The latest from The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com
- Anne Naylor: 5 Creative Ways To Pursue Your Passion
- Tara Stiles: How To Walk A Mile In Your Own Shoes
| Anne Naylor: 5 Creative Ways To Pursue Your Passion | Top |
| "Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self." Erich Fromm Pursuing your passion can draw the best of your creativity from you. Being creative lends greater meaning to your life. Others will benefit from your creativity. Sir Ken Robinson gives here an inspiring and entertaining TED talk about creativity in education. His website is one of the most fun I have ever visited. "Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual." Arthur Koestler In response to my post last week 3 Tips To Awaken Your Life's Passion I received the following: "I am pursuing my passion and have run into lots of hardships. However I am determined and often times I find myself visualizing success before it has happened just as you described in the article. If possible-- since I am dealing with this right now - write something on recovering from setbacks and dealing with adversity when you have decided not to give up no matter what. I know that may sound kind of off the wall, but I find myself trying to secure little wins to keep going. and love to hear and read about how others overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles." Here are 5 ways to recover from setbacks and deal with adversity. You have probably heard many times the story about Edison inventing the light bulb. History relates that it took over 1,000 (some say more) attempts at light bulb before he achieved his goal. How did he keep going? Thankfully, he did. 1. Bless The Block Accept the setback. Do not let yourself be cast down by it. It may be just what you need to take a vital next step in a direction you would not otherwise have taken. Look for the good in whatever does not seem to be going your way. Adversity can prove to be a blessing in disguise, if you choose to see it that way. These two sayings help me keep a winning frame of mind: Every knock's a boost and Everything that comes to me is for me. 2. Re-energize Yourself Do not be tempted to let your energy drop so that you become despondent. Stand up tall. Take a few deep breathes to connect you with your spirit. Smile. Have a break and do something different - give yourself a treat. Speak kind words of encouragement to yourself, as a loving parent would to their adored child. Play at something, just for the fun of it. Drink plenty of water. It helps to clear negative emotion. Go for a brisk gratitude walk, recalling all the things you now appreciate in your life, especially the "small" things you often take for granted. Swim, even jump up and down on the spot. It may seem silly - and make you laugh. Laughter is great for getting things back in perspective. 3. Refocus On Your Passion Connect with what your passion means for you. Feel it, see it, hear it. Immerse yourself in the beauty and magnificence of your purpose. Set aside considerations and touch into your heart, the source of your vision. Do you have images around you that help you to hold your purpose? Do you have a photo of yourself central to the images? Remind yourself: What is calling you to express your passion? How is it a valuable contribution - to yourself, to others? Why is this vision important to you? 4. Get Support Few great objectives have been achieved in isolation, as anyone who has watched an Oscar night will verify. Ask others for help when you need it. Be open and willing to receive assistance when it is offered to you. You may gather a team around you who enjoy participating and contributing to your efforts. Find one or more "witnesses". A good witness is primarily a listener who shares a positive focus with you. I have several wonderful witnesses, dear friends who listen with great empathy, both when I meet a setback, but also when I have a win. It is so good to share your wins! It seems to make them bigger somehow - and that keeps me going. 5. Access Your Spirit Saying " Help " can be the most profound prayer. Many times, I have found amazing things happening having called for help from my depths. Your creative centre is the source of what I call divine guidance. Prayer I have found to be a way of making the connection between my earthly, child-like nature and my higher spiritual self. Well chosen affirmations are a form of prayer that condition you and help move you in the direction of your passion. Forgive yourself for the mistakes you think you have made. They may turn out to be not so wrong. I know that the spirit you are is magnificent beyond understanding. I hope that you may come to realize something of this for yourself. Begin by loving yourself, just as you are. "There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly." Buckminster Fuller Have you ever overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles in pursuing your purpose and passion? I would love to hear about them. As the writer above suggested, sharing our stories can give great hope and encouragement to others. I would love to hear more about you, what you love to do that brings greater meaning into your life. If I can assist you, I would be very happy to do so. Please feel free to leave a comment below or contact me at clearresults@mac.com More on The Balanced Life | |
| Tara Stiles: How To Walk A Mile In Your Own Shoes | Top |
