Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online

Breaking Through Your Creative Blocks

Marelisa — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:53:56 +0000

Poet and creative coach Mark McGuinness from the excellent blog Lateral Action is running a series on how to break through your creative blocks. In Mark’s own words:

“. . . one of our goals for this series is to take the lid off the creative process, examine the challenges together, and for everyone involved to realise that being blocked or stuck doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you personally – this kind of thing is just an occupational hazard for those of us who live to create remarkable things.”

So far Mark has published six posts for this series, each addressing a particular problem that people face when they set out to create. Oh, look, I just happen to have written the sixth post in the series – The Inner Critic.

Head on over to Mark’s blog and start removing every obstacle that stands in the way of your creativity, one at a time:

Related Posts

I Recommend:

My ebook “How to Be More Creative – A Handbook for Alchemists” explains that creativity is not the sole domain of the arts but is important in any field. Whatever you do, creativity helps you do it better. Discover practical advice on how to be more creative in every life endeavor by reading my ebook.

Juicy Journaling with SARK inspires daily creative writing as you nourish your curious, colorfull, inspired writer self. Find your unique writing voice in Juicy Journaling with SARK!

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe for free by RSS or e-mail and you’ll always know when I publish something new. (What’s RSS?).

Also, please share it on the social media site of your choice, thank you.

How to Prepare Yourself for Success

Marelisa — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:29:18 +0000

In her fabulous book, “Do Less, Achieve More”, Chin-Ning Chu tells the story of a night in the 1960’s in which Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds were having dinner together. At that time, while Clint had already played major roles in several successful films and was recognized as an international star, Burt was still a struggling actor.

Burt asked Clint how he had gotten his big break and Clint answered: “I prepared myself for success”. Burt understood the principle contained in these words, he applied it, and he soon joined Clint as one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Here’s a quote from the section of “Do Less, Achieve More” in which Chi-Ning Chu talks about this conversation between Eastwood and Reynolds:

“Before the Angel of Success arrives in your life, you should devote yourself to preparing your welcome for her. Polish your craft and strengthen your body to be fit so that you can do your job and enjoy success when it comes. Sharpen your mind and spirit so they are ready to face the challenges that accompany a visitation from the Angel of Success.

If you are not ready when the angel knocks, she will flee. And who knows when she will make it back around to your door again?”

Below you’ll find several tips and examples on how to prepare yourself so that when success is standing at your door you’ll be ready to welcome her in and offer her a seat at your table.

(Clint Eastwood photograph from here).

Create a Clear Vision of What You Want to Achieve

In his book 100 Ways To Motivate Yourself Steve Chandler narrates that in 1976 he was a sports columnist for the “Tucson Citizen” and he was assigned to conduct an interview with some unknown actor who had just retired from bodybuilding named Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger was in Tucson publicizing the movie “Stay Hungry” which he had just made with Jeff Bridges and Sally Fields, and which was turning out to be a big box office disappointment.

At one point during the interview Chandler asked Schwarzenegger: “So, what do you plan to do next?” Schwarzenegger calmly answered: “I’m going to be the number-one box-office star in all of Hollywood”. Keep in mind that when this interview took place Schwarzenegger had just left bodybuilding and he was huge and awkward. There was also the matter of his very noticeable Austrian accent. And, to top it all off, his first movie was doing rather poorly.

Chandler–trying hard to keep a straight face–asked Schwarzenegger just how he was planning to become Hollywood’s top star. Schwarzenegger answered that he was going to follow the same process he used in bodybuilding. He explained the process as follows:

“What you do is create a vision of who you want to be, and then live into that picture as if it were already true.”

Years later, the box office receipts from his second “Terminator” movie made Schwarzenegger the most popular box office draw in the world. Having a clear vision of what you want to achieve, and constantly visualizing yourself as having achieved your goal, is a fabulous tool for helping you to succeed.

(Posing Arnold photo is courtesy of d_vdm)

Act “As If” You’re Already a Success

Chris Guillebeau has a very successful blog titled “The Art of Nonconformity”. He sells guides from his blog–which is basically how he makes a living–explaining how to create freedom and how to be a travel ninja (he’s on a quest to visit every country in the world before his 35th birthday). Chris wrote a free manifesto called “279 Days to Overnight Success” in which he explains how he became a full time writer in under a year.

