Days like these lead to…..

Days like these lead to…..

Last week while driving home from dropping my son off at childcare, James Blunts’ Bonfire heart came on the radio. It made me want to sing my heart out. It’s not like I have been a James Blunt fan but something about the song and lyrics caught my attention, my heart.

 

Days like these lead to...
Nights like this lead to
Love like ours.
You light the spark in my bonfire heart.
People like us—we don’t
Need that much, just some-
One that starts,
Starts the spark in our bonfire hearts

 

I did, I sat in my car and sang. It really is all the small things, the little moments that make each day, that lead to our lives. Even the hard stuff.

“Enjoy the little things in life…for one day you will look back and realise they were the big things….” Robert Breault

So this morning the little things that have already started making my day and that I am grateful for:

1.       My son waking me up at 3.30 am in the morning because he had a nightmare and he wanted me to sleep with him so he wouldn’t be scared anymore.

2.       Getting up at 6 am and going for a run with my dog along a beautiful woodland path with the sun shining and nobody but us.

3.       Enjoying a lovely warm shower and having the time to get ready because my son and husband are having breakfast together and playing Lego Creationary.

4.       Getting a mini aeroplane to go with my mini Groot.

5.       Having the opportunity to drop my son off at nursery without having to rush or feel pressure to get to an office and enjoying the moment.

6.       Writing this post. Having scheduled time into my day for it and making being creative a priority.

What are your little moments? the moments that fill up your day, that make your heart sing, that one day when you look back you will think days like these led to…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1j1qwQQ8-Q

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1j1qwQQ8-Q

Are you in your element? Do you love what you do?

Are you in your element? Do you love what you do?

If you love what you do, it might that you are using your talents and passions in what you do every day.

“There are plenty of people who don’t know what their passions are, but it’s a rare person who has none. “

In Finding Your Element, Sir Ken Robinson discusses how to find your talents and passions, embrace them, and come up with your own definition of happiness, so you can combine what you love with what you’re good at to live a long, happy life. Before I read this book, I’d seen his TED talk on “Do schools kill Creativity?” which is a fascinating look at how our education system knocks creativity out of you along the way as it tries to make you obedient, discouraging us more than encouraging us. He talks about three things: creativity, uncertainty and the immense capabilities of children. It totally resonates with me. All I ever wanted to be is creative, be it making clothes, drawing or writing. I didn’t really have a preference as long as I was creating something but I do remember being told I was not good at it. Someone forgot to mention that you get good at something the more you practice!

What did teachers make you believe you were bad at? Do you still believe that today? 

The book is a journey into how you can find out what you’re good at and what you like, and how to combine these two things into something that makes you happy, regardless of what society tells you or what you’ve been trained to do in school and college.

He outlines three principles:

#1 Your life is unique - take in and appreciate the uniqueness of your life and the probability of events that took place to make you

#2 You create your own life. “I am not what has happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” Carl Jung.

#3 Life is organic and very few people anticipate to be doing what they are doing.

 He then takes you through a series of exercises to help you discover your element, from SWOT analysis to unconscious writing (I really enjoyed this one!), helping you a build a picture of your passions aptitudes, attitudes and opportunities. He provides lots and lots of fascinating examples of people finding their element at different times in their lives.  There is always hope you can find your element no matter your age.

“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

For me, the parts that resonated the most in the book were that we are living through a revolution in education, and that it’s time to change it. Work has changed, the jobs we do have changed and will change further. The way we work is changing as well.

Life is not linear – you may have more than one element, you may do several things that ignite you. You may have yet to discover it and sometimes the next step forward is to retrace a path that you thought you’d left behind.  

If you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you do?

Do Less. Be more. Is doing less the new busy?

 

Is doing less the way to happiness or a more content life?

 

“Trying to do it all will eventually be your undoing”     Kate Northup

Kate Northup­ believes that instead of “leaning in,” and “doing it all”, we should actually do less and that by doing less we can have – and be – more. Her book “Do Less” discusses tools to change the way we approach life, and how as women we should embrace living in tune with our cyclical nature and the feminine. She states that women function on a 28-day cycle, and not 24 hours as our lives as set up. Men function on a 24-hour cycle.

Kate believes that by cutting out the busyness, we’ll have more satisfaction and joy. We will stop and be.

Our worth should not be associated to how much we do. We shouldn’t wear busy like a badge of honour. But we do, and we’re tired, drained and some of us near burn out. We live by our to do lists, ticking it off as a source of contentment, we consume more than is healthy – hands up who’s done the lying on the sofa scrolling through social media only to realise your evening has just vanished, sat in a meeting that could have been an email or gone from email to task to email to browser.  And then went and did it all over again the next day.

Doing less isn’t doing nothing it is just doing more of what matters, of the important stuff. By doing less, we’ll accomplish more, be less anxious or stresses, create more time for ourselves and be happier.

Multi-tasking is overrated. The switching back and forth between ‘important tasks’ comes at a cost to our performance. Two years ago videos made for Facebook were one to two minutes long, now videos made for Facebook are under 30 seconds, anything over and it won’t be watched, it would seem we no longer have the attention span.

Doing more things does not drive faster or better results. Doing better things drives better results. Even more accurately, doing one thing as best you can drives better results.

