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inspiration

inspiration & influence

Seeing stars

February 3, 2013
Orion Nebula

Orion Nebula – by the Smithsonian Institute via flickr

These words are running around my head…

Look at the stars,

Look how they shine for you,

And all the things that you do.

Yes, they are from a song from a while ago, “Yellow” by Coldplay but it’s suddenly on high rotation in my head and I woke up to these words running through me in the middle of last night. They are beautiful, speak of possibility, potential, opportunity. They are sad and make me think of my brother and what I didn’t get to say to him when he couldn’t see the light shining any more. They are words of encouragement to continue to see the light and positives ahead.

These words sit by my desk…

Perhaps they are not the stars but rather openings in heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy

This is an Eskimo proverb apparently. Even before I came across this quote, it was how I liked to think of the stars. I found myself in my deepest moments of grief looking up into the stars with some sense of connection and comfort. It’s something I still do.

These stars shine for me…

I wrote about my seven stars a few years ago when I was just starting out here. These stars still shine for me. Weekly, daily, their words and projects influence and guide me. Here are some recent thoughts on their influence:

Shanna Germain wrote a brilliant post ‘Do the Words: On (Writing) Productivity‘ based on sitting and writing in a cafe while overhearing a conversation about all the barriers the speakers faced to writing. She tweeted:

People at next table spent 2 hrs kvetching about writer’s block. In that time, I wrote 827 words, edited 2 stories. Shut up. Do the words.

Shanna cuts through, does the words, gets on with it and through the resistance and is such a great example of writing productively. This is a message I will be remembering this year: stop talking (or blogging) about it and just get on with it!

Susannah Conway. What can I say, I am a huge fan and cannot capture just how influential Susannah has been to me. This recent post, ‘From the Heart‘ just floored me as Susannah reflected so openly on both the personal toll of her work effort and her sense of being alone; my heart and many others went out to her in return. This post demonstrated, in the deepest way, the sheer vulnerability and honesty that is ‘Blogging from the Heart’, why it is so valuable and how the online community of the heart can provide so much support to each other.

Danielle LaPorte’s ‘Desire Map‘ project and current posts continue to cut through to new thinking. Elsewhere, I was reading about email overload this morning and rules about managing this in the workplace in terms of redefining when people can/can’t email and should/shouldn’t read emails. Part of me is thinking, ‘good idea, we need to manage this better in my workplace‘ and another part of me is thinking, ‘well, what about personal choice and the customer, who might want an answer now?’ Shortly after, I read this post from Danielle, Bag your Boundaries. Wham! Love that fresh, pure, direct thinking.’ You can have both, Danielle says:

You can protect yourself and be open-hearted.

Cool! So I am now thinking about how I can do this in my workplace from a different perspective altogether.

And then there’s Chris Guillebeau who probably started all this; through him I linked up with Danielle and then through to Susannah. He has helped me make so many connections – people, thoughts, plans – and is still out there building empires, fostering world domination and writing posts that, like Danielle, make me look at things from a non-conformist standpoint. Take for example, ‘Changing the System’:

If you want something to change, therefore, show us an alternative. Show us a new way of life.

You are the role model. Not the politician, not the celebrity, not the evangelist. Don’t throw up your hands in resignation, and don’t look for another leader.

It’s all on you, in other words. No pressure.

Whew! No pressure indeed! But it’s so true. It’s easy to complain; it’s easy to give up or to look for someone else to lead but the solutions come from taking responsibility and working through to find another way. My work role as a leader is about making a difference. This is the exactly the way I need to lead: finding the alternatives and being the role model, helping us to work through them.

So, I am seeing stars all around me, a constellation of words, thoughts and song that gather and cluster to propel me to also shine.

What stars are you seeing? What’s making you shine?

blogging planning & productivity

Setting the scene

January 26, 2013

setting the scene

There’s been a certain amount of scene setting for 2013 going on here at present. I’ve moved my roll-top desk, the centre of my creative universe, from the back of the room where for some reason I had my back to the window and trees. It’s now closer to the window where I can see the trees and feel a cool afternoon breeze wafting in. My room is less cluttered, still busy and full of books and papers, but more organised so I can see and find things. It feels cooler, calmer and a more relaxed place to be.

Today is Australia Day and it’s a long weekend, so a wonderful time to breathe in and out, and work on the personal planning I need for 2013. Much has been rattling around my head and I’ve had the opportunity to read how others are working on their plans for this year. I  have especially loved reading about the 2013 approaches and plans of my Blogging from the Heart buddies, Victoria Smith and Liv White and so many others which have warmed and inspired my heart. Such different and wonderful approaches to thinking about this year; some more structured and others more free flowing and intuitive, and now it’s time to work though my own.

Key members of my Seven Stars virtual support team, nearly three years on, continue to be a huge influence. I will start with Chris Guillebeau’s annual review process which I have worked through for a number of years now; it’s good to have a process that is consistent to go back to and review over time. Susannah Conway is a wonderfully wise and gentle support in so many ways and her Unravelling the year ahead 2013 workbook will also be something I will work through.

