Creative Woman Cafe Blog: Abundance

This week I created a painting just for me. It reflects me "Creating Abundance In My Life." Watch my video to learn more on the topic of abundance.

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This painting is not part of the Goddess Archetype series. I have been working long hours and didn’t want to research a new Goddess. Instead I wanted to do a painting to remind me to tap into the abundance that surrounds all of us all the time. The irony of me talking about consciously co-creating at the same time that I am working insane hours was not lost on me. I wanted to shift myself out of overload into a more sustainable lifestyle. I have been averaging around 15 hours a day and usually weekends too, so haven’t had much time to do anything else, including thinking about what I would really like to create in my life. This painting was my way to create that shift into abundance for myself.

I love farmers markets. To me they are a powerful symbol of abundance. The flowers, fruit and veggies are the earth’s abundance. When I grew native wildflowers, I sold them at farmers markets, so they also bring up my memories of that time in my life. I did this painting to give myself an example of what I wanted–the kind of life I want to create. Rather than working all the time, I want to redesign my life so I am working less.

It is interesting that this painting has one side that is grey, concrete and asphalt, which could represent hardship, struggle, effort and working long hours, and then the other side is the overflowing abundance of the farmer’s market. My hope was that by making this painting I would shift into the abundance side and things would just flow to me in an effortless way. The difference would be like standing in a stream and just picking up the things we want as they float to us, rather then having to struggle upstream to get to the things we want that are stuck in the rocks.

The magical thing about this piece is that about 48 hours after I started it I had rented my house to the most perfect family. I have wanted to rent my house for quite some time now. It was very important that I rent it to a family that would take fantastic care of it, because it is not a rental house, it is my dream house and I plan to live there eventually. This painting was the catalyst that shifted me into abundance long enough for them to be drawn to the house. They had called a week or 2 earlier and I don’t know how it happened, but they fell through the cracks. They actually had a dream about the house and that caused them to call again. They loved the house and rented it on the spot.

I would love to hear your stories of how you are using your creative process to co-create the life of your dreams.

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Have you ever let fear creep in your life? Watch my video to learn more.

I would love to hear your stories of how you are using your creative process to co-create the life of your dreams.

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Hello and welcome to the Creative Woman Café, a place where your creativity flows. Is creativity a gift only bestowed on a small number of people or is it something we all possess?

In my very unscientific study of children with boxes of crayons or lumps of clay–watching them dive in with joyful abandon, I concluded that everybody is creative! Some people have just forgotten!

Somehow along the path of growing up most of us just forget that we are creative. So many people tell me that they can hardly draw a stick man, but drawing and painting are just learned skills, like cooking or accounting and whether or not you can draw has no bearing on whether or not you are creative. Creativity is already in all of us, we may just need to reawaken it.

The process of creating is good for us because it connects us to our soul and brings the unconscious in to conscious. Many people compare art making to meditation and there are similarities in the sense of timelessness and predominance of alpha brainwaves. But for me painting is a lot more fun then meditation. Harvard psychologist, Ellen Langer, has discovered that mindfully creating anything can increase our mindfulness, which has the following benefits: we become more competent, healthy, happy, creative, charismatic, satisfied with our work and to top it off we also live longer. All fantastic benefits from doing something that we enjoy!

The bottom line is that no matter what you are creating, if you get lost in the process, it is good for you! So lets get out there and create something!

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Create the life of your dreams by tapping into your flow and abundance. Watch this video to learn more about this topic. Embrace the Holy Grail of Creativity.



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Lets discuss how you know when a project is finished. Watch my video and please add your comments below.



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I am working on a painting of the Greek Goddess Artemis. I have moved her into the present day. Her companions join her: a horse, a bear cub, a doe and fawn.

This is the first in a series on Archetypes that I plan to paint. Archetypes are powerful inner forces that can be personified by Greek Goddesses. I just recently discovered these archetypes and am blown away by how much I recognize myself in them. At least in Artemis! I really resonate with Artemis and the self-knowledge I have gained has given me the confidence to take a stand on several things that were deeply important to me. I have long been a fan of the Meyers Briggs type indicator, because it validates who I am in a culture that generally doesn’t, but I resonate even more with seeing aspects of myself reflected to me in the stories of Greek Goddesses. They are a great tool for self-discovery. Perhaps part of the appeal is that the Goddesses are easy to put into images and that satisfies my artist soul.

