http://archive.aweber.com/creativezen2008-05-15T23:02:03-04:002008-05-15T23:02:03-04:002008-05-15T23:02:03-04:00tag:archive.aweber.com,2008-05-15:/creativezen/xLue/h/Your_Creative_Garden_Pests.htm

Creative Zen Transitions creativity ~ transformation ~ peace Your Creative Garden: Pests Pests are usually tiny, but if they are allowed to take over, they can destroy your garden. In the organic garden, there are several ways to accomplish pest control. For chewing insects, like big worms, the easiest pest control may be simply picking them off each morning and disposing of them. For sucking insects like aphids, a soapy solution suffocates them, and even just blasting them with water from the hose will help get them off your plants. Natural garden predators, like ladybugs and the praying mantis may be happy to keep your garden free of pests. Ground red peppers are said to keep some insects away, and beer for snails is a classic. Each strategy works against a different type of pest, and if one isn't working, it's easy enough to try another one. In your creative garden, pests are the distractions that interrupt your creative time, and keep you from creating. Pests can be people, issues you can't get out of your mind, low-priority tasks, or anything else that keeps you distracted. It's good to remember, too, that not everyone's distractions are the same! For some people, trying to work in a noisy environment is not an issue, while for others it may be totally incapacitating. This brings up the importance of really honing in on what is at the heart of what is distracting you. It may not be what you think! Like in your garden, you may have to try out different strategies to combat these pests. The first part of your strategy is building awareness. What things prevent you from giving yourself permission to relax and devote yourself to your creative time? Are there specific people who distract you when you sit down to create? Do your own thoughts, feelings, or attitudes distract you and rob you of peace? Is your life filled with endlessly distracting trivia, so that you don't feel you can take time from it all to create? Is your work area cluttered, leading you into cleaning and organizing, rather than creating? Identifying where the problem actually lies is the first step to taming those pests. There are two specific situations that I'd like to bring your attention to. One occurs when distractions show up and we are not really ready to create anyway. We're uncertain, fearful, procrastinating a bit, and when a distraction comes along, it delivers us from this situation. We grab hold of it, and go off with the distraction, happy not to have to deal with our creative uncertainty. We are actually welcoming distractions in this situation, because they provide us with a perfect excuse to avoid a deeper issue. One place to look at this deeper issue is back with our garden's weeds -- negative thoughts. Are we feeling inadequate or hopeless? Perhaps we need some grounding and centering. Or are we simply uncertain about how to move forward? Perhaps we need to spend some time daydreaming about what we're wanting to create next, and how to go about it. Distractions can also show up when we ARE ready to create, and steal away our time. When this is the case, we need to find ways to keep those distractions out of our creative time, at the very least. Another option, which will free up even more energy, is to get those distractions out of your life in general. This requires a bigger commitment of time, at least at first, but does make life a little easier in the long run. Figuring out what purpose the distraction is serving -- whether it is a welcome or unwelcome visitor -- is key to figuring out how to deal with it. If you find it to be a welcome visitor, it is time to stop and figure out what is really going on, to figure out what you are avoiding with the distraction. Many times this will tie back to some type of fear about creating. If you find it to be an unwelcome visitor, then it is time to try out strategies until you find one that works. Teaching other people in your life about boundaries so that you have uninterrupted time. Clearing clutter so that your mind is as open as the creative space around you. Choosing to eliminate from your life things that do not contribute to your life or well being. Or clumping those distracting little tasks and details together to be dealt with at a common time. In modern life, distractions are increasing. While some of these pests are not within our control, many of them are, and minimizing them will give us more energy for our lives. When our lives are overrun with distractions, then our creativity as a whole suffers, much like our garden. At the very least, we can choose to make our creative time a pest-free zone! It's a great place to start. Creativity Spark Our primary goal is to bar distractions from our creative time and space. You may choose to expand this to reduce distractions from your life in general. 1. What distractions do you find interrupting your creativity? Are the distractions offering a handy excuse to help you avoid an issue that you need to deal with? If so, look into that issue more closely. 2. Develop a few different strategies that you would like to try. Depending on your specific issue, you may try setting boundaries with others to guard your creative time, working to eliminate distracting thoughts, or finding a way to effectively deal with life's trivia. You may pick up hints through books, the internet, or TV shows. 3. Call on others to help you implement some of these plans. Discuss your creative time rules with your family, offer to exchange support or time with a friend, develop a meditation practice including supportive audios and books, get yourself taken off junk mail lists and hire a housekeeper. Anything you think will work for your situation, now is the time to get support and get into action. 4. Evaluate and adjust. When things aren't quite working right, that's not the time to give up! Instead, evaluate why something didn't work, and try adjusting things a bit. Don't expect one thing to be a solution for everything. Life is complex, as I'm sure you've noticed by now! 5. Focus on creating, not implementing strategies to reduce distractions! Yes, it takes time to get things in place, evaluate and adjust. Just don't get lost in it! About Caroline ... Caroline coaches people who want to incorporate creativity into their daily lives. By working on our creative projects, we are able to transform our lives, and bring about a sense of peace and joy. Creativity is also a wonderful way to navigate life's transitions. For more information on individual and group coaching programs, live and virtual retreats, and more resources to help you get going on your creative projects with comfort and sustainability, please visit our website at www.creativezentransitions.com For insights on creativity and life in general, please visit the blog, at http://www.creativezentransitions.typepad.com/ Zenspiration! Caroline's podcast of creativity meditations will get you in the right frame of mind to begin creating. They change every week, and provide focused inspiration related to the current newsletter topic ... usually! Click here to listen...

