by Katherine on March 3, 2010
Want to get a picture of the best environment for using your own creativity to grow and contribute? This free tool was so accurate for me that it was almost eerie. I’m “a Creator”, and I like “working independently, being creative, using (my) imagination, and constantly learning something new.”
Got me in one.
After you’ve done the test, it does make a sponsored offer but don’t let that stop you. Just click on the NO THANKS link. It’s fast, (takes about three minutes) fun and amazingly effective. Try it out.
And once you’ve done it come back and share your results in the comments below.
by Katherine on November 10, 2009
The Alchemical Process ~ An Allegory
One night she dreamed. In the morning, not remembering the story of the dream, but remembering the meaning, she knew what she had to do.
She found clay, rich from the earth. In her hands the clay became many things. She ’saw’ into the clay and knew the form within each piece. It seemed to her that the clay breathed as a living thing.
Some of the things she made she crushed back down into clay to use again. Some things she made did not survive the firing. But she kept working with the clay.
One day she began to make a plate. It was a large plate and when she had finished, she realized she was very tired. She knew her work was very good but it was just beginning. She set the plate aside to dry and rested.
A few days later, she returned to the plate and found that it was ready for the firing. Carefully she tuned the oven to the right temperature and placed the hardened clay inside. Knowing she had done all she could, she closed the door and left the plate to be tempered by the fire of the kiln.
When the oven had cooled she found that the plate had survived the heat of the oven. She took it out and ran her hands over it. The clay had hardened to bisque and was dry and rough to the touch.
She began to experiment with her glazes. She wanted this plate to have the colours of the living earth, colours of the elements, deep and rich. Finally she was ready to glaze the plate.
She used her tools to smooth the raw bisque as well as she could and then she began to pour the glazes over the plate. The colours of the glaze appeared chalky and dull but she knew that would change when the plate went through its second alchemical process.
Once more she tuned the oven, placed the plate inside and closed the door. While she waited she imagined what the plate might look like but she knew there was no knowing until the firing was done.
When the oven had cooled and she opened the door, she found to her delight that the plate was exquisitely beautiful even beyond her imagining. She set it out where she could admire it.
But something was wrong. She looked at it again and again to try to figure out what was missing. I know what it is, she thought finally. I am not finished yet. This plate was not meant to be empty. But what is it meant to hold?
Watch for Part 2 in an upcoming post.
by Katherine on April 14, 2009
I love metaphors. They make things easy to understand. So a pie is my metaphor for today’s post.
Coaches, authors, mastermind groups, and other leaders recommend that naming and balancing all the various aspects of your life can help you live a more joyful life. They list things like family, relationships, financial resources, business and career, and personal and spiritual development. And yes, it’s easy to see how all those things fit into the pie.
I’d like to invite you to add creativity as a separate category all on its own. In your life pie, does creativity have its own piece? Do you practise creativity on a regular basis?
Let’s go a little further with this idea. What if you substituted the word innovation for the word creativity? How about insights? New ideas? Wouldn’t daily insights make a huge difference to your business or personal life?
If how we’re creative was as high a priority as say, how we make money, wouldn’t that change our world perspective? Think about it.
The lines separating the pieces of pie are much more delineated than the lines separating the various parts of our life. Things tend to blend together and the same is true of creativity….there’s no doubt you are bringing your own ability to create into all the parts of your life.
But if you did make it a separate category, what do you think would happen to all those other categories?
Certainly food (or pie) for thought!
by Katherine on March 31, 2009
For those of us who do vision boards, there are probably pictures of new homes, cars, and partners…all things that exist in the material world. There are probably also pictures of ideas such as a business, a not-for-profit organization, or writing a book….things that become a legacy.
One of the best ways to manifest and create what we want is to help someone else get what we want. (No, that’s not a typo!)
If you want a new home, help someone who is homeless.
If you want more fans for your music, help someone else get connected to more fans.
If you want a new relationship, hang out with couples who have the kind of relationship you want, or introduce two friends to each other.
What’s key here is to serve with a spirit of joy. Giving to get hardly ever works.
Try it. It may seem like magic when what you want shows up but it’s not really magic. It’s simply using natural law.
“The universal Mind contains all knowledge. It is the potential ultimate of all things. To it, all things are possible.”
Ernest Holmes
by Katherine on December 1, 2008
In my last post I described an imaginary conversation between two internal voices. One voice wanted to experience being the creator and the other one was scared and wanted to lie down and watch television.
Enter Kaizen.
The word Kaizen is Japanese and simply means taking small steps to a goal. This is not a new idea. Twelve step programs encourage you to live one day at a time. Others tell us to court presence and live in the moment.
Massive action is great when it works. Most of us can think of someone who created something by taking massive action. The philosophy of taking small steps is an alternative to massive action which for the average person works MUCH better.
What if we applied this philosophy to creativity?
- Take five minutes to work on a creative project instead of thinking you have to finish it all at once.
- Write three sentences of your book.
- Draw one diagram of your new invention.
- Try one new recipe.
- Or just sit and think about your project with a smile on your face! Hmmmmmmm, are you smiling?
Why does this work? Let’s face it. If the gap between where we are now and the imagined outcome or goal is just too big for us to successfully envision, most of us will respond with fear or do nothing.
But anyone can take one small step and then bask in the feeling of accomplishment.
Will you become a creativity basker?
by Katherine on November 25, 2008
What creative idea would you start right now if you dared?
Creativity shifts us forward in our life like nothing else we do. It is the essence of who we are and the form through which we express that essence… a poem, a building, a medical device. Or a blog!
Let’s face it. Life has moments where all we see on the horizon is a big black cloud with no sun or blue sky anywhere to be seen. We can create drama or we ease through those moments by looking into the heart of the cloud for the jewel hidden inside. The cloud is what happens to us. The jewel is the act of creating because in that act we are expressing who we really are.
Artists and poets and writers and artisans and crafts people have known for eons that the act of creation is profound and sometimes even life-saving. (I have personal experience on that.. stay tuned!)
So right here and now I want to dispel the idea that only artists are creative. Who started that idea anyway?
We create every day and it takes many forms both large and small, both short term and long term. How about an architect who envisions a beautiful building and then creates it? How about someone whose dinner table is as beautiful to look at as it is to eat?
It’s a way of thinking and being. It’s how we live while we travel the distance from one point to another or one day in our life to another. And the most direct route is not always the most rewarding.
When I was in elementary school I used to consistently get a D in art. I couldn’t reproduce a tree that looked like a tree, or people that didn’t look like stick people. But I had an ear for music that surprised people as early as when I was two or three. I might not have been a Mozart but it was clearly a gift.
But here’s the darndest thing. It was the D I got in art that had more impact on me. Where did we get the idea that it was okay to rate someone else’s creative endeavor? Wow, if that ever changed, a whole lot of newspaper reviewers and arts critics would be out of a job!
So this blog is going to be about sharing the many ways that unique individual essence is creatively expressed.
Creativity Shifts……
What creative idea would you start right now if you dared?