If you want to find out what archetypes are most active in your life right now (they can vary at different times), go to the following link and take the questionnaire. I got a lot of insight from this website.

http://goddess-power.com/questions.htm

I tried a few new things in this painting.

1. Lighting plastic figures: I have been having trouble making up the light falling on my subjects, because usually I use several photos all with different light sources. My instructor suggested I get some plastic figures and light them. Finally I got the figures and waited until dark and set them up, lit them with my headlamp and photographed them from different angles. I wanted a moonlit scene and it worked very well.

2. Getting rid of the detail: I found a program online from AKVIS called ArtWork that simplifies photos. I hope it will keep me from getting caught up in the details.

3. Painting all the highlights white and then painting a dark transparent color over the whole board.

We’ll see how they progress!

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Take a walk in nature and find something that inspires you creatively.



Join us in the Creative Woman Café, where we explore the Holy Grail of Creativity and learn to direct our creative flow more productively.

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Do you ever feel uninspired? How about when you are faced with deadlines and expectations?

Using a creative process can be a life-saver when you have a deadline or feel hopelessly stuck and just can’t seem to get inspired. There is no shortage of creative processes to choose from, and I offer this one as an example, however, feel free to modify it to suit you or pick a different one that resonates with you.

The creative process I chose to use has the following outline:

Preparation
• define the issue or problem
• observe
• study
Incubation
Illumination
Verification


“Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.”–George Lois

Most highly productive creative people use some form of Creative Process.

Preparation– Define the issue or problem.

The first action that we take to seed our creativity, get unstuck, and put us in the empowered position of being able to solve our issue is simply to define the issue or problem. Our issue may be the lack of ideas for the blank canvas sitting in the studio, or it could be the fact that we work twice the number of hours a week that we want too.

This process is not just applicable to our creative practice, it can help us to come up with solutions to issues related to work, our relationships, our lifestyle and basically any area that we feel stuck. There can be numerous problems that keep us stuck, so we may find ourselves going through this process several times, solving different problems or coming up with solutions for new projects each time.

To me, the greatest benefit of the creative process is that the solutions that we come up with are uniquely our own, so we are more likely to follow through with them, rather then trying to put on someone else’s solution,which may not be a good fit for us. I think this is what sometimes happens when we take courses and read books to help us make changes in our life. We want the outcome that we think the course or book will give us, only to be disappointed that it doesn’t feel right for us, and if we experience any change at all it is not to the magnitude that we had hoped for. The solutions that we create will usually feel like a great fit and we will be much more committed to them.

This process allows us to examine our problem in a fun and productive way and in doing so, to overcome it. Join my community in the Creative Woman Cafe where we will explore the Holy Grail of Creativity and direct our creativity more productively.
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Verification is the stage where we take a hard look at our insight and decide if it is a keeper or not. Celebrate your great ideas and toss out your bad ones.

Watch this video and join us in the Creative Women Cafe, where you can release your creative flow. Embrace the Holy Grail of Creativity. I invite you to join the Creative Woman Cafe by Clicking Here

Create the life of your dreams by tapping into your creative abundance. Let's discuss what inspires your creativity.



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What is Mindlessness? When you are not thinking about what you are doing. Instead you rely on preprogrammed scripts that may not be appropriate. Mindlessness is a huge block to creativity.

I was going to talk about mindfulness, but it is more fun to look at mindlessness.

I have a favorite story from my life that illustrates mindlessness: When I was going to university in Texas, I had a Volkswagen bug named Walter. It is the only car I have ever had that had a name. I don’t remember who named him, but even my friends would ask to borrow “Walter” rather than “my car.” I was cleaning my horse’s stall, when 2 good-looking guys asked if I could boost their car. “Sure,” I said. I wanted to look good and I was a bit nervous, which is often when we mindlessly follow rules. And that is what I did. What I had learned about cars was that the engine and therefore the battery are under the hood. I pulled up hood-to-hood and jumped out to open it. To my surprise and embarrassment there was no engine. I laughed, “that’s right it’s in the back!” Next I jostled the car around until the trunk was in line with their battery. I hopped out, opened the trunk and there was the engine, but no battery. Baffled, I remember that there is something a beetle doesn’t have–perhaps it’s a battery. The guys assured me it had to have a battery, so after a long pause to ponder where it could be, I remembered that the man I bought the car from told me it was under the back seat!