In terms of participating in projects and e-courses this year, I have started off this year with blogging buddy, Flo Gascon’s ‘Time of your Life’ ecourse . It’s about refocusing so you realise the positives and ensure you are in fact having the time of your life and not some sub-standard version of what it might be. It’s the first week but already the thoughts that are being sown are powerful and I look forward to this renewal of perspective.

I’m also working through Danielle LaPorte’s Desire Map multimedia guide. Again, I’m just getting my toe in the water but it’s already enabling some refocusing on what my core desires drive me to do and understanding this better. I loved working through ‘Style Statement‘ and the power that this gave me for bringing together aspects of my core values that I hadn’t previously connected. I’m looking forward to more of this and am in no rush; I will just take this one gently and deeply and as I can.

I’m also joining the Australian Women Writers’ Challenge again this year and will post soon on last year’s experience and what I hope to focus on this year. I absolutely love this challenge, the reading and writing experiences and the community it brings with it. I have learned so much more about a space that brings together three of my great loves: Australia, women and women’s issues, and writing. Linking with people who also share these loves has been a source of inspiration and learning.

So, lots of scene-setting, physical, mental and emotional, and I’m looking forward to sharing the evolving scenes here as they play out this year.

What scene setting are you doing for this year?

creativity introversion

Gems #18 Creating sacred space

October 9, 2012

Living and working away from home for a while recently has made me reflect on space, the space I inhabit, the space I share, the nexus between partnership and independence, and between time together and time alone.

As an introvert, who is in a highly interactive, people focused leadership role, I need time alone to re-energise, ground myself and get in touch with my creative side. This time enables me also to feed my creativity with valued reading of books, blogs and other sources to shape my own developing thoughts and ideas. Or to interact with creative others through social media and blogs to also link and inspire.

It all comes back to making sacred space. Here are some gems on creating sacred space:

Defining your sacred space

Todd Henry, author of ‘Accidental Genius’ makes the case for having a sacred space and encourages us to find our ‘bliss station’ or:

a physical place where your only job is to pursue the things that ensure your sense of wonder and prod you towards the unexplored.

Quoting Joseph Campbell from interviews collected in ‘The Power of Myth‘, Henry celebrates the power of this type of sacred space in ‘creative incubation’:

[A sacred place] is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be.

Love that place and that thought, and holding onto it. Read Todd’s great article for more thoughts on sacred space and its value.

‘A Room of One’s Own’ – Virginia Woolf

One of my favourite books that sits on my rolltop desk always, ‘A Room of One’s Own’ makes a clear case for both physical and intellectual space to write especially for women. Walking us through the history of women and those who have paved the way in making space for creativity, Virginia Woolf’s classic book is full of gems that remind us of the value of space to be able to create and express one’s unique vision and work:

Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream. For I am by no means confining you to fiction. If you would please me – and there are thousands like me – you would write books of travel and adventure, and research and scholarship, and history and biography, and criticism and philosophy and science. By so doing you will certainly profit the art of fiction. For books have a way of influencing each other. Fiction will be much the better for standing cheek by jowl with poetry and philosophy.

More quotes from Goodreads here from ‘A Room of One’s Own’, or dive back into this wonderful essay and read it in all its sinuous and intelligent entirety.

And finally, my own poem celebrating sacred space:

Poem without silence

I want to write a poem
without the word silence.
The allure of its sleek long vowel
fights to identify this
late night sensation,
wise without sound.

After the traffic
punctuating rain,
the music I become,
beyond the reach of reading
all that marches past my eyes,
the exterior collapses
to a page to hold
the chatter
I confine.

And there though this loophole
of assonance or in its role
defining that breathless space,
the secret finds its way,
this pleasure I make.

creativity

On Creativity

August 23, 2012

Some gems about gathering creative ideas and being productive:

In ‘Capturing Your Creative Ideas‘, Victoria Smith outlines a range of strategies, both digital and non-digital, for capturing and organising creative ideas. As ‘ideas and creative inspirations are our currency’, Victoria provides many practical suggestions for how to collect and curate our inputs and thoughts so we are ready to move when the opportunity arises.

In ‘Writers, Inspiration and the Ideas we Collect‘, Benison O’Reilly writes about my favourite bird, the satin bowerbird, and the male bowerbird’s penchant for gathering blue objects into his bower to attract his female mate. Benison captures how, like the bowerbird, writers gather what attracts them and the ideas that come together. As Benison says, ‘All writers need to be bowerbirds’, open, alert, looking for what connects us and making the links.

In ‘Creating Perfect Solitude for Creative Focus‘, Leo Babauta provides suggestions for how to find the right time to create, how to schedule it, clear the desk, disconnect and generally keep the creative environment simple and productive.

What gems do you have on creativity?

blogging creativity

Angel and muse

April 22, 2011

You wonder about all the time you spend online sometimes, where it’s heading, where it’s taking you. Where all the twitter followers might take you, how you can ever read all the valued work of the people you follow; for me: the writers, readers, bloggers, family historians, cancer researchers, vintage lovers, photographers, artists, entrepreneurs, creatives and other ‘out theres’ paving a blazing way.

