Three years ago.. "Part I"
And no revisions. From 1/2/2013:
Not sure why I titled this Part I. I have no idea how I am going about this whole blog thing. Maybe I can formulate some way to organize this when I have more material and posts.
Anyways..
There are several people that have inspired me to do this. I don't know them all, and some have passed.
In brief, some of them are: Madisyn Taylor, Dr. Teusch, Joel, Dr. Dixon-Peters, Sidney, Erick... there are more.
Whether its their writing, life style, philosophy, attitude, kindness, optimism, etc... they have helped me want to serve others. We exist for one another.
The goal is to continue trying to live by this:
"To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one’s self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived—this is to have succeeded." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
It doesn't have to be a legacy, or something one would acknowledge as profound. I just want to pay it forward. I know I don't have to. I know all the help I have gotten there was never an intention of repayment, or following up with a debt. I know that doesn't exist. I do feel burdened though. I do feel I owe a debt, and I know the people I have listed would want me to pay it forward. Their nurturing, selfless acts.. I find amazing. I want to help. Help people, support a good cause, save an animal, make someone laugh.. its something.
I have been so blessed. So fortunate. Have been helped in so many ways. I want to do the same for others.
For this first post, I want to share some insights I have gotten from DailyOm. I bought Madisyn Taylor's book DailyOm months ago. I got into a routine of reading a few pages every morning with a cup of tea. That has been the best way to start a day! Not always consistent about it, but I try and I'll keep trying. Mid-November I got into her website dailyom.com. I get emails from the site, and they are fantastic. A lot of the stuff I want to share are from those. In some ways it will be my form of note taking. Keep all the highlights as a form of memo's for myself and share with those who it interests as well.
Today is the second day of 2013, but I am going to note things I got in November.
November 15, 2012
Summon Your Aliveness Being Fully Present by Madisyn Taylor
"When we live fully in the moment there is an aliveness that comes easily.
When we are fully present, we offer our whole selves to whatever it is that we are doing. Our attention, our integrity, and our energy are all focused in the moment and on the task at hand. ....Even tasks or jobs we don’t enjoy can become infused with the light of being present. The more present we are, the more meaningful our entire lives become...The more we draw ourselves into the present moment, the more we honor the gift of our lives, and the more we honor the people around us. When we are fully present, we give and receive aliveness in equal measure."
November 16, 2012
Leaving a Positive Footprint Blessing Space by M. Taylor
"We can bless each space we enter leaving a sweet energetic footprint behind.
Physical space acts like a sponge, absorbing the radiant of all who pass through it. And, more likely than not, the spaces we move through each day have seen many people come and go... Yet we can control the energy footprint we leave behind for others. In blessing each space we enter, we orchestrate a subtle energy shift that affects not only our own experiences in that space but also the experiences of the individuals who will enter the space after us. While we may never see the effects our blessing has had, we can take comfort in the fact that we have provided grace for those that follow after us... Try blessing every home, business, and office you visit for an entire week and observing the effects of your goodwill. Your affirmative energy footprint will help brighten your day as you contemplate your blessing’s future impact on your siblings in humanity and your environment."
November 17, 2012
Overcoming Creative Anxiety by Eric Maisel
"The following is an excerpt from the "Overcoming Creative Anxiety" on-line course. If you would like to take the entire course
Anxiety is a feature of the human condition. It is a much larger feature than most people realize. A great deal of what we do in life we do in order to reduce our experience of anxiety or in order to avoid anxiety altogether. Our very human defensiveness is one of the primary ways that we try to avoid experiencing anxiety. If something is about to make us anxious we deny that it is happening, make ourselves sick so that we can concentrate on our sickness, get angry at our mate so as to have something else to focus on, and so on. We are very tricky creatures in this regard.
We are also very wonderful creatures who have it in us to create. "Creativity" is the word we use for our desire to make use of our inner resources, employ our imagination, knit together our thoughts and our feelings into beautiful things like songs, quilts, or novels, and feel like the hero of our own story. It is the way that we make manifest our potential, make use of our intelligence, and embrace what we love. When we create, we feel whole, useful, and devoted. Unfortunately, we often also feel anxious as we create or contemplate creating. There are many reasons for this—the subject of our 16 lessons. We get anxious because we fear we may fail, because we fear we may disappoint ourselves, because the work can be extremely hard, because the marketplace may criticize us and reject us, and so on. We want to create, because that is a wonderful thing, but we also don't want to create, so as to spare ourselves all this anxiety. That is the simple, profound dilemma that million! s of people find themselves in.
The solution is very simple to say although much harder to put into practice. In order to create and to deal with all the anxiety that comes with creating, you must acknowledge and accept that anxiety is part of the process, demand of yourself that you will learn—and really practice!--anxiety management skills so that you are equal to mastering the anxiety that arises, and get on with your creating and your anxiety management. It is too big a shame not to create if creating is what you long to do and there is no reason for you not to create if "all" that is standing in the way is your quite human, very ordinary experience of anxiety. The thing to do is to become an anxiety expert and get on with your creating!
HEADLINE
Since both creating and not creating produce anxiety in a person who wants to create, you might as well embrace the fact that anxiety will accompany you on your journey as a creative person—whether or not you are getting on with your work. Just embracing that reality will release a lot of the ambient anxiety that you feel. Since anxiety accompanies both states—both creating and not creating—why not choose creating?
TO DO
Pick your next creative project or return to your current creative project with a new willingness to accept the reality of anxiety. To help reduce your experience of anxiety, remember to breathe deeply, speak positively to yourself, and affirm that your creative life matters to you. If some anxiety remains, create anyway!
