Your #CreativeGenius Will Transform Your Business or Your Life

YOUR CREATIVE GENIUS  will transform your business or your life I was #drawingsolutions at an events planning meeting and they were talking about one of the coolest ideas to build their brand's culture. It was a creativity event that was taking place all over the world; included amazing artists, awesome technology and never mentioned the sponsor's name. You had to go searching for it, which people did! They were shocked by the event's sponsor!  Wow! This team's idea was so compelling that it made me want to switch my brand loyalty.  When was the last time you felt inspired by an idea? You know, where that concept or vision was so cool that you thought, oh my god, where did that idea come from?! Incremental change is just that…incremental. To get to the awesome you…you gotta goBIG. 1. Ask questions - What's the boldest thing I (or we) could do? 2. Stop the internal chatter and listen to what your intuition (or customer) is telling you. 3. Use your innate creative genius, your imagination, to pull down, build, balloon, highlight, explore your idea. 4. Draw it as you get it.  Literally, sketch it on a scrap of paper. People who draw their ideas increase their idea generation by 65%! 5. When you hit on and sketch out that idea you love, then rest for a second. Close your eyes and ask the big you, the universal you, the creative genius you, for "This or something better." The brain is a limited resource. But you, the eternal you, is limitless. Creative genius is about accessing the ideas that already exist and pulling them out of your imagination and into this reality, right here, right now. In an ICF Oregon Chapter meeting, I was showing the coaches the Draw Your Future process, and a woman drew a picture of herself taking a vacation with her boyfriend, in a very specific country, on the future side of her map. Moments later she got a text from her boyfriend suggesting they put a vacation into the calendar to travel to that very place. I hear stories like this everyday. Go draw your future, then send me your story, I know you'll have one too. If you want to change your life, be more successful in your business, your health or your relationship, why not shift your perspective? Pretend you already are in the experience you want. Everyday, take time to rest, get quiet, reflect, and dream.This or something better. Your creative genius is spinning the universe on your behalf in every moment of every day. Tap into the hundreds of ideas and solutions to help you handle any situation you encounter. UP YOUR CREATIVE GENIUS THIS SATURDAY!!! Join me at the 2014 CREATIVITY SYMPOSIUM Saturday, June 7th, 10Am-3PM, Fremont Abbey Arts Center in Seattle.  Here's the lineup of awesomeness: Jennifer Hopper, Song Artist, The Angel Band Project Carol Sanford, CEO of the Responsible Entrepreneur Institute Lisa Fitzhugh, Founding Partner of Creative Ground, Activist Abby Lodmer, Conscious Comedian of Humor Healing Humanity Imani Sims, Poet and Spoken Word Performance Artist Justin Blaney, #1 Best-Selling Novelist Kerstin O'Shields, Soprano Opera Singer & Presentation Coach Zita Gustin, Connector Expert and Strategic Coach Erin Jeck, Founder, Create Infinite Balance, LLC Amy Lang, MA Speaker, Author & Parenting Expert Keynote Patti Dobrowolski, Up Your Creative Genius VISION TO REALITY ICF OREGON CHAPTER MEETING These coaches are amazing.  They invited me to do a keynote on Drawing Solutions, Visual Goalsetting.  If you need your team to get revitalized or realigned, this 45-90 minute key note is a perfect way to do it! And these coaches will help you make those changes stick! THE GIRL EFFECT GIRLS RULE, MAKE IT OUR REALITY We give a lot of lip service to supporting girls in our society. But the fact is, there are girls starving, stolen, or lost all around the world. You can do something about it. Change your attitude and start empowering girls. Put Girls First. FOUND ITEMS 7 PRINCIPLES OF CONSCIOUSNESS i found this in a book that I had on my shelf. I love it. Try taking one of these words into your day and ask to have an experience with one of these qualities to show you what it means.