2008-05-09T16:30:26-04:002008-05-09T16:30:26-04:00tag:archive.aweber.com,2008-05-09:/creativezen/1NFIu/h/Your_Creative_Garden_Weeds.htm

Creative Zen Transitions creativity ~ transformation ~ peace Your Creative Garden: Weeds An important part of garden care is weeding. Weeds are continually popping up. If you spend a little time every day, you can keep them under control; if you ignore them, pretty soon they will have taken over your garden! The real problem with weeds is not that they are coexisting peacefully in your garden, but that they are stealing nutrients, crowding out your plants, and eventually stunting their growth. Your plants cannot produce a bountiful harvest under these conditions. It's an easy matter to remove weeds when they are small, before their root systems are established -- a simple pluck and they're gone. You can even put them on the compost pile, so long as they're not blooming, and get those nutrients back. In your creative garden, the weeds that pop up are those negative thoughts that start taking over, stealing nutrients, and crowding your creative projects out of your life with uncertainty and doubt. If you get a chance at these thoughts when they're new and not yet established, they are easier to remove. Problem is, a lot of these weedy thoughts have been growing with us our whole lives, and they've got pretty big root systems! Like with a weed, we may have whacked off the top part many times over the years, only to see them grow back from the roots. Don't be discouraged that it takes awhile to get rid of them. Your best tool for making progress in this area is cultivating an awareness of these thoughts, and understanding that they are not reality. Be gentle with yourself in your thoughts in everything, including frustrations you have getting rid of negative thoughts! There are several ways to try dealing with negative thoughts. One way to work with them is to spend a few minutes each day visualizing these weedy thoughts, and pulling them up. Maybe you see the words as part of the weed, maybe you hear the thought in your head. Either way, work with this process, and see if it is helpful. Another technique is meditation. Your mind may naturally go to those negative thoughts, and you can gently steer it back to your breath. This is a way of disempowering those thoughts. You can also try affirmations. Make sure you select a phrase that you can absolutely believe in. Don't use an affirmation that you are an award-winning writer if you can barely imagine finishing a short story. Create a phrase that you can fully commit to, such as: I am becoming a short story writer. Also, be sure to state your affirmations in the positive. I'm becoming a less horrible writer is not going to inspire! It takes time and consistent action to change negative thoughts and the beliefs behind them. They're very tenacious. Rather than trying to get rid of negative thoughts, another useful perspective is to just notice them, without trying to change them, and then go on about your creative work. This is what is recommended by Richard Carson in his book Taming Your Gremlin. You might enjoy reading the book to get a different point of view. Or, you can use a combination of noticing and continuing, while still working with some of the other techniques. This allows you to be able to move forward on your creative project, while also offering the opportunity for long term thought change. Another technique that works is to use physical exercise to simply create a feeling of empowerment that makes it difficult for negative thoughts to speak up. Use that time when you are still feeling up from the exercise to work on your creative project. A few words of warning: Don't wait until these negative thoughts are gone to begin creating! And don't allow the focus of your time and energy to become getting rid of negative thoughts! These are both traps that will prevent you from creating, and they're traps you can be in for a very long time! The truth is that no matter how hard you work at it, some negative thoughts may not ever shift. At that point, noticing and moving ahead anyway may be your best option. Remember that negative thinking is partly a habit you engage in at the present time, and partly a set of very old beliefs that you've carried around for years. Changing how you think in the present will help, but some of those old thoughts take time and persistence to minimize or eliminate. Be patient and persistent! Creativity Spark Start developing an awareness of negative thoughts in the moment. Sometimes you can catch them as an actual phrase, sometimes they just show up as an attitude. Realize that they have nothing to do with the reality of the present moment. When you catch a negative thought, counter it with a new phrase: It used to be that way! That's not true! Or just acknowledge its presence. Oh, that thought again! Try working with one of the more long term change techniques listed above. Try spending a few minutes a day with one of them, and see if that brings results. What would it be like if you didn't have to struggle with negative thoughts each day? What would be possible creatively if you could free up that energy? About Caroline ... Caroline coaches people who want to incorporate creativity into their daily lives. By working on our creative projects, we are able to transform our lives, and bring about a sense of peace and joy. Creativity is also a wonderful way to navigate life's transitions. For more information on individual and group coaching programs, live and virtual retreats, and more resources to help you get going on your creative projects with comfort and sustainability, please visit our website at www.creativezentransitions.com For insights on creativity and life in general, please visit the blog, at http://www.creativezentransitions.typepad.com/ Zenspiration! Caroline's podcast of creativity meditations will get you in the right frame of mind to begin creating. They change every week, and provide focused inspiration related to the current newsletter topic ... usually! Click here to listen...