AND
Begin using the Anxiety Mastery Menu at the end of this lesson. That is work that will reward your efforts! Making a real effort to deal with your anxiety will allow you to get on with your creating and create deeply and regularly.
VOW
I will create, even if that provokes anxiety in me; and when it does provoke anxiety, I will manage it through the use of the anxiety management skills and techniques I am learning and practicing.
**
TEACHING TALE
The following teaching tale features Ari, a fictional creativity coach who lives and works in an unnamed desert location. Modeled on the Sufi teaching tale, this tale employs naturalistic and fantastic elements and presents a lesson or a moral in fictional form. A teaching tale of this sort may or may not be your cup of tea. If it isn't, please proceed to your work of learning and using your anxiety management tools. If it is, please enjoy!
**
THE GHOST WITH CONSCIOUSNESS AND POTENTIAL
One day a ghost paid Ari a visit. She had long blond hair and wore a banana-colored satin nightgown. Even though she had the power to interrupt and to come and go as she pleased, she arrived between sessions as a gesture of respect and good will.
"I never got to use my talents!" the ghost wailed. She floated about the room, agitated and unable to alight. "Now I'm dead and buried!"
"You can't create where you find yourself these days?" Ari asked the miserable ghost.
"No! I just wander the universe, pointlessly and aimlessly!"
"But you sound like you still have a brain?"
That seemed to surprise the ghost. She shot out of the air and sat down suddenly.
"That's true," she replied.
"And you can talk to people?"
"Yes."
"Then why not be a muse?"
"A muse," she murmured. For an instant she looked happy. But then a new thought creased her brow. "Since I never manifested my own potential, how can I help others?"
"Just by telling the truth. Are ghosts more honest than the next person?"
"Not particularly."
"Too bad. But that was an honest thing for you to say! So it appears that you can tell the truth. So, if I were you, I would think about why I hadn't been able to create while I was alive, I would learn the painful truth about that, and then I would visit people who are despairing and help them."
The ghost fell silent.
"I'm drawing a blank," she finally said.
"About?"
"About why I avoided creating my whole life long. Not that it was such a long life!" she interjected suddenly. "I died at thirty-nine."
Ari nodded. "But if it had been sixty-nine or eighty-nine-"
"No, you're right. I was not on the path to creating. I could have lived another fifty years and I wouldn't have accomplished anything."
She flew off the chair and circled the room ten or fifteen times. Ari, watching her, began to get dizzy.
"Come down here!" he cried. "Settle down for a moment!"
The ghost dove to her seat and sat there hunched and moody.
"For a lifetime you couldn't create," Ari said. "Why should you be able to figure out the reasons for that in a split second? Don't you think it's going to take a little time?"
This cheered her. "Well, all right. But how will I learn?"
"Picture the thing you always wanted. What was it?"
She had the answer on the tip of her tongue. "To spin stories like Scheherazade," the ghost said with real passion. "To hold audiences captive. I knew Scheherazade. She had something I didn't have. Some spunk. Some fire. A gleam in her eye. Something!"
"No!" Ari disagreed. "She manifested something that you didn't manifest. There's a difference. Don't you have a fire burning in you? Of course you do!"
"She was also beautiful," the ghost continued.
"That's no way to think!" Ari leaned forward. "Your mind is brooding about the accomplishments of others. You're thinking about Scheherazade, not about you. You're making yourself into a failure by thinking about her successes. Your despair flows from your envy."
"Thank you!" the ghost said bitterly.
"Plus, you didn't hear me."
"What did you say that I was supposed to memorize?" she said, the irony in her voice perfected in the coldest reaches of the universe. "What was so damned important?"
"That you have potential," Ari replied. "You have all the genetic material you need. Just not the mental health."
"Mental health!" the ghost exclaimed. "I've been insane for hundreds of years!"
The ghost flew up out of her seat and began circling the room at breakneck speed. She seemed out of control and bent on crashing into walls and objects. But, strange to say, she had no accidents whatsoever.
"You came here because you wanted to change," Ari said softly, so softly that the ghost could not have been expected to hear him. Yet she did.
"Maybe," she said, still buzzing about.
"You do want to change. I know that."
"Change! How can a ghost change!"
"You keep running from the obvious. You can still think. But you won't. You have retained consciousness but you are not willing to grow in awareness."
Tears trickled down the ghost's pink cheeks. They fell from the air and dotted the small table between Ari's chair and the chair reserved for clients.
"Even a ghost can heal," Ari said. "If she can love again."
"Love?" the ghost whispered. "Have we been talking about love?" She stopped in midair. "You mean--?"
"Love yourself. If you can accomplish that, then you will begin to love others. The desire to help will well up out of that self-love and that other-love. One day, without noticing what a tremendous trip you have taken, you will have become a muse."
A new fluttering filled the room. Then silence descended. The ghost had vanished, her disappearance accompanied by the tinkling of bells. For a moment Ari wondered if a ghost had really visited. He sat quietly, feeling for shifts in the universe. In a while it came to him that a little more love was present in the universe, which he took to be proof of the ghost's visit and of its successful outcome.
MORAL: You can make yourself anxious in all sorts of ways. The answer is to love yourself and, out of that love and devotion, demand that you do whatever work is necessary.
**
YOUR ANXIETY MASTERY MENU
Let me end this lesson with the reminder with which I will end each of these 16 lessons: you must learn and practice anxiety management techniques if you are to master your anxiety!
