New Year, New Lens! Here’s to 2026 🌟

 Hello Friends!

As we step into 2026, I wanted to share with you a new way of looking at life and the many challenges we can often be faced with, both individually and on a collective level, and that can be of great help in these tumultuous, difficult and yet exciting times of rapid change.

I hope that with the dawning of a new year you will find new energy and inspiration to bring a deeper love and appreciation for your own self and your life, so you can share your unique gifts and talents with others with increasing confidence, satisfaction, and enjoyment: my new workshops, based on these ideas, are being offered with this goal in mind, and I am looking forward to sharing them with you!

Life as a Gift and a Work of Art.

What does this mean, exactly?

It is not so much a therapeutic technique as a way of thinking and seeing the trauma we carry, and the accomplishments and challenges that are present in our lives from the moment of our conception onward, through a brand new lens.

All kinds of tools and techniques can be used to help us develop this kind of Artistry, from more traditional talk therapy to the most avant-garde energy techniques becoming more and more popular over time.  What is important is to define what it actually means to become an Artist of our Life, and why we might want to do so. 

First developed by Antonio Mercurio, the founder of Existential Personalistic and Cosmoartistic Anthropology, it is a holistic way of seeing our human experience, and while it fully honors and recognizes the kind of profound discomfort and disorientation we can experience when we are faced with pain and loss, it also encourages us to see these traumas not so much as condemnations or punishments, but as potential motors for new ways of Being, Seeing, Experiencing, and thus Creating new ways of Living.

It encourages us to embrace even the most difficult past or present traumas and struggles as important parts of our story, as often they are the motors that help us find the strength and courage to change not only how we see and care for ourselves, but how we see the world, and how we truly want to live in it. As we turn to address those inner and outer obstacles that bring us dissatisfaction and trouble and manage to overcome them, we not only live better ourselves, but we create a powerful, transformational energy. This energy is such that it can not only help us continue to heal and grow, heal and grow as we face the various challenges that come up in every life, but, like great works of Art that we may admire in the galleries of the world, it sparks inspiration to create such Beauty in others as well.

The beauty we are talking about here is not the aesthetic beauty normally ascribed to material things; it is an inner beauty that transforms pain into love, fear into new dreams, and opens in the most wounded of souls to new possibilities.

Just as an artist uses many different colors to create a powerful painting, so, too, can we learn to combine the many elements of our lives, including the painful ones, to create a new sense of ourselves and, sometimes, an entirely new direction in our lives.

By shifting our inner attitudes from those of feeling that we are powerless victims of circumstance – which can be very difficult when we come from family and/or societal and cultural situations that are abusive, dysfunctional and deny us basic rights – to realizing that we can learn to love ourselves and our lives, and improve our circumstances through that love and through acts of existential creativity, we can build something entirely new out.

When we choose to do so, we are activating our Inner Artist and becoming actively engaged in affirming the deepest goals of our Higher Self .

The Inner Artist is that part of ourselves that expresses our basic freedom to choose to either move towards love of ourselves and our unique life purpose – our True Self – or instead move away from it. When we move towards our life purpose we feel more fulfilled and whole; when instead we move away from it, we feel empty, conflicted, and full of all kinds of problems. This does not mean that we make one giant leap and become either completely One with our Higher Self, or completely disconnected from it. Although some people may experience such extreme moments of inner choice making and never change again, most of us are on a journey that begins the moment we are conceived, and ends the moment we die. We are offered many choices to experience both types of movements, and with every step forward, or back, we learn something new about ourselves and our lives and about Life itself, as well.

And sometimes we are blocked from moving towards our life purpose by difficult external circumstances. If our parents / caregivers in early life, families and societies are unable to offer us the kind of nurturing and support we need to feel in touch with our own Self and our own deeper value and meaning as a human being, it can be extremely difficult to feel the kind of freedom and confidence we need to do so.

We can also be also be inhibited by types of loyalties and expectations that pull us away from our Selves to make others in our life happy, or to keep the peace, but the cost in our mental, emotional and even physical health can be high. 

Whatever the case may be, the Authentic or True Self, even when deeply buried within us beneath layers of denial and repression, never goes away. Often it takes time for us to be able to truly hear its call and even more time to listen to it. It is a common experience that something happens in the course of our life – a loss, an illness, a divorce, a deep personal crisis of some sort – that forces us to stop and pay attention. The pain of denying our inner truths becomes greater than the fear of listening, and in those moments, we open our minds and hearts, and begin an entirely new journey.

The Inner Artist is always there, and we can tap into its energy at any time, although we often need to learn how to do so in ways that feel right to us, and that can truly lead us towards the purpose contained in our True Self, rather than remain stuck in our past conditioning that suffocates that purpose, or even actively oppose it.