| We've all heard advice and inspiring phrases thrown around like "stay true to yourself," "be the change you want to see," and of course the more street-cred version, "keep it real." It can be tricky to figure out what these catch phrases actually look like when put in practice. What does staying true to your self feel like when we try it on for size? We are trained from birth how to act to get love. When we do what our parents want, they are happy, and we get love. When we go with what we feel, who knows where that could take us. It could take us out of safety, security and love. This programming continues in our lives whenever we look outside ourselves for approval and love. That's a hard thing to take because we all want love. We all want to be liked but where will the conforming and acting to please actually take us? What will that look like when we try it on for size? And will we even be happy with the result? We are bombarded with information telling us we need to change who we are. Skin creams, plastic surgery, designer clothes, expensive cars, houses, and stuff to put in the houses. Where does it all end and what is the pay off? Are we going to be happy once we look how the TV tells us we should and we have all the stuff that we think we should? How are we going to feel if we don't achieve all of that stuff that we think we should? There is so much to worry about when we fall away from ourselves. It's easy to fall off the path of you. We've all experienced it. There are so many other paths around made out of different materials that look and feel different than ours. How do we know ours is the best? Maybe we want someone else's path that we think might be better? Maybe we think our path is so awesome and work tirelessly to recruit people to our path, convincing them it's the best. Maybe our path used to be a wide clear open road and as we go along it shrinks ever so slightly until one day we realize we're on a tight rope fighting for balance. Ram Dass is a favorite teacher of mine. His writing is clear and relatable. In his book, Still Here , he tells a story of a talk he gave at a ritzy Jewish summer hotel in New Hampshire in the 60s. He said to the crowd, "Well, you've really made it, haven't you? Look at where you've ended up. You're at one of the best hotels in the country. The parking lot is full of Cadillacs--even a few Rolls Royces. You have your children in private schools. You have money in the bank. Many of you have two homes. You have all the physical comforts you could ask for." And then Ram Dass said, "Is it enough?" Ram Dass basically walked into that fancy hotel and asked the guests if they were keeping it real. With that one question, "is it enough?" Ram Dass showed people that they are not a sum of their material lives. It only took a moment of insight for them to realize how much suffering this belief had created. Worldly success doesn't bring peace, serenity, and well-being. We all know this in some way, intuitively, somewhere in the backs of our minds. But it's extremely easy to slip away from what we know to follow what's most prominently around us every day. We all have this straying to some degree. For some of us it's moments of insecurity where we think "if only" we looked a certain way, had a certain amount more in the bank, married the right person, or had the perfect career. "If only" things were a tad different, life would be better. The deferred life plan is never a good idea. Your stuff is not you. It's just stuff. People we collectively admire, whether they are saints, teachers, leaders, actors, famous or not, all have one big thing in common. They all have followed their own path, walked in their own shoes, and tuned out the noise and distractions of anything that pulled them in any direction other than their own. We all can do this. It's not easy but it is possible. There is not a single person on this planet that is exactly the same (until this whole clone thing gets kicked off). We each have something special to contribute to this world. It takes desire, strength, courage and a lot of tough choices to stay on your path, but you are worth it. We all are worth it. When you walk into a room and you are completely, totally you, that is worlds more powerful than a version of you that you have altered to try to be like someone or something else. Ram Dass breaks it down into three levels of being: ego, soul, and awareness. Ego is made of who "we think" we are and our association with all of our stuff, our psychology and our physical possessions. The soul is here to learn and if we're not here to learn than what are we here for? Ram Dass believes the soul transcends death, and we're reincarnated. We're learning so that eventually we can become a Buddha, reach Heaven, or enter into union with the Divine. He says nothing else in the universe is that inefficient and we have to be here to learn otherwise our lives are meaningless. He's got a point. A tree seems to have learned a thing or two and isn't struggling with decision making, life choices, personal, emotional and spiritual growth. A tree is a tree. Awareness is the juicy one. Awareness has no boundary. It is eternal and infinite. Awareness is God, the Absolute, whatever you want to call it. Awareness is beyond time and concept. Awareness is what so many of the great saints (Jesus included) are getting at when they say when we know what we are, we're God. Walking in your own shoes. The Practice: Sky Gazing This practice is from the Tibetan Dzogchen practice, for entering the Awareness plane of consciousness, and also from Still Here by Ram Dass. It's perfect for a summer day. Lie down on your back looking up at the sky, and watch the clouds pass over. At first the clouds are way up in the sky and you're way down on the ground. After a while, this great distance seems to fade. You begin to experience the sky as mirroring the sky of your own Awareness. In time, you start to be the sky. The clouds become the phenomena that enter your mind and body -- desires, fears, images, sounds, smells, all of it. The sky doesn't pay attention to the clouds passing through. It just stays open as they all go by. More on The Inner Life | |
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