on becoming an artist, part two
a book by Ellen Langer, mindfulness expert, on “reinventing yourself through mindful creativity.”
I am a mom so I understand mindlessness.
My kids come home and it’s the end of the day and I’m tired. I tell myself, “Be present for them.” But often I find my mind wandering as the details of their day slip through the crevices of my thoughts. I nod, “uh huh,” and return as slyly as I can to the world inside my head. Later I berate myself for my absence. I tell myself, “This time is fleeting, show up for it.”
I’ve often wondered if my kids can tell, pretty certain that they can.
Ellen Langer, as part of her research into mindfulness and creativity, wondered the same thing.
Ellen writes:
When we are mindful, do others know?... We often feel we can tell when someone is pretending to think or feel a certain way. When people are pretending they are following a script written in the past, and scripted behavior is, typically mindless behavior.
Later she carried this into art and I’ll get to that.
This is what Ellen found: not only can people tell when someone is mindfully present but mindfulness has its own charm. We find mindful people more charismatic, respectable, and likable.
And when we’re not mindful? Here’s how kids respond...
Children spoken to by mindless adults “led to a drop in the children’s self-esteem. They felt less competent, were less willing to help others, and had some negative feelings toward the adult when the adult was mindless.”
Ouch.
Now comes the piece about art.
Do we notice when someone is creating art mindlessly? And does it matter?
Ellen and her research team divided people into two groups. The first group was asked to draw a dog and then make several copies of the drawing. The assumption being that the act of copying would make each drawing better than the last.
Then they took a second group and had them engage in the same exercise only told them to make subtle changes to the last drawing in ways that wouldn’t be obvious to anyone but themselves.
The idea was to bring more mindfulness into the process by having the artist make something new, and thus create more mindfully, the last drawing.
Then they showed the drawings of the two groups to another group that knew nothing of the experiment. And what they found was this:
The viewers preferred the drawings that had been subtly changed. They couldn’t decipher the changes but something about the drawing was different and they responded to that. The drawings from the first group simply became more rote and, therefore, less interesting.
Ellen writes:
We found that people do indeed prefer art that is mindfully created. It is less perfect and more pleasing. This will be a theme we return to again and again: we seek perfection and get frozen by the thought of our imperfection. This is ironic in that the outcomes we seek are more likely to come to our imperfect selves.
Isn’t that interesting?
So many of us don’t make our thing because we think we’re not good enough. Or we spend ages on it reaching for perfection. And yet, what we most appreciate in the work of another is not the ideal achieved by endless repetition but the imperfection of our uniqueness achieved through mindful creativity.
I found this insight incredibly inspiring and the needed kick in the butt to wake up, show up, and stay present with my kids and my art.
Because people notice.
And it matters.