One of the success secrets he shares is to “act as if”. Even if you have a tiny blog with very few readers, act as if you have thousands of readers. That is, post regularly, give great care to the topics you choose to write about, and make sure that you provide lots of value in each post. You’ll probably never have a lot of readers if your attitude is the following:

“Well, this post isn’t all that great, but there’s really no use in spending lots of time to write an awesome post when I really don’t have that many readers anyway.”
“I’ll save my really good stuff for when I have more readers.”
“I’m kind of busy this week so I won’t post anything, but I’ll make sure to post three times a week once my blog is popular”.

You can’t wait until you’re successful and until you have a large audience to start doing your very best. Instead, you become successful and you gain a large following by producing top quality work even when you’re tiny. This concept applies to everything, not just blogging. In order to be successful, act as if you’re already successful.

Believe In Yourself and be Persistent, Regardless of Naysayers

Anthony Robbins was having dinner with Sylvester Stallone a few years back and Robbins asked Stallone to tell him his life story. Stallone explained that he knew his whole life, ever since he was a kid, that he wanted to be in the movie business. He went to every agent in New York—many of them several times—but he couldn’t get any parts because they kept telling him that he looked and sounded stupid (which, incidentally, is because he was pulled out by forceps when he was born).

Stallone kept trying to get parts, and he kept getting rejected. He was starving and couldn’t even afford heat in his apartment. His wife kept screaming at him to get a job, but he wouldn’t settle for something that wasn’t his dream. He was going to be a movie start and he was going to burn all other bridges.

He then decided to write a screenplay. The first screenplay he sold was titled “Paradise Alley” and he sold it for $100. Unfortunately, nothing much happened after that and he got to the point where he was so broke that he hocked his wife’s jewelry. She hated him after that and their relationship was basically over at that point.

Now all he really had left was his dog. However, he didn’t have the money to feed him, so he went to a liquor store near to where he lived and stood outside trying to sell his dog to strangers for $50. Finally, one man stopped and negotiated with him and bought his dog, his best friend, for $25. Stallone says that was the absolute lowest point of his life.

Two weeks later he was watching a fight between Muhammad Ali and Webner, this white guy that’s getting bludgeoned but just keeps on coming, and he got an idea. When the fight was over he started writing and he wrote for twenty hours straight. The screenplay he wrote in twenty hours was “Rocky”.

He then went out and tried to sell the script to agents. He was turned down several times but he finally found some people who wanted to buy it for $125,000. However, Stallone told them that part of the deal was that he had to star in the film. He told them: “That’s my story; I’m Rocky”.

But they didn’t want a no-name to play the lead role in the movie, they wanted a star. In fact, they were thinking of Ryan O’Neal. Stallone indicated that either he got the role of Rocky or he wasn’t selling them the script. When they told him he couldn’t play Rocky, even though he didn’t have a cent to his name, he turned around and walked out.

They called him a week later and offered him a quarter of a million dollars not to star in his own movie. He turned them down. They then offered him $325,000 and again he said, “Not without me in the role of Rocky.”

Finally, they compromised: they gave him $35,000 and a stake in the movie, and he got the role of Rocky. They made the film with a million dollars and it grossed $200 million.

The first thing Stallone did when he got paid for the script was to go back to the liquor store and buy his dog back. Know your outcome, believe in yourself, and persist, regardless of naysayers.

(Rocky photo from here.)

More Tips to Prepare to Succeed

Here are some more ways to prepare for success:

Constantly plant seeds for your future success.

Always seek to create value.

Know that what you focus on expands. Stop focusing on your set-backs.

Make sure to be well-groomed and well-dressed.

Invest in yourself: read good books, attend seminars, and learn all you can.

Take care of your body: exercise, eat well, and get enough sleep.

Surround yourself with people who are more successful than you are.

Release fear of failure.

Each day do the best you can with what you have.

Be gracious to everyone you meet.

Be as happy for the success of others as you are of your own.

