BONUS EPISODE | Creating Your Calm amid Anxiety and Stress with Meera Lee Patel
Traveling is a joyful exercise when you need inspiration and a break from anxiety and stress. Your ability or inability to move impacts your creativity. With the current travel restrictions and civil unrest around the world, no one is immune from getting feelings of uncertainty and anxiety during these trying times.
In today’s episode, Meera Lee Patel gives us a glimpse into her creative process when writing her book, My Friend Fear. She tells us how the pandemic and her pregnancy affected her creative flow. She also shares her stories of overcoming fear by feeling at home with herself, no matter where she is.
If anxiety and stress are getting you stuck physically, emotionally, and mentally, this episode is for you!
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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:
Discover the magic that could happen when you face your fears.
Learn how you can let go and let life shape itself.
Find out how Meera creates her own calm amid anxiety and stress.
Resources
My Friend Fear: Finding Magic in the Unknown by Meera Lee Patel
Create Your Own Calm: A Journal for Quieting Anxiety by Meera Lee Patel
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Episode Highlights
Leaving Your Comfort Zone
A New York native, Meera left Brooklyn to work on her second book, My Friend Fear.
She realized that she needed to face all her fears to honestly write her book. So she left her job, traveled alone, and worked on being an artist and a writer.
Her decision to move to the countryside wasn’t intentional. But in the course of writing her book, she worked at an illustration studio based in Nashville, where she connected with the artist community.
Meera never dreamed of living in the countryside. But some things shape themselves when you decide to be open to them.
Feeling at Home Within Yourself
Even if you’re afraid, Meera says you should do things that excite you.
Your fear of rejection may feel like the worst thing that could happen, but you can overcome this by being yourself and letting people know you.
The biggest gift of mindfulness and discernment is finding peace within yourself.
From the City to the Countryside
Countryside living offers peace and quiet that is nearly impossible in the city.
Under pandemic circumstances, the countryside also offers a lot of space where you can feel free to walk around without encountering others who may be sick.
However, living in the countryside makes you feel isolated and lonely.
As a city girl, Meera isn’t used to driving, but that’s how you get around in the countryside.
Creativity Requires Calm
Living in Nashville got Meera back into her creative flow because she has fewer distractions and a larger space in her home studio.
Connecting with your highest self is a challenge when there’s so much frenetic energy, especially when you live in the city.
Nature helps shift your perspective, especially when you are feeling anxious.
On Her Pregnancy
Being pregnant during the pandemic has negatively affected Meera’s body and emotions, hampering her creative work.
The pandemic exposed all possible emotions, including guilt.
Meera thinks she still hasn’t processed her feelings of disappointment and anxiety related to the pregnancy.
Nothing Is Permanent
Anxiety can be paralyzing because it eliminates the idea that life could be different.
When you accept that nothing is permanent, it gives you back some sense of control.
Meera also worked hard on accepting the things she can’t control.
5 Powerful Quotes from This Episode
[04:55] “When I open myself up to the world, when I'd let somebody see me for who I was, not for who I thought they wanted me to be, I was welcomed.”
[16:55] “In order to be creative and make the work, you need time alone. So much of being a creative is solitude.”
[19:13] “Whatever was cycling in your head and giving you such anxiety, maybe that is a very small part of life and your life and a very small part of what is affecting you in this grander scheme.”
[26:51] “Something that helps me always with my anxiety is remembering that the way I feel right now is temporary. Just like everything else in life, this moment is temporary, and it’s going to pass, and it won’t be like this forever.”
[29:14] “Losing control, and letting go of control, and learning to be okay with that has been really freeing. Instead of making me more anxious that anything can go wrong, instead it makes me feel like, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen. And that means that there is a lot of possibility.’”
About Meera
Meera Lee Patel is an illustrator and writer based in Nashville, Tennessee. Coming from Brooklyn, she began working as an editor at a publishing company after graduating with degrees in English and Journalism & Media Studies. A self-taught artist, her stationery and gift line are inspired by nature and her home country, India.
She published three journals, namely, Start Where You Are, Made Out of Stars, and Create Your Own Calm. Her works encourage self-exploration and help build a practice of introspection through art. Her book My Friend Fear features Meera’s reflections about her fears, thoughtful questions on creativity, and beautiful watercolor paintings.
If you want to connect with Meera, follow her on Instagram and Twitter or visit her website.
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Rosie