Artistry

What if, before everything we did each day, we asked ourselves how we could make the activity a form of art?  That sounds pretty lofty even to me because how could some of the drudgery (or at least that's how I regard it), be turned into an art form?  I've read that what makes art art is the spirit and love that goes into the creation.  That makes even routine tasks accessible to me to make them into an art form.  This is another one of those 30 day challenges for increasing quality of life that I think I will try in September.  I may get a headache from all the thinking it will take to try it but it sounds so wonderful I really must try it. 

Some of the routine things I do I could design ways to make them into art (with spirit and love), ahead of time.  When I do my morning to do list would be a good time.  Cooking comes to mind as an easy one to infuse with spirit and love into art.  Cleaning the cat box and taking out the trash seem to be a little more challenging.  More to come on this as I make the inevitable discoveries in doing a 30 day challenge.  But if the life I'm creating is to be art, then ESPECIALLY the routine tasks will have to be first on the list to be transformed.

Stressful thoughts...

There are several people writing books about stressful thinking and how it affects us -  Byron Katie, Don Miguel Ruiz, Marianne Williamson to name a few.  I do believe that a lot of the suffering we go through is because of our thinking.  I'm guessing that negative thinking developed as a survival mechanism in the distant past of humans so that we could anticipate and guard against possible threats to our survival.  Some of us who had difficult times growing up developed the habit of negative thinking on a personal level as a survival tool.  The trouble is that that was then, and this is now and all that negative thinking about all the possible horrible things that could happen mostly just makes us miserable.  Beyond sensible precautions against disaster, negative thinking doesn't help.  It's called "stinkin' thinkin'" in recovery programs.

Have you ever noticed that your thoughts just arise from some mysterious place - that you don't actually direct your own thinking?  Scary isn't it.  Where does it come from?  I don't know - it really is a mystery to me.  BUT, the good news is that I CAN direct my second thought.  I can choose to think the opposite of the stressful thought.  Why not?  Since I can't know for sure which is true, I might as well think of positive things and outcomes.  When my dear husband's severe health problems landed him in intensive care - which happened many times - my first thoughts were fears that he would die.  But I soon learned that it was at least as likely that he would survive and thrive.  So I chose my second thought to believe that instead.  I certainly was right many, many times and got to skip all the fear and misery that my first thoughts would have caused.

Lifestyle

There are a lot of definitions of "lifestyle."  It really depends on who you ask as to what it is.  But everyone has one.  It would be helpful to creating the life of your dreams if you took a look at what your lifestyle is right now.  To begin, take a look at how you spend your time and money.  Attach some adjectives to your answers.  Would you say you were "organized?"  How about "spiritual?"  "laid back?" "political?"  "cultural?" "artistic?"  "healthy?"  How would your friends describe your lifestyle? 

Having taken a look at what it is now, use some creativity and imagination to discover what you would like to be able to describe.  How do you feel about your current lifestyle?  Is it really what you want?  If so, you've arrived at the life of your dreams.  Or have you?  A lot of our lifestyles are developed completely unconsiously.  But an "unconscious" lifestyle isn't likely to actually be the one we want.  Try making a list of the adjectives to describe the lifestyle of your dreams.  Then add the actions you would need to take to make the dream real.

A Totally Different Way to Learn Something New and Shake Yourself Up!

Have you ever found out that an acquaintance is on the other side of politics than you are or has a completely different opinion about something you consider important?  One of the deeply ingrained habits us humans have is to distance ourselves from people we disagree with.  We like to hang out with people who believe the same things we do and if we're stuck with somebody we disagree with, we usually argue with them. 

Personally, I've found that engaging in a dialogue with that person and asking respectful questions is a terrific way to learn something new.  So far, I've not changed my opinion but at least I've increased my understanding.  These dialogues have also kept me from making enemies of people I associate with.  I believe that making the effort to understand someone whose ideas are opposite to mine really increases my own creativity in navigating the world.