Anxiety mastery requires that you actually do the work of managing and reducing your anxiety. It is not enough to have a refined sense of when you are anxious and why you are anxious: you then must do something.
Most people who know that they are anxious do not make a sufficient effort to change their situation, opting instead to "white knuckle" life, medicate themselves with anti-anxiety medication (which can be useful in some circumstances) or make do with alternative medicine approaches (likes teas or homeopathic remedies).
Core work requires more than this: it requires a diligent, systematic effort to find techniques that work for you, especially cognitive ones that retrain your neurons to think differently, and to then actually employ those techniques.
Experiment with the following 14 anxiety reduction strategies, learn which ones work for you, and begin to use the ones that work best. Make sure to actually use the ones that you discover work best for you! "Knowing about them" is not enough—you must practice them and use them. In subsequent lessons we'll look at each of these techniques in turn and examine them more closely.
1. Deep breathing
The simplest—and quite powerful—anxiety management technique is deep breathing. By stopping to deeply breathe (5 seconds on the inhale, 5 seconds on the exhale) you stop your racing mind and alert your body to the fact that you wish to be calmer. Begin to incorporate deep breaths into your daily routine, especially when you think about your creative work and when you approach your creative work.
2. Cognitive self-help
Changing the way you think is the most useful and powerful anti-anxiety strategy. You can do this straightforwardly by 1) noticing what you are saying to yourself; 2) disputing the self-talk that makes you anxious or does not serve you; and 3) substituting more affirmative, positive or useful self-talk. This three-step process really works if you will practice it and commit to it.
3. Incanting
A variation on strategies one and two is to use them together and to "drop" a useful cognition into a deep breath, thinking "half" the thought on the inhale and "half" the thought on the exhale. Incantations that might serve to reduce your experience of anxiety might are "I am perfectly calm" or "I trust my resources." Experiment with some short phrases and find one or two that, when dropped into a deep breath, help you quell your anxious feelings.
4. Physical relaxation techniques
Physical relaxation techniques include such simple procedures as rubbing your shoulder and such elaborate procedures as "progressive relaxation techniques" where you slowly relax each part of your body in turn. Doing something physically soothing probably does not amount to a full anxiety management practice but can prove really useful in the moment to help you calm yourself and when used in combination with your cognitive practice.
5. Mindfulness practices
Meditation and other mindfulness practices that help you take charge of your thoughts and get a grip on your mind can prove very useful as part of your anxiety management program. It is not so important to become a practice "sitter" or to spend long periods of time meditating but rather to truly grasp the idea that the contents of your mind make suffering and anxiety and that the better a job you do of releasing those thoughts and replacing them with more affirmative ones, the less you will experience anxiety.
6. Affirmations and Prayers
Affirmations (and prayers) are simply short cognitions that point your mind in the direction you want it (and you) to go. If you are feeling hatred, which breeds conflict and anxiety, you affirm your desire to love, the availability of love, or some other formulation that turns you in the direction that you want to go and that, by turning you in that direction, reduces your experience of anxiety. By affirming your talent, your ability to trust yourself, your willingness to show up and do the work of creating, and so on, you "talk yourself" into a better frame of mind and as a result feel less anxious.
7. Guided imagery
Guided imagery is a technique where you guide yourself to calmness by mentally picturing a calming image or a series of images. You might picture yourself on a blanket by the beach, walking by a lake, or swinging on a porch swing. You can use single snapshot images or combine images to such an extent that you end up with the equivalent of a short relaxation film that you play for yourself. The first step is to determine what images actually calm you by trying out various images and then, once you've landed on images that have the right calming effect, actually bring them to mind when you are feeling anxious.
8. Stress Reduction techniques
Many formal and informal techniques have been developed to reduce stress. An example of a formal technique is biofeedback, where you learn how to relax through the use of an informational feedback loop system. Examples of informal stress reduction techniques include pep talks, stretching, and self-massage. There are literally hundreds of stress reduction techniques available to you, from formal ones like assertiveness skills training to informal ones like listing your stressors—and burning the list. Add one useful stress reduction technique to your arsenal of anxiety management tools.
9. Disidentification techniques
One of the best ways to reduce your experience of anxiety is by learning to bring a calm, detached perspective to life and by turning yourself into someone whose default approach to life is to create calm rather than drama and stress. You do this by remembering that while you can exert influence in life you can't control outcomes and by affirming that you are different from and larger than any component part of your life: any feeling, any thought, any ruined project, any rejection, anything. By taking a more philosophical, phlegmatic and detached approach to life (without giving up your desires, dreams or goals) you meet life more calmly.
10. Ceremonies and rituals
Creating and using a ceremony or ritual is a simple but powerful way to reduce your experience of anxiety. For many people lowering the lights, lighting candles, putting on soothing music and in other ways ceremonially creating a calming environment helps significantly. One particularly useful ceremony is one that you create to mark the movement from "ordinary life" to "creating time." You might use an incantation like "I am completely stopping" in a ritual or ceremonial way to help you move from the rush of everyday life to the quiet of your creative work, repeating it a few times so that you actually do stop, grow quiet, and move calmly and effortlessly into the trance of working.
11. Reorienting techniques
If your mind starts to focus on some anxiety-producing thought or situation or if you feel yourself becoming too wary, watchful and vigilant, all of which are anxiety states, one thing you can do is to consciously turn your attention in another direction and reorient yourself away from your anxious thoughts and toward a more neutral stimulus. For example, instead of focusing on the audience entering the concert hall, which you know increases your anxiety, you might reorient yourself toward the notices on the bulletin board in the green room and casually glance at them, paying them just enough attention to take your mind off the sounds of the audience arriving but not so much attention that you lose your sense of the music you are about to play.
