Cut Out Empty Calories in Your Brain

Almost everyday we get some kind of spam mail giving us tips on how by doing x,y, or z, we can cut out empty calories.  Thanks!  But wouldn't you rather cut out the empty brain calories you ingest everyday?  You know what I'm talking about.  How about the wasted brainpower you spend worrying about whether your boss likes what you did on that recent project?  Perhaps it's that conversation you have in your head figuring out the angle that will finally convince your spouse to throw out those old boxes of high school memorabilia that take up half of your basement.

I am also talking about the empty calories you and I ingest when we allow our brains to stay unfocused.  Take email for example.  You open your laptop first thing in the morning and what happens?  You probably check your email.  Why?  Maybe it's to feel more connected.  For some of us, a full email box makes us feel needed or important.  In some cases, our job depends on us checking, it's as simple as that.  Or maybe email has just become one of those early morning habits.  But empty emails suck up our precious brain power.  The brain power it takes to manifest what you want.

What would it be like if you opened your laptop and just started writing, started expressing yourself? 

What if your daily ritual was to open a word doc and ask the universe a question?  Think about it.  What is the one question you would LOVE to have an answer to?

Most of us spend a great portion of our day spinning through empty calories.  We open up emails trying to sell us stuff, we read random articles to keep connected to the world, or click a link "to know more" about something.  One of the best kept secrets to knowing more about anything is by entering into dialogue with yourself, your more knowledgeable self, your quieter self - through any creative portal.

Imagine for a second that everything you ever wanted or wanted to know was just waiting for you to shift your attention from the analytical, rational, data driven left side of your brain to that expansive, connective, creative, all knowing right side.  And all it took was a little creative exercise.

Try it.  Draw a picture of your biggest desire, then let yourself bask fully in the imagination of it (like it's a huge sun lamp and you've been living in Seattle).

Write a question on a chalkboard in your mind.  Then watch to see who comes into your world today to answer it.

Take time to ingest the kind of creative calories that will feed you long after that bowl of distractions has passed through you.  You'll be pleasantly surprised by what happens!

Prioritize to Get It Right

Goal setting smoal setting.  You can set all the goals you want, but if you don't get your mind wrangled around the right priorities, you may as well forget about it.

In David Rock's book Your Brain at Work, Dave talks about the pre-frontal cortex and how easily that tiny little stage gets overwhelmed.  The secret to keeping yourself on track is to calm down, slow down and set priorities so that you can actually make progress on the things you really want.

Imagine this scene: you are all hyped about your new goal to stay focused on finishing that _________.
But when you have the time to do something with it, you decide you better check your email just in case...and suddenly that little window of time to get the ________done gets dissipated by drivel.

It's part of what all of us have to deal with in the age of information.  So what to do about it?

1.  Take a moment to remember what your goals are.
2.  Look at the things you need to do.
3.  Prioritize them into the ones that are going to require the most brain power first.
4.  When you have finished doing that priority one first, go check your email : -)

In my world, I'm all about rewards. You want to mess around on the guitar? Draw a picture? Get that client's drawing down first, then you can go do whatever you want.  Before prioritizing, if I got behind on projects, I'd have to claw my way back from distractions to do one small thing.  After prioritzing, I had more time for all the fun things and I didn't feel so weighed down by worry.

Next time you feel overwhelmed, try this.  Make a list of all the things you need to do.  Then figure out which takes the most brain power, put that in the number one spot.  Then go through the rest of the list to see where else in your schedule you can do a few other high priority brain items.  Between sets take time to go running, call someone, or do something different. Taking a short break allows your brain to recharge.

Goal set, go ahead!  But be sure to remember to prioritize so you can get what you really want!

Ringing in the New

Change is good.  Deep change is a process.  (I was about to write "deep change is hard" but who wants to manifest that experience?!)

We often forget that the first step to creating the change we want begins with a simple shift in our thinking - from that which we don't want, to more of what we want. You dream it in your mind while stuck in traffic - aaaah a nice vacation on the beach, or oooooo a new and inspiring job.

You can always create positive change for yourself.  While I do not understand how fate plays its hand in things, I do know that when I believe I can change things, I can and do.  The trick is in getting more of what I want, and less of the other!

