The beginner’s mind is a term that I learned when I was teaching yoga. The concept is that you come back to look at a process as though you know nothing about it. I have found as I work my way through a career as a writer and an artist that even after all these years, I need to go back to the start and see what I missed.

The inspiration to go back to the start came to me accidentally. I just finished a recent manuscript and oftentimes when I have such a massive outpouring of creativity I need to pause and reabsorb creativity around me. The best way I do this is with learning something new.

In classic art terms, I hear constant reminders of revisiting the fundamentals. Afterall, those are the basic skills that become the building blocks of everything you draw in the future, but in this case, I’m still at the beginning regardless. As for writing, it often means going back to understand character arcs or plotting (or a million other nuanced story skills).

I’m about to jump in to the third book in my pirate series, but I wanted to approach it from a different angle. The best way to find a new angle is to learn from someone new. I found some resources such as Brandon Sanderson’s lecture series on YouTube to fuel my curiosity. His particular view of writing includes all the elements I already “know” but in a way I never thought about them before.

This is why YouTube is magical. You can go and learn from any number of artists and writers who have graciously shared their hard earned lessons with you. Their experiences are different and they’ll present the information in their own unique way—ways that might click in your brain.

I was speaking with my mentor, Jen Graybeal, who is an amazing coach for authors and creatives, and we were discussing how going back to the beginning has a incredible impact because you are a different person now than you were then. We continue to change, learn, and adapt and because of that, what we know now creates a new lens to see the “old” information through.

It also inspires new neurons to connect and play off each other. Reviewing what we think we know is kind of like this key that unlocks new ideas by exposing our assumptions and highlighting what we’ve previously glossed over because it didn’t apply at the time.

This is like how in yoga you want the beginner’s mind when you start overlooking basic poses. Warrior 2 is a very common pose but after a while you can sink into habits without considering if that is the best expression of the pose you can achieve. The beginner’s mind tells you to reexamine what your muscles are doing, how your foot is placed, where your toes are pointed, if your knee is caving in or out—it teaches us to self-correct.

So as I’m going through Sanderson’s lecture series, I’m reminded to step back and look at my story from the ground up. Do I have my big story question clearly presented? What are those signposts of progress he speaks about that I am giving to my readers?

As for art, I still consider myself a beginner. Being self-taught meant I needed to go and learn the fundamentals even after years of drawing on my own. And let me tell you, that is a humbling process.

I want to encourage you to go and look at the beginning steps of your creative endeavor from someone else’s perspective and see if you don’t come away with a new nugget of usable information that you “knew” but you didn’t know.

If you experiment with the beginner’s mind in part of your creative journey, let me know. I would love to see what new inspiration you have taken from working backwards in order to propel yourself forwards.

Until next time, stay awesome. See ya.