Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day

I encourage you to explore Self-Love - this asks of you to connect to your Heart's Desire, regardless of your relationship status.

In this Valentine's Day Message, I am offering you creativity tools & practices that will support you to do just that. This process of Appreciative Inquiry will help you discover what you are passionate about. A great act of Self-Love is to allow your attention to shift to what you truly want… Let's jump right in and make the most of this time and space (your Valentine's Day Gift to You) you've just created for yourself.

Embrace Your Passion
• What do I think passion refers to?
• When do I feel most strongly about something?
• When have I been most passionate about something?
• How do I feel when I am using my talents and strengths?
• Where do I get my motivation from?
• Who has impressed me because of their passions?

• What makes time fly? (because time flies when you're having fun)
• What do I wish I had more time for?
• What would I do even if I was not paid for it?

You are happiest when...

Now that you are better connected to what you are passionate about, what next? You want to make plans to embrace your passion on a daily basis. Continue this exciting adventure with a free e-book, Passion to Performance on Scribed. You are also free to join me on Facebook at The Happy Heart Project and share with other Happy Hearts!


Wishing you one more Day (after day after day), living more and more heart-fully, passionately and happily!

Explore Play Appreciate
Aneesah

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

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...}

Explore, Play, Appreciate

Having written many academic and non-academic articles on Creativity and the stages of creativity, I am now working on making this topic more interesting and accessible to people of all ages and all walks of life.

I have written extensively on I-VOLUTION where I explain the 7 stages in creative thinking. These are:

1. Interest, Initialisation, Introduction
2. Interaction
3. Immersion
4. Incubation
5. INSIGHT, innovation
6. Integration (personal level or specific area)
7. Integration (globally)

Through experience in coaching and consulting, I have come to condense these stages into 3 steps. These are:

1. Explore
2. Play
3. Appreciate

I have found this new Creative Thinking Model can hold and transmit more information in less time - it's more efficient, effective and versatile.

I am currently writing a knol with the title "Possibility Thinking - explore, play, appreciate" to present a simple, fun and valuable exercise with wide application.

Passion to Performance

I am so passionate about the subject of using creative thinking to embrace your passions/potential and to drive this passion to performance that I authored the book "Passion to Performance - A Formula for Self-Mastery".

P2P takes you from the very depths of your passions to successful performance and personally fulfilling outcomes.

The experiential exercises are presented in three phases:

• Find your Passion
• Create Passion-Driven Goals
• Cultivate a Resourceful State

Passion to Performance was published in 2007 by Trafford Publishers. While the foundational thinking remains the same, the ideas have evolved with my experience and practice. Passion to Performance, I now also refer to as Essence to Presence. I encourage clients and workshop participants to personalise this and they come up with interesting credos, e.g. Design to Delivery, Mind to Matter, etc.

The latest evolution of this concept and the three phases above is "Explore, Play, Appreciate". This is a natural evolution that I believe is congruent with changes I have noticed in Universal Thinking.