2008-03-21T03:29:02-04:002008-03-21T03:29:02-04:00tag:archive.aweber.com,2008-03-21:/creativezen/Q99a/h/Your_Creative_Garden_Needs.htm

Creative Zen Transitions creativity ~ transformation ~ peace Your Creative Garden: Needs Your garden needs fertilizer in order for the plants to be able to grow properly. Compost made from kitchen scraps is natural, healthy for your plants, and good for the ecosystem! To make compost, you take kitchen waste -- apple cores, vegetable peels, seeds and such -- and throw it in a pile to rot. You turn it occasionally for a few months, and let time, microorganisms, moisture, heat, and nature do the work. Likewise, your creative garden needs nutrients. Just as time and nature turn your kitchen garbage into compost, our life experiences provide the starting point for creating our own personal compost! When we've learned from challenging experiences, we've transformed those experiences into nutrient-rich material: ie, compost! When we've not been able to process and learn, these experiences may pile up like garbage, and never complete the cycle of renewal that releases their nutrients. What do we need to do to help this transformation? We need to practice skills like awareness, acceptance, gratitude, forgiveness, and letting go. When we are able to do this, we are able to transform these experiences into wisdom: compost! Many of our life experiences have to do with our success in meeting our needs. Needs go beyond food, water, shelter, and oxygen. Needs are unique to each of us, and include what we require for our souls to thrive. When our needs are met, they transform our life experiences into a rich compost, full of nutrients and energy to power our creative dreams. When our needs aren't met, they lie unchanged on the compost pile for years, keeping energy and nutrients tied up and unavailable for our use. We often tell ourselves that it is okay for our needs to remain unmet, that it doesn't really matter, but our subconscious knows we are not content when our needs are not met. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we shouldn't have a particular need, but changing that need can be like trying to change the color of your hair: it may happen naturally with time, but if you dye your hair, it will eventually go back to what it was. Expressing your creativity may be a need of yours. Feeling close to people around you. Getting out in nature. Having peace and quiet. We often blame others for our needs being unmet, and with that blame come feelings of anger, resentment, unworthiness, guilt, fear -- you name it. Until we know what our needs are, these feelings lie as garbage on the compost pile, unable to be transformed. Once we understand our needs, we can begin figuring out how to get them met appropriately, either by ourselves or others, or dealing with the fact that they won't be met by accepting, forgiving, and moving on. Once met, these needs become rich compost to nourish our lives. Needs often have two sides to them. For example, needing to feel close to others may lead you to host potluck dinners so you can enjoy spending time with friends and family. It may also lead you to sacrifice your own self-care to catering to their every wish, and to push yourself upon people when they need to be alone. See how their need to be alone is now in direct conflict with your need to feel close to others? What is critical here is to make sure your need is not constantly pushing you into unhealthy behavior or conflict with others, while at the same time getting that need met. Your need to feel close to others may be better satisfied by meeting a whole group of new friends who love doing potlucks and movies every weekend! Some needs, you will find you can meet yourself. If you need to get out in nature regularly, don't fume at your couch-loving spouse -- find a hiking club on the internet! Or, if you need to feel respected, instead of turning to others to meet that need, and being repeatedly disappointed, work on learning to respect yourself. You're more self-sufficient when you can meet your own needs. Some needs you can specifically request be filled. For example, if you love dancing, but your partner never takes you out, a discussion of why it is important to you followed by a request for them to join you twice a month for a night out might be the perfect solution. If they say no, take your sibling and have a great time. Or, if you feel you need a hug in the mornings, let your spouse know -- they may be trying to stay out of your harried morning routine. And some needs you just have to let go of, and come to peace with the fact that they may never be met. A lot of parental issues fall into this category. If you want your parents to be proud of you, your spouse being proud of you may not quite do it. A conversation about how you'd like them to express their pride in you may fall on confused ears. At some point, you may want to release this unmet need and free up the energy, or nutrients, it contains. Find a way to let go and come to peace with it. Accept that it will never be met. Oddly enough, that is frequently the point at which your parent may comment on how great something you did 30 years ago was! Sometimes we get caught up in thinking that our needs must be met in a specific way, or by a specific person. Be flexible in seeing how your needs can be met creatively, rather than holding onto your fantasy of how things must go. If it is not practical to relocate your family to the mountains, take them camping a few times a year and see how far that goes toward meeting your need for being in nature. We talked last time about taking time for self-care. Getting our needs met is part of that. When our needs are not met, energy that could be nourishing us is tied up in old issues, and we end up feeling drained and unfulfilled. Taking the time to figure out what our needs are, and how to get them met, is a vital part of self-care. When our needs are met, it creates the rich compost that provides the energy and enthusiasm we need to pursue our lives and our creative projects. Creativity Spark First, start making a list of your needs. You may have to focus your awareness on your reaction to things over a period of time in order to figure some of them out. Most of us have lived with our needs unmet for so long that we may not have a conscious awareness of what those needs are anymore. Focus on what excites you, what saddens you, what angers you, what you are longing for, what you feel like you don't deserve, what you feel is impossible, what you loved as a little kid, and what brings you peace and happiness. Chances are good that those things are somehow tied up with your needs. When considering your needs, ask yourself: 1. What is at the heart of this need? 2. Can I meet this need myself? 3. Is someone else willing and able to meet it? 4. If I cannot get this need met, am I willing to let go, forgive, and move on? 5. If I am not willing to let go, forgive, and move on, how long am I willing to have my energy tied up in this unfulfilled need? About Caroline ... Caroline coaches people who want to incorporate creativity into their daily lives. By working on our creative projects, we are able to transform our lives, and bring about a sense of peace and joy. Creativity is also a wonderful way to navigate life's transitions. For more information on individual and group coaching programs, live and virtual retreats, and more resources to help you get going on your creative projects with comfort and sustainability, please visit our website at www.creativezentransitions.com For insights on creativity and life in general, please visit the blog, at http://www.creativezentransitions.typepad.com/ Zenspiration! Caroline's podcast of creativity meditations will get you in the right frame of mind to begin creating. They change every week, and provide focused inspiration related to the current newsletter topic ... usually! Click here to listen...

