Drawing Solutions: How Visuals Will Change Your Life: Let Go & Move On!

I walked into another company this month where they’d merged a couple of big companies together, laid a bunch of people off and everyone was SUPER excited at the TOP. But down below that level, wow, were people pissed off. Our job was to help them make change using a picture of the future and what we found was what they really needed was a cheering squad, a pep commission, a complete confidence overhaul.

This is how it goes in the drivelatia of corporate America and it will go on and on and on like that until eternity is over. BUT that doesn’t mean you have to let it roll over you, squish the life out of you, pummel your self esteem to pieces.

When your company merges with another and they are threatening and actually making lay-offs, you can despair if that is your nature, or you can:

1. Be curious about your future, rather than be afraid of what’s coming.

2. Ask questions when there are no answers until there are answers.

3. Offer to help with something you like doing.

4. Refuse to be a lemming and start to swim upstream, support your friends and buy them coffee and donuts to cheer up the team.

5. Actively look for alternative employment i.e. LET GO.

Which brings me to this blog’s topic. It’s fall and like the big trees all around your neighborhood, it’s a good time to drop your leaves and LET GO of something. Maybe let go of parts of yourself that are bugging you, of bad habits or old beliefs.

Sound good? Here’s a few tips on how:

Make a list of things you really want to let go of (draw a few pictures of them too, just to make it a fun versus torturous review of yourself/life/work).

Choose one habit, behavior, thing to let go of. Imagine yourself without that thing/habit/behavior. See it as clearly as if you were in that life without itright now. Draw a sketch of you without it (perhaps a smiley-face you)

Now look back at the road you took to get here. Pretend you have already traveled along that road to this miraculous new you without that thing and what did you do, learn, find, experience along the way? Write down everything you can think of that you did to help yourself. Then do one of those things to kick start the new you.

Here’s mine. I’m an illustrator. I have hundreds of pens of all kinds, pencils, pastels, chalks, paper, tape. As I write this I know that when I get home I am going to go through my closets, drawers and keep ONE of each thing I have actively used in the last year and give the rest to the art teacher at the local elementary school. Divest. AND I’m going to enlist Julie’s help doing it, because I can’t be fully trusted with these kinds of divesting things. I can give up sugar but hard to give up art supplies.

What will you give up this fall? What are you clinging to?

Let go. Be brave. Move on. Lighten your load.

Creativity Symposium Rescheduled

If you were signed up for this awesome event next Saturday, you'll be happy to know we came up with something even better! In honor of International Women's Day and a number of other factors, the organizers have decided to move the party to March 7.

Imagination Changes Everything

Looking for some change in your life? Draw your way to success!

Use Sleep to clear out your brain

Did you know sleeping allows your brain to let go? A finding from the National Institutes of Health suggests that one function of sleep is to allow the brain to flush out the toxins that build up during waking hours.

"Sleep basically restores your vitality and your ability to do things," Dr. Saper said. When your nerve cells are active for a long period (such as while you're awake), there's a build up of the chemical adenosine, which can reduce the ability of your nerve cells to fire when they get a new piece of information. When you go to sleep, you convert adenosine back into forms that help your brain work better."