Failure

Can there be anything else that hold us back from creating the life of our dreams like fear of failure?  I don't believe there's anything that can even begin to compare with that fear.  The fear is trying to protect us from pain, but the thing is, if we try, we are going to fail.  That's just a given.  There's no way to escape.  No one knows how to do something on the first try, so everyone fails as a huge part of the process of doing anything.  What if babies tried to walk and quit the first time they fell down?  We would all be crawling through the world.  So the solution is to give our egos something else to do while we are being creative.  It's really our egos that fear failure.  The rest of us is just like a baby - ready to try pretty much anything - no ego involved.  The more we fail, the better we can get at failure - which will eventually lead to some kind of success.  The iconic true story in recent times is J.K. Rowling's many, many, many rejections as she tried to get the Harry Potter series in print.

"Ever tried?  Ever failed?  No matter.  Try again.  Fail again.  Fail better."  Samuel Beckett

Fear or Regret?

A very big part of the life of my dreams, as it is for a lot of people, is making use of my creativity.  What gets in my way is fear - fear that what I create will not be received with appreciation from other people.  I'm guessing that I'm not alone - that lots of people have this fear.  The thing is, it's impossible to create anything while being afraid of fear!  So, the answer is - for me at least - to fear regret more. 

A few years ago I went to hear a presentation by Anne Lamott who wrote "Traveling Mercies" which is one of my favorite books.  I would have brought tissues if I had known I was going to cry.  As it was, my husband had to go to the restroom and get paper towels because I was crying so much.  As part of her presentation, she talked about all the "writers" she had met that desperately wanted to write but were stopped by fear.  She said that they were holding back something that wanted to be born and that at the end of their lives they would deeply regret not having given birth to their creations. 

So, which would you rather fear?  Fear?  or Regret?  I fear regret more.

Ideas for Trying a 30 Day Challenge

There are lots and lots of things you could do as 30 day experiments to see if they improve your life's quality.  Here are some (some are from Steve Pavlina and some are mine):

     Go out every evening - somewhere different every time.  Make it fun.
     List something new to sell on ebay every day (a way to clean out).
     Spend 30 minutes a  day organizing your home.
     Call a family member, friend, or business contact every day.
     Do 5 things to market yourself every day.  (Everybody has SOMEthing to market)
     Read for an hour every day.
     Meditate every day.
     Start a blog and post every day.
     Take a picture every day.
     If you're in a relationship, give him/her a massage every day.
     Eat 5 fruits and vegetables every day.

If you miss a day, just try again, but never give up.  That's all there is to it.  Some of these may really increase your quality of life, some may not, but you will know for sure after 30 days.

Preparation for Change

I love Steve Pavlina.  He has a lot of weird ideas that don't interest me at all, but in the area of personal development that requires big changes, he's my favorite.  He's tried out all his methods on himself so they're not just ideas.  On the other hand, he's much more self-disciplined than I will ever hope or even want to be, so I'm not totally in love with everything he comes up with.  I have tried one of his ideas several times, and it has worked like a charm for me and that's the 30 day challenge.  He recommends trying out new ideas for personal development for 30 days to see if it's really something you want to add to your life or not.  After 30 days it will have become a habit and will be easy to continue if that's what you choose, or you can discontinue it if it hasn't been all that much use.  It's the best for preparing for change that I've ever come across.

Here's the way it works:  First, of course, you will come up with some ideas for ways to improve your life and then you will choose one for the 30 day challenge.  It's been my experience that if it's the first time you've done a 30 day challenge, don't pick the hardest one to start with.  It can be too much of a challenge.  I like to pick one that sounds like a little bit of fun like reading for an hour every day, but every body's will be different.  Then you will want to make your decision public (which makes it harder to give up).  It works even better if you have an accountability partner who won't cut you any slack. 

Next, carve out some time to implement whatever you've decided on.  It won't work well unless you have decided on how you will make time for this new thing.  It needs a home in your day and the way to do this is to decide on what time you will focus on it and for how long.  Tracking this is a good idea - a calendar page posted on the refrigerator might work for you.  Check off each day when you've finished.  Celebrate at the end of the 30 days and decide whether you want to continue.