12. Symptom confrontation techniques
A rarely used technique, employed mostly in some form of therapy and by some teachers in the performing arts, symptom confrontation is the idea that by "demanding" that your anxiety symptoms get worse and worse—that your querulous singing voice or jumpy violin bowing wrist get even more shaky—and by actively trying to increase your experience of anxiety, you reach a point where you break through into laughter and a sense of the absurdity of your worries. This is a powerful technique that however probably works best in the context of coaching or therapy.
13. Discharge techniques
Anxiety and stress build up in the body and techniques that vent that stress can prove very useful. One discharge technique that actors sometimes learn to employ to reduce their experience of anxiety before a performance is to "silently scream"—to make the facial gestures and whole body intentions that go with uttering a good cleansing scream without actually uttering any sound (which would be inappropriate in most settings). Jumping jacks, pushups and strong physical gestures of all sorts can be used to help release the "venom" of stress and anxiety and pass it out of your system.
14. Preparation techniques
Many of the situations that creative people face, like auditioning, meeting with an editor, hosting an open studio weekend, and so on, provoke intense anxiety; and a key to reducing that anxiety is to get in the habit of preparing well for each such situation. You want to be prepared and to feel prepared so that you enter a calm, detached, ready state and can concentrate on the auditors' instructions or the editor's feedback. You prepare by really learning your material, preparing responses to questions that you are likely to be asked, visualizing the situation in your mind's eye, and getting accustomed to what it will feel like to be there in reality.
Explore this list and learn for yourself what works for you—and truly make use of the techniques that work. Start to really own at least one or two anxiety management strategies, practice them, and make real and regular use of them."
November 18, 2012
Seeing the Pattern - DailyOm horoscope excerpt
"The more we appreciate the blessings that have allowed us to prosper and grow, the more we learn to recognize those blessings in disguise that touch our lives unexpectedly. Good fortune is often misinterpreted as chance, and our understanding of what constitutes a true blessing enables us to look past the easy explanation of luck to the providence beyond. We come to realize that the abundance we enjoy is part of a larger pattern made up of both triumphs and trials, each of which have taught us something about ourselves. Life’s challenges do not dismay us as we understand that good fortune can take many forms, many of which are not easily distinguished. You will feel truly grateful for your abundance today because you have refined your ability to see the blessings in your life."
January 2, 2013
Divine Resonance
Chanting
by Madisyn Taylor
By using your breath and your voice with Chanting, you raise the level of your own vibration to a higher spiritual state.
In many cultures and civilizations, chanting, a form of vocal meditation, has endured through the ages. Practiced by many people around the world seeking greater health, a sense of well-being, enlightenment, and a connection to the divine, chanting unites the mind, body, emotions, and breath through vocal sounding. This unification can open and nurture your creativity, lower stress levels, and teach you to become fully alert and in the moment.
Some people are naturally drawn to chant while others feel awkward using their voices in such a way. Singing along with recorded chants before chanting on your own can help dispel any nervousness. However, the chanting that will resonate most deeply and beneficially for you is the chanting you do for yourself. There are many different chants. They can be composed of names, words, sounds, syllables, or even sections of text. What you chant is less important than your willingness to focus fully on the act of chanting itself. To begin, sit comfortably with a straight back and take a series of long, deep breaths to open and flex your lungs. Then, take another breath, and with resonant tones direct your breath outward in the form of sound. Simple syllables like ‘oh,’ ‘ee,’ or ‘mm’ are easy to remember.
Chanting lets you raise the level of your own vibration to a higher spiritual state. You can chant as an invocation or to set intention. Reciting even the simplest chant can bolster a flagging spirit, hone the mind, and produce natural painkillers within the brain. While chanting, you may feel energy surging through your physical body or joy entering your heart. Chanting can liberate and ground you simultaneously because it allows your soul to soar freely while compelling you to focus on the here and now.
January 3, 2013
Bringing Out the Best
Checks and Balances
by Madisyn Taylor
When we see ourselves in other people it can be a great opportunity for growth if we are willing to do the work.
From 1-2-2013
Most of us have probably come across the universal wisdom that the people who irritate us the most are expressing qualities that we ourselves have. This is why family members can be so vexing for so many of us—we see ourselves in them, and vice versa. This isn’t always true, of course, but when it is, it’s a real opportunity for growth if we can acknowledge it, because it is infinitely easier to change ourselves than it is to try to change another person, which is never a good idea. For example, if we have a coworker who engages in some kind of negative behavior, like complaining or trying to control everything, we can look and see if we ourselves carry those traits.
We may have to look to other situations in our lives to see it, because we behave differently in different environments. Perhaps we don’t complain at work, because our coworker overdoes it, but maybe we do it with our friends. Maybe we aren’t controlling at the office, but we’re used to being in control at home, and this is why we feel so irritated not to be in control at work. Even if we look and find that we are not engaging in the same behavior that we see as negative in others, we can still learn from what we are seeing in this person. The truth is, human nature is universal, and we share many of the same tendencies. What we see in others can always help us to understand ourselves more deeply.
Having the ability to see something in another person, and automatically bring this observation back to ourselves, is like having a built-in system of checks and balances that enables us to be continually engaged in self-exploration and behavior change. When we see behavior we don’t like, we can make a concerted effort to weed it out of ourselves, and when we see behavior we do like, we can let it inspire us to engage in imitation. Through this process, we read our environment and let it influence us to bring out the best in ourselves.