Honor your worth.

Take responsibility for yourself.

Demonstrate ease: stop complaining, stop making excuses, don’t overreact to problems, don’t promise more than you can deliver, and don’t take on more than you can do.

Know what is unacceptable to you and communicate boundaries.

Give yourself permission to be and do what you want.

Follow your inner guidance.

Expect success.

Related Posts

I Recommend:

Juicy Journaling with SARK inspires daily creative writing as you nourish your curious, colorfull, inspired writer self. Find your unique writing voice in Juicy Journaling with SARK!

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe for free by RSS or e-mail and you’ll always know when I publish something new. (What’s RSS?).

Also, please share it on the social media site of your choice, thank you.

42 Happiness Tips and Snidbits

Marelisa — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:01:09 +0000

Contrary to popular belief, happiness isn’t something that just happens. You have to work on being happy. To help you with that, here are 42 happiness tips and snidbits:

1. Just be yourself.

2. Realize that you’re fighting against a world of your own creation.

3. Know that your happiness is independent of how much stuff you own.

4. Change yourself instead of expecting the world to change to meet your expectations.

5. Define happiness as peace, tranquility, and serenity.

6. Remember there’s no such thing as the perfect life.

7. Your happiness is equal to your ability to love.

8. Stop thinking of what you don’t want.

9. Just for today, pretend that you have amnesia about anything that stresses or worries you.

10. Truly believe that everything you go through has a higher purpose.

11. Don’t turn small problems into big ones.

12. Stop comparing yourself to others.

13. Remember that envy is the art of counting someone else’s blessings instead of your own.

14. Set limits with people who drain your energy.

15. Surround yourself with positive, mood-elevating people.

16. Nothing has to happen outside of yourself for you to be happy.

17. When you change your thoughts you literally rewire your brain; start rewiring your brain for happiness.

18. Be very careful of where you choose to place your attention.

19. Don’t criticize anyone—including yourself—for 24 hours.

20. Try turning the stories that you tell yourself about what happens in your life into comedies instead of dramas.

21. Make a list of the things you need in order to be truly happy; make it a really short list. (Here’s an example: Having good health, sufficient money for food and shelter, no debts, loving friends and family, and something meaningful to work toward).

22. Keep a happiness journal in which you write down only the things that make you happy.

23. Set SMART goals and then create a paint-by-numbers plan to achieve them.

24. Spend a few minutes each day thinking about things that make you happy.

25. Find your passion.

26. Savor the little things.

27. Schedule short, frequent vacations; studies show that the anticipation leading up to the time off is one of the best parts about taking a vacation.

28. Engage in humility; you can only carry the burden of pride and of having a huge ego for so long before you crack under the pressure of upholding your incredible significance.

29. Dr. Timothy Sharp recommends that you set aside “worry time”. There may be an issue that is bothering you and that you need to sit down and think through. Schedule some time in which you’re going to think about the issue and then put it out of your mind until then.

30. Accept the things you cannot change.

31. Keep in mind that we tend to overestimate how likely it is that something bad will happen. We also tend to overestimate how bad things will be if something negative does happen.

32. Talk to yourself in the way in which you would talk to someone you really care about and respect.

33. Try something new.

34. Identify your greatest strengths, and then try to use these strengths in new ways.

35. Keep an “unhappiness log” so that you can keep track of things such as the following:

Are there specific things or people that trigger emotions in you that are not conducive to happiness?
Is there someone in particular who is constantly making you angry?
Are there certain situations in which you become irritable and can easily become upset? For example, if you’re hungry or haven’t had enough sleep.
Is there a particular situation that creates anxiety or frustration in your life?

The aim of keeping an “unhappiness log” is to identify specific things that trigger anger, frustation, anxiety, and so on in you so that you can plan on how to deal with these situations before they happen.

36. Give in to temptation once in a while: eat that chocolate sundae (with whipped cream, nuts, and a cherry on top), splurge on a day at the spa, or read the mystery novel instead of answering the 100th email.

37. Although it is important to “know thyself”—as Socrates advised—don’t take self-introspection to the level of navel-gazing. That’s just not conducive to happiness. It’s just not.

