I attended a workshop recently where we were asked to tell as many people as we could what we were passionate about in five minutes. There were 60 of us in that hotel ballroom, but I only managed to talk to two people. The first woman I spoke with nodded in agreement and said “Cool,” when I recited my line: I’m passionate about encouraging women to use Creativity as a healing tool. She said she was passionate about going to a game in Yankee Stadium before it gets torn down. She was quite serious.

 

The next woman I spoke with said she was passionate about her 2-year-old son. I said it must be hard to leave him for our five day conference. She said “yes, I miss him so much!” and asked what my passion was. I told her and her immediate response was, “I don’t have a creative bone in my body.” To which I immediately launched into my usual line of questions.

Do you like to cook?

No, I don’t know where my kitchen is!

Do you like to garden?

I live in an apartment and I have a black thumb.

Do you ever read a map and choose a different route to travel?

Do you try new things?

Do you take risks?

Are you adventurous?

Well, that I can say I do, she said warily. But, I’m not creative. I don’t paint and I’m not crafty.

Being creative is more than making art – it’s an attitude. It’s a state of mind. Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.

OK, she conceded, then I guess I am Creative!

What about you? After all this discussion you have to consider yourself Creative too!

 

It was a gorgeous summer day today and I found myself needing to be outside. I took a blanket, a cup of tea and settled on the deck chair to see what the afternoon would bring me. Soon all my senses were engaged. I was entertained by the gentle breeze making the leaves on the trees dance and the birds playing tag in the branches of the lemon tree heavy with ripe fruit. The sweet scent of spent roses greeted me as I buried my nose in the flower and the soft velvet of the falling petals brushed against my skin. My tea has never tasted more delicious than this afternoon while I was being lavished with Nature’s affection.It was very, very pleasant to sit in the garden without an agenda or specific task to accomplish. Lately, I’ve been consumed with some very ambitious projects and while I have accomplished a great deal, there are other tasks I have not been successful in completing. I have been letting myself become caught up in a cycle of overwhelm and disappointment. I have to remember that every morning is a brand new day and all I have to do is to just keep showing up with gratitude, love and joy in my heart and remember: All I have is all I need.

I hope you have a chance to stop and smell the roses, sit in the garden, or watch the waves roll in, and consider how with tapping into our Creativity we have more than enough to handle whatever life has in store for us. See you in the garden…

Since my last dispatch I have had numerous incidents to write about, yet I have not. My reasons are frustrating, exciting, tedious, and just plain boring. Life happened and I’ve been running from one project to another at warp speed. Here are some of the occasions which have consumed my attention:

1. Launching is the Simple Abundance Close-to-Home Workshops:  Overcoming the stress factor  is my motivating argument to encourage women to sign up for the workshops. However, this has not been the case and despite my best positive thinking approach and the  encouraging advice of “just set a date and people will sign up,” to my disappointment, I have not had anyone sign up for a workshop – as yet.

2.  WNBA-SF Gala and the WNBA National meeting:  The flury of activity of preparations and overseeing that long-anticipated weekend consumed my thoughts for almost a year. When the time finally arrived, I was amazed at how calm I was and delighted in the fact I could step up to the microphone without notes and welcome 87 people for dinner as if I did it all the time. It ultimately was a fun evening, but I’m so glad it’s over!

3. The Journal Writing Conference in Denver immediately followed the WNBA weekend and I got to spend time with my sweet friend Cindy and get reacquainted with my first writing teacher, Christina Baldwin.

4. I was the subject of an interview, instead of the other way around, and it was a very heady experience. I liked it. Now, in addition to my writing samples I have a file of stories about me!

5.  I’ve been invited to write a column for an on-line magazine and to choose the subject matter I wanted to write about. Of course, it will be about Creativity and it’s healing properties.

Well, it seems I have lots of material to keep writing about here so stay tuned, Dear Readers. I’ll be back… 

It would seem a farmer’s daughter would have more affinity with the earth, but alas that has never been my story. Planting a garden full of vegetables has never appealed to me and having dozens of thriving house plants has not been my good fortune. My mother used to refer to the tangles of indistinguishable green vines which lived on a chrome utility cart as her “jungle.” It subsisted on intermittent watering so that it was either a rain forest or desert and absolutely no plant food of any kind. I guess I’ve taken after her in that respect because plants that come into my home have little chance of survival if they do not possess a strong sense self-preservation. But I do believe the house, indeed everyone in our home, is happier when there are healthy green plants. Consequently, I am a very good customer of the local nurseries. I have very good intentions when I purchase plants for inside and outside my home. However, I did not inherit the “farmer” gene. (Thankfully, my brother did inherit it as the family farm is his livelihood.)

I took myself to the local nursery not too long ago to refresh the plants in the house and change the landscape in the pots by the front door. I took my time wandering the aisles of scented lavender, sprawling hydrangeas, scented geraniums and tailing ivy. Enjoying fantasies about all the wonderful combinations of plants I’d like to see in my surroundings made me smile and sigh. Some day I would love to have a trellis loaded with sweet jasmine in my garden so the heavy perfume would penetrate every cell of my being as a lie in the sun in a hammock, sipping lemonade and reading something wonderful. Turning the earth in big clay pots gives me a sense of of connection with my Minnesota roots. Right now I’m content having Martha Washington Pink Geraniums greeting me when I approach my front door.

A visit to your local nursery may start you on a Creative journey as well. What about lingering in the floral department at the grocery store, sitting on a park bench enjoying the sun on your face, or stopping to smell the roses..what will be your first step towards a getting next to Nature Creative excursion be?

On April 22 I gave my first free talk about the Simple Abundance Close-to-Home Workshops. We had a small intimate gathering at Ink Spell, a sweet little bookstore in my small town. I felt nervous, not about the public speaking I was about to do, but that I would do justice to the message I wanted to share. I wanted my audience to know in their core that they were not only deserving of being on their ever present “to do” list, but they needed to be a top priority – if not their first. The analogy I used of the flight attendant instructing passengers to put their oxygen mask on first before assisting others seemed to have the most impact. It was so obvious that in such a situation, of course, it made sense to put your own mask on first. Otherwise how would you be able to help anyone else? However, applying that principle to our daily lives when there seems to a never-ending list of demands on our time, attention, patience, common sense, good will and creativity is well worth the effort involved. As the commercials tell us, “I’m worth it!”

 

We discussed a few creative ways to put ourselves first without alarming family, friends and our own ingrained sense of duty:

– Journaling is a powerful tool to connect with ourselves, requires minimum supplies and little time, yet writing our thoughts down has significant impact on us emotionally, spiritually and physically. As a journal writer since the age of 11, I am a strong proponent of this practice.

-Being in Nature was another suggestion. From sitting on the grass in our back yard, taking a walk in the neighborhood, enjoying the local park, or exploring a new area of town. We don’t have to postpone our appreciation for the great outdoors until we have a weekend to get away from it all. We can escape with a cup of tea on our front step to contemplate what the day will bring, or what it has brought us.

-Flowers. Taking the time to stop and smell the flowers; whether it means bringing them home from the grocery store, going to a Garden Center, or admiring a flowering bush – close your eyes, breathe in their scent and feel the aroma melt your resistance.

 

Your stress may not be eliminated, but it certainly will have had a pleasant interlude enjoying the flowers, the walk and the writing in your journal. Today, I’m going to stop and smell the flowers on my front step. What will you do to create a little time to put yourself first today?…