Not sure why I titled this Part I. I have no idea how I am going about this whole blog thing. Maybe I can formulate some way to organize this when I have more material and posts.
Anyways..
There are several people that have inspired me to do this. I don't know them all, and some have passed.
In brief, some of them are: Madisyn Taylor, Dr. Teusch, Joel, Dr. Dixon-Peters, Sidney, Erick... there are more.
Whether its their writing, life style, philosophy, attitude, kindness, optimism, etc... they have helped me want to serve others. We exist for one another.
The goal is to continue trying to live by this:
"To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one’s self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived—this is to have succeeded." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
It doesn't have to be a legacy, or something one would acknowledge as profound. I just want to pay it forward. I know I don't have to. I know all the help I have gotten there was never an intention of repayment, or following up with a debt. I know that doesn't exist. I do feel burdened though. I do feel I owe a debt, and I know the people I have listed would want me to pay it forward. Their nurturing, selfless acts.. I find amazing. I want to help. Help people, support a good cause, save an animal, make someone laugh.. its something.
I have been so blessed. So fortunate. Have been helped in so many ways. I want to do the same for others.
For this first post, I want to share some insights I have gotten from DailyOm. I bought Madisyn Taylor's book DailyOm months ago. I got into a routine of reading a few pages every morning with a cup of tea. That has been the best way to start a day! Not always consistent about it, but I try and I'll keep trying. Mid-November I got into her website dailyom.com. I get emails from the site, and they are fantastic. A lot of the stuff I want to share are from those. In some ways it will be my form of note taking. Keep all the highlights as a form of memo's for myself and share with those who it interests as well.
Today is the second day of 2013, but I am going to note things I got in November.
November 15, 2012
Summon Your Aliveness Being Fully Present by Madisyn Taylor
When we are fully present, we offer our whole selves to whatever it is that we are doing. Our attention, our integrity, and our energy are all focused in the moment and on the task at hand. ....Even tasks or jobs we don’t enjoy can become infused with the light of being present. The more present we are, the more meaningful our entire lives become...The more we draw ourselves into the present moment, the more we honor the gift of our lives, and the more we honor the people around us. When we are fully present, we give and receive aliveness in equal measure."
November 16, 2012
Leaving a Positive Footprint Blessing Space by M. Taylor
Physical space acts like a sponge, absorbing the radiant of all who pass through it. And, more likely than not, the spaces we move through each day have seen many people come and go... Yet we can control the energy footprint we leave behind for others. In blessing each space we enter, we orchestrate a subtle energy shift that affects not only our own experiences in that space but also the experiences of the individuals who will enter the space after us. While we may never see the effects our blessing has had, we can take comfort in the fact that we have provided grace for those that follow after us... Try blessing every home, business, and office you visit for an entire week and observing the effects of your goodwill. Your affirmative energy footprint will help brighten your day as you contemplate your blessing’s future impact on your siblings in humanity and your environment."
November 17, 2012
Overcoming Creative Anxiety by Eric Maisel
"The following is an excerpt from the "Overcoming Creative Anxiety" on-line course. If you would like to take the entire course
Anxiety is a feature of the human condition. It is a much larger feature than most people realize. A great deal of what we do in life we do in order to reduce our experience of anxiety or in order to avoid anxiety altogether. Our very human defensiveness is one of the primary ways that we try to avoid experiencing anxiety. If something is about to make us anxious we deny that it is happening, make ourselves sick so that we can concentrate on our sickness, get angry at our mate so as to have something else to focus on, and so on. We are very tricky creatures in this regard.
We are also very wonderful creatures who have it in us to create. "Creativity" is the word we use for our desire to make use of our inner resources, employ our imagination, knit together our thoughts and our feelings into beautiful things like songs, quilts, or novels, and feel like the hero of our own story. It is the way that we make manifest our potential, make use of our intelligence, and embrace what we love. When we create, we feel whole, useful, and devoted. Unfortunately, we often also feel anxious as we create or contemplate creating. There are many reasons for this—the subject of our 16 lessons. We get anxious because we fear we may fail, because we fear we may disappoint ourselves, because the work can be extremely hard, because the marketplace may criticize us and reject us, and so on. We want to create, because that is a wonderful thing, but we also don't want to create, so as to spare ourselves all this anxiety. That is the simple, profound dilemma that million! s of people find themselves in.
The solution is very simple to say although much harder to put into practice. In order to create and to deal with all the anxiety that comes with creating, you must acknowledge and accept that anxiety is part of the process, demand of yourself that you will learn—and really practice!--anxiety management skills so that you are equal to mastering the anxiety that arises, and get on with your creating and your anxiety management. It is too big a shame not to create if creating is what you long to do and there is no reason for you not to create if "all" that is standing in the way is your quite human, very ordinary experience of anxiety. The thing to do is to become an anxiety expert and get on with your creating!
HEADLINE
Since both creating and not creating produce anxiety in a person who wants to create, you might as well embrace the fact that anxiety will accompany you on your journey as a creative person—whether or not you are getting on with your work. Just embracing that reality will release a lot of the ambient anxiety that you feel. Since anxiety accompanies both states—both creating and not creating—why not choose creating?
TO DO
Pick your next creative project or return to your current creative project with a new willingness to accept the reality of anxiety. To help reduce your experience of anxiety, remember to breathe deeply, speak positively to yourself, and affirm that your creative life matters to you. If some anxiety remains, create anyway!