THE PLAY REVOLUTION I'm inspired by playfulness when I see it. People playing with their dogs or kids, the guy who fills his workspace with toys, the woman with the dashboard of her car filled with odd objects or a silly bumpersticker. The checker who greets me at the grocery store and when I say loudly in response to the amount I owe, "Are you kidding me!?" gets the joke and laughs. You can inspire playfulness anywhere, anytime. You can spend a day or a year pretending to be an artist, you can take up the ukelele and start your own one person band. You can plant your garden in the shape of your favorite _______.  Organized and spontaneous play allows us to relax and let the good in.   PLAYINGaccelerates innovation. It's an automatic de-stressor.  It opens wider that two way interchange with life and puts the critical self on hold.  It lets the alpha waves in.  Those are the good fairy waves that help your brain mash thoughts together to come up with better ideas. And playing...  PLaYING requires only a willingness on your part to suspend belief and use your imagination as a guide. Ask yourself, how can I make this more fun?  How can we do something silly? What kinds of ridiculous things might I wear, eat, do?  When we were young we spontaneously played.  Secretly, when we are alone, we still do.  Sometimes it is just a fantasy that we are having in our heads, other times, we experiment, we take a Zumba class, we join a team, we dress up for a football game.  All of this makes us healthier, and believe it or not, wiser. When I first moved to Seattle, Scott Ward and I secretly played tennis almost every afternoon. Scott is my secret weapon. Not only is he a superb visual artist, he is also my favorite playmate. We were both terrible at tennis, the ball would go wildly all over the court. Rather than swim against the current, we decided to make up our own game.  We called it Tigawatab.  In the game of Tigawatab, every time your ball was at the net because you hit it badly, you had to run  to the net and do a set of pushups or a plank hold, or run around the outside of the court. At the time, I believe we were both trying to get into better shape, so this was our way of making "workout" fun. Variations on Tigawatab included if we were alone on the court, we would take over the one next to us and play both courts when the ball went flying over there. We made up stories about the tennis ball, we made up songs, we parodied grunting, you get the picture. playing is easy.  it's natural. You are going to have a meeting, you decide to bring costumes for your team and have them wear them.  You don't have to role play (although you could) you don't have to do anything more than offering freedom and people will respond. I can guarantee once they get beyond the shock (and you let go of worrying about that one person who won't play with you) they will expand into their true nature...that of a child. Your meeting will be fun and you'll be surprised at how much more you get done. . Honestly,we all need to play more, and more often. He doesn't know it yet, but Scott and I are starting a PLAY REVOLUTION. Do you want to come out to play? PLAYING AT SCHOOL ZAC HOLDING HIS V2R DRAWING  When I told teacher/therapist Mike Barber about my "give back" year, he invited me to show his high school students how to draw their vision into reality. His students rocked it! If you want me to come to your school, business, NFP, email me. PLAYING ON THE AIR SUSAN CRAMPTON DAVIS INTERVIEW If you are stuck and need to weed out your subconscious, this is the woman to help you do it. She interviewed me on the radio. Super fun. #checkherout  SHOUT OUT THE ARTIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS SCOTT WARD This guy helps make it happen. I know you think it's all me all the time. nope. here's my secret weapon playing with his mustache.

Holding the Visual Until Life Links You Up

More and more I am seeing the value of the visual.  Whether you dream it, you watch it, you imagine or you draw it, what you see in your mind and in your world becomes your reality.

I'm not making this up, your brain is.  That's right, your brain sees in two dimensions because of the optic nerve, but we live in a three dimensional world.  What does your brain do to compensate?  It makes it up.  It's fact that part of what you see is fiction.

Why not leverage that piece of brain science to your advantage?  Next time you want to be someone or somewhere else in your life, make it up using that innate tool of creative genius -  your imagination.  Envision it thoroughly as if you are right there, right now looking out through your own eyes experiencing it.  Make  it vivid.  Paint it with emotion. Lock it into memory.

Then do EVERYTHING you can to take action towards that vision to make it real.  Dream it everyday and be grateful for every small or large movement in that direction. Celebrate that movement.

Surprise yourself at how quickly your inner and outer imaginings can become reality.
Not through hocus pocus but through leveraging your own brain.  Curious?  Don't take my word for it.  Experiment on your own.

Hold that visual until life links you to it.

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!

Dreaming Your New Reality From the Inside Out

Last week I introduced you to how to use the Snapshot of the Big Picture map to set goals.  In the snapshot process, you embed drawings and words of what you want in your new desired reality into the right side of the snapshot template.  Then you determine some bold steps you need to take to get yourself there.  This is just the first part of the equation for successful goal achievement.  To fully realize your dream, you must live it from the inside out with the full belief that this is your new reality; you have become that which you dream.   

I know, I know, things don't always happen in the time frame you expected.  Since we live in an age of instantaneous results, it is hard to wait for things to happen.  In the absence of tangible proof, many of us begin to question the process; problem-solve and subsequently "think it to death."  Instead of spinning your wheels worrying "Am I am doing this right?", I have another suggestion for you:  step more deeply into that new reality you created in your map and dream it from the inside out.  David Bohm in his work on quantum physics Thought As a System wrote "Thought is constantly creating problems (that way) and then trying to solve them.  But as it tries to solve them it makes it worse because it doesn't notice that it's creating them, and the more it thinks, the more problems it creates." (p. 18-19)  Don't think it to death, dream it to life.

You've had that experience where you were reading a good book and then suddenly you began to feel like you were living that story, you may have even wished the book would never end, that you never had to come back out.  Recently I read a blog post by writer, Kim Falconer, someone I have been following on Twitter.  In her post Immersion, Bringing Readers Into Your World,  Kim writes "If you experience the participation mystique in the act of creation, your readers will in turn be affected in the same way.  This is where the magic happens, where we immerse in a world co-created by author and reader."  

In the same way, when you become immersed in and begin to experience your own desired new reality and fully live it like a fantastic story, it begins to take on a life of its own.  Suddenly one day you wake up and it is no longer a dream you had to be a _______, it is what you are now.  You and I accelerate making our dreams real when we access the "as if" principle; living the dream as if it is our reality, until it becomes so.  Life is both a push and a pull, a push from your part that creates a pull in the universe, bringing all that you want to you.  Sound complicated?  Remember these lyrics?  "Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream."   Why not live inside your dream?  Gently.  Merrily. Sounds a lot easier to me than worrying all the time, doesn't it?

Take your Snapshot to a new level.  Look at the images and words you have put on the right side of your template and then begin to imagine living within it with every ounce of your being.  Now watch the Alchemy as it takes shape - your life now; part science, part magic.