This book has kept popping up on my social media radar for a while now.
I have been avoiding it.

I had no idea who Rick Ruben was, and I suspected it was just another self-improvement, 3 weird habits that will help you lose belly fat, 10 steps to monetise your life, type of thing.

Note to self: don’t believe all the bad hype about hype.
Serendipitously, the actual book fell into my lap and so I took it for a tentative test drive….turns out, it is really good. Really good.

Living life as an artist is a practice. You are either engaging in the practice or you’re not. It makes no sense to say you’re not good at it. It’s like saying, “I’m not good at being a monk.” You are either living as a monk or you’re not. We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output. The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world.

Rick aRubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

This book is not just for people who would label themselves ‘artists’. I would recommend it for anyone who has some form of creative release in their life. Writers, musicians, photographers, artists, craftspeople, stamp collectors, welders, and you. Be it a professional inclination or some secret hobby hidden under your bushel.

The purpose of your life is to make it artful.
The meaning of life is to infuse it with meaning.

That was me, not Rick but you get the gist.
Don’t worry, this is by no means a long read. It is the sort of book you keep on your self and pick up every now and again to dip back into for refreshment and inspiration.

5 out of 5 stars.

Moreover, it seems Mr Ruben is a long time meditator. And you can sorta tell….

Awareness In most of our daily activities we choose the agenda and develop a strategy to achieve the goal at hand. We create the program. Awareness moves differently. The program is happening around us. The world is the doer and we are the witness. We have little or no control over the content. The gift of awareness allows us to notice what’s going on around and inside ourselves in the present moment. And to do so without attachment or involvement. We may observe bodily sensations, passing thoughts and feelings, sounds or visual cues, smells and tastes. Through detached noticing, awareness allows an observed flower to reveal more of itself without our intervention. This is true of all things. Awareness is not a state you force. There is little effort involved, though persistence is key. It’s something you actively allow to happen. It is a presence with, and acceptance of, what is happening in the eternal now. As soon as you label an aspect of Source, you’re no longer noticing, you’re studying. This holds true of any thought that takes you out of presence with the object of your awareness, whether analysis or simply becoming aware that you’re aware. Analysis is a secondary function. The awareness happens first as a pure connection with the object of your attention. If something strikes me as interesting or beautiful, first I live that experience. Only afterward might I attempt to understand it. Though we can’t change what it is that we are noticing, we can change our ability to notice. We can expand our awareness and narrow it, experience it with our eyes open or closed. We can quiet our inside so we can perceive more on the outside, or quiet the outside so we can notice more of what’s happening inside. We can zoom in on something so closely it loses the features that make it what it appears to be, or zoom so far out it seems like something entirely new. The universe is only as large as our perception of it. When we cultivate our awareness, we are expanding the universe. This expands the scope, not just of the material at our disposal to create from, but of the life we get to live.

Rick aRubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being