Looking for That “Sweet Spot”
- At October 20, 2025
- By Write in Community
- In Blog
2
It is how we choose what we do, and how we approach it, that will determine whether the sum of our days adds up to a formless blur, or to something resembling a work of art.” ―Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi
My husband is a sports nut, especially in regards to baseball. So around our house, particularly now with the playoffs, the TV is often turned to a baseball game. And if a game isn’t on, he tunes into sports talk radio to catch up on the latest. Because of his passion, certain exotic words and phrases float around our house. Phrases like slugging percentage, RBI’s, and pitching rotations. And from time to time, there’s a reference to the sweet spot.
What’s that? I asked. Tom defined the sweet spot as “a particular spot on a baseball bat that when the ball is hit from that point, everything lines up perfectly. And it’s as though there is no sense of impact, no effort on the part of the batter, but the ball sails out of the park.”
What if there were a “sweet spot” for our creative lives, a place from which we do our best work—and it comes effortlessly? Peter Bregman believes that “We all have a sweet spot where everything seems to flow; where we feel happy, competent, in sync with everything around us, [and] uniquely talented…” David Spangler states that the sweet spot is “the state of mind in which we experience the most joy and satisfaction in being ourselves. And from that place of pleasure and joy…energy arises to flow out into our day…”
So, the sweet spot does exist, surfacing when we are ourselves, doing what we love and are meant to do; and when we are in sync with everything around us.” It is being “in sync,” I believe, where we run into trouble. Life gets too crazy sometimes. Our plates are too full, and we wear ourselves ragged. Our emotions get the best of us, and we find ourselves out of harmony, out of balance.
In her book, The Sweet Spot, Christine Carter suggests ways we can re-establish that balance and work from our places of greatest strength. These ways include developing habits which enable us to re-energize, unshackling ourselves from clutter, cultivating relationships, and the willingness to get out of our comfort zone from time to time.
The sweet spot is elusive. If it were not so, every pitch to a batter would result in a home run, every artistic step we took would be brilliant. But we can try to grow closer to the place where we are at our best. That place where we breathe deeply and feel at peace. Sometimes it can be as simple as finding time to take a walk outside or sharing a laugh with a friend. For me a place of great comfort and also great energy is writing with my writing group. Some mornings I find this place at my writing desk. What about you?–Lucy Adkins
For more inspiration, check out our website www.thewritingandcreativelife.com. Or follow this link to purchase Writing in Community or our latest book, The Fire Inside.
Focused on the Small Sounds
- At September 22, 2025
- By Write in Community
- In Blog
- 6
Hermann Hesse observed that “whoever has learned how to listen to trees…wants to be nothing except what he is.”
Changed by Their Sounds
Aspens, The Small Sounds of Whispering Trees
My childhood was punctuated with careful, attentive listening. No, not every day, but when I turned off my attention to common, familiar sounds around me and focused on the small, seemingly insignificant notes, different kinds of music were heard. One day walking thistles in our cornfield with my grandfather Nanny he told me to stop and listen. Nothing was heard at first but soon a soft clapping crescendo like raccoons playing tiny cymbals enveloped me. In a hushed voice, Nanny said it was the sound of corn growing–growing fast.
At first I didn’t believe it. But standing amidst rows of six foot green giants the rhythm of tiny twigs being snapped was undeniable and inviting. My face tightened and then opened like I was possessed for a while. Heat radiating from the lofty stalks drew me closer into their circle brushing against me. It made me want to climb hills and shout like when a new friend touches your hands.
Read More»The Fire Inside
- At May 17, 2021
- By Write in Community
- In Blog
- 4
The Fire Inside
Chapter One: The Fire Inside
We all have deep within us a yearning, a passion, a desire to make and to do, to create something out of our hearts and imaginations that did not exist before. To bring forth something new upon the earth. It is innate in us, this intense wanting, and when we are engaged in the specific type of creativity we were meant to do—whether it be painting, writing, making music or designing a new way to educate our children—we experience what Martha Graham calls “a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening.” It’s what puts the spark in our eyes, the skip in our steps. It is the fire inside.
Do you know that fire? Sometimes it manifests itself as restlessness, a vague dissatisfaction, a feeling that there is something important you must do, you have to do, to be true to yourself. It is the little ache you feel when you read a story that is heartbreakingly true and think I want to do that, or when you see a painting that stuns you with its power, and your fingers itch to pick up a paintbrush.
Maybe it isn’t exactly clear what is burning inside, what you want and are put on earth to do. Or perhaps you know in your bones that you must write poetry, you must dance or die, you must create gardens of incredible beauty, but maybe you’re afraid that if you try you will fall flat on your face. You doubt yourself and your abilities.
This is the way we humans are, having an intense wanting on one hand, fear and doubt on the other. But let us accept as an essential truth that we are all creative, wildly creative, each and every one of us—that we have vast reserves of untapped talents and abilities—songs only we can write, sculptures waiting to be born from the unique spirit that is us; and when we accept that belief and act on it, oh, then! We wake each day with a new animation, a vibrancy and passion. We feel like children let out of a stuffy classroom into a blue-sky spring day, and we can’t wait to see what we can do with it.
The fire inside is the “something” that fascinates you, intrigues you, so that you go to sleep and wake up thinking about it. You want to study it from all its interesting angles and make it central to your life, keep working at it, falling short in your aspirations at times, but trying and trying again. And if you are not currently involved with something that brings with it such zeal, if you’ve kept your fire tamped down, unable to act on your passion for whatever reason, know that it is still there— the beginning of days filled with intense purpose and meaning, waiting for you.
You can take a closer look at (and pre-order) The Fire Inside here. For more about the writing and creative life, you can visit our home page.
“The Fire Inside” Creative Exercise:
Each of us was put on this earth with certain innate talents and abilities, things we were meant to do. Some of us can identify almost immediately what these might be, what is “calling” to us. For others of us, it may take a little time. The best way to do so is to follow the love trail.
What do you love? What puts the shine in your eyes? (And there will be more than one thing.) Find some meditation time, some time alone, and consider what you love, what might be calling to you. Maybe it is spending time messing with watercolors, or taking pictures and arranging them in a scrapbook to tell a story. Maybe you love figuring out the plots in mystery novels. Jot these down in your notebook. Try this exercise several times a week, several times a month. You’ll begin to see patterns and themes and it may become clearer what you love to do.
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