You wonder how you might ever keep up with all the blogs you love and subscribe to, clumsily it seems, through a series of readers that overwhelm you. You wonder how you will capture the essence of each crafted voice and message you admire or learn from and how you will apply them to your own journey.

And then you lie here in the middle of the night in hospital after an operation, full of painkillers and strange emotions, and receive the most blessed message from a fellow traveller, more a leader and teacher, met through your various journeys in your online world.

In this case, it’s from Susannah Conway, angel and muse to me and many, as we are in the middle of engaging in our Unravelling 2 e-course journey. In the midst of pain, the message about ‘Stories’ and what we will be thinking through and working on this week hits a poignant space, the tears start but it also makes my heart soar and immediately celebrate possibilities. And I start writing again, if here, full of painkillers in the middle of the night.

That’s why I twitter, blog,  flickr, read blogs, subscribe to Susannah Conway, Colleen Wainwright, Chris Guillebeau, Danielle LaPorte, Sage Cohen, Shanna Germain, Jonathan Fields and Joanna Penn. Why I love the creative inventions and reinventions I find on etsy and in delish and love reading about people dealing with fear and challenges in fearless.  Why I engage with these very special people and their products, read their work and their reviews, listen to their podcasts, follow their entrepreneurship, their stories, their journeys, buy their books, join their online classes and apply the thoughts, processes and aspirations to myself as I journey on.

It all leads to engaging with like others and knowing what real stories I can tell, what my role as angel and muse in an online space might be, finding the unique transcendent voice that might articulate the story or experience that others might learn from, add to or grow from, imperfect and flawed as it is, a reaching to a sacred creative place.

Postscript:

No dramas with the op – I am fine and recovering and it’s nothing major!

If you do have a recommendation for an RSS reader that doesn’t overwhelm or any other strategies for dealing with all the blogs you come across and want to keep up with, I would heartily appreciate any tips!

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creativity planning & productivity transcending writing

About stillness

February 13, 2011

While I have been doing my annual review of 2010 and goal setting for 2011 (and yes I do know it’s the middle of February already!), I have been thinking about my theme and word for this year.

It has become a popular concept to have a word for the year. I like the idea of having a word to focus you, direct you and power you, offering the opportunity of a clearly identified source of strength.

Here are some writers and thinkers employing and celebrating the word of the year in their lives and work:

  • Sage Cohen wrote on this issue on her new site, the Path of Possibility, especially in relation to being a productive writer. Sage’s word of the year is grace.
  • Shanna Germain’s piece on her word of the year and how its various meanings might play out in 2011 is so full of energy. Shanna’s word is the very powerful prime.
  •  Ali Edwards has been writing about the power of One Little Word since 2007. She has a One Little Word online workshop where you can learn more about the power of working with the one word concept.  Ali’s word of the year is light.
  • Christine Kane has a Word of the Year worksheet tool which provides a framework for working through your words and your goals.

I have been reflecting on my word and waiting for it. It came suddenly and perfectly whole one day in January. The word is stillness.

This word is about all aspects of my life and especially how I source my strength. I am highly intuitive and introspective according to the Myer Briggs Inventory.  I spend most of my days in constant contact with people at work; often very extraverted people, full of energy and ideas. I am keen to be more aware of how to be still, to listen, to charge my batteries and to be calm and to make a difference wherever I am.

Some definitions of stillness include:

  • tranquil silence
  • state of being quiet or calm
  • the absence of sound
  • calmness without winds
  • a state of no motion of movement
  • motionlessness, immobility, remaining in place

Here are some examples of what stillness means to me:

  • choosing to close the door a little more to write and reflect
  • listening to others and learning
  • creating the space to enable people to come to their own solutions
  • asking the right questions at the right time
  • being early instead of rushing, being late or just on time
  • resisting a sense of urgency to solve everything now
  • being comfortable with a phase of muddle and overwhelm
  • finding the right way to focus a difficult or unproductive team or meeting
  • taking the time to consult and map a complex problem to get to the heart of it
  • keeping things simple and not over-complicating
  • knowing and allowing the space and conditions for creativity
  • a candle burning steadily
  • a walk on the beach and standing in a cool pool of water

Stillness is not always a complete absence of movement; it’s more the calm that will power the right moves and provide the time for reflection for myself and others. I am finding much strength in that ‘one little word’. As Ali Edwards says:

It can be the ripple in the pond that changes everything.

There is a sense of ‘stillness’ being absolutely the right word to navigate myself and consequently others. Through a sense of ease and calm, it seems more likely that desired goals like creative process, business success, teamwork and balance will be achieved.

And via @DennyCoates on twitter, comes a perfect quote from D H Lawrence:

“One’s action ought to come out of an achieved stillness: not to be a mere rushing on.”

Perfect. What word is working for you in 2011?

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