Dear Reader,
This week, I was invited to attend a Creative Table session with the beautiful Gemma from Art for Today.
It was an afternoon set aside for pure creativity, connection, and slowness. Painting for the sake of creativity and nothing else.
No expectations, no deadlines, no end product required.
You would think that in such a non-threatening task, the mind would easily settle. Yet almost immediately, I noticed my inner critic speak up.
What are you painting? Is that the right choice? Will it be any good?
It was striking to notice: the inner critic appeared precisely when there was absolutely nothing at stake.
With no external standard to meet, my mind instantly tried to invent one.
Even when other women at the table offered genuine encouragement, it momentarily threw me off. Without realising it, my mind converted their warmth into a subconscious pressure: Now it has to actually be good.
I had to actively practice what I talk about so often—
noticing that familiar impulse to perform,
taking a breath, and
consciously softening back into an exploratory and present-moment mindset:
Let’s just see where it goes. Being good or bad is not the point.
Watching the other women in the room, I noticed how readily they seemed to sink into the afternoon. They already knew how to rest; they had signed up for this space of slowness and ease on a weekday! A few of them were self-professed creatives, and it made me wonder if they had made a choice to reject the "system" earlier on in life as a necessity to lean into their creative and expressive work.
At first, it made me think that perhaps I am simply more "of the system" than they are.
By that, I don't just mean corporate structures or institutions. I mean the subtle, pervasive culture we absorb from an early age: the unspoken expectation that our worth is tied to competence, usefulness, and keeping everything contained. And perhaps even more, our own personal systems of survival—the inner rules we built up over a lifetime to keep ourselves safe, capable, and acceptable, which now convince us that unstructured time without a purpose is somehow risky.
Sitting with that contrast, I realised it wasn't about whether they had escaped the system and I hadn't. Rather, their willingness to rest and play held up a mirror to me. It revealed just how deeply those rules of productivity, vigilance and performance still live inside me.
Even in a room with supportive women, paints, tea and explicit permission to just 'be', my baseline reflex was to perform.
It reminded me of an old biblical adage:
to be in the world, but not of it.
For me, this doesn't mean escaping reality, rejecting society, or checking out of our responsibilities. We still have families to care for, bills to pay, and lives to run in the real world.
Instead, I see it as being about conscious, intentional choice.
Being in the world means we participate in it fully.
But choosing not to be of it means we stop letting its conditioning—and our old survival patterns—dictate who we are and how we treat ourselves.
It means having the discernment to live in line with our own authentic values, rather than the expectations we inherited or the fears that once protected us.
Being at that table challenged me to look honestly at how often I still accept the status quo out of habit. It invited me to ask what rules I am still living by simply because they are familiar, and what I might finally be ready to lay down.
Living more authentically isn’t a dramatic, all-or-nothing rebellion.
It’s an ongoing, subtle untangling. It’s noticing the moment you start measuring your worth by your output—even when holding a paintbrush—and choosing, intentionally, to not let outdated rules dictate how we inhabit our lives.
So, as you move through the week ahead, I invite you to pause and consider:
Where in your life are you still holding onto rules or standards that belong to "the system," but no longer serve your true wellbeing?
What would it look like to make a conscious, value-led choice instead?
Hit reply and let me know—I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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With love and warmth,
Zac ♥
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Dr Zac Elizabeth Buchanan | Clinical Psychologist
The Return
drzacelizabeth.com @dr.zacelizabeth