I use tricks to help me - images in particular.  While I have successfully set goals using collage compiled into a visual of what I want to see in the future, I am an artist and visualizer by trade.  One of the things I get paid to do is to draw pictures of people.  I draw what they say, what they think, their words, metaphors, dreams, strategies and new desired realities.

What I have found is that when you or any team take the time to draw out what is inside, you lay claim to that which you desire.  When a team paints a powerful picture of what they want to see happen, they begin to own it and to see it, both inside their heads and outside on the page.  The whole process sends out an internal and external call to life - in some wild and unseen process - and life does what it does best, it responds.  Subsequently things change and often quite dramatically.

We are stepping into a new year - 2010.

What would you like to call out for?  Whatever it is, consider doing it with intention (that's the drawing the picture of it part) and love (that's the loving every aspect of what you imagine); two things that when combined, create combustion and results.

Many of you have done my Snapshot of the Big Picture process.

Now is a great time to do it again.  If you don't remember how it goes, go back to my blog from January of last year and get started ringing in a year full of all the things you want to have.

Add to the visual you create, a bit of night and day dreaming and a little elbow grease.
Then be sure to let me know what happens (I believe that great things will).

Here is wishing you and yours the very best and happiest of new years!

P.S.  Please feel free to visit my art on display at Ella Mon in Ballard starting the second weekend in January and into February.

Home for the Holidays

What's your travel schedule been looking like?  Are you insanely scurrying from city to city, country to country in a wild map dance across the globe?  This year, why not stay home for the holidays?

I've been living my new core value of when you go shopping - why not go shopping loco!  That means this year I'm not going to do my shopping at the mall.  I'm going to Ballard, right in my own hood where I know I can find all the right kinds of unique, local made gifts.

Like at Damsalfly.  Here I found the best prices for groovy boutique items.  I took my friend Scott in there and said "Pick out anything you want."  Of course this is a women's boutique shop and there's only one men's rack, but I knew that anything he found for his birthday present would cost around $50.  So it was.

Or how about Ella Mon?  Now here is a women's boutique shop that carries Farinaz, one of my favorite local designers.  AND they happened to have a sale rack on the day I went inside.  I found a tux jacket for Julie that is to die for.  It was a bargain.  The women that work there are incredibly helpful, kind, patient.  Go there.

If you want to get your hair cut for a great price, there's Rudy's.  If you are hungry there's Bastille or any number of great restaurants.  On Ballard Avenue, you can find/have tea, weird toys, stoves, green materials, new and used clothing...up and down the street.

It's all in that one little, NYC style hood.  But it's not just Ballard, find out what your neighborhood has to offer.  Then offer something back.  For Thanksgiving we volunteered with ElderFriends.  That was amazing to spend a few hours with a lonely elder person on that holiday.  Sure it made me miss my parents, but hey, they're gone.  I better find some new ones.

Don't get me wrong, I'm big on travel and I love holiday vacations. But this year, we're staying home, because just like the song says, there's no place like home for the holidays.  To all of you who helped to make this year great at Up your Creative Genius, thank you and I hope to see you around town!

  (At Swanson's with the REAL REINDEER!)

Aligning Yourself With All That You Are

In a recent workshop I attended, participants were asked to identify one thing in their world in which they needed to make a change. I admit I really had to search for something, since I love my work and my life.  It is filled with freedom and adventure.

When I shone the flashlight into the back of the theatre of my mind as David Rock talks about in his new book Your Brain at Work, I discovered one niggling thought way back in the very last row.  While I have been studying the laws of the universe and the spiritual nature of life for over 25 years, I bring a small percent of this into my working sessions.   My process has often been to leverage my WOO (winning other's over) strength using humor and commentation at the beginning of the session, and then, when it was safe, introduce one or two of these deeper ideas.  I realized here was a great opportunity to bring myself more in alignment with all that I am.

Last week I began opening my sessions by starting from this place of connection, rather than waiting until it was safe.  Mindful of other people's freedom, I simply began by stating something like, "There is a world cafe concept which says there are no accidents.  That you are the right people, right now, who have come together to discuss and answer these questions."  I opened another session with a story about Krazy George and the start of the Wave, a story that is both humorous and poignant and illustrates a deeper message.