38. In the Mahabharata– one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India –there is a passage which says “That person who lives in their own home, eats and lives simply and has no debt to anyone; they are truly happy in this world”. Simplify!

39. Think of the saying: “It’s not where you stand but the direction in which you face.” If things aren’t going well for you, just think of where you would like to be and start taking baby steps to move in that direction.

40. Shift from a victim to a creator mentality.

41. Release negative feelings and emotions and allow the happiness that lies underneath those feelings to emerge.

42. As Charles Schulz would say, “Happiness is a side dish of French fries” and “Happiness is a warm puppy.”

Please share your happiness tips in the comments section.

Very cute puppy photo courtesy of cloneofsnake.

Related Posts

I Recommend:

Juicy Journaling with SARK inspires daily creative writing as you nourish your curious, colorfull, inspired writer self. Find your unique writing voice in Juicy Journaling with SARK!

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe for free by RSS or e-mail and you’ll always know when I publish something new. (What’s RSS?).

Also, please share it on the social media site of your choice, thank you.

The Sedona Method – Let Go of Negative Emotions and Limiting Beliefs

Marelisa — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:08:17 +0000

The Sedona Method is a simple, powerful, easy-to-learn technique that shows you how to let go of any negative, unwanted or painful feelings you may be experiencing at any particular moment. It consists of a series of questions you ask yourself that lead your awareness to focus on what you’re feeling in the moment and gently guide you toward letting it go.

Everyone is born with the natural ability to let go of negative feelings and emotions. However, we inadvertently get trained out of it when we’re children by the adults that surround us. The Sedona Method shows us how to regain the ability to release unwanted feelings and emotions, on the spot. In addition, it shows us how to let go of any limiting beliefs that may be holding us back.

Sedona Method graduates worldwide have reported the following results:

Greater financial freedom and success.
Improved relationships.
Reduced stress levels.
Freedom from depression, anxiety, fear, anger, and other emotional challenges.
More energy.
Greater self-esteem.
Getting rid of bad habits and self-sabotaging behavior.
Better health and a sense of vitality.
Getting better sleep.
And much, much more.

You can “let go” of years of mental programs and accumulated feelings in just seconds using the Sedona Method’s unique techniques. When an unwanted emotion or feeling of resistance comes up, you simply release it. With the limiting feeling out of the way, you’re free to create any result you desire, whenever you want.

There are few techniques out there that are as effective as the Sedona Method in removing both conscious and unconscious barriers in your life. Continue reading below to find out more about the Sedona Method.

The Sedona Method in a Nutshell

Pick up a pen. Hold it in front of you and really grip it tightly. If you hold the pen long enough, it starts to feel uncomfortable, yet familiar. Now open your hand and roll the pen around in it.

Notice that you’re the one holding on to it; it’s not attached to your hand. At any moment you can drop the pen and it would fall to the floor. The same is true of your feelings and emotions: they’re not attached to you and at any moment you can simply choose to let them go.

Simply put, the Sedona Method consists in focusing on what you want to feel better about and then allowing yourself to really feel the emotion that is present. The goal is to welcome the feeling and let it be whatever it is. Then, you ask yourself the following three questions:

Could I let this feeling go?
Would I let this feeling go? (Am I willing to let this feeling go?)
If so, when?

Repeat these three questions to yourself until you feel lighter and you feel less tension from the problem, issue, or feeling you’re releasing on.

We tend to over-identify with our feelings and emotions. Instead of saying “I feel sad” or “I feel angry”, we have a tendency to say “I am sad” or “I am angry”. That is, we say “I am the emotion.”

However, every emotion that you have is separate from you, and you can choose to release it at any moment. This is so no matter how justified the emotion might be, or how solid it feels, or how good a story you’ve come up with of why this is exactly the way in which you should feel. You can let it go.

Stop Suppressing Your Emotions

Some people cope with negative emotions by suppressing them. They simply try to deny them or pretend that they’re not there by focusing on something else. People who have a tendency to deny their feelings hope that by not thinking about them, the negative emotions will simply go away. However, negative emotions that are not outwardly expressed or dealt with effectively, turn inward.

