100 Days Project Starts Tomorrow

I’m doing the 100 days project starting tomorrow because for so very long, I felt like I couldn’t create. At this point, I’ve spent the better part of my adult life selling myself short. I know everyone around me knew I could do way more than I was allowing myself to see I could do. Tragic but not unchangeable.

I started to think, actually hear the words “I can” in my head somewhat recently. That every time I thought of possibilities of achievement, I didn’t suddenly feel like some sort of snail that wanted to retreat back into my shell at the fearful thought of venturing forward. I heard myself say “I can” instead. That’s some powerful mojo shifting right there.

So when I considered participating in the 100 Day project starting tomorrow, I realized that I could because I’d already done this last year. See my previous post on the 100 Day Project here and feel free to follow along with me on Instagram. I’m mostly sure I’ll be sketching little sketches of little moments of my world every day. I was inspired by my daughter.

Creativity and authenticity are truths worth living.

Thank you for your readership and your support.

And if you missed the publication of my Wholehearted Story on the Quiet Writing blog, see that here.

If you enjoyed what you read, please subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your email box. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional In-touchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

Give Yourself the Credibility for the Courage You’ve Already Shown

It took me exactly 51 years and 179 days to have the courage to get here. There’s much that I will not remember about this half century I’ve lived. And there’s much that I could remember if I put my mind to thinking about it. But I think the greatest tragedy is the disrespect we can show ourselves as we forget ourselves. As we underplay our achievements.

When we invalidate ourselves by blowing off a compliment or comparing how we feel about ourselves compared to what we perceive someone else is/has/has done, we commit such a crime against our own humanity. We invalidate our own existence.

We invalidate our own existence.

But what of all the people who benefited from our actions and our presence? Like in It’s a Wonderful Life, were we to take ourselves out of the equation and nullify our actions, we’d most likely cause irreparable harm to those people whose lives we’ve touched.

It takes tremendous courage to be us everyday. It takes courage to get married, get divorced, have children, and endeavor anything. We make creative risks daily whether they’re what we cook for dinner or what jobs/tasks we take on outside our homes, we are using courage we apparently undervalue.

Yesterday I remembered a challenge I’d hosted that I’d forgotten from a year and a half ago. I am re-losing the weight that I’ve lost before. I’m full of so much more talent and experience than I ever give myself credit for. And while I’m not going to rewrite my resume today, I’m going to be extra mindful about what I tell myself I don’t have the courage for and can’t do. Because after a half a century plus, I think there’s a lot I can in fact do and do well.

If you enjoyed what you read, please subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your email box. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional In-touchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

My Creativity Workshop in the Fall of 2017

Developing and leading the Creativity workshop on November 18^th of this year, 2017, renewed my understanding of my purpose. All the self-trust and self-esteem work I’ve done has naturally led to me valuing my creativity. The more I read and the more I write about both self-development and creativity, the more I understand the entwined nature of our true and creative selves.

And I now understand the same fear that threatens to keep us from our truest and most authentic self is the same as that which keeps us from our most creative selves. I find this kind of knowledge is too juicy to keep to oneself. Because if you can separate yourself from your fear and feelings just long enough to make a better choice that makes you feel better, at least you know you have a choice.

Previously, I have conducted one other workshop several years ago on blogging. And as that was a success at showing me I could teach a workshop, this one was more about what I felt passionate about. These are the subjects that have changed my life drastically. The theories and understanding that I have developed were earned by me. And I can see that what I know and feel may be of help to someone else looking to free themselves from the anguish of anxiety and blocked creativity.

I started the workshop by asking people to describe creativity. To put a value on it in their minds is to make it worth pursuing. These dozen attendees were there because they already valued creativity and yet, in our separated worlds, we may not realize it means as much to others. Hearing others say how you feel is very validating. We then jumped into what held us back from creativity, claiming words that described our blocks and our fears. And again, we owned what we knew was keeping us from this goal we wanted and heard what other people had struggles with. A sudden sense of community felt formed.

I shared my humanity and told a story of how anxiety had gripped me while driving on my way to a creative event once. I spoke about the cruelty we treat our inner children with when we deny or criticize their natural need to play. I gave them words and concepts about fear of being outcast and faith in our authentic selves and the kindness of permission to play versus the cruelty of not allowing for it. And then we got to the hands-on fun part where we applied ourselves to this process.

First, we created permission slips based on a blocked creative task citing our creative desire and then writing through our blocks to achieve that. And then we created authority badges claiming ourselves and our talents as creatives regardless of talent.  It was wondrous to watch this roomful of adults grab markers and glitter and paper and create physical representations of their entitlement to be creative.

My takeaway? I am onto something. There is a simple equation here about our true inner children being allowed to be unequivocally ourselves. That we’ve been so programmed to be productive and ready for disaster that day after day we deny ourselves our true identities, a moment to indulge in “pointless’ fun activities. And day after day, hope leaks from our souls as we remain imprisoned in our shoulds and can’ts.

