I’d love if readers would pop on over to this little survey. I’d like to get to know my readers, so I can fine tune content that makes you happy. The survey is also a great little self discovery tool for you!
And there’s a draw for a $20 gift certificate for any book from the Book Depository!
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/543845/Oh-The-Wonder-of-You
Thank you!!
I thought I survived the Rapture on May 21st.. but then I wondered.. Maybe the world ended, and we just kind of re-created this next life into something we are used to. I mean, by habit, it’s what most people have gotten used to doing on a daily basis.
The fun part will be.. as soon as everyone realizes we’re in a whole new life of our making, we’ll discover that now we don’t have to pay bills, fuss with tiresome administrative details or otherwise do stuff we don’t want to do just to survive.. we can just create what we need by thought.
I suppose we’d need a good first step to propel us into our full creative powers.
I figure not paying the bills would be a start. And not doing any work just for the money. (off tangent: so glad my ‘work’ is already what I love!)
You see, as everyone realizes we are not getting paid, we will be forced to reconsider the ‘usual’ habits, and contemplate that if we re-created a whole new world …why, that’s pretty powerful stuff, indeed. And so, we might as well re-create it more to our liking.
In my case, I’d create what I’d like for cozy comfort. (ie: home on the water, room for visits by family and friends, a choice of boats for the occasion including a tall ship and current waterski boat, food, art and writing supplies, sunny days when I want them, thunder storms when I’d love them, etc) Then I’d spend time mastering things like flight, time travel, realm travelling, guiding other planets and universes in the art of creation, reading, writing, painting, potting, and, most of all, basking endlessly in people and things and thoughts and activities I love…
Hmmm. I think I’ll start a rumour that the world ended and that we get to create something much more condusive to exploring our greatest potential, greatest joy, and greatest fun in this new life of ours. Ya, that might be a good idea.
But what if… what if we really did recreate a whole new world May 21st…?
Below are snippets from a very long and interesting report about Creative People on the Scientific American website. I’ve chosen snippets (in italics) for my personal commenting pleasure and humour. The snippets are not a summary of the report which is written by a professor and author who specializes in creativity. For those interested in scientific studies, do read the article.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-unleashed-mind&page=5
Highly creative people often seem weirder than the rest of us. Now researchers know why
By Shelley Carson | April 14, 2011 |
…may believe in supernatural phenomena such as telepathy… Not all schizotypal people have a personality disorder, however. They are often very high functioning, talented and intelligent. Many of my students at Harvard University, for example, score far above average on schizotypal scales, as well as on creativity and intelligence measures…
Yes, my creative and adventurous friends… we may all be schizotypal. Who knew there was a name for us that sounds like a psychosis because we can get overwhelmed by all the information we process, and we believe in ♫ wooo wooo♫ more in life than what we can physically see and prove? That pretty much covers everybody I know. Wait a sec… maybe if we know things like telepathy are true, rather than just ‘believe‘, we fit in some different category that probably still sounds like a psychosis. (Yes, there’s a telepathy game at the end of this post)
… found that study participants who score high in a measure of creative achievement in the arts are more likely to endorse magical thinking—such as belief in telepathic communication, dreams that portend the future, and memories of past lives. These participants are also more likely to attest to unusual perceptual experiences, such as having frequent déjà vu and hearing voices whispering in the wind.
They nailed me! And my god, the studies are finding our poor ‘disinhibited’ brains are the cause of all this! I suspect in India, they don’t do this sort of study. I suspect all of this scientific research in North America is our left brain society trying to get back to our true nature of magical thinking in a way that they can justify, quantify, and linearize. Sadly, ‘justify, quantify, and linearize’ just aren’t the tools that find magical thinking.
(participants of a study were asked:) Do you often feel like a square peg in a round hole?” Participants who score high on the Creative Achievement Questionnaire have answered “yes” significantly more often than those who have low scores in creative achievement. In fact, one participant—a Hollywood screenwriter—answered “no” but then wrote below the question: “I don’t feel like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. I feel like an octagonal peg with conical appendages.”
In my coaching practise, it’s a rare client who does feel like they fit. The following is the author’s final paragraph.
Square pegs (and octagonal pegs with conical appendages) no longer have to work so hard at fitting in. It is high time. Indeed, we all owe a deep debt of gratitude to those whose creative work has been accomplished at the expense of square-peg feelings of alienation and ostracism. The creative efforts of eccentrics add richness, beauty and innovation to the lives of those of us who have fit somewhat more comfortably into our round holes.