This response to unwanted feelings can cause hypertension, high blood pressure, or even severe depression. In addition, many people who suppress their negative emotions tend to have addictive behaviors, such as overeating, gambling, drinking, tuning out in front of the television set, and so on. These things temporarily make them feel better since it allows them to escape from their emotions for the time being.

If you have a tendency to suppress negative emotions, you need to find ways to release these emotions instead of burying them. Pretending that the emotion is not there is a form of resistance toward the emotion.

Hale Dwoskin, one of the founders of The Sedona Method has the following to say about releasing negative emotions:

“The instant you stop resisting any negative emotion… is the instant it gives up its hold over you. So, welcome the feeling and then let it go. This frees up space for you to begin feeling good – feeling the peace that you truly are.”

photo credit: mark sebastian

Stop Expressing Your Emotions Inappropriately

At the other end of the spectrum are inappropriate expressions of negative emotions. Suppose that you feel that you’ve been wronged, taken advantage of, or otherwise treated unfairly in some way. As a result, you feel angry. Anger produces a physiological response in the body:

Your heart rate increases.
Blood rushes to your limbs.
A rush of hormones such as adrenaline increases the energy necessary for action.

This physiological response creates tension, and letting anger out by yelling and screaming can momentarily provide some release from said tension. However, an aggressive response rarely solves the underlying problem; instead, it will likely escalate the situation and lead to even more anger, tension, and aggression.

The Sedona Method will help you diffuse the anger caused by any given situation. By lessening the intensity of your anger you will put yourself in a position from which you can act in a constructive and assertive manner, and communicate your feelings and needs effectively, instead of lashing out at others and acting in a way that does not serve you well.

You can release anger–or other negative emotions–quickly by using the Sedona Method in all of the following situations:

When you’re in a meeting with your boss and he or she is saying something that’s making your skin crawl.
When you’re driving and you suddenly get cut off by another driver;
During an uncomfortable conversation with a co-worker or a neighbor;
When your child is acting up; and so on.

Use the Sedona Method to Reach Your Financial Goals

One way to use The Sedona Method is to help you reach your financial goals, such as creating wealth. Often, people form the intent to achieve wealth, they set well-defined financial goals for themselves, and then they go about taking the necessary steps to reach those goals. However, they soon sabotage themselves in their attempts by the beliefs they hold in their subconscious.

If you set the goal of becoming wealthy while holding the belief that you don’t deserve wealth, or that you’re not smart enough to be wealthy, or that creating wealth requires making enormous sacrifices, you simply won’t allow yourself to be rich. It’s like trying to cultivate a garden which is run over by weeds, or trying to keep a plant healthy when it’s infested with bugs.

So how can The Sedona Method help you create wealth? After reviewing your financial goals you can practice The Sedona Method to help you release any hesitancy or resistance that may come up toward those goals caused by your belief system. This resistance could be in the form of uneasiness, insecurity, doubt, or frustration. In fact, any feeling that is not positive or empowering is a form of resistance. Releasing the negative beliefs and emotions that stand in your way helps clear the way for you to create wealth and attract abundance into your life.

Let Go of Fear With the Sedona Method

Fear stands for false evidence appearing real. We tell ourselves all the time that all sorts of awful things are going to happen to us, and we live our lives as if this were true. Mark Twain is often quoted as having said the following: “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”

Because we allow our imaginations to run rampant with all sorts of fears and worries about the future, we live horrible experiences over and over again inside our minds. However, we can let go of fear; fear is just an emotion and you can choose to let it go at any moment. As you decide to let go, you’ll discover that the fear starts to dissolve, and what’s left is a feeling of calm and of “yes I can”, and this feeling is always available to you.

Conclusion

I purchased the Sedona Method about ten years ago and I use it all the time to release negative feelings and emotions, and to help me let go of any resistance I may feel when working toward achieving my goals. I believe it’s one of the most powerful personal development tools out there.

The Sedona Method holds that at our core we’re already whole and perfect. There’s a peace, radiance, joy and love that underlies even our most hateful emotions. When you let go, you naturally uncover that.