I have a strong sense that this kind of self-permission and soul tuning is necessary for our world to heal. That we can’t be an authentic nation of people if we are not acting as our truest selves and in our own interests. And that creative living and listening to our intuition will serve to make us stronger in every application.

I will be revamping my content and offering this workshop again next year sometime. The potential to awaken people’s insights and intuitions is tantalizing. And I would love to know and be proud to have I contributed what I could to the healing of people’s creative souls.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your email box. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest  too. I am always practicing Intentional In-touchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

Why I’m OK Teaching a Creativity Workshop

If I had a dime for every time I heard, “Oh Shalagh you are so creative”, I’d at least have five bucks. This became one of those phrases that made me twitch perhaps because I didn’t think of myself as having any kind of creative superpowers which was obvious to them but not to me, until it finally was. I think perhaps what they meant was they wished they knew the secret creative permission spell too.

Fast forward to the past several years when I intentionally indulged myself in creative challenges to gain creative confidence. I followed many of my creative curiosities until I finally owned that I was an Uber-creative. And I am beginning to understand that I believe in creative living aka Creativism as a way of life, one that is at odds with the consume and destroy mode of existence I see all too much of.

So if there is a purpose to my life, one of the facets seems to be sharing my creativity with others so that they too have permission to create.  To this end, I am offering a creativity workshop locally this Fall because I believe that everyone can benefit, and perhaps heal, from increased creativity in their lives.

Each of us looks to understand ourselves based on our interaction with the world. The advertising propaganda would have us believe conformity and possession would be our best safe bet to easy existence. But in fact, we crave to understand our uniqueness through our interactions. We long to be carefree, to be unique and yet connected to our community at the same time. We want self-confidence that comes from owning our own uniqueness and perspective. Not only are these human needs, they are only a few of the many benefits of creativity.

Somehow, as we become older, we conform to the idea that creativity will get us outcast from the tribe. That we need to focus only on the earning of money and security for our family. My hope is that by opening up a conversation with people, and consequently they with themselves, the tantalizing benefits will begin to tickle people slightly out of their fear zones so that they may try creativity in small bursts in their lives. A little creativity in one’s life is better than none. And the money people can save by ceasing to try to find themselves by spending rather than creating will make it an even more enticing proposition.

My final realization is that I don’t have to a “professional” artist to legitimize my knowledge and experience around creativity. I can be a small “a” artist. I only need to acknowledge that I am creative and share what I feel and know to be my truth around this process as it relates to my growth and development as a more rounded human being. I can honestly say that the permission I have given myself to create has created a better happier more confident me. And that is a completely good thing.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your email box. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest  too. I am always practicing Intentional In-touchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

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Creativism

An online connection/friend and introduced me to this concept of Creativism. I looked it up immediately and I believe I already embrace and live this way. According to Orna Ross,the author and source of a series of books on this subject, ”Creativism is the adoption of creative principles and practices as a way of life, applying the creative process to everything.” It’s the adoption of the idea of recreation and connection applied to life. “Creativists say, there is a creative flow unfolding all the things and experiences in the world. I am a part of that. The best way to live is to align with that flow, to ride the wave.” And they say,” I’m in charge, I am responsible for what unfolds in my life”. Peruse her website for ideas and inspiration at OrnaRoss.com.

But it was in my friend Olivia’s own Manifesto , The Creativist Manifesto : Consumer or Creativist ?, that I really began to understand the yin and yang of our way of living. Our society currently prioritizes the masculine with consumerism and destructive way of life over creativity and the flow of creating our worlds, life outcomes, communities, and surroundings which reflects the feminine way.

In order to be a creativist, you can’t be following someone else’s rule book or blaming your life’s outcome on anyone else. Ms. Ross says, ” (Creativists) We spend much time cultivating an internal open space so that our truest needs are what concerns us. It is to these true wants that we give our time and life energy and we let the rest go.” Live by your own truths? Absolutely. Which is not to say we live solely for ourselves either. Because that’s the economic/money based system’s downfall. Greed. Instead, as a creativistic society, we live and aspire collectively and join with others in the pursuit of these truths as the collaborative creative project of life.

If there is anything wrong with this way of thinking, I don’t see it. It seems idealistic and utopian and aligned with all my values. I already began to think about this concept in my piece about Non-Negotiable Creative Soul Living Here. As a creativist, you commit to allowing for and helping to create beauty, trust, honesty, and abundance in your world. Miss Ross suggests this can lead us to an economy that recognizes an individual and a collective, male and female, the tangible and the intangible, that is beyond consumerism. Create a balance of these conditions in your own life and you can then create them in the world. Apply this to whatever it is that you want to create.

I love and am equally terrified by the thought of our boundless potential for possibility and change. I know that within me are all the tools and the potential for higher thoughts than I practice having now. I will be checking out author Orna Ross’s Go Creative! It’s Your Native State, when it comes out. Her other title I love too, You’re Not Crazy, You’re Creative. And I highly recommend reading Olivia Sprinkel’s Creativist Manifesto Here.

I love discovering new concepts about creativity. Anyone else ever heard of Creativism?

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your email box. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest  too. I am always practicing Intentional In-touchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

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