When you hear the word artist, what image comes to mind?
Do you see someone in a studio with color splattered all over the floor? A pottery wheel? Expensive pieces of work in a gallery? Sitting at a park sketching a caricature or a landscape?
What if I told you that all humans are Artists?
Toltec Knowledge
In the Toltec teachings, each person has the ability to be the creator of their life. The Toltecs are indigenous people from the region near Mexico City, Mexico.
The Aztecs gave the people the name Toltecs, literally meaning Artists. The Toltecs were known as “women and men of knowledge…scientists and artists who formed a society to explore and conserve the spiritual knowledge and practices of the ancient ones” (pg. v, Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz).
In 1997 don Miguel Ruiz published The Four Agreements sharing with people worldwide his Toltec heritage. Now, these teachings are included in numerous settings. A significant understanding and application from the Toltecs is the idea that everyone has the power to be the creator, or artist of their life.
Evolving Masterpiece
Imagine if you had the opportunity in life to begin again with a blank canvas. What would you want it to look like? What truths of who you are would you allow to be on this canvas?
A masterpiece is not created in a single moment. A masterpiece evolves.
An artist works through many practice experiences before and during the master piece work. An artist is not starting over each time they pull out their tools to create. They take what they have learned and explore how and what is desired at that moment.
Every person has this power every day.
Do you see yourself as an artist of your life?
Think about the tools that you have learned. Take a moment to evaluate the choices you are given. Consider the decisions you make.
One can see life through a rigid lens that there is a right and wrong way to create. Or, one can view life that there is an unlimited way to create.
What kind of artist are you?
We have the power to create the kind of relationships we want. We have windows of opportunity to engage with people. We can choose not to be in relationships as well.
An artist has multiple tools in which they create. Likewise, we as humans have different tools to build and navigate relationships. We don’t always know what we want at the beginning of our relationships. Our relationships evolve, just like an artist’s creation evolves. Also, many times we learn what we want and how we manifest that through the support of others.
My amazing life coach Amy K Musson, creator of the Growth Moment Podcast, always asks me, “What do you really want?” My question to you is, “What kind of artist do you want to be?”