By Nadia Hammoud

Looking Inward:

Having recently read a little on self-compassion and meditation, I decided to make a conscious effort to practice both.

Self-compassion is an incredibly important trait to have. In being self-compassionate, one recognises that:

• there are difficulties that you will consistently not be able to conquer

• there is no such thing as ‘normal’

• everyone is tending to their own problems, big and small

• the people who provide you with emotional support, and who find joy in seeing you grow and develop, are the most important people to have around you

Meditation has formed a huge part of this last week for me. Acknowledging the relationship between your own body and its immediate environment seems like a small, perhaps insignificant observation, yet in truth it’s incredibly energising; It’s a brilliantly simple and effective way to recharge.

Whether lying, sitting or standing, acknowledging the ways in which arms, legs, back, hands, head, sink into carpet, chair, or linen, in that silence, with eyes closed, evokes an addictively calming sensation, in turn channeling a flood of energy into every hollow.

Pairing the practice of meditation with self-compassion is undoubtedly key to a life of many successes (your definition of success goes here). Both practices afford us the ability to reset, heal, and move on, in turn permitting us to explore new opportunities.

In the context of being a creative, the above practices instil a calm resilience that allows us to embrace a plethora of scenarios in which our ideas flourish, fail, get built on, collaborated with, nurtured, stretched, battered, buried, dug up, envied, reworked… Creatives consistently form and mould ideas; It’s an incredibly brilliant and brilliantly strange process which sees us excited, invigorated, energised, exhausted, and sometimes, somehow, simultaneously exhausted and invigorated at the same time. More often than not, home-time (your clock-out time goes here) sees you spent; Whether satisfied with your day’s work or not, achieving self-compassion and immersing yourself in the recharging process are undeniably key to enabling you to putting the same energy and focus into your endeavours as soon as the very next morning.

Looking Outward:

It’s interesting to note how comfortable one feels at the cinema. You’re sat in the dark, with nobody’s attention on you, free to indulge in your inner voyeur. It’s something that’s generally a taboo – to be a gazer, voyeur, intense observer. Partaking in intense observation in public spaces is, according to what’s societally accepted, perceived as mad, yet it’s something we all crave. The cinema is the perfect space to indulge in this.

As creatives, it is so important to maintain curiosity about others, and whenever and wherever possible, dip into that voyeuristic state. To observe is to learn, and in learning about people’s differences, similarities, wants and quirks, we find those all important untold, previously undiscovered insights that lead us to make better informed work that truly connects our work to our audience.

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Below is a pieced-together visual for Friday Reflections at SCA. In short, it’s a comment on how great it feels to re-energise through meditation (but could equally, perhaps quite comically, refer to the “Looking Outward” section if this SCAB):

Words: Tame Impala

Imagery: Screenshot from an incredibly hypnotising mu! piece