I’m sitting outside a cafe in Tarifa, Spain, sipping a tiny coffee, reflecting on the twists and turns of my life. I want to be in motion, so I finish my journal entry and go for a walk along the cobblestone streets of the old town, protected from the wind by the closeness of the whitewashed buildings.

As a facilitator for Julia Cameron’s renowned book The Artist's Way, one of the most powerful tools I share with participants is the Creative Affirmations. These positive statements aim to counteract the negative self-talk and doubts that can hold back artists and creatives.

The Basic Principles of Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way provide a philosophical foundation for awakening one’s creative potential and nurturing one’s inner artist.

This is the twelfth post in a series on The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, a book and a self-study program by writer Julia Cameron. I’m looking back on Week 12: Recovering a Sense of Faith.

When we receive a creative impulse, it can come through quickly. When it arrives, it doesn’t always make sense in that neat kind of way. And when we spend time with our ideas, developing them through the creative process, meaning can be fluid. We’ll start one place and end up someplace radically different.

Some of you may know that I became a hypnotherapist and coach alongside my practice as an artist. Some people ask me if I am an art therapist. It would be more accurate to say that I am often a therapist for artists.

Have you ever felt it was challenging to feel truly free to create and express yourself? Maybe you hesitate to spend time doing the things that you enjoy — painting, singing, drawing, writing, playing the guitar, taking photos — worried that you should be doing something more practical, concerned what you make won't be good enough?

One of my mentors once shared a way of looking at how we grow and move through life. She suggested I imagine the process of drawing a flower — like a daisy or a wildflower with a circle at the centre and petals looping around.

It's springtime in London and the season of renewal takes on an even greater resonance this year. Out in the hazy sunshine, I feel myself taking gentle and playful steps in the world.

When I moved to London over eight years ago, I underestimated the change I’d experience in this city. Letting go of ideas of girlhood to become a woman, facing some of my greatest personal challenges, and allowing myself to reconnect with parts of myself I had abandoned.

Your essence is your fundamental nature and what makes you uniquely you. It is the deepest part of yourself, where your authenticity lives.

From the moment we wake in the morning until we drift back to sleep at night, we move along the path of life making decisions and taking actions that steer our life in a nearly infinite set of directions.

This is the eleventh post in a series on The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, a book and a self-study program developed by Julia Cameron in the 1990s. I’m looking back on Week 11: Recovering a Sense of Autonomy.

This is the tenth post in a series on The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, a book and a self-study program developed by Julia Cameron in the 1990s. I’m looking back on Week 10: Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection.