It's Not too Late to Make 2011, Your Best Year Yet!

It's not too late to make 2011 your Best Year Yet. 

It's possible because perception is the key to transformation. Good, better, best... it's all a matter of perception. Change the way you see something, and you change everything.

So how do you change the way you see 2011? Ask this simple question, it is called Appreciative Inquiry.

If 2011 was my BEST YEAR because it was here to teach me everything I needed to know to make 2012 even better, what did I learn?

Now, put pen to paper and write down all that was great about 2011, all that you have learned from 2011 to make it even better (because you learned and grew from it, duh) and your plan to take all this that is good and make it even better for 2012.

Read more...

Congruent Connections through Turnarounds

Yin and yang is a fantastic idea. We use it everywhere. What if it means and can mean more than we think it means?

Creating congruent connections means creating new and increasingly better connections to your authentic self. 

What if asking a difference question is the one thing you can change and it will change everything?

What are the questions you are asking yourself? Why me? Why not me? Where can you ask the opposite, turned around question to reclaim your connection, so reconnect to reclaim your power?

Start asking powerful and empowering questions to receive powerful and empowering answers!

It's a popular strategy in coaching, and it works. Nietzsche said "Even a thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform you". So write down 10 questions you ask yourself daily and turn these around.

Hero's Journey & TAO of Experience

Updating my other blogs, the Hero's Journey and TAO of Experience.

Interesting read on how to use creative perspective, strategies and practices to create your experiences. Isn't this why we are all here, in a search for meaning and the eternal validation of our "creative essence".

Do not assume that all you have experienced is all there is to experience. We usually remember this therefore we have the courage to continue on our journeys. There are times we need to remind ourselves though.

7 Idea Generators

The 7 Idea Generators are competencies and practices to generate ideas, improve memory, increase knowledge, solve problems (find solutions), invent things, improve relationships, find partners, shift to a new perspective, and best of all, to cultivate a sense of humour. Did I mention, it creates HAPPINESS?

Like INNOVERY  or not, on facebook. 7 Great tips to get you what you want!

Connect To Resourcefulness

DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY 

 I remember the reggae music, musicians on a tropical island sharing their perspective. It's easy not to worry and to be happy when you are on a beautiful island, with friends, singing and dancing, in the sun, the poster child of health and freedom, making money doing all this, and the list is endless. What are the reasons we give ourselves as to why we have to worry and why now is not the time to be happy even though it is the one thing I want more than anything else?

Tell Me It's Normal

It is normal to feel fear, doubt, worry and even panic. We are learning to focus our attention in more creative and constructive ways. When we are doing this conscciously, we are getting increasingly better at it.

But change happens, externals can be unpredictable and we have our moments where we are just not in the zone. If you consider that we are expanding our potential, and our potential is also expanding, we are regularly faced with challenges. We can learn new ways of perceiving these challenges, so we feel less overwhelm.

 Worry, panic, fear and doubt usually stems from us feeling overwhelmed. We feel overwhelmed when we tell ourselves that the situation is asking more than I am able to give. When we tell ourselves that this is too big, hard, emotional to handle right now. I can't do this. This shouldn't be happening... the list goes on. 


Reactive vs. Responsive

 The reaction is usually to go at it harder and more aggressively or to run away. The flight, fright, freeze reaction again. But what if we can put ourselves in a position to be RESPONSIVE instead. To be creative is to be responsive. How does on choose to be responsive instead of reactive? To use negative emotions as fuel as so many creatives say they do. How does one turn a negative into a positive?

 Resourcefulness & Resiliency 

 The answer lies in RESILIENCY. What if I can keep my head while the world is losing theirs? Resiliency comes from an awareness that "If there is an answer I will find it" thinking. The turning point is cultivating resilient thoughts and choosing to believe in one's ability and capacity to rise to any challenge. I call this a faith in one's inner creativity, in one's Resourcefulness.

We are by nature resourceful. When the going is good, it is important to cultivate a resourceful state, to enhance one's experience and connection to those inner resources of creativity, creative growth and creative resolution.

Even greater benefits come from connecting to this Resourceful State when faced with any challenge. Resiliency & Resourcefulness comes from a belief in one's own capacity to connect to one's creative centre. The belief that it is there and I can mobilise it.

 Creative Practice 

1. Take a sheet of paper and write down the words "worry, fear, panic and doubt". 
2.  Circle these words. 
3. Now draw arrows leading away from these words into open space on the page.
4. Now write down the words, resilience and resourcefulness. 
5. Meditate on how you connect to your resilience & resourcefulness. 
6. Be aware of where you have this as you move more creatively through your day. 
7. Write down three affirmations that describe what you are feeling. e.g.

• I feel more and more connected to my creative capacity. 
• I feel stronger when I am aware of my strengths 
• I feel like I am looking beyond overwhelm, connected to my calm in better ways.

Uniquely You: 20 Things To Love About You

If someone were to say “You are indeed unique.” What does this mean to you? This column is to guide you through the process of making an appreciative inquiry into what makes you special, and create a more conscious awareness of many ways in which you express your uniqueness. Your practices are the many ways that you express your uniqueness. 


The first step is to list 20 qualities that are uniquely you so we can inquire into them. The purpose of this exercise is to connect with what is best and then to make it even better. I am not asking you to come up with 20 things that you or someone else thinks is wrong with you; neither of us feels inspired to create there!


We want to do something different. I am asking you to note 20 things that are great about you and then the ways you express these qualities.  Can you be comfortable enough to make the assumption that these qualities exist? What if you are doing at least 20 things right? Can you live with that thought? If they are there, are you willing to look into them? For example, you might write that you’re creative, generous,genuine, focussed and funny.


Proceed until you reach 20. Here are a few processes that can help you get there.

• Ask somebody 
• Brainstorm, and free associate 
• Focus on an image, plant, animal or fruit and write down the words that come to mind 
• Choose any five words and then substitute these for the qualities that ring true for you. 
• Perhaps the words to a prayer, a song or quotation come to mind. Write these down. 

Stay in the flow, and truly open your mind to this process. I encourage you to truly see the beauty that is you—and uniquely you. By now you are relaxing into this process of appreciating the authentic you and becoming increasingly comfortable. Notice how you are feeling differently already, notice how you are making the difference in your perception and experience. What is changing for you as you progress through this appreciative inquiry?


Now lets review your list. It’s probably a good guess that the majority of items on your list aren’t just physical attributes. You may have already noticed that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You may have also noticed that you have inner qualities that you express in ways that are uniquely you.


We are now in an even better position to expand your list to include what it is about these qualities that makes you different and unique. The answer lays in the way you and only you practice these qualities. Practices are your ways of thinking, expressing, doing things and getting things done.


Now you are ready to continue to the next step which is to register each of these qualities onto an index card.


Once you have completed this, you will plan to create multiple opportunities to affirm and consciously appreciate your unique capacities. Carry these with you and put in places where you can connect to them easily.


You are different and you are similar. These special qualities will help you connect in more meaningful ways to yourself and to others. You will notice how others also hold these qualities in ways that are unique to them, similar yet different at the same time. We do practice what is in our awareness and you will find yourself sharing your experiences with others, projecting an increasingly creative and positive self-image. In other words, you will feel more connected, confident and empowered.


And it keeps getting better. Your growing awareness will not only continue to sustain you, it will also expand into all the areas of your life, personally and professionally. In this way, they form your unique Success Blueprint that will honour and continue to celebrate the authentic you. You will continue to tell an ever-improving story of how you made it, a story of appreciation and worthiness. Your experiences will continue to grow, to empower and to sustain you.

The Happy Heart Connections

I have a new initiative, a non-profit organisation called The Happy Project on Facebook.
I also have a webs account to blog on The Happy Heart, read and participate while the book unfolds.
This is an extract from one of the blogs on this site.

There are three parts of the program. I have studied the process of creativity and innovation extensively. I have taken the different stages and condensed them into three stages, recovery, discovery and prosperity. Prosperity is a mainstream word, that I find comes the closest to represent the third stage of creativity, which embraces insights, and the integration of these insights into one's experience and across all areas of one's life. This learning is free of context and therefore can be applied universally, very much like one would use a metaphor and apply it to different contexts.


The term I prefer using to represent the third stage of prosperity is "innovery". It is a term I have coined and embodies the true essence of this stage of moving beyond all that already exists.


If I was to elaborate on the characteristics of recovery, I would liken it to falling out of the sky in the middle of the desert. You are stunned and disorientated... Who Am I?  In Recovery, one is so entangled in one's story and overwhelmed that one no longer has a sense of the unlimited self. Flight, fright and freeze are active modus operandi. Recovery is initiated when one realizes that one is confused and that there is more. It is an awakening that "oh, I am stressed, I forgot my heart, my courage, and so on". One then takes the initiative to restore some balance.


Inadvertently or consciously, one realizes  this is not who I am, I am more, I can reach for that now. Discovery is discovering that "you never left Kansas". Your personal power, happiness, strength, courage is inside you and you can reconnect. Your capacity for happy never separated from you, instead you turned your attention away from the things to appreciate.


Innovery is when you receive this insight amongst others and decide to integrate it into your life. You look through believing eyes fully and clearly seeing possibilities are endless. You incorporate new insights into your thinking practices and you seek to create new practices, projects and connections.

How Can You Be Happier?
Here are 3 practices that can make a difference:

1. Express appreciation to someone you want to connect with in a more authentic way
2. Pay attention to your self talk. What words are you using? Take 3 of these words, write them down. Now make them more positive. For the rest of the day, take the opportunity to use your 3 words that make a difference.
3. Write down one belief you have about what makes you happy. Ask yourself 3 questions, any questions, about this belief. 

• What makes you happy? 
• Can I be happy right now? 
• What can I do to reconnect to my happy feelings?

In very simple terms, the stages are:

EXPLORE, PLAY, APPRECIATE

Is Creativity the Number 1 Skill

"Creativity may be the most powerful of all the resources to be rich in. With vast numbers of people entering the workforce, huge improvements in productivity, and continued globalisation, the rewards for innovation and creativity will become even greater."
Given that for much of the western world we have exhausted our supplies of cash and commodities, creativity may be all we have left.
So there we have it.  7 themes that demonstrate that creativity is the number 1 skill for the 21st Century.

Excerpted from Mark Batey's Is Creativity the Number 1 skill for the 21st Century?

Creative Change Coaching on Facebook

You are invited to connect with Creative Change Coaching on facebook. Here you will find up-to-date news and resources to help you create the change you want to experience in your life.

Lots of links and create a change workshops, including free taster sessions!

Creating a LOGO

I am busy working on my logo... think it was time for a change.

I used photoshop, layers, spherize, gradient, text direction and am very satisfied with the results.

Walking in This World

Today I started a new website and blog entitled Walk in this World. My passion for The Hero's Journey and living a life that is more empowered and enriched resonated with the writings and tasks of Julia Cameron in  her workbook Walking in this World.

My website and weblog will be used as an interactive tool to journal my experiences as I engage my creativity to create new experiences, callibrate and enrich my experiences and embrace more fully the art of possibility as I live more fully and more joyfully in this world.

I will write about my experiences of the tasks, which I perceive as practices, some daily and some weekly, some ongoing and some once-off. Practices are the very core of experience.

This is an invitation to join me in this journey as guided by Walking in this World as we take step after step in making congruent connections.

Connecting Experiences

I am playing with the idea... developed from NLP's emphasis that to move through something or to move over something, we need to do something different.

Einstein's definition of insanity - i.e. insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result - is featuring more and more in people's consciousness.

I often meditate on this idea of doing something different to make a difference. I also think it is similar to what Ghandi said about being the change you want to see in the world.

I know my thinking is not very linear at the moment, but humour me as I engage my creative mind.

I am wondering about how perceiving something as similar or different influences our further thoughts and consequently our actions. When someone overreacts to something I have said, I wonder where this is coming from. When someone misinterprets my comments, I also tend to think along the lines of ... this does not seem to have anything to do with the current conversation. At this point you might be catching on that, the same is true when I feel my buttons are being pushed.

We assign meaning to words, comments, actions, etc. often based on earlier habits of assigning meaning. When x says that, it actually means....this and that. This is how we make sense of our world and create our reality and experiences.

I am coming to realise though that "good" people can say something that I perceive as bad and "bad" people can say something that I perceive as good. Also reminding myself that good and bad are simply labels I give to people and things to simplify my life.

Of course I realise my labels are created by me and not set in stone. I can change my perception and the meaning I give to events.

The reason this entry is rambling is that I am building on an idea ... a bit of the explore, play and appreciate approach. I have utmost confidence that it will develop into something fun, empowering and useful!

QUESTIONS THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE

• How is this the "same"?
• How is this "different"?
• What makes it the same/different?
• What will make the difference here?
• What is the pattern? e.g. X says this and I know he is lying. I have given him the benefit of the doubt many times. Then when I confront him, he admits nothing, denies everything and makes counter accusations. He then does something "nice" (i.e. acts differently in a way I appreciate). I then doubt myself and give him the benefit of the doubt... only to start the cycle all over again. {comment: In this  scenario, x does something different to what he's been doing and this influences me to give him a second chance, what I don't see is that his something different is actually perpetuating his lying ways. I want it to be the truth so much...etc.etc.etc...}

Paradigm Shift Scale

I am playing with the idea of creating an emotional scale relative to change that is similar to the one Elizabeth Kubler Ross created to describe the stages of grieving.

My idea is that when I have an emotional scale, I can pinpoint the thoughts, beliefs, mindset etc. that is related to each emotional level. For example, to me personally, the worst emotion I can feel is fear. The worst meaning the most uncomfortable, helpless, fight, flight, freeze impulses are activated. I feel powerless and that all is out of my control.

Once I've identified this, I can set my intention to feel better. An improvement on fear that comes to me with a little bit of work to shift my perspective and release some blocks... so an easing of fear for me is to feel angry. Therefore anger is an improvement on fear. I stand back and look at my anger. I sometimes journal or go for a walk with the  intention of releasing this anger.

You will notice that my work is to become aware of where I am so I can shift it to a better feeling place... to a perspective that leads me to release blocks and reclaim my personal power. The main block being opened up is the block created by the belief that I have to be able to control everything and everything must be the way I want it to be now.

Anger can be softened to irritation. Yes, one can be irritated at someone, something, oneself, and so on. Irritation is a miraculous progression from fear. In irritation, positive feelings and appreciation becomes more accessible... one becomes less resistant to noticing that somethings are working.

In irritation, I find it relatively easy to shift to disappointment. When I identify that I am disappointed in someone, myself, something, etc., it is easy for me to ask the question: what was I expecting here? I expected x to do or not to do something. I then shift into choosing to release the block that expectation causes. Expectation is wanting to control externals... wishing something didn't happen but it did. I can now do the work to forgive and to release expectation. This is where ho oponopono us a fantastic tool.

I am sorry that I expected this of you...
I forgive you for not living up to my expectations...
I forgive myself for expecting you to do/not do this...
I love myself for choosing to let this go...
(from tapping EFT)Even though I held this expectation, I completely love and accept myself
and so on.

This practice diffuses disappointment and helps me own my power. I realize I don't need to control anyone or anything but my own consciousness and experience. I am now in a position to climb up a positive emotional scale. This is done by appreciation. The real magic/miracle is I can experience better by finding anything to appreciate. My choice is usually appreciating the essence... i.e. noticing that in essence I have what I wanted e.g. I wanted to feel connection and now I feel reconnected to my personal power.

I also appreciate how I moved myself from a consciousness that activated fear to one that is appreciative. I appreciate the miracle and am now free to focus on what awarenesses increases my joy.

Creative Change Coaching

Just started exploring a new look for my main website www.creativechangecoaching.eu.

I thought to change the journal-look inspired by The Secret. Then I discovered a more contemporary, and still another journal-look. I continue to be inspired by the power of journalling and how our life experience is shaped by our stories. My coaching work now greatly embraces exploring and clarifying the stories we tell ourselves. I love creating more empowering and joyous stories.

I truly believe that the story precedes the experience and not the other way around.

 When I tell a story of success, gratitude and joy... my life unfolds to reflect this story.

My website is a work in progress - I have revamped the look and worked on page one.

Creativity in O - Make 2011 Your Most Creative Year Yet

Just got an email with 3 articles on creativity from O Magazine... from November 2009 issue.

The first article is 5 unexpected ways to jumpstart your creativity with writer and filmmaker Miranda July.
http://www.oprah.com/packages/show-us-your-creativity.html . Unique, and for rational thinkers, seriously daring assignments to boost your creative prowess.

The second article is 7 ways to spark your creativity by designer Anna Rabinowicz.
http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Advice-to-Get-Creative-Designer-Anna-Rabinowicz . I was really inspired by her assignment to start an exhibition. For this to be creative for me as an artist, I am thinking of some weird, wild or whimsical collection - not paintings or paintings that are not paintings or paintings that are different from anything I've done before. Better still, forget I am a painter and exhibit something else... an invisible exhibition that is created on the spot!!! The creative juices are certainly flowing!

The third article is my favourite. The Creativity Boost - how to tap into right-brain thinking. "Martha Beck offers a few fruitful ways to branch out" - she has such a colourful way of perceiving things that makes for an interesting, inspiring and entertaining read. http://www.oprah.com/spirit/How-to-Tap-into-the-Right-Side-of-Your-Brain-Martha-Beck-Advice . I loved her comment that "In a world where information is superabundant, unique and creative ideas are hot-ticket advantages both personally and professionally."


Totally awesome - a worthwhile read to make 2011 Your Most Creative Year Yet