The thing about learning how to access our Inner Artist is that there is no set manual to do so. The manual for our “best life”, along with our ability to truly love ourselves and our lives in respectful connection with others and with Life itself, is written within us, not within anyone else.

For this reason, it is a journey that only we can undertake for ourselves. We need help to do so, because none of us, just like no other life form, grows or changes in a vacuum. We are here to spark growth in each other, and to cheer each other on in an increasingly give and take movement.

But in ultimate analysis, only we can make the choices that lead us towards a loving expression of our unique being, or away from it.

And often the journey is one step forward, and two steps back! It is not an “art” that we learn once. It is an art that we must become willing to practice, to the best of our ability, day after day, accepting that some days we will be more effective than others… but that every day that we try, is a good day.

As we learn this complex and delicate art and tune into our Selves while tuning out the effects of our wounding and conditioning, we become ever more capable of expressing what it is that we are here to express.

This does not mean that we have to be actual “artists” in our daily lives. Whether or not we engage in the “arts” per se, music, painting, dance, etc., or not, we are innately creative, because Life itself is creative, and we are a part of life.

We may be mothers, or fathers, or farmers, or teachers, or CEOs, or scientists; religious people, doctors, lawyers, mechanics, gardeners or not yet clear about anything we are or want to be or do; we may want to live in the woods by ourselves, or feel engaged and important within the hustle of a large metropolis. We may engage in many activities, or few; have many friends and family members, or choose to be alone; be ambitious and driven towards forms of material and societal success and recognition, or satisfied with a simple life.

Each of us is unique, and how we feel most in tune with ourselves and purposeful in our own journey is … well, sacred, and valid, because each life, thus each and every one of us, is sacred and valid.

But often times we don’t know this, because negative voices from our past are louder than the whispers of our Self … and our lack of connection with our inherent worth and our true purpose creates rifts within ourselves and in our interactions with others and the outside world that bring immense confusion, pain, and inner and outer conflict.

When instead we choose to tune into our Inner Artist and affirm the purpose contained within our Personal, Higher Self, we can become capable of making decisions based on love for ourselves and others – an ability to enhance Life in all its forms. And not only does our life begin to evolve in ways that we never dreamed possible, but our own increasing liberation, freedom, and ability to truly enjoy our lives inspires others to make the same effort.

But as I mentioned above, although the Inner Artist is ever-present, as is the Self, learning how to hone our Existential Artistry and actually follow the guidance we receive does often require some deliberate effort and intentional focus on our part. Even the most fortunate among us can be called to higher levels of Self expression, which require new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting in the world.

And just as people with natural artistic talent need to be willing to learn specific techniques and skills so they can best express their gifts, if we want to become expert Artists of our Lives, we, too need to learn new ways of seeing ourselves, our traumas and struggles, our conditioning and our free decisions whether they be Self-affirming, or Self-denying.

We need to become willing look at what the painful experiences we encounter can mean for us, and change our thinking and sometimes even our ways of living to embrace a more enlivened, holistic and engaged way of being.

It does not mean that when we do so we will become perfect, or that we will no longer encounter obstacles; it does not guarantee a quick fix for our inner pain or an automatic solution to the complex and difficult experiences life brings to our door.

Life itself is constantly changing, and we are called to go along with it, even when doing so means letting go of ideas, people, ways of being and thinking that we believed were “forever”.

This new paradigm of Life as a Gift and a Work of Art is not only a new way of seeing and experiencing the world for ourselves and how we can collaborate and connect with others that is not only nurturing and healing, but it is an antidote for the kinds of anxieties that times such as the one we are all living in, during a major evolutionary push. As such, it is not only a huge help, but it is truly exciting!

But how, you may ask, do we embrace this new paradigm, and apply it to our day to day lives?

In the workshops I will be offering in 2026- so far three, on February 21, April 18, and June 20 2026, from 10:30 am to 12:00 pm – we will explore a variety of simple but effective tools and techniques to help you begin to see your own Life as a Work of Art. We will start out by assessing where we are now in our journeys, and from there move on to exploring what we would like to bring into our lives or what we would like to change, and, lastly, some ideas on how we can begin to get there in a more determined, and supported, way.

Join me on February 21 at 10:30 am – either in person in Oconomowoc (405 E Forest St), or on line – for the first of these workshops.

You can check out my webpage here to learn a bit more about the themes we will be exploring and what kinds of tools and techniques I will be offering as we endeavor together to become ever more engaged and fulfilled Artists of our own Lives and of the Life of the Universe. 

And if you are already inspired to take this step forward towards creating a New Lens and a New Life for yourself in 2026, and beyond, you can sign up directly here. Please also send me an email to indicate if you intend to participate in person or online. 

I look forward to seeing you there, and in the meantime, I wish you the very best for a beautiful and inspiring beginning to 2026!