. The habitual tendencies we generally have is to start thinking about these sensations, by wishing them to be this way or that, by theorizing, story-telling, justifying or criticizing in some way. But trying to control feelings with thoughts is like trying to put out a fire by throwing dry timber on it, it just ends up feeding that reaction with your attention, making it worse. If you notice the tension and tightness, then simply relax the tension in your head, then just like with the smiling, your mind relaxes as well. We’re using the body to influence the mind. We let go of the mental tension by letting go of the physical tension. This weakens the existing habit that causes our stress to build up. Then immediately after relaxing, we smile, this builds up a new habit, the habit of being happy.

We didn’t just pick the example of smiling by accident, smiling is one of the most simple, most powerful tools for happiness and well-being there is, and it's right there under our noses.

Scientists have found it to have a wide range of benefits like: triggering dopamine release, which is responsible for motivation and creativity, promoting relaxation and heart health, improving memory, strengthening the immune system, increasing lifespan and satisfaction, making you look more attractive, helping others be happier, and it doesn't even matter whether the smile is genuine or not.

That's all we need to build up a mental technique we can use to draw and be happy, the “Relax, Smile, Draw” or RSD.

It goes like this:
Before you start drawing, you

1. Relax
Relax any tensions in your body, especially in your head, face and neck.
2. Smile
It doesn’t matter what your mood is, or whether you feel like it, you can paint it on
Your brain won’t know the difference.
Recalling a happy memory can make it easier.
3. Draw
Be aware of this happy feeling and the smile on your face as you draw.
Sooner or later you’ll notice that the smile has faded away, the happy feeling is gone, and there is tension and tightness in your head, accompanied by thoughts. These are the sure signs that your mind is having an emotional habitual reaction.
4. Repeat
Go back to step 1, relax that tension and tightness in your head, smile again, then go back to the drawing while feeling the smile.

That's the RSD technique in a nutshell: When there's tension, relax and smile. It looks so simple, and may feel a bit awkward at first but the benefits of it are profound and long lasting after you get over the initial bump.

Every time you relax your head, you let go of mental tension, which is the source of stress. You maintain a relaxed mind, which results in a relaxed body. The lack of unnecessary tension protects you from potential pains and injuries caused by chronic tension and tightness.

Every time you smile, you uplift your mental state, get a boost of motivation and energy, and calm your nerves.

By keeping your mind and body in a relaxed and happy state, you start noticing things you do that cause yourself pain, things like bad posture, or an unhealthy schedule, or self-criticism, doubt, anxiety, or overindulging in food, drinks and other harmful habits that you consciously or unconsciously adopt because you don’t know how to deal with stress.
Now with a smile as your detector, you can catch these things happening in your mind, and with the RSD technique, you can train your mind to let go of that stress.

More importantly than that, you gain a different perspective about art and happiness.
Happiness is not something that happens to you. Just like art, happiness is a skill, you get better at it by persistent effort, by using RSD.
Happiness is not a reward for doing something that fits your, or someone else’s definition of goodness.
Happiness is something you build within you, a foundation, a fuel for your art, your endeavors, and your health and wellbeing.
If you can see that happiness is the true goal, which you reach by choosing to relax and smile over and over, and that everything else is a consequence, a side effect of that, then you’ll have learned how to draw and be happy.