Happiness is your basic nature. Most of us look for happiness outside of ourselves, but happiness is something that’s within us. Stop looking for happiness in all the wrong places and simply let go, be present with what is in this moment, and let happiness gush forth and fill your life.

You can try the Sedona Method for free by clicking here (get your free DVD, CD, and MP3).

Reinventing Yourself Through Mindfulness

Marelisa — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:53:16 +0000

Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer is best known for her work on the subject of “mindfulness”, by which she means paying attention: consciously looking for what is new and different, questioning preconceived ideas, and stopping to think about what you’re doing and how you’re reacting.

Of course, the opposite of mindfulness is being on automatic pilot (much of what we believe is rational thought is actually our brains on automatic pilot), stereotyping, categorical thinking, simply accepting what we’re told, and acting mechanically.

Here are two examples of mindlessness; the first is an illustration of categorical thinking, and the second is an illustration of stereotyping (Source):

First. Suppose that a rich-looking man rings your doorbell late one night and tells you that he’s on a scavenger hunt and desperately needs to find a 3′ x 7′ piece of wood. He’ll give you $10,000 if you help him find one.

You try to think of a lumber yard, although you have no clue where one is, and then you conclude that nothing would be open at this hour anyway. So you turn him down. It doesn’t occur to you that the door you just opened is a 3′ x 7′ piece of wood, because you think of it as a category called “door,” not “wood.”

Second. During a psychology conference, a fight broke out. Unbeknown to the attendants, the fight was staged. Immediately after the fight, the forty witnesses were asked to write down an account of what they had seen. The results were as follows (remember that these are psychologists, people trained to observe):

The majority of the psychologists made mistakes regarding more than 50% of what had taken place.

In addition, several of them came up with numerous “facts” that were completely made up.

Why did more than a majority see a scene that had not taken place? Because what they saw was not the fight that took place in front of them, but the stereotype that they had of what “a brawl” is supposed to look like.

Langer explains that being mindful is very significant. She adds that being mindful makes people more effective, more creative, and healthier. Below you’ll discover how being mindful can help you age better, be more creative, and enjoy life more.

Mindfulness and Aging

In 1979 Langer conducted a study with a group of elderly men, retrofitting an isolated old Monastery in New Hampshire so that every visible sign said it was 20 years earlier. The men—in their late 70s and early 80s—were told not to reminisce about the past, but to actually act as if they had traveled back in time.

They watched Sgt. Bilko and The Ed Sullivan Show on a black-and-white television set.
They listened to Nat King Cole on the radio.
The men had discussions about Castro marching on Havana and the latest NASA satellite launch – all in the present tense.
In addition, although these men were used to being taken care of, they were encouraged to be active: carry their own bags, put their things away, help around the house, and so on.

The idea was to see if changing the men’s mindset about their own age might lead to actual changes in health and fitness. Langer’s findings—published in her book “Counterclockwise”–were stunning:

After just one week, the men in the experimental group–compared with a control group of men of the same age–had more joint flexibility, increased dexterity and less arthritis in their hands.
Their mental acuity had risen measurably, and they had improved gait and posture.
One man even decided he could do without his walking stick.
Outsiders who were shown the men’s photographs judged them to be significantly younger than the men in the control group.

Langer holds that by encouraging the men’s minds to think younger their bodies followed suit and actually became “younger”.

Another of Langer’s mindfulness studies involved an ordinary optometrist’s eye chart—the chart with the huge “E” on top and descending lines of smaller and smaller letters that eventually become unreadable. She wondered: what if we reversed it? The regular chart creates the expectation that at some point you’ll be unable to read the letters. But what if the chart was turned upside down, so that people would expect the letters to become readable?

She found that by creating the expectation that the letters would become more readable as they descended, the subjects still couldn’t read the tiniest letters, but they were able to read smaller letters than they could when using the “regular optometrist” chart. Their expectation—their mindset—improved their actual vision. (Source and Source).

Langer and her Harvard colleagues have been running similarly inventive experiments for decades. Her theory is that we are all victims of our own stereotypes about aging and health. We mindlessly accept negative cultural cues about disease and old age, and these cues shape our self-concepts and our behavior.