Yes!! I do wish she had blurted out, “Creatives, don’t try to fit in anymore!” That would be more empowering for creative readers who might otherwise think “but I do have to work hard to fit in, what do you mean it’s no longer so hard?”
And as for me, I do work at ‘fitting in’… not in all ways, but I watch that how I present myself online, professionally, etc, isn’t so out of sync with the norm that people won’t pause to learn more. This article makes me think I ought to explore more eccentricities.. beyond wearing my oldest beat-upest slippers while coaching in person.
But alas, all my weirdness in its full glory is in my novel… Almost done. Focus, Janet, focus… and in the meantime, I may just practise the art of eccentricity a little more.
Dang, don’t you just love being a creative, soulful and weird schizotypal?
Not crazy… just practising the art of doing things that seem scary but really aren’t therefore one feels much freer than when holding on to concepts of scary things that aren’t real.
Busey Mountain, The Pinnacles, Kamloops
The truth is I am safer where I am in this photo.. with an actual rock support below my feet, than standing near the edge of the rest of the cliffs – where if I were to lose balance, panic, get dizzy, or a big wind came up I could fall off. YET, those who are with me see what I’m doing as scary- when in fact, they have put themselves in much more dangerous situation by walking along the edge of the cliff.
In life? Perspective.. perception… there are easy shifts that can happen that can make the scary very safe. I adore witnessing that with the clients I coach.
From War and Peace, a “pearl” shared by a friend who either knowingly or unwittingly inspires my own written works each time he captures a treasure and shares it with me.
a paragraph about the inevitability of war….
“When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it ,or because the boy standing below wants to eat it? Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions in which all vital organic and elemental events occur. And the botanist who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue decays and so forth, is equally right with the child who stands under the tree and says the apple fell because he wanted it and prayed for it.”
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
This captures in a paragraph concepts that can take others thousands of words to explain. Profound. Short and sweet. Now, back to shortening, profounding and sweetening my novel in progress.
You’ll notice I didn’t even begin to respond to the actual concepts in this analogy. Because as yet, it would take me a thousand words.
If I HAD to respond though, I’d say…. (dang, just had to delete the thousand words!) Okay, but what would you say?
I’ve been spending time participating in the lastest craze (and I say that in a good way) for creative beings: telesummits.. which simply means gathering a number of experts in the field to share information and resources via phone and webinars.
This thrills me for many reasons but key is this: If you are either creative, intutive, a risk taker, adventurous OR some or all of the above, you have not been supported or encouraged in a way that works for you in this dominant left brain world.
Finally, with the likes of Sir Ken Robinson, Jill Badonsky, Garrott LaPorto, and now others gathering people in telesummits, there is a wave of resources that finally acknowledge the right brain soul.
The two telesummits I’ve recently followed (albeit a bit of ‘hit and miss’.. yes, I am creative, that happens) are Jennifer Lee’s video series about building a right brain business plan and the Creative Soul Telesummit– both introducing a number of speakers who are good and whom I had never heard of. The tribe is gathering.. this is good.
As I’ve watched all the questions from participants on the ‘chat’ side of the screen in these telesummits, I’ve laughed and thought, “oh my, these people are all my ideal clients.” I didn’t leap in with “Hire me!” … thought I might get thrown off the conference for blatant advertising. ~smile~
But here’s my AHA moment from this experience. Right brain creative people are the ones who would most benefit from coaching. But alas, it is the left brainers who go for coaching because they most understand the logic of this.
Rightbrainers with all their brilliance and ideas and wisdom also have the most difficulty putting these into actions – there’s a lot going on in the mind of a brilliant rightbrainer. There’s constant conflict between the left logical, linear ‘should do’ ‘must do’ thinking and the lateral aha brilliance of the right.
There’s overwhelm, perfectionism, self doubt, inner critic yattering, and procrastinations.
There’s trying to fit in a left brain world.. as a parent, in your job, in the way you keep your house, manage your finances, in making decsions. That can be exhausting to always be living your life , without engaging your right brain brilliance that cries out to be noticed.
Ah, the quandary…Rightbrainers are known to rebel against logical… because honestly ‘logical often does feel like a ‘should do’. Combining intuition and logic is a good way to make a choice… but one must first rethink ‘logic as a rightbrainer’ and best ways to access intuition.
It doesn’t have to be like this, dear wondrous rightbrainers!
In my little video below called “conversations between the left brain and right brain” it explains more… and I offer my services as the mediator for your left and right brain, so you, dear right brainers, have success.
Your left brain knows this makes sense and is logical. The right knows your possibilities are limitless. Bring them together. I would be honoured to help.
Musings of Janet L Whitehead 