2008-02-23T03:01:51-05:002008-02-23T03:01:51-05:00tag:archive.aweber.com,2008-02-23:/creativezen/iWuW/h/Your_Creative_Garden_Self_Care.htm

Creative Zen Transitions creativity ~ transformation ~ peace Your Creative Garden: Self-Care Water and fertilizer are both necessary for your garden. Water keeps your plants alive, and so is more essential, while fertilizer helps them really thrive by providing nutrients that the soil may be lacking. In your creative garden, water corresponds to self-care, while fertilizer corresponds to what we call needs. Self-care includes all the physical things necessary to survival, such as oxygen, food, water, sleep, and shelter. It also includes things like exercise, caring for medical conditions, and meeting your needs. Good self-care is the foundation that provides energy for your creative projects. It is difficult to create when you are not providing your body with good care, and the things it needs. In fact, self-care improves the quality of your life overall. There is not a lot of support for self-care in our society. Self-care is sometimes considered to be selfish, and is sometimes found masquerading as destructive habits or expensive indulgences that have more to do with business profits than your well-being. Self-care is not selfishness; it is caring for yourself on a routine basis, and meeting your own needs first, before you try to meet the needs of others. That doesn't mean that if someone has an emergency, you don't set aside your own needs to help them. It means that you don't make putting your own needs last a way of life. Self-care is not just the minimum standards needed to maintain life, it also includes things necessary for long-term benefits, and an attitude of kindness toward yourself. Proper self-care is really a quality of life issue. As a society, we are currently asking How poor a quality of life am I willing to endure? What we should be asking ourselves is How well am I willing to treat myself? While scarfing down fast-food while driving your kids to their sports practice may technically qualify as self-care, I really have in mind a higher standard. I would like you to consider that self-care includes eating healthy food, in a relaxed environment. This is where many people fall short of true self-care. While you may have nourished your body with fast food, depending on what you ate and your definition of nourishment, you probably don't feel especially cared for, and your kids are learning a terrible lesson from you: that there's not enough time in life for them to tend to the basic task of nourishing themselves. The same is true for sleep. Do you pay attention to how much rest your body tells you it needs, or do you sleep your 6 or 7 hours and drag yourself out of bed, buying into society's message that sleep deprivation is a virtue? True self-care includes giving your body the gift of rest. You may short it here or there, but overall, you listen and respond to what it needs. Exercise is a big self-care issue, because so many people dislike it. The truth is that more scientific research is showing that daily exercise is an important component of health. If you are committed to your long-term self-care, you have to get into the exercise habit. If you are looking to begin an exercise program, try out something off the beaten path that sounds like fun: dancing, cycling, or hiking. Incorporating a larger purpose into your exercise helps motivate you, such as daily walking with the goal of going on a backpacking trip in six months. If you can't find a way to make it fun, try reframing it. I have a friend who took up jogging with the mantra of 56 more years! At the beginning, she didn't enjoy jogging, but her motivation to be healthy for an additional half-century has kept her going, and it's even grown on her! Exercise may be a huge component of caring for medical conditions, but routine checkups and procedures fall under this heading as well. Taking time to maintain your body is a big step in assuming responsibility for your self-care! Needs are another part of self-care. They are those things, unique to each of us, that are necessary in order for us to thrive. They are the fertilizer in the garden. Everyone has needs, and being aware of what your needs are, and keeping them satisfied, helps you have more energy to devote to creating. We'll discuss them next week! Creativity Spark What areas of self-care could use improvement in your life? What will you have to do to implement those changes so that they are sustainable? What changes in mindset are necessary? How do you see these changes impacting your quality of life? What does being kind to yourself and caring for yourself mean to you? How do you normally treat yourself? What is more important in your life than self-care? About Caroline ... Caroline coaches people who want to incorporate creativity into their daily lives. By working on our creative projects, we are able to transform our lives, and bring about a sense of peace and joy. Creativity is also a wonderful way to navigate life's transitions. For more information on individual and group coaching programs, live and virtual retreats, and more resources to help you get going on your creative projects with comfort and sustainability, please visit our website at www.creativezentransitions.com For insights on creativity and life in general, please visit the blog, at http://www.creativezentransitions.typepad.com/ Zenspiration! Caroline's podcast of creativity meditations will get you in the right frame of mind to begin creating. They change every week, and provide focused inspiration related to the current newsletter topic ... usually! Click here to listen...

2008-02-01T21:27:04-05:002008-02-01T21:27:04-05:00tag:archive.aweber.com,2008-02-01:/creativezen/1xjcy/h/Your_Creative_Garden_Time.htm

Creative Zen Transitions creativity ~ transformation ~ peace Your Creative Garden: Time Again This week we're going to talk about that dedicated time we must set aside for our creative projects. Ultimately, time is a vessel which holds all our life activities. Our goal is to choose wisely, in order to fit in the things we value most. Finding time for your creative work starts off as a time management question (am I managing my time wisely?), and ends up as a values question (which of two activities do I value more?). Ideally, you will find an activity that you don't really enjoy anyway, eliminate it from your life, and use the time for something you do enjoy, like creating. But it is more likely that at some point, you may have to make some hard choices. Only you know your life and its demands. Some of these suggestions aren't going to work for you, simply because they're not appropriate, or you've already worked through them. They may work for someone else, which is why they're here. Or they may work for you at a different time in your life. Here are four situations regarding time:A. Scheduling, the easy fix: Do you get to the end of your day thinking, oh, I really meant to spend time creating today ... I wonder why I didn't? You may have the time to create, you simply don't have a routine set up so that it takes place. If this is the case, try putting it on your calendar. If you have challenges scheduling on a calendar, try scheduling by activity links. An example is to exercise right before you shower. For me, creative time is after dinner and before my favorite nighttime show. Maybe not ideal for early-risers, but that's the point: do what works for you! This may involve experimenting and finding 100 ways that don't work. Enjoy it. B. Getting rid of time wasters: Do you find yourself doing something that you know is a total waste of time? You may not have any spare time, but you may have habits that waste time, which could be pruned back with some awareness. Good news -- you'll probably improve the quality of your life doing something you actually enjoy. Things that fall into this category are activities that are unnecessary, and you're not crazy about. Identify them, then ruthlessly eliminate them. You'll generate energy in your life doing something you love, instead of feeling guilty and lethargic and helplessly wasting time.C. Prioritizing -- knowing your values: If your schedule is efficient, you may still have some fairly straightforward prioritizations to make. One way of finding time for our creative garden is looking at what is taking up time in our lives now, getting rid of lower priority activities, and keeping that time open by saying no to things in the future. This is about prioritizing our creativity within our lives. Are lower priority activities present in your life? If so, weed them out. Before you commit to new activities, make sure you know what their priority is relative to your creativity. If they are higher, realize that taking them on is taking time away from your creative projects. If they are lower, saying no should be easier knowing that your creativity is your priority.D. Choices, the hard truth: You've gone through the previous three categories, and everything in your life is important -- you are living your values. This is where the hard choices get made. The question here is how much value you place on your creative time. Not how much you should place, or how much your friends or family place, it's how much your heart wants to place on it. Because you may have to choose between creating and other things that are dear to your heart. This is a values question. The good news is that you may discover that some of these activities are not as important to you as you believed, and eliminating them actually frees up a lot of energy. The point is to find the things that you are committed to, that energize you, and that you must spend time on, and weed out the things that don't fulfill these requirements anymore. You may experiment and find that everything in your life is necessary, and there is not a moment to spare. What then? Maybe this is the time when you have to choose between two things that you really enjoy. Creating may not be as important to you as everything else in your life, and that's okay too. You may create less in order to include something else that is vital to you. You may work on a creative project for six months, then switch to volunteer work that is equally meaningful. You may get by with less sleep, though most people already aren't sleeping enough; you may find you are so energized by creating that you have a little boost of energy even though you are sleeping less -- give it a try. There is the ever popular and often impractical suggestion: delegate! Finally, remember that you get to choose what priority things get in your life. If your creativity is more important than something currently higher up, don't feel guilty about making a change, or asking others to help out. Sometimes they'll surprise you, especially when they understand that creating is a priority of yours. So begin with the easy fixes and work your way up. Keep changing things in your schedule until something works. It may take awhile to figure it out, but if you're serious about creating, it is worth it. If you are continually telling yourself that there isn't time in your life to create, you run the risk that you will never have creating as part of your daily life. Time is a vessel, and activities fill it whether we choose them or not. By prioritizing, we can consciously choose to include creative time with the other priorities in our lives. Creativity Spark Try scheduling or including creative time each day, and evaluate if that helps you to create regularly. Identify time wasters in your life -- excessive TV or web surfing, worrying, etc. -- and make an effort to stop doing them and turn that into creative time instead. Does the quality of your life improve? Make a list of activities in your life. Which of these are of lower priority than your creativity? Try to find ways to cancel the activity or delegate it and claim the time for creating. If there are no items of lower priority on your list, see if there is something of equal priority you could give up or reduce on a trial basis, to see if your creativity brings you more joy, making it worth a permanent switch. Look closely at things you feel you should be doing that are actually someone else's priority. Are there standards that could be lowered to good enough without serious impact? If you are absolutely positive that you've gotten your life down to the basics and there is no time for creating, consider whether you can trade time with someone else -- watching kids, running errands, etc. Look for new areas of responsibility to delegate to your kids -- teaching them how to do laundry or prepare a meal. Look for creative ways to solve the problem, for example dictating a novel while on the exercise bike, or setting your kids up to paint at a canvas while you paint at yours. Choose to change your priorities for 6 months of creating, then change them back. Instead of volunteering your time, donate a piece of your art. About Caroline ... Caroline coaches people who want to incorporate creativity into their daily lives. By working on our creative projects, we are able to transform our lives, and bring about a sense of peace and joy. Creativity is also a wonderful way to navigate life's transitions. For more information on individual and group coaching programs, live and virtual retreats, and more resources to help you get going on your creative projects with comfort and sustainability, please visit our website at www.creativezentransitions.com For insights on creativity and life in general, please visit the blog, at http://www.creativezentransitions.typepad.com/ Zenspiration! Caroline's podcast of creativity meditations will get you in the right frame of mind to begin creating. They change every week, and provide focused inspiration related to the current newsletter topic ... usually! Click here to listen...