One could write off my unfamiliarity with my car as a gender thing, but I regularly had to reattach some electrical wires to the engine, so I was actually very familiar with the location of the engine.

If I had been present in this situation, I would have easily found the battery. Instead, I shut down my knowledge and experience of my car, because I was trying to look good!

I mindlessly followed my fixed beliefs about where things are in a car, despite my experience with this car.

Mindlessly following preprogrammed beliefs like this blocks our creativity. Creativity is all about drawing novel distinctions and in order to do that, we have to be present in the moment. A few years ago, someone told me, “Be where your hands are.” In my experience, this is one of the best ways to allow your creativity to flow.

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Most of us use lists, but I have recently figured out a way to supercharge my list and become way more productive!

1. Use a list
I have always used lists and enjoy crossing things off. I even add things I have already done so I can cross them off! However, I found myself working on so many projects (ten) that I became overwhelmed. It took me several days after I combined the 3 paper lists that I was working from to add the things that were rattling around in my mind. Even getting tasks out of your mind onto paper brings a sense of relief.

2. Organize it by project and break into small doable tasks For example, Roofing: “Pick roof color.” was overwhelming because I didn’t know how to make that decision, so I broke the task into more palatable tasks that didn’t overwhelm me. The list grew to reflect what I had learned and became more about suitability of product than simply color.

Pick Roof Color
look at roof colors on houses (what do I like and not like?)
ask friend who built house how they picked their color
Google energy and longevity of shingles (dark vs light)
see how diff colors look with house colors I like
Pick a manufacturer
Google Cambridge vs Harmony
Go to Roofmart to see samples of IKO
Read warranty Information
Talk to roofers about suitability of product
Compare color samples from 2 manufactures
Talk to designer and roofer about Beachwood/driftwood

3. Supercharge list with Color
My list was so long and complex that I was unable to figure out what had to be done first, second etc. Many right-brained people have trouble prioritizing. I found that using color to mark the different levels of priority worked very well. I made the tasks that needed to be done asap red text. Then when they were done, I changed them to green text, so I could see that all projects were moving forward. A few weeks into the list, I started using orange text to show the second level of priority behind red. Blue was added for tasks that didn’t materialize (and wouldn’t) and Yellow highlights on the red text are for tasks that have to be done today. Black text hasn’t been prioritized yet. I leave this list on my computer so it is easy to change. I have never actually printed it. For example here is one of my projects:

Rented house:
Remove and take faucet to plumbing store and buy o-rings Replace seals and remove cattle water pump Declutter Garage: (Finish before Oct 1 so can collect extra rent) Book 4 days
1. With Kathy (move heavy things?)
2. Finish de-cluttering Take trailer with road crush /garbage and recycling
3. Fill mouse holes with spray foam
4.Garage door seal (get help with feeding rubber in, loading canoe, moving heavy things)
– Check email to see what date Kathy has and reply
– Take garbage bags, feed bags and boxes
– Flip breaker to see what flips it off/check toilet/ try Kyle’s ideas
Drainage
Book gravel, call with measurements (110 meters x 10 sandals) take blade
Contact re cattle underpass
Call Frank/change to Mike/ Monday Steve will call me


Working with a list this way is very dynamic and visual. The list evolves easily. I enjoy seeing how much I have accomplished on each project, so I like the green text for completed tasks, rather than deleting them. This all-encompassing list wiped away overwhelm and gave me a place to break down complicated tasks into more palatable ones.

My housemate, a student, devised a way to do something similar on paper. She highlights what she doesn’t understand in yellow and once she understands it she highlights in blue, changing the color to green.

To see other ways to get organized in ways that work for Right brained people, join us in the Creative Woman Café, where we explore the Holy Grail of Creativity and learn to direct our creative flow more productively.

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Have you ever thought about what factors affect your style? Let's discuss this topic.

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Meditation is an excellent way to relax. Watch my video as I share information about "Frog Meditation."



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