Sometimes, anxiety can make it difficult to get out of bed in the morning. You wake up with a stomach ache, and an overwhelming feeling of dread. Everything just feels “too much.”
It was on a day like this, when I was suffering with (what I now know) was an anxiety disorder, that I decided to try to lift my mood by repeating the mantra, “I am enough” to myself. I was also trying something new. I had decided to start drawing little cartoons to illustrate my mental health struggles. Because I had noticed that when I was drawing, absorbed in creativity, that was the only time that my head wasn’t busy with anxious overthinking. Creativity calmed my mind.
“I am enough.”
If you say it fast enough it sounds like “I am an oeuf.” Oeuf is French for egg. I grabbed a chalk board we have in the kitchen and spontaneously drew a serene-looking egg who believed that he was enough. Underneath him I wrote,
“I am an oeuf.”
It made me smile. So I got into drawing this little egg character, in various different situations.
And after a lot more doodling, colouring, meditating, chats with friends, counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy, I eventually overcame that pesky anxiety.
A few years later, Emma and I decided to start our mindful art business, and when we needed a logo it seemed appropriate to me to use the egg. Because I am an oeuf.
You are enough.
We are enough.
So shine like an egg.
And if you want to try using mindfulness and creativity to calm your busy mind today, grab yourself a bundle of free colouring pages and doodling printables by entering your email here.
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Back to the Egg- wonderful
Thanks Mick 🙂