2008-01-28T01:00:05-05:002008-01-28T01:00:05-05:00tag:archive.aweber.com,2008-01-28:/creativezen/1TQU1/h/Your_Creative_Garden_Time.htm

Creative Zen Transitions creativity ~ transformation ~ peace Your Creative Garden: Time When creating a garden, you need time for planning, site selection, amending the soil, setting up irrigation, planting, weeding, and all sorts of other tasks! Sometimes you need to set aside a chunk of time, but for many tasks it can be a few minutes here and there. Creating is the same way. There are occasions when we need to set aside a large chunk of time -- forming your clay into a vessel, for example, is usually best done in one sitting -- and other times we can use little dollops of time here and there -- making notes on the vessel design that comes to you unexpectedly. The important thing to remember about creative time is that we're actually dealing with two types of time. One is relatively inflexible, and the other is very flexible. When we are actually producing our project -- putting pen to paper, or paint to canvas -- we need time that is devoted solely to our project. Preferably it is relatively free of distractions, and preferably we have a chunk of it available. This is the type of time that most people are thinking of when they lament a lack of time to create. The other type of time is when we are actually getting creative inspiration on a project. This is the kernal of a story, the flash of insight for a painting, or the shape of a vessel. This type of creative time is often actually timeless, and it can occur as easily while we are occupied with a physical task as while sitting in our creative space creating -- more easily, perhaps. What it requires is that we are cultivating our creative mindset and holding that in our awareness. We can be doing anything -- brushing our teeth, showering, driving, vacuuming. The problem is that if we are not using our creativity in our daily life, if we are not keeping that sharp, then these ideas are more reluctant to show up. Or we miss them entirely. When they do show up, we need to honor them by taking a moment to make a note or a sketch -- in other words, we need to honor our creative insights, we need to listen. When we do this, insights are more likely to keep showing up. When our subconscious believes that we are ignoring it, there is no incentive for it to keep communicating with us. If we are cultivating ideas for our creative projects all the time, and recording them, then when we sit down to create, during our creative time, we are ready to go, not trying to come up with ideas. Sometimes, of course, we do both. Sometimes our creative process just works that way. When we're in the middle of creating, new ideas come to us, things change. If we're not living our lives with the focus of creating, then when we sit down to create, we're trying to force inspiration to appear on a timetable, rather than recording the inspiration that's already shown up. If we do this often enough, eventually we begin to view our creative time as unproductive, unsatisfying, or stressful, and eventually we may give up creating all together. Priming the pump by keeping a creative mindset as part of our daily lives allows us to quickly get into the flow of creating when we get to our creative time. To cultivate a creative mindset, try using that magical time when our mind is unoccupied by other tasks to invite creative ideas to appear. Collect these ideas together, so when you get to your creative time, you have material ready to go. Next time, we'll discuss ways to find creative time in your schedule. In the meantime, check out the audio meditation Zenspiration! in the sidebar to your right. Creativity Spark This week, when you come across things that strike you as odd or ridiculous, behaviors or situations that interest you, people who capture your imagination, color combinations that you find appealing, shapes that intrigue you, or any other creative insights, make a note about it in a notebook or file dedicated to your creative projects. Let your mind play with how that idea might show up in your creative project. If that creates more insights, record them! Notice how these insights come in the middle of your daily life, and take no time except for the few minutes you spend recording them for later use. About Caroline ... Caroline coaches people who want to incorporate creativity into their daily lives. By working on our creative projects, we are able to transform our lives, and bring about a sense of peace and joy. Creativity is also a wonderful way to navigate life's transitions. For more information on individual and group coaching programs, live and virtual retreats, and more resources to help you get going on your creative projects with comfort and sustainability, please visit our website at www.creativezentransitions.com For insights on creativity and life in general, please visit the blog, at http://www.creativezentransitions.typepad.com/ Zenspiration! Caroline's podcast of creativity meditations will get you in the right frame of mind to begin creating. They change every week, and provide focused inspiration related to the current newsletter topic ... usually! Click here to listen...

2008-01-17T00:09:05-05:002008-01-17T00:09:05-05:00tag:archive.aweber.com,2008-01-17:/creativezen/20q51/h/Your_Creative_Garden_Space.htm

Creative Zen Transitions creativity ~ transformation ~ peace Your Creative Garden: Space When creating a garden, it is important to realize that many factors influence your success, and that they're not all within your control! The key is to set things up to maximize results, while minimizing effort and problems. One of the first things to do when creating a garden is to select the space you're going to use. There are many factors to consider when choosing a site location, for example: it's not too rocky, the area gets the right amount of sun, and that it's not too wet. You may find that your choices are limited based on the land you have access to. Sometimes you have to work with what you've got, even though it isn't optimal. You have to make judgments and tradeoffs. When considering our creative gardens, the first aspect of space to consider is the physical space needed to create. This may be as small as a place we can sit with our laptop and write, or as big as a studio where we can set out our clay, kiln, and glazes. The size of the space matters less than its feel. Do you feel creative while you are in the space? A large space may actually be more overwhelming than a cozy creative space. You may feel you can never live up to a grand studio, but feel a cozy space next to the washer is just right. The space also includes where our creativity belongs within our lives. It is easier to establish a creative practice with an abundance of time and space in your life. If you are in that situation now, take advantage of it by protecting your creative time into the future. Many of us have lives that are well-established, with other people, jobs, and many responsibilities, and we may feel a bit overwhelmed trying to find space to create! Yes, the land we have available to cultivate is somewhat rocky! That's just what we've got to work with. It doesn't mean that we must jettison the people and things that are important to us. We just have to learn to deal with rocks! The most important part of creative space is not a physical space at all. The biggest challenge about creative space is whether you have a mindset that allows room for your creativity in your life. In a recent blog entry I explored the idea of viewing the world through your creativity, even if you are not actively creating on a specific project. This is part of it. Beliefs about your creativity form another part of it. Do you have beliefs that enlarge your creative space, or that squeeze it down so that there is no room for creating at all? Believing that there is time for creating, that it is a priority in your life, that it has value to you, that it is part of your authentic self -- these are all beliefs that make more room in your life for creativity. If your beliefs surrounding creativity are expansive, creative space will start showing up in your life. Creativity Spark What do you believe about your creativity and its purpose in your life? Can you do it without feeling guilty? Is it a priority in your life? Would you like it to be? Make a list of all the beliefs that come up when you consider your creativity. Identify which of these are limiting your creativity. What kind of creative garden are you wanting to grow this year? How much space would you like in your life for it? Do you have a physical space set up for your creative work? This week, consider how much space you need, and where you can make that work. If at all possible, try to make it a place that feels good to you naturally. About Caroline ... Caroline coaches people who want to incorporate creativity into their daily lives. By working on our creative projects, we are able to transform our lives, and bring about a sense of peace and joy. Creativity is also a wonderful way to navigate life's transitions. For more information on individual and group coaching programs, live and virtual retreats, and more resources to help you get going on your creative projects with comfort and sustainability, please visit our website at www.creativezentransitions.com For insights on creativity and life in general, please visit the blog, at http://www.creativezentransitions.typepad.com/ Zenspiration! Caroline's podcast of creativity meditations will get you in the right frame of mind to begin creating. They change every week, and provide focused inspiration related to the current newsletter topic ... usually! Click here to listen...

