Everyday Creative

If you want to have more fun, feel more engaged, wag your tail more, ask yourself one very important question:

Am I doing enough of the things I love to do?

I’m talking daily life Loves, like: cooking, reading, sports, movies, walking, hobbies, enough time with your favorite people.

Start with a love list

• Write a list of the things you love to do. (See examples above and expand; anything goes.)
• Next, fill the list out with some context, i.e.: I love to cook with my kids. I love to trail run with friends. I love going to a matinee by myself. I love reading in a coffee shop surrounded by the smell of coffee and sweet pastries… you get the picture.

How many of the items on your list — that are within your control – are you doing? How many of them are doable but they’re falling through the cracks?

Pick one of them up. Pick up another. Step up and make small tiny efforts over time to make these Loves happen.

Fun is important. Having more engagement, laughter, tail-wagging, purring hums of contentedness — this is the stuff that makes life and all the gorgeous struggles worthwhile!

But it takes effort. Fun doesn’t happen without you turning the wheel. It’s not insta-delivery service falling out of the sky, Surprise!

Just for the record …

I asked myself this question recently when I felt myself sinking into an existential funk. I wrote down a list of Loves, five items and it took about ten seconds. When I looked at my list I saw what was missing: “with others” was the context part that was falling through the crack. So the following week I went to work on adding the “with others,”  by finding professional groups and doing a bit of networking. And my funk drifted away once it had focus and an assignment. Which is ongoing (don’t drop the ball folks).

Don’t forget the high five

When you write down your list of things you love to do, don’t forget to pay tribute to this: Where are you succeeding? Then, give yourself a high five — before asking:

And what do you need to add back into your life?

Start with one item, shine the sun of your affection and attention on it and go!

Hint: The things we love to do, we love for a reason. They’re part of our gift, our purpose, our natural expression. So the more you do these Loves, the better life is, for you and everyone around you.

If you make this a project that lights up your curiosity, you’ll find your entire outlook changing. Enjoy, and share what you find there.

xo t

Everyone aims to have a fun weekend. (Or at least we’re all told to!)

There’s fun and there are the duties of errands, kids’ sports, home improvement projects, family time, friends time, hobby time, sports time, alone time, nap time, movies, reading, cooking – Jesus, that’s a lot to fit into a couple days. It’s amazing more of us don’t call in sick with a mini-nervous breakdown Monday morning.

Of course fun is relative. But I’ve never heard someone say “I need to have less fun.”

If you like the idea of having more Fun, consider this:

• Define what fun feels like.
• How do you know you’re having fun?

Take this question around with you for the next week. Fun might show up as a hum in your belly, an opening in your chest or the sound of lots of laughter. It can be jumping in the lake, running hard with friends, doing engaging work, watching a movie on the couch – it can surprise you. But when you spot it, take note. 

I once discovered my fun hum kicking in while doing laundry and cooking. I was having a great time doing domestic arts on a Sunday night preparing for the week. Consequently, I cooked more that week and had more enjoyable evenings. What made it fun was that I was in motion and creating something, a combo that works for me but I often give into laziness and the story of “I don’t feel like cooking.” But when I do it, my evening is so much more fun; I eat better, sleep better and so it goes. You probably have your version of cooking on a sunday eve.

Sometimes we have fun without knowing it because we haven’t defined that fun feeling. But once you lock into it, you’lll notice when it shows up. You’ll start to have more fun — and you’ll be able to make it happen. I’m talking about simple, everyday but meaningful fun.

So what does fun feel like for you? Take this question out into your week, keep a fun notebook. See what you find there.

xo, t

“I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.” — Katharine Hepburn

American mythologist and scholar Joseph Campbell said, “I think the person who takes a job in order to live — that is to say, for the money — has turned himself into a slave.”

I always like the message of a quote like this, probably because I am not one of these slaves — I’ve always “followed my bliss,” as Campbell liked to say. But the reason why I like this quote is because I need it. At a time right now, when I’m building a new business and filled with all kinds of uncertainty, a quote like this can cheer me on.

But I also feel for another reality of those of us who have taken jobs more for the money than for deep meaning or fulfillment. Some of us have needed it, some of us have started on that path and are now stuck there, not sure how to get out of it, and let’s face it — we live in an increasingly expensive and materialistic world. It’s tough to “follow your bliss.” As someone who has chosen to — actually, it’s more that I’m wired to — do work I really like and care about, I feel for both stuggles.