If we release our negative preconceptions about aging and about health, we can “mindfully” open ourselves to possibilities for more joyful, productive lives.

Mindfulness and Creativity

“What attracted me was less art itself than the artist’s life and all that it meant for me: the idea of creativity and freedom of expression and action. I had been attracted to painting and drawing for a long time, but it was not an irresistible passion; what I wanted, at all costs, was to escape the monotony of life.” – Pierre Bonnard

Langer explains that we’ve all had the experience of being deeply engaged in something, whether it’s a book, a conversation, playing a sport, and so on; we seek lives steeped in such experiences. Langer’s book “On Becoming an Artist: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity” is a guide to opening up to creative engagement on a daily basis in all that we do.

She argues that instead of judging everything we do by its end-product, we should ask whether we were mindfully engaged while doing it. What does Langer mean by mindfulness?

Mindfulness is an effortless, simple process that consists of drawing novel distinctions.
It’s about noticing new things.
Noticing new things puts you in the present and makes you sensitive to context and perspective. It allows you to notice the novel in the familiar.
It requires that we give up the fixed ways in which we’ve learned to look at the world.
It’s about gaining an enhanced receptivity to new information and to different points of view.

Questioning the Rules

Langer argues that we are taught that we live in a world of “is”, rather than a world of “maybe” or “it depends”. Most of what we believe is certain about the world we live in is simply the result of a decision that someone made at some point. Then we’re told that “this is the way that it is” as if it were something that is God-given and not to be questioned. This makes us accept a world, or a life, that is less exciting than it otherwise could be.

The world we live in is simply a social construction. People change their minds, there’s room for negotiation, and the fact that someone made a decision means that there was uncertainty at some point. So everything becomes more malleable.

Langer goes on to say that rules and ways of doing things that are giving to us as guidelines help us make our way in the world. But if these rules are given to us as absolute statements, they tend to hold us back.

The Power of Mindfulness

To illustrate the power of mindfulness, Langer explains that she took up painting a few years back. She showed one of her paintings, which was made on glass, to a friend. Her friend told her that she loved it, but that she should have painted it on canvas instead. So Langer went back and redid the same painting on canvas.

Then the friend told Langer that she should have painted it on a larger canvas. Langer then created the same painting again for a third time, this time using a larger canvas. She noticed that as she repeated the painting the process of creation became less interesting for her. In addition, the quality of the painting dropped each time she repeated it.

Based on this observation from her own work, she conducted an experiment in which students were divided into two groups:

The first group was told to create a painting and then copy it.
The second group was told to create a painting and copy it, but to add some subtle changes. That is, to be mindful while making the copy.

A random group of people were asked to select which paintings they preferred. Overwhelmingly they preferred the paintings which were created mindfully. This led Langer to conclude that mindfulness is visible on the canvas.

A similar experiment was conducted with orchestras. Musicians have to play the same piece of music over and over again; often, they reach a point in which it becomes boring for them. Langer took an orchestra and told them to play a piece twice: the first time they had to remember the best time they had ever played the piece and try to repeat that performance; the second time they had to make subtle changes to the piece (be mindful).

These two performances were recorded and were replayed to a group of people knowledgeable about music. Overwhelmingly they preferred the performance where the musicians were mindful. In addition, the musicians reported that they preferred playing mindfully. (Source; thank you Mimi. ).

Conclusion

Mindfulness is, in large part, about preserving our individuality. It’s about questioning so-called rules and assumptions given to us by others, making our own decisions, reassessing beliefs that no longer serve us, and being willing to express ourselves without worrying about how others will judge or evaluate us.

In addition, it’s about slowing down, being in the present, following your intuition, and putting more emphasis on the process instead of the outcome.

Reinventando a roda photo courtesy of everton137.

Related Posts

I Recommend:

Juicy Journaling with SARK inspires daily creative writing as you nourish your curious, colorfull, inspired writer self. Find your unique writing voice in Juicy Journaling with SARK!

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe for free by RSS or e-mail and you’ll always know when I publish something new. (What’s RSS?).

Also, please share it on the social media site of your choice, thank you.