Over time, I've made some big changes in my life by using Steve's 30 day challenge.  It has worked for me in areas where I was likely to forget to do it - such as setting aside a time for daily meditation, exercise, fixing healthy food.  I don't want to end up at the end of my life wishing I had done the things I wanted to do, and the 30 day challenge continues to help me do the things that really benefit me.

An Easy Way to Shake Things Up

Here's another way to shake yourself loose when you're stuck and not making progress toward the life of your dreams:  Do something different.  Do something VERY different.  It doesn't have to be a big deal - just very different.

I have a daughter who has many disabilities, and her development as a young child was severely delayed.  That was the bad news.  The good news was that when we found ways to help her move forward in her development, she responded marvelously.  A brilliant occupational therapist worked with her, and I carried out her suggestions at home.  At one point, progress had completely stopped for weeks, and we were at our wits ends.  We had no idea why she was stuck and no idea what to do about it.  Finally the therapist said, "Let's shake things up - WAY up."  Her suggestion was to clean the bathtub really well, make a whole bunch of chocolate pudding, put her in the bath tub with it and let her play in it.  Well, I can't tell you how much fun that little 18 month old had with that!  And what was more important, she began to make progress like a race horse at top speed.  What the chocolate pudding in the bathtub had to do with her sudden ability to stand up, we had no idea.  But whatever... we didn't care.

Since then I have discovered that doing something VERY different when I'm stuck in my progress works for me too.  Some ideas:  change the environment I'm working in - take my project to a friend's house and work in her kitchen.  Do my hair in a totally different way every day (need lots of hair spray) that I'm working on a project.  If the project lends it self to it, lie down in the grass to work on it.  Eat some dark chocolate with every meal on the days I'm working on the project (chocolate seems to cure everything).  You will have your own ideas.  Something about doing something VERY different can break loose your motivation.

Music and Motivation

There's a lot of research showing that music evokes emotion in most people.  One was to get motivated is to listen to music that has an emotional motivating effect.  For example, if the goal you're working on has to do with exercise, listening to energetic, exciting music could help you get going.  If, on the other hand, the goal has to do with relaxation, soothing music would probably help.  Each goal you're working on undoubtedly has an emotion associated with it that it would help you to evoke.  Look at each of your goals, identify the emotion that if you were experiencing it would help move you forward, and then look for a piece of music you can play during the time you're taking action on that goal. 

The work to find the right music might be challenging and time consuming, so maybe the only goals you'll need musical accompaniment for are the ones where you are stuck.  Getting unstuck with music might be the most useful thing you can do.

Making Life Work

"We must have the stubborness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world." - Jack Gilbert.

I love Martha Beck.  I love her because she is wise without taking herself seriously.  I love her because she has a child with a disability and is happy about it.  Her latest column in September's Oprah is on being stubbornly optimistic.  According to her, we are evolutionarily hard wired to be negative - it's a survival mechanism.  Is it more important to survival to smell the flowers or notice the rattlesnake?  The trouble is, we're not living in a jungle now so most of our constant negativity - far from making us safer - just makes us unhappy and stressed - which ends up shortening our lives.

Our negativity - which makes us constantly afraid - makes the people around us fearful.  Then everybody gets more than a little bit aggressive.  "Billions of people are doing this right now, fomenting little tornadoes of pain that swell with every reciprocal negative interaction," Martha says.
To counteract this, we will have to learn to be "stubbornly glad." 

But what about all the problems we have and that the world has?  How will those get solved if all we do is focus on the bright spots in life?  According to Martha, there's nothing to worry about.  We will be stronger, more confident, more creative and more energetic in solving problems if we're focusing on delight.  Research shows, she says, that painful, negative emotions only last about 90 seconds if we don't prolong them by negative thinking.  The next time we have a painful emotion, she recommends we throw a fit for 90 seconds, then do something to bring relief - ice cream, a nap, a visit with a friend, a bubble bath.  Then the rest of the time look for delight and focus on that!

It appears that the more we defy our inbuilt negativity, the happier AND the more effective our lives will be.  Plus our delight is just as catching to others as our fear!