my core 3 practices: wellbeing, art, and business
I am finally drawing this distillation diagram after many, many years spinning around it in circles, like being inside a washing machine. these three categories above — wellbeing, creative practice, business — captures 95% of what I write about on this site — when I write about process, and what I think about on a day to day basis.
I stand firmly by the philosophy that process is everything — and anything we want to build in this life is only a byproduct of living an aligned, embodied process.
in this post, I’ll share my own cyclical journey through them, over these last 8 years — and then, I’ll break down each practice into phases.
my cyclical journey over 8 years
looking back at my work — I’ve been keeping this journal since 2015 — I can see the arch and focus of my energy shift thematically.
I only see this in retrospect, of course — at the time, I thought I was trying to work on all 3 things — WELLBEING + ART + BUSINESS — but in reality, all the gravity and momentum of my life pulled me into one practice at a time; not unlike being sucked into a wormhole. for my journey, it was essential that I mastered one practice — as much as I could — before moving onto the next. (I’m not saying this has to be the case for you, at all.) I moved very slowly.
2015-2019 — THEME: WELLBEING
I had just graduated college, and worked a 9-5 while dreaming of becoming a writer, or starting my own business. I read business books feverishly before work. I was living in NYC, young and confused, and stuck in a 5 year relationship with a man I loved, but didn’t want to be with.
I was extremely anxious all the time. I tried to learn about business and personal growth from books written by white tech dudes. I started a morning routine. I took design classes. I jumped; quit my job and left my boyfriend, and documented my emotions in a 365 moon journal. I hustled for myself for a while, then I joined a design studio part-time. I obsessed over my 13 wellbeing practices and rituals — simply because I was just feeling bad, all the time.
2019-2022 — THEME: ART
that year, 2019, I felt 100%, stubbornly certain of my artist path, and starting working on my artist-business full time. I wrote about the journey up to that point here.
in retrospect, the business part didn’t work very well. I felt constantly stressed and deeply ashamed about money, ALL the time. that year, I mostly worked on art — becoming an artist — which mostly means: embodying what it means to be an artist, without needing validation or permission from anyone. it felt like going through an ordeal by fire. I wrote about some lessons from that year here.
then I left NYC (way too expensive, I was too poor). a few months later, the pandemic started, and I had the most magical (difficult, lonely, existentially challenging) 2 years of creative hermitude. I lived in 9 countries. I made just enough money to support my living and travel expenses. I woke up and made art, every day, especially on bad days. then, I settled in Istanbul.
2023 — THEME: BUSINESS
this year — as I’m writing this in July, year 2 of living in Istanbul — is the year when I really found a deep feeling of integration between my artist self + business self, through embracing the role of the artist-entrepreneur. for the first time in my life — I’m actually feeling inspired and excited about business, becuase I no longer see it as a compromise for my art.
I didn’t start there, of course. I started by thinking about the lonely work itself, and reflecting on the choices that lead me here. then I observed how I was running my business like an overwhelmed, moody artist. I did inner work around money — and re-evolved my relationship to money. the work is ongoing.
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and now, as I’m zooming out, looking at the entire journey, I’m realizing how I was growing in circles — again and again, evolving through each step of the process, in infinite iterations. there was never “done.” there was only an ongoingness; a deep forever becoming and being.
business, for me, HAD to be built on top of my artistic practice; not the other way around. I had to find my freedom as an artist — before I could channel my wealth into the material world. my artistic practice had to be built on top of my wellbeing rituals.
now, even as I’m focused on business, I am constantly thinking about creative practice — and wellbeing.
let me break down and explore the phases — in each process. (this is just my nerding-out, and desire to deconstruct everything).
wellbeing: nourishing yourself
nothing is possible without taking care of your wellbeing, first — this is a lesson I learned the hard way. I divided this practice into two parts:
(1) forming a new ritual
discovering, experimenting with, and integrating something new into your daily practice.
(2) recentering/evolving/deepening it
returning to the same practice, again — at this point, you’ve formed a flexible net, strong enough to catch you even when you fall off-center. you have trust in your own structures to hold and support you.
there is no such thing as putting a check mark next to wellbeing, and being done with it. you will fall off center. the whole point is to always be recentering.
creative practice: making art
(1) forming/discovery
the first phase is about giving yourself permission to start. start, without being overwhelmed/paralyzed by perfectionism or overplanning. this is planting a seed of creative possibility — and then watering it, rather than drowning it or abandoning it. it requires so much courage, nurturing, and openness to discover. here, you start building your own creative practice — just do your thing - and trusting it to hold you.
(2) showing up
this sounds so basic — but after you’ve weaved your creative practice in and out of your life, the the hard part is keeping the momentum. life is full of a gazillion other seemingly more urgent things, and sometimes, showing up is the hardest part. showing up means: making space, and prioritizing it. holding yourself accountable. supporting yourself in the process.
(3) finding flow
after you show up, then you find flow. for me, flow feels like being so deeply in resonance with my gifts — and allowing my creative deluge to pour from me, into whatever I create. finding flow is about removing all the obstacles and forms of inner resistance within you, and being in flow with the world.
business — making money
(1) forming/experiment
at the beginning, business is just an experiment — both with yourself, and with those you want to serve. will it work? will they buy from me? will I deliver? in this phase, it’s about cultivating confidence in yourself and the value of your offerings — by going through the experiment, again and again. see what works — what nourishes and drains you. the point is to collect a data set - so that you have a starting base. here’s 30 lessons I learned from the very beginning of my experiment.
(2) aligning/evolving
finding alignment usually comes after a great deal of experimentation. here’s where you look at all the offerings and forms of exchange — and evaluate how you’ll evolve them in a way that feels deeply aligned with you. you discover which ways of working feel good to you, and what doesn’t. you evolve. iterate. build. for me, this had a LOT to do with learning human design, and how to use my energies in a way that was sustainable. for me, the biggest alignment was finding integration between my artist self and business self.
(3) expanding/iterating
this is continued phase of iteration and evolution— after finding what works, you ride “the business flow,” — a dream of the future visions and reincarnations, and where you want it to go, next.
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ongoing end notes
I write these phases and processes, but to be honest — they are just ongoing approximations of what I’ve experienced. there is no such thing as an “END point,” and it’s not like you finish one phase, and never return to it. you always return, you move through it — iteratively, again and again. which is what makes it beautiful, in the end - that everything is always changing.