2008-01-07T06:00:11-05:002008-01-07T06:00:11-05:00tag:archive.aweber.com,2008-01-07:/creativezen/1OoVH/h/Growing_Your_Creative_Garden.htm

Creative Zen Transitions creativity ~ transformation ~ peace Growing Your Creative Garden The new year has me thinking of how much working on our creative projects is like growing a garden. A garden isn't a one-shot thing, and neither is a creative project. In order to harvest, you have to work consistently in the garden, or on your creative project. Sometimes this is exciting; sometimes it is incredibly boring. Sometimes the weather changes unexpectedly. There are seasons conducive to growth, and seasons when preparation is called for. You may work carefully for months, and then things don't turn out as you expect, for the garden, or a creative project. At that point, a bit of reevaluation may be helpful, to try and determine how you can avoid problems in the future; then, it's best to get started again. If you spend too much time watering, even though water is vital, you can kill everything off. You may think you aren't caring for your garden enough, but it surprises you with a wonderful harvest! You may be gardening in lush, fertile soil, and things may grow easily; you may be trying to garden in rocky, barren soil, and everything is difficult. Sometimes there are things you can do to improve where you're working; sometimes you just need to start over somewhere else. Sometimes you look over at someone else's abundant garden, frustrated that yours isn't growing like that. You learn to come to terms with it, see what lessons are available to learn, and focus on applying those lessons in your garden, and nurturing your own plants. Sometimes beautiful flowers produce ordinary fruit, and the most delicious fruit comes from rather ordinary looking plants. What it all comes down to is that every garden, and every harvest, is uniquely its own. Just as every creative project is. But learning to consistently cultivate our garden mindfully, and our creative projects, is what eventually leads to success, in both endeavors. Over the next few weeks, we're going to examine various aspects of cultivating our creative gardens. While you will be prepared to start your creative garden soon, your actual garden may have to wait for spring! Creativity Spark Remember last week's newsletter, where I assured you that January 1 is not a one-shot new beginning for your creative projects, and that each new day is a new opportunity to begin again? If you're feeling a little behind where you wanted to be, I'd encourage you to remember that there are still plenty of opportunities to create in front of you ... the whole rest of the year. For this week, spend some time getting clearer about what project you are most drawn to. Indecision, or multiple choices, frequently leads to us not choosing to create. For now, just choose what you are drawn to create right now. You may change your mind later. Consider this a test run, something to get started on, something to build creative routines and habits on. About Caroline ... Caroline coaches people who want to incorporate creativity into their daily lives. By working on our creative projects, we are able to transform our lives, and bring about a sense of peace and joy. Creativity is also a wonderful way to navigate life's transitions. For more information on individual and group coaching programs, live and virtual retreats, and more resources to help you get going on your creative projects with comfort and sustainability, please visit our website at www.creativezentransitions.com For insights on creativity and life in general, please visit the blog, at http://www.creativezentransitions.typepad.com/ Zenspiration! Caroline's podcast of creativity meditations will get you in the right frame of mind to begin creating. They change every week, and provide focused inspiration related to the current newsletter topic ... usually! Click here to listen...

2008-01-01T06:02:07-05:002008-01-01T06:02:07-05:00tag:archive.aweber.com,2008-01-01:/creativezen/SORH/h/January_1.htm

Creative Zen Transitions creativity ~ transformation ~ peace January 1 ... Magical day of new beginnings! Every year we feel the allure of the fresh start that this day brings. Whether we succeed or fail in our creative projects may not depend on how strict we can be with ourselves and our New Year's resolutions, but how forgiving. The truth is that the best of us will likely not fulfill a vow to create daily. Why? Because life is delightfully unpredictable and quirky ... and so are we! The ability to reach our creative goals this year depends primarily on our ability to fall short one day, and begin again the next. Rather than thinking of January 1 as a new beginning, maybe we should think of it as a year full of new beginnings. It doesn't matter how many consecutive days we manage to create before hitting that day when we don't, what matters is how many times we are willing to begin again, as if nothing had happened. What matters is not the occasional day when we don't create, but increasing the number of days we do. The only way we can do that is to release our vows, forgive ourselves, and begin creating again the next day. What we need is a New Year's resolution that will allow us to create sustainably and with joy, not a sledgehammer to pound ourselves with when life shows up in an unexpected way ... as it always does from time to time! Creativity Spark Are you setting the bar so high on your New Year's resolution that you are nearly guaranteed failure? Is there a way to introduce flexibility into this promise to yourself, so that as your schedule changes you have the opportunity to begin again without feeling like you've failed? Can you structure your commitment to your creative dreams in a way that guarantees you will feel good about beginning again each day? Write up your creative intention for the new year today, and make sure to include a way to feel good about using those new beginnings. Then just ... begin, in some small way that feels good, that feels sustainable. Create just a bit today, and feel wonderful about it. Then, begin again tomorrow. No stress, no expectations, just play around and enjoy your creative time, even if it is only a few minutes on your lunch hour, at night before bed, or first thing in the morning. When the day comes when you don't create, don't beat yourself up. Just begin creating again the next day. That's what new beginnings are for! About Caroline ... Caroline coaches people who want to incorporate creativity into their daily lives. By working on our creative projects, we are able to transform our lives, and bring about a sense of peace and joy. Creativity is also a wonderful way to navigate life's transitions. For more information on individual and group coaching programs, live and virtual retreats, and more resources to help you get going on your creative projects with comfort and sustainability, please visit our website at www.creativezentransitions.com For insights on creativity and life in general, please visit the blog, accessible through the website. Zenspiration! Caroline's podcast of creativity meditations will get you in the right frame of mind to begin creating. They change every week, and provide focused inspiration related to the current newsletter topic ... usually! Click here to listen...