And??!  By offering the opportunity to connect at a deeper level first, the sessions started from a more honest place.  It was as if this different kind of opening stilled the anxiety that often occurs at the start of the session when participants are wondering if this day is going to go well.  My aha?  Be all that you are! (doh!)

I invite you to reflect on the current state of your life and work.  Ask yourself, "Where can I take a risk and bring more of myself into what I am doing?"  Then jump off that diving board into the pool of something new and up your creative genius.  I look forward to hearing what you find!

Want to Save Your Brain? Visually Prioritize Your Priorities!

There is a new book out by David Rock called Your Brain At Work.  I have been awaiting this book's release for a couple of months because it was touted to be a great book on neuroscience that actually can help you figure out how to work better.  They were right.  This book is great.

One of the coolest descriptions in the book is Rock's description of the Prefrontal Cortex; which is the part of the brain that helps us decide what to do, among other things.  He describes the prefrontal cortex as like a stage that actors use.  The actors that enter from the sides are the external stimulus that we see, experience, etc.  The actors who enter the stage from the audience are the conversations we have going on with different parts of ourselves.   All of these "actors" can interact with each other.  When we try to remember something from the past, depending upon how far back or how hard it is to remember, it is like a person sitting in a dark seat way off in the corner of the theater that we have to search for to shine a light on and talk with.

Why is this analogy important?  Well each of these interactions or actions, whether it is the actors interacting on the stage or the act of remembering something, takes up our brain's energy.  Come to find out that stage is TINY.  It can only hold about 4 things on it at the same time.  When you and I open our computers and the emails flood in, and we add to that all of the things we need to do while taking care of our home lives, schedule, hobbies, exercise, etc...we can become instantly overwhelmed.  Too many actors on stage!  That's why sometimes we'd rather just shut the lid and go eat breakfast, or go back to bed.

Rock suggests that the greatest thing we can do for our brains is to take time first thing in the morning to  "prioritize our priorities."   This act relieves our brain of trying to figure out which of the actors or interactions on stage to shine the light on.  Rock also suggests that the best way to prioritize...is to VISUALIZE what you need to do by either drawing it out, seeing it in your mind, and putting it down on paper.  The visuals create order and understanding.

Take a moment right now to test this tip for yourself.  Write, draw, see the things you need to do, and then decide which one takes the most amount of energy and attention and do that thing first!  Save your brain for what's most important.  See if you can't up your creative genius by optimizing your brain's power for better results!

What the Brainiacs Know About Creative Genius

Brain scientists know that you are going to remember only 1 thing in about 10 that I write here.
AND I am going to need to make it memorable with a story, a picture, and something stimulating!


John Medina says I am going to have to repeat it again in 90 minutes for it to truly lodge in your memory.
That's right and then AGAIN in 90 minutes and again 90 minutes after that.  That could make for a really long blog post.  (Well no wonder they run that Geiko ad so many times.)


In a TED talks 18 minute presentation on creativity, Elizabeth Gilbert shared her view on creative genius.  She reminded us that the Greeks and Romans believed creative genius to be separate from you, and flowed through you into the universe.  This separate thing removed you from being responsible if your art or idea was "good" or "not so good" when it manifested itself.  If you didn't think it was great, you simply blamed it on your creative muse.  You were simply the vehicle through which creativity or inspiration expressed itself.  


In her talk, Gilbert told a story about a long time poet who told her how poems would come to her.  She said,  "I would be working in the fields and I'd hear the poem come thundering my way and I would run as fast as I could to get into the house and grab a pen and paper to catch that poem as it came through me.  Sometimes I would miss it and it would go on down the road looking for another poet to write it down.  Other times I would catch just the tail end of the poem and I would pull it back through my body onto the page.  At those times, the poem would come out perfectly, but backwards."  


What about this do I want you to remember?  That you are off the hook and free to explore and express what is at this very moment coming through you.  Take time to run into your house, grab your own creative idea by the tail and pull it back into your world.  The world will be a better place for it.


Up your Creative Genius