James Clear   

https://jamesclear.com/multitasking-myth

 

Focusing on what really matters and doing less has helped me over the last month to create more of what I want. I still have a list but it is more realistic day to day. I am more mindful in what I do. When I am with my son, I no longer have my phone so that I can be totally present with him. I set myself three personal and three work goals every day. I focus on each one at a time, doing deeper work. I have turned down the noise of social media. I feel better. It fits in more with cosy minimalist approach to life.

Can you do less? How would you do it?

1.       Discover what really matters to you – work what energises you and what drains you. Do more of what energises you. Figure out what provides the most impact on your life, your career, your ability to help others, etc…

2.       Reduce distractions – have a digital detox, turn off the internet while you are working so you can’t check emails.

3.       Do more of what you love – prioritise your day around doing what you love. Figure out ways of doing less of what you love. This might mean delegating or asking for help. Some things we have no choice about but it is about minimising that.

4.       Accept where you are – when you accept where you are, you start being more accepting and loving towards what you do, where you are and who you are and this can create a huge shift in perspective. Instead of looking at the gap and wanting more, look at how far you’ve come and what you have.

5.       Take a moment and breathe – control your time. Ever noticed when you are very calm and relaxed how time can flow so slowly.

 More inspiration here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8yWLA--S8Q

Eat. Sleep. Write. Repeat.

Do you ever feel like you are going round in circles? You set yourself all these goals and good intentions only to wake up the next day and then do the same as yesterday. If you are anything like me then you will have a myriad of excuses to talk you out of what you want to do and justify your actions. One of my goals for this year is to write and so far it hasn’t been so successful.

I have a new little trick - tell myself I will just do 20 minutes and that’s enough. Because 20 minutes a day actually adds up. What I have found though, is that once I have been doing something for 20 minutes I often carry on for a bit longer. My block is usually getting started. This has certainly been true with my attempts at writing blogs over the last few months. I am going to give it once last try, one blog per week and see what I can put together in 20 minutes – it doesn’t need to be perfect it just needs something to be written. The first draft of anything is shit!

 

“You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it.

That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.”

― Octavia E. Butler

 

I have been given some tips to help me along my writing attempt number 3:

1.       Practice makes perfect – writing is a muscle and it needs flexing.

2.       Don’t put yourself under too much pressure (I was probably doing that a fair bit).

3.       Read, read, read and read some more.

4.       Start with what you know.

5.       Publish your work on your own channels first (it helps to retain control).

6.       Let everyone know you have published content.

7.       Find partners to help you.

8.       Find guest blogs/ Friends who have blogs.

9.       And Repeat!!!

 

“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”

― Jodi Picoult

 

On Creativity.

My first memory of me being creative is of me making a skirt when I was probably about 10. I am sure I was creative before that but I don’t have a memory of those moments. I have seen pictures but I am going with my first real and clear memory. At the time, I am pretty sure I dreamt of being a Fashion Designer and obsessed with Jean Paul Gaultier’s work. I think I carried that ambition for many years, even going to college to study for an HND in Fashion and Textile Design after completing my degree in Behavioural Science. I didn’t last, I struggled with the lack of flexibility of college after University and obviously wasn’t that committed to it so went off to do a Masters in Fine Art instead. Indulgent, expensive and for a long time I thought pointless. But turns out maybe not so pointless.

I listened to Sir Ken Robinson Ted Talk this morning which was very interesting and considering I don’t have much love for our education system though I love to learn it rang very true for me.  Sir Ken Robinson believes that Creativity is as important in education as literacy, that we should nurture creativity but that it gets educated out of us with our current educational system. Our education system is failing, it is not fit for the world of today and most likely redundant for the world of tomorrow.

Check out the Ted talk here:

https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity?referrer=playlist-the_most_popular_talks_of_all#t-353374

Daniel H. Pink and his theories on motivation would certainly be supporting Robinson’s views on creativity and schools. We’ve got it wrong. It shouldn’t be about getting a Degree for the sake of having one so you can get a good job or choose one so it gets you to a high paying job. It goes against motivation and what drives us. It stifles creativity. It’s not just our education system that stifles creativity but it is the first significant hurdle of the journey.

So how do we nurture our creativity?

For some of us (I am mostly talking about me here), we have to wipe the slate clean and forget all past creative efforts because they no longer serve us – my should have, could have, what if – Done. Anthony Burrill on how to be more creative that says Forget what you’ve done in the past. He believes that “you really need to have a process of creative renewal so that you’re not endlessly remaking the same picture…” More here: https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2018/how-to-be-more-creative-anthony-burrill/

We just need to start being creative as creativity breeds more creativity. Do something new, change your daily routine, sign up to a class, challenge yourself to read a book a week.

We should also procrastinate more, do nothing, meditate and get uncomfortable. I have the most random thoughts when I stop and go for a walk, or meditate or basically where I am doing nothing.

This year I challenged myself to be more creative in my personal life so that my creativity wasn’t just being funnelled into my work – not that is a bad thing - and I think I am slowly getting there. I signed up to a pottery class, I am writing, reading a lot, drawing and taking photos. I guess we will see where my creativity and creative endeavours take me, if anywhere, but I am enjoying the process and journey and that is the main thing.

True art is always done for its own sake, for love of composing it. Follow your instincts, your creative intuition, and cherish the result without judgment. - unknown