The struggles to do work you don’t like in order to provide for a family; and the struggles to do the work you love while dealing with uncertainty, isolation, doubt and fear. And then there are the places in between these two extremes.

I’ve worked for companies and on my own over the years and I’ve liked both experiences for different reasons. I like the community and collaboration of a company job; I like the regular pay check, the insurance and generally the sense of being taken cared of.

But it doesn’t take long for me to start feeling bored and restless in the routine, with the politics and the same-ol, same-ol.

I got my first clue when I was 23, working at my  first job in NYC, an advertising job, when after a very unsatisfying first year of working in circles I started asking my team members, “Why do you do this? Do you like this work?” My answers were all along the lines of, “What else is there to do?” I found those answers totally unacceptable.

Have I had a better life leaving this so-called “prison” and doing work I like, that has meaning and diversity and creativity? Who knows, but I don’t think I am better off or a better person or enjoying my life any more.

I’ve struggled and been broke, unemployed, lonely and despairing while others have marched to their daily jobs, building their 401ks and getting on in life. However –

It’s the right life, with the right successes and challenges for me. And I don’t have a big history of jobs I hated or jobs I’ve been bored at and the changes along the way have also fit my temperament and personality.

I believe we have the life that works best for us, at least when we’re making intentional decisions.

At some point in life we get an opportunity to take all those breadcrumbs and patterns and sign posts and start to consider a new way of working, living — and committing to that. It might be a tiny shift, like working 40 hours a week instead of 60. It might be quitting your job to do that thing you’ve always wanted to do (which recessions can be good for; many people who lose their jobs are often freed up to follow a new path).

Either way, creating a good working life can be a struggle — but a beautiful one, filled with surprising encounters, self-discovery, connections and euphoric buzzes of purpose and meaning that go beyond one’s wildest expectations.  Even a sense of peace.

A friend recently responded to my biz building efforts with, “That sounds hard.” Yes, sorta. But what’s harder for me is going to a job day in day out that I don’t like.

I care about having a fulfilling working live, and I care about other peoples’ working lives. I’ve been at enough companies where I’ve witnessed people just not having a great time at work. Some of it is their own choice (we all know those chronic bitchers). But still, what a sad situation, that so many of us go off to our jobs with rounded shoulders and tired souls.

This is one reason why I want to coach professionals. I want to do what I can to help people have more fun at work, feel more fulfilled, use their innate imagination and creativity to manifest a better work-life experience.

Because when you’re happier and I’m happier and he’s happier and she’s happier … it affects all of us. What a beautiful world it would be if more people even liked their work more than they already do.

So, whether you’re a job slave or bliss follower, or somewhere in between, what do you think of Campbell’s quote?

What are you doing right now to have a life-work experience that brings you some kind of joy, fulfillment and sense of purpose?

Here’s to all of you hard workers!

xo t

The first calendar was a one-week whiteboard calendar that I gave away after writing down a great schedule for a week in January that was still there in early March.

Next, I moved on to the big lovely monthly calendar you see above. I sprinkled the month of March with an editorial calendar and ideas and that went okay. I do have a bit of a problem following orders, which this felt like. My internal writer self would protest, “But I don’t WANT to write about that! I don’t WANT to write it today!” Hmph.

April I ended up accidentally doing something different– I filled the calendar after I wrote a blog or had an idea to track or fill out. I thought it was the best idea ever — learn from the pattern and do more of what worked. Genius.

And by May, I was over it. It didn’t even exist for me anymore, even though it sat there on my working table in all its whiteness.

Ironically enough, I was the “calendar girl” at my last editorial job, keeping our calendar updated and I even liked it. I can actually get organized when it’s for a group. For myself, it’s a differnet story: it seems to be a more chaotic sense of organization.

Here’s the thing: Systems don’t work for everyone. Our cavemen predecessors didn’t have calendars and keep appointments. Even though that’s modern life, so we have to deal with it, it’s still not a part of our animal nature.

Casa Mila, Barceona

Over a year ago I visited Spain where I spent time in Barcelona and other Northern towns standing in complete awe before the amazingly fantastical architectural creations by Antonio Gaudi (1852 – 1926). He’s famous for the Sagrada Familia, a church that’s still under construction, among other Disney-esque buildings, parks, homes and churches.

Gaudi was an architect who studied Euclid’s geometry and worked in various art forms, like sculpture. Whenever he was stuck on a problem he went outside and studied the natural world for solutions.

His home is in the Park Gruel which is filled with tiled creatures, arched pillared walkways, and colorful fairyland-esque structures.

Park Gruel, guard home: Take that Disney!

He says he never owned or referred to an architecture book when he was stuck on a project. Instead, he got all the answers he needed by studying a tree outside one of the windows of his house.

This is one of my favorite stories of creative problem solving and creation. His devotion to the natural world, and looking to it for ideas made him one of the most unique architects in history.

So let’s take a page out of Gaudi’s book. The solution you’re looking for may very well be in the singular act of looking up and out the nearest window.

Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Well chalk one up for the pot smokers. Apparently, multitasking lowers your IQ by 10 points while smoking pot only lowers it by 4 points. Shit.

 The other night I took the first of a two-part teleclass on Time with the spunky smart duo of Susan Hyatt and Terry Demeo. It’s not about Time Management but more about our relationship to time, as in: How do you stop feeling like there’s never enough Time, and Why does it always feel like you’re never doing enough with your Time (flog flog — ow).

Until now, I always prided myself on a continual circular way of working and moving and thinking. Maybe this was my romantic way of promoting a darting, undisciplined attention span.

And so I learn the cold hard — and liberating — truth: I’d be better off waking and baking than parceling out my mental concentration chunks the way I do.

However, the reason why this feels liberating  is because it actually sounds a lot more relaxing to give a chunk of my focus to an activity instead of being in perpectual mind motion.

And already I’m watching the behavior. For example, last night I’m in bed –  with three books to choose from, which does wonders for my reading — and when I finally pick one to settle into, my mind tells me “There’s some TheraFlu in the kitchen that would be good to have so you don’t cough through the night.” And off I went.

Classic behavior. Does anyone else ever do this? It’s not that I can’t sit still, it just takes me a while to get into the groove. And I do like being in motion, mentally or physically.

Still, it can be frustrating and defeating to be constantly darting. I can see my mental acuity passing out on the couch by midday. My working style can be a disjointed romp of: Writing a little here, Emailing a little there, a thought comes in so I get online to check god-knows-what site which reminds me of something Else and before I know it I’m totally lost. Except that I have the breadcrumbs of open windows and browsers to help me back to the beginning. So I’ve made a teeny bit of progress and off we go again. The writing gets started and then the email, something to check, a Facebook message to reply to and we’re back at the multitasking races.

So now the practice is to dedicate myself to a project for a chunk of time and see how that goes.

The main tricks here include: closing my email, not checking Facebook (I love distractions!) and reminding myself to Stick With It. The Stick With It is made possible by the fact that some part of mywiser self knows I’ll have more fulfillment, and do better work if I phase out the multitasking and go deeper with each project.

Plus the fact, I gave up pot smoking years ago, so I don’t really have a choice.

And I have to admit something: I often get plagued by something I call “stoner’s brain.” It’s when I lose my train of thought in the middle of a story, or I can’t think of a word or I act generally spacey because I can’t get my thought-life together and intact. I’ve wanted to blame it on age but I’m not 100. So maybe it’s the multitasking.

It will be interesting to see if reducing multitasking will make my stoner’s brain go down.

Note: here’s an interesting book about Time if anyone is curious to read and learn more:
The Secret Pulse of Time: Making Sense of Life’s Scarcest Commodity, by Stefan Klein.
Some interesting stuff in there, including why time-keeping/calendaring systems just don’t work for human beings (did our caveman ancestors use them? no.)

Enjoy your gorgeous IQs and watch that multitasking!

xo

Every once in a while I go on these month-long themes.

They started a few years ago when I was contracting at a job where I was underutilized and bored out of my skull. So I had to do something to fluff my mood up on a daily basis. Hence: the  monthly “things.”  For a month I did daily things like:

• Wear mascara  (hardish)
• Talk to someone new at work (harder)
• Tell someone you love them (hardest; freaked a few people out that month)

Lately, as I establish and build my own biz, the monthly themes have come back in a different form: letting go of. A couple of themes in the last several months:

• Don’t think or talk about biz-building (November ‘09)
• Don’t worry (April ‘10)

In both cases I gifted myself a time frame to let go of overthinking and do the work that was in front of me and see what might come in. Actually, I didn’t know if anything would come in, I just needed to give my brain and psyche a break, already!