AND
Begin using the Anxiety Mastery Menu at the end of this lesson. That is work that will reward your efforts! Making a real effort to deal with your anxiety will allow you to get on with your creating and create deeply and regularly.
VOW
I will create, even if that provokes anxiety in me; and when it does provoke anxiety, I will manage it through the use of the anxiety management skills and techniques I am learning and practicing.
**
TEACHING TALE
The following teaching tale features Ari, a fictional creativity coach who lives and works in an unnamed desert location. Modeled on the Sufi teaching tale, this tale employs naturalistic and fantastic elements and presents a lesson or a moral in fictional form. A teaching tale of this sort may or may not be your cup of tea. If it isn't, please proceed to your work of learning and using your anxiety management tools. If it is, please enjoy!
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THE GHOST WITH CONSCIOUSNESS AND POTENTIAL
One day a ghost paid Ari a visit. She had long blond hair and wore a banana-colored satin nightgown. Even though she had the power to interrupt and to come and go as she pleased, she arrived between sessions as a gesture of respect and good will.
"I never got to use my talents!" the ghost wailed. She floated about the room, agitated and unable to alight. "Now I'm dead and buried!"
"You can't create where you find yourself these days?" Ari asked the miserable ghost.
"No! I just wander the universe, pointlessly and aimlessly!"
"But you sound like you still have a brain?"
That seemed to surprise the ghost. She shot out of the air and sat down suddenly.
"That's true," she replied.
"And you can talk to people?"
"Yes."
"Then why not be a muse?"
"A muse," she murmured. For an instant she looked happy. But then a new thought creased her brow. "Since I never manifested my own potential, how can I help others?"
"Just by telling the truth. Are ghosts more honest than the next person?"
"Not particularly."
"Too bad. But that was an honest thing for you to say! So it appears that you can tell the truth. So, if I were you, I would think about why I hadn't been able to create while I was alive, I would learn the painful truth about that, and then I would visit people who are despairing and help them."
The ghost fell silent.
"I'm drawing a blank," she finally said.
"About?"
"About why I avoided creating my whole life long. Not that it was such a long life!" she interjected suddenly. "I died at thirty-nine."
Ari nodded. "But if it had been sixty-nine or eighty-nine-"
"No, you're right. I was not on the path to creating. I could have lived another fifty years and I wouldn't have accomplished anything."
She flew off the chair and circled the room ten or fifteen times. Ari, watching her, began to get dizzy.
"Come down here!" he cried. "Settle down for a moment!"
The ghost dove to her seat and sat there hunched and moody.
"For a lifetime you couldn't create," Ari said. "Why should you be able to figure out the reasons for that in a split second? Don't you think it's going to take a little time?"
This cheered her. "Well, all right. But how will I learn?"
"Picture the thing you always wanted. What was it?"
She had the answer on the tip of her tongue. "To spin stories like Scheherazade," the ghost said with real passion. "To hold audiences captive. I knew Scheherazade. She had something I didn't have. Some spunk. Some fire. A gleam in her eye. Something!"
"No!" Ari disagreed. "She manifested something that you didn't manifest. There's a difference. Don't you have a fire burning in you? Of course you do!"
"She was also beautiful," the ghost continued.
"That's no way to think!" Ari leaned forward. "Your mind is brooding about the accomplishments of others. You're thinking about Scheherazade, not about you. You're making yourself into a failure by thinking about her successes. Your despair flows from your envy."
"Thank you!" the ghost said bitterly.
"Plus, you didn't hear me."
"What did you say that I was supposed to memorize?" she said, the irony in her voice perfected in the coldest reaches of the universe. "What was so damned important?"
"That you have potential," Ari replied. "You have all the genetic material you need. Just not the mental health."
"Mental health!" the ghost exclaimed. "I've been insane for hundreds of years!"
The ghost flew up out of her seat and began circling the room at breakneck speed. She seemed out of control and bent on crashing into walls and objects. But, strange to say, she had no accidents whatsoever.
"You came here because you wanted to change," Ari said softly, so softly that the ghost could not have been expected to hear him. Yet she did.
"Maybe," she said, still buzzing about.
"You do want to change. I know that."
"Change! How can a ghost change!"
"You keep running from the obvious. You can still think. But you won't. You have retained consciousness but you are not willing to grow in awareness."
Tears trickled down the ghost's pink cheeks. They fell from the air and dotted the small table between Ari's chair and the chair reserved for clients.
"Even a ghost can heal," Ari said. "If she can love again."
"Love?" the ghost whispered. "Have we been talking about love?" She stopped in midair. "You mean--?"
"Love yourself. If you can accomplish that, then you will begin to love others. The desire to help will well up out of that self-love and that other-love. One day, without noticing what a tremendous trip you have taken, you will have become a muse."
A new fluttering filled the room. Then silence descended. The ghost had vanished, her disappearance accompanied by the tinkling of bells. For a moment Ari wondered if a ghost had really visited. He sat quietly, feeling for shifts in the universe. In a while it came to him that a little more love was present in the universe, which he took to be proof of the ghost's visit and of its successful outcome.
MORAL: You can make yourself anxious in all sorts of ways. The answer is to love yourself and, out of that love and devotion, demand that you do whatever work is necessary.
**
YOUR ANXIETY MASTERY MENU
Let me end this lesson with the reminder with which I will end each of these 16 lessons: you must learn and practice anxiety management techniques if you are to master your anxiety!
Anxiety mastery requires that you actually do the work of managing and reducing your anxiety. It is not enough to have a refined sense of when you are anxious and why you are anxious: you then must do something.
Most people who know that they are anxious do not make a sufficient effort to change their situation, opting instead to "white knuckle" life, medicate themselves with anti-anxiety medication (which can be useful in some circumstances) or make do with alternative medicine approaches (likes teas or homeopathic remedies).
Core work requires more than this: it requires a diligent, systematic effort to find techniques that work for you, especially cognitive ones that retrain your neurons to think differently, and to then actually employ those techniques.
Experiment with the following 14 anxiety reduction strategies, learn which ones work for you, and begin to use the ones that work best. Make sure to actually use the ones that you discover work best for you! "Knowing about them" is not enough—you must practice them and use them. In subsequent lessons we'll look at each of these techniques in turn and examine them more closely.
1. Deep breathing
The simplest—and quite powerful—anxiety management technique is deep breathing. By stopping to deeply breathe (5 seconds on the inhale, 5 seconds on the exhale) you stop your racing mind and alert your body to the fact that you wish to be calmer. Begin to incorporate deep breaths into your daily routine, especially when you think about your creative work and when you approach your creative work.
2. Cognitive self-help
Changing the way you think is the most useful and powerful anti-anxiety strategy. You can do this straightforwardly by 1) noticing what you are saying to yourself; 2) disputing the self-talk that makes you anxious or does not serve you; and 3) substituting more affirmative, positive or useful self-talk. This three-step process really works if you will practice it and commit to it.
3. Incanting
A variation on strategies one and two is to use them together and to "drop" a useful cognition into a deep breath, thinking "half" the thought on the inhale and "half" the thought on the exhale. Incantations that might serve to reduce your experience of anxiety might are "I am perfectly calm" or "I trust my resources." Experiment with some short phrases and find one or two that, when dropped into a deep breath, help you quell your anxious feelings.
4. Physical relaxation techniques
Physical relaxation techniques include such simple procedures as rubbing your shoulder and such elaborate procedures as "progressive relaxation techniques" where you slowly relax each part of your body in turn. Doing something physically soothing probably does not amount to a full anxiety management practice but can prove really useful in the moment to help you calm yourself and when used in combination with your cognitive practice.
5. Mindfulness practices
Meditation and other mindfulness practices that help you take charge of your thoughts and get a grip on your mind can prove very useful as part of your anxiety management program. It is not so important to become a practice "sitter" or to spend long periods of time meditating but rather to truly grasp the idea that the contents of your mind make suffering and anxiety and that the better a job you do of releasing those thoughts and replacing them with more affirmative ones, the less you will experience anxiety.
6. Affirmations and Prayers
Affirmations (and prayers) are simply short cognitions that point your mind in the direction you want it (and you) to go. If you are feeling hatred, which breeds conflict and anxiety, you affirm your desire to love, the availability of love, or some other formulation that turns you in the direction that you want to go and that, by turning you in that direction, reduces your experience of anxiety. By affirming your talent, your ability to trust yourself, your willingness to show up and do the work of creating, and so on, you "talk yourself" into a better frame of mind and as a result feel less anxious.
7. Guided imagery
Guided imagery is a technique where you guide yourself to calmness by mentally picturing a calming image or a series of images. You might picture yourself on a blanket by the beach, walking by a lake, or swinging on a porch swing. You can use single snapshot images or combine images to such an extent that you end up with the equivalent of a short relaxation film that you play for yourself. The first step is to determine what images actually calm you by trying out various images and then, once you've landed on images that have the right calming effect, actually bring them to mind when you are feeling anxious.
8. Stress Reduction techniques
Many formal and informal techniques have been developed to reduce stress. An example of a formal technique is biofeedback, where you learn how to relax through the use of an informational feedback loop system. Examples of informal stress reduction techniques include pep talks, stretching, and self-massage. There are literally hundreds of stress reduction techniques available to you, from formal ones like assertiveness skills training to informal ones like listing your stressors—and burning the list. Add one useful stress reduction technique to your arsenal of anxiety management tools.
9. Disidentification techniques
One of the best ways to reduce your experience of anxiety is by learning to bring a calm, detached perspective to life and by turning yourself into someone whose default approach to life is to create calm rather than drama and stress. You do this by remembering that while you can exert influence in life you can't control outcomes and by affirming that you are different from and larger than any component part of your life: any feeling, any thought, any ruined project, any rejection, anything. By taking a more philosophical, phlegmatic and detached approach to life (without giving up your desires, dreams or goals) you meet life more calmly.
10. Ceremonies and rituals
Creating and using a ceremony or ritual is a simple but powerful way to reduce your experience of anxiety. For many people lowering the lights, lighting candles, putting on soothing music and in other ways ceremonially creating a calming environment helps significantly. One particularly useful ceremony is one that you create to mark the movement from "ordinary life" to "creating time." You might use an incantation like "I am completely stopping" in a ritual or ceremonial way to help you move from the rush of everyday life to the quiet of your creative work, repeating it a few times so that you actually do stop, grow quiet, and move calmly and effortlessly into the trance of working.
11. Reorienting techniques
If your mind starts to focus on some anxiety-producing thought or situation or if you feel yourself becoming too wary, watchful and vigilant, all of which are anxiety states, one thing you can do is to consciously turn your attention in another direction and reorient yourself away from your anxious thoughts and toward a more neutral stimulus. For example, instead of focusing on the audience entering the concert hall, which you know increases your anxiety, you might reorient yourself toward the notices on the bulletin board in the green room and casually glance at them, paying them just enough attention to take your mind off the sounds of the audience arriving but not so much attention that you lose your sense of the music you are about to play.
12. Symptom confrontation techniques
A rarely used technique, employed mostly in some form of therapy and by some teachers in the performing arts, symptom confrontation is the idea that by "demanding" that your anxiety symptoms get worse and worse—that your querulous singing voice or jumpy violin bowing wrist get even more shaky—and by actively trying to increase your experience of anxiety, you reach a point where you break through into laughter and a sense of the absurdity of your worries. This is a powerful technique that however probably works best in the context of coaching or therapy.
13. Discharge techniques
Anxiety and stress build up in the body and techniques that vent that stress can prove very useful. One discharge technique that actors sometimes learn to employ to reduce their experience of anxiety before a performance is to "silently scream"—to make the facial gestures and whole body intentions that go with uttering a good cleansing scream without actually uttering any sound (which would be inappropriate in most settings). Jumping jacks, pushups and strong physical gestures of all sorts can be used to help release the "venom" of stress and anxiety and pass it out of your system.
14. Preparation techniques
Many of the situations that creative people face, like auditioning, meeting with an editor, hosting an open studio weekend, and so on, provoke intense anxiety; and a key to reducing that anxiety is to get in the habit of preparing well for each such situation. You want to be prepared and to feel prepared so that you enter a calm, detached, ready state and can concentrate on the auditors' instructions or the editor's feedback. You prepare by really learning your material, preparing responses to questions that you are likely to be asked, visualizing the situation in your mind's eye, and getting accustomed to what it will feel like to be there in reality.
Explore this list and learn for yourself what works for you—and truly make use of the techniques that work. Start to really own at least one or two anxiety management strategies, practice them, and make real and regular use of them."
November 18, 2012
Seeing the Pattern - DailyOm horoscope excerpt
"The more we appreciate the blessings that have allowed us to prosper and grow, the more we learn to recognize those blessings in disguise that touch our lives unexpectedly. Good fortune is often misinterpreted as chance, and our understanding of what constitutes a true blessing enables us to look past the easy explanation of luck to the providence beyond. We come to realize that the abundance we enjoy is part of a larger pattern made up of both triumphs and trials, each of which have taught us something about ourselves. Life’s challenges do not dismay us as we understand that good fortune can take many forms, many of which are not easily distinguished. You will feel truly grateful for your abundance today because you have refined your ability to see the blessings in your life."
January 2, 2013
Divine Resonance
Chanting
by Madisyn Taylor
In many cultures and civilizations, chanting, a form of vocal meditation, has endured through the ages. Practiced by many people around the world seeking greater health, a sense of well-being, enlightenment, and a connection to the divine, chanting unites the mind, body, emotions, and breath through vocal sounding. This unification can open and nurture your creativity, lower stress levels, and teach you to become fully alert and in the moment.
Some people are naturally drawn to chant while others feel awkward using their voices in such a way. Singing along with recorded chants before chanting on your own can help dispel any nervousness. However, the chanting that will resonate most deeply and beneficially for you is the chanting you do for yourself. There are many different chants. They can be composed of names, words, sounds, syllables, or even sections of text. What you chant is less important than your willingness to focus fully on the act of chanting itself. To begin, sit comfortably with a straight back and take a series of long, deep breaths to open and flex your lungs. Then, take another breath, and with resonant tones direct your breath outward in the form of sound. Simple syllables like ‘oh,’ ‘ee,’ or ‘mm’ are easy to remember.
Chanting lets you raise the level of your own vibration to a higher spiritual state. You can chant as an invocation or to set intention. Reciting even the simplest chant can bolster a flagging spirit, hone the mind, and produce natural painkillers within the brain. While chanting, you may feel energy surging through your physical body or joy entering your heart. Chanting can liberate and ground you simultaneously because it allows your soul to soar freely while compelling you to focus on the here and now.
January 3, 2013
Bringing Out the Best
Checks and Balances
by Madisyn Taylor
From 1-2-2013
Most of us have probably come across the universal wisdom that the people who irritate us the most are expressing qualities that we ourselves have. This is why family members can be so vexing for so many of us—we see ourselves in them, and vice versa. This isn’t always true, of course, but when it is, it’s a real opportunity for growth if we can acknowledge it, because it is infinitely easier to change ourselves than it is to try to change another person, which is never a good idea. For example, if we have a coworker who engages in some kind of negative behavior, like complaining or trying to control everything, we can look and see if we ourselves carry those traits.
We may have to look to other situations in our lives to see it, because we behave differently in different environments. Perhaps we don’t complain at work, because our coworker overdoes it, but maybe we do it with our friends. Maybe we aren’t controlling at the office, but we’re used to being in control at home, and this is why we feel so irritated not to be in control at work. Even if we look and find that we are not engaging in the same behavior that we see as negative in others, we can still learn from what we are seeing in this person. The truth is, human nature is universal, and we share many of the same tendencies. What we see in others can always help us to understand ourselves more deeply.
Having the ability to see something in another person, and automatically bring this observation back to ourselves, is like having a built-in system of checks and balances that enables us to be continually engaged in self-exploration and behavior change. When we see behavior we don’t like, we can make a concerted effort to weed it out of ourselves, and when we see behavior we do like, we can let it inspire us to engage in imitation. Through this process, we read our environment and let it influence us to bring out the best in ourselves.
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