It started when I was going through a challenging situation and a friend recommended that I read Ryan Holiday’s popular book The Obstacle is the Way. The name of this book sounded so familiar and it turned out that I had already purchased it. It was waiting for me to listen to it in my Audible library.
I had absolutely no idea that this book was about Stoicism, what Stoic philosophy was, or how popular Stoicism had become.
Once I began listening, I was completely and utterly gripped by how reasonable, rational and logical the whole thing was. I was amazed at how the trials and tribulations of Roman emperors and Greek philosophers from 2,000 years ago seems not so different from the stuff we are all confronted with today. I was smitten!
I figured that the best thing I could do at this point was to take a super deep dive into Stoicism. I listened to Ryan Holiday’s advice and purchased books from the main Stoic “gurus” that folks read today: Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus. (These books are so much more readable that I had EVER imagined!)
Now if you are anything like me, you’re wondering at this point where the art making comes in. This blog post will review one way that I use art journaling to be a happier person and thus, basically, to improve my life overall.
I use my art journals the way that I used to use my notebooks when I was in college and law school: as a way of internalizing information in a way that works for me. I need to write ideas out on paper and make them beautiful in order to get them to stick in my brain.
My college notebooks are full of carefully written, diagrammed, and drawn out facts and ideas. It’s just the way that I learn best, and I’m not alone. Just do a search on Instagram for #studygram and you’ll find 16 million posts on creative note taking for school.
But I’m no longer in school or preparing for tests, so my art journals can be more fun and less formal than what is being created by students today.
I also never need to review my notes, so they don’t even need to be legible! I don’t totally care if what I create makes sense to anyone else, or even myself for that matter. It’s the process of meditating on the words as I carefully hand letter them that is the meaningful thing to me.
Just so you know what I’m talking about here, here are some examples of my art journal pages from the journal that I am currently working in:
