Every month in our interview series we take a peek into a different person’s creative process. We learn what inspires and fuels their beautiful work and how they navigate the obstacles that can potentially hinder their creative practice. Plus, we get tips that can be applied to our own creativity.

This month we’re honored to share our interview with Vivienne McMaster, a Vancouver-based photographer with a big heart and a spirit of playfulness. McMaster leads workshops and online classes that invite individuals to tell their stories using photography.

Her prime tool is self-portraiture. After experiencing a rough patch in her own life, it was photography, and self-portraiture in particular, that helped her heal and find her way back to herself.

This guest article from YourTango was written by Susie And Otto Collins.

Jealousy in a relationship can cause you to say things you later regret. You grill your partner about who she had lunch with. You interrogate your boyfriend about who he was just talking to on the phone. You accuse your spouse of flirting.

Jealousy robs you of your peace of mind and wreaks havoc in your relationship. It comes through in the way you talk and the way you act. Strictly speaking, “stalking” is the illegal act of pursuing or harassing another person, like when paparazzi stalk celebrities.

But did you know that stalking also happens in committed relationships and marriages too? Because of suspicion and jealousy, girlfriends stalk their boyfriends and husbands stalk their spouses.

Working memory is “the ultimate evolutionary tool” that has helped us create everything from Google to the Eiffel Tower, according to authors and researchers Tracy Packiam Alloway, Ph.D, and Ross Alloway, Ph.D, in their new book The Working Memory Advantage: Train Your Brain to Function Stronger, Smarter, Faster.

They define working memory as “the conscious processing of information.” And in addition to inventing incredible innovations, working memory is critical for our daily lives.

In fact, the authors call working memory our brain’s conductor. Just as a musical conductor creates a symphony of melodies by instilling order to an orchestra of instruments, working memory instills order to the onslaught of information we confront day to day, including shifting to-do lists, emails, social media alerts, work projects and ringing phones.

So how can we supercharge this maestro of memory?

We’re joining the APA in honoring Mental Health Month, which seeks to bring awareness to the importance of taking care of your physical, mental and emotional health and well-being.

Nowadays there seems to be a focus when talking about mental illness or challenging life issues to talk about what’s wrong. There’s this emphasis on symptoms — an emphasis that seems unrelenting and single-minded.

Eventually, when you get into psychotherapy, you do start talking more about your strengths, about the good things in your life, and how you extend such strengths and wins into other aspects of your life. But people don’t seem to go into psychotherapy as much nowadays. They expect life changes to just happen, with little effort on their part.

Since this is Mental Health Month, it seems like a good time to just say what sometimes seems impossible — you can make the change you want in your life.

Today, we’re joining the APA in honoring Mental Health Month. One of the aims of Mental Health Month is to bring awareness to the importance of taking care of your physical, mental and emotional health and well-being.

Stress touches everyone. It’s a tangible part of our days. But it doesn’t have to dismantle our lives. The key is to cope with stress effectively. And, thankfully, this is something each of us can learn. Once you find practices that resonate with you, you can tuck them into your personal wellness toolbox for use at any time.

Below, Kathryn Tristan, author of the book Why Worry? Stop Coping and Start Living, shared her tips for alleviating stress and enhancing your well-being. You’ll also find a simple test at the bottom to help you quickly assess your stress level.

Most of us want to get along well with other people. One way to do this is to help people feel good about themselves.

If you make a person feel smart and insightful, that person will more likely enjoy your company. The point is not to be manipulative, but to help other people feel good about their contributions to a conversation.

So here are some suggestions to make that happen.

A few weeks ago, as I was sitting with some friends over dinner, there were multiple times when a lot of “shoulds” circulated through the conversation. “He should have picked you up for the date,” or “he shouldn’t act like that.”

I myself was guilty as charged, “should-ing” here and there as well. And then, when I actually pondered the meaning of what we were suggesting, the blinker in my mind flashed red, and I tried to bring myself back into check.

That wasn’t the first time that I’ve had difficulty with just letting people be.

“[B]eing regularly creative correlates with being a better you, a happier mother, a lighter self with an easier laugh,” writes creativity coach Miranda Hersey in her excellent e-book The Creative Mother’s Guide: Six Practices for the Early Years. (You can read a sample page here.)

But, not surprisingly, expressing your creativity, whether through penning poetry, painting or opening up an Etsy shop, can be incredibly challenging during the early years of motherhood. Your days fly by, a blur of feedings, fatigue, mood fluctuations, swelling to-do lists and profound love for your little one.

In The Creative Mother’s Guide, Hersey, who has five kids herself, shares a variety of valuable tips and other mothers’ stories on living a creative life when your kids are young.

A favorite caption I saw a couple years ago with regard to workforce restlessness was “Distracted? Hit the Reset Button.”

We all know the familiar frustration with computers and other devices that decide they just can’t work anymore in the moment. We’re probably all familiar too with the required routine to update their operating systems in order to bring them back to even keel, starting point, place of rest.

It is the same with people.

We find ourselves with “restlessness syndrome,” the inability to write another word or figure another computation in our workplaces. That’s not to say distraction doesn’t rear its periodic unattractive head when we are attending to a project at home. Often, what is behind it is simply our modern lack of deep focus on any one thing at any one time, in an age of expected, mega multi-tasking.

According to interfaith minister and author Rev. Maggie Oman Shannon, when we immerse ourselves in creative acts, we can quiet the noises around us from our “wild and wired world,” and truly calm ourselves. With these creative acts, we also can cultivate a spiritual practice.

In her book Crafting Calm: Projects and Practices for Creativity and Contemplation, Oman Shannon quotes the 20th-century Catholic priest Henri Nouwen, who said, “Through the spiritual life we gradually move from the house of fear to the house of love.”

Oman Shannon believes the same can be said about the creative life. Through creating, she writes, “we can enter the stillness that characterizes prayer and the ‘house of love.’ We can open ourselves and experience spaciousness.”

A relatively hot topic turned up at the end of last year, found in and among commentary on national bestseller lists, with scores of subsequent articles and essays in magazines, journals and online: taking risk to achieve the happiness you crave and deserve in life and work.

Suggestions abound about the necessity (not mere option) of striving toward certain pinnacles in life, be they health challenges to overcome or professional goals to better implement. The condition of being human in a complex world requires much life-energy spent on going after what’s really important and required of each of us, rather than in chasing distractions.

I like the addition to this philosophy, though, of an element I believe that’s equally required in the mix. It was well stated in a New York Times Career column editorial on Sept. 30, 2012, describing that mere work and dedication are not enough to reach one’s goals.

Real “audacity” must be paired with a balancing measure of “humility.”

In our society self-care is largely misunderstood.

Its narrow and inaccurate perception explains why many of us — women in particular — feel guilty about attending to our needs. It explains why many of us stumble around drained and depleted.

However, self-care offers a slew of benefits. And it feels good to nourish our needs.

Below, experts dispel seven of the most common myths surrounding self-care.