I can be a real  fretter and worrier  in times of uncertainty (like starting a new biz and not having a regular HR-generated paycheck). Which is also a bit paradoxical since I ultimately thrive in the creative adventure of work, which comes with a lot of uncertainty. But really, any “certainty” in life is a bit of a mirage, no?

Anyway the point here is to get you thinking about something you can do — or give up — every day for a month. And good news! There’s a new month incoming in just a few days here.

A note about the Month Theme

There’s something wonderfully liberating about giving yourself a designated time frame — a beginning and end-time — in which to try something new and possibly uncomfortable. Whenever I want to sit up and calculate my bank account or imagine myself destitute under a bridge, I remind myself that April is worry-free month and that on May 1 I can resume worrying myself into the coma, if need be.

And since I’ve been worrying way, way less …

• I’ve been more creative, more productive
• I’ve been happier
• I’ve been getting out into the world and meeting new people more
• I’ve had some cool new biz opportunities come up
• I’m sleeping better
• More smiles, more optimism, more calm
• I’m thinking of signing up for one more month. Curious to see what less worry gives me.

What can you give up or do more of — one habit or way of being that doesn’t serve you well – for just one month and see how life shifts a bit for you?

The space you create for yourself by giving up a dear old-friend of a habit (focusing on regrets; filling your head with “yeah-buts”) may bring answers, resolution, the birth of new cool projects and creative progeny.  Maybe even a refreshing sense of peace and a true belief in life’s possibilities. Trying something new for a month may kick your sweet ass and out of a rut and show you what you’re made of.

Ready, set …. let the month begin!

And have fun with it,

xo

“This is probably a really bad idea but …”

How many of us cover our asses with a prelude sentence like this, before offering up our gem of a thought?

There’s also this spin on downselling ourselves and staying stalled: ”I don’t have any good ideas [on how to move this project forward; start this book; what to do this weekend or eat for dinner].”

But you do! We all have an idea and here’s where we can start. We don’t need a great idea off the cuff but just ONE to get things going.

Just one brave, adorable, shitty, crappy, ridiculous idea.

Because just one “bad” idea is a start. No more blank paper or open space of nothingness.

It’s Hard to Be Bad

I used to give a writing exercise that was to write as badly as you can and as fast as you can. Guess what?

It’s HARD. Try it. It’s hard when you’re writing fast — writing improvisationally, writing past the nay-saying judge, writing so fast all you can do is trust your instincts.  What you’ll find is it’s just in one’s nature to create something that has a modicum of decency. I’m not talking about trotting it out to the New York Times or the Nobel Prize committee or MOMA but there’s going to be something there.

Plus, if you allow yourself a bad idea it’s something to push off of. Especially if there’s one more person in the room, so, since it’s Friday, let’s set up this scenario:

A: “What do you want to do this weekend?”

B: “Let’s go to the midnight show at the Lusty Lady before it closes.”

A: “Hell no. But I’d like to go see a funny movie, like Date Night, followed by Mexican food in bed, how’s that?”

Give Your Ego a Kiss and Go For It

The hardest place to step out with a bad idea is at work, of course. Our fragile egos. I’d like to challenge/dare/invite work teams to say it’s okay to have a shitty first draft of an idea and that no one has to waste time on any of those ass-covering preludes. Example:

A: “Who has an idea of how we can make more money on our product?”

B: “Let’s stand on our heads and see if that helps.”

A: “Hmm, that would hurt a few of our heads HOWEVER, maybe we can stand our plan on its head and see how we can do something so differently that we’ll catch our customers’ attention in a new way.”

See?

Turn a Bad Idea Into Something Good

It’s easy to say, “Nah, I don’t like that” to the offering — the gift — of a first draft idea. And then you sit there with your Orphan Annie eyes blinking into the air. Next time, take the idea and use it as a place to push off from. Go in the opposite direction or take a tiny nugget or a word or a letter or a strange-seeming association to push things forward.

What if there were no bad ideas? Free your mind, let the ideas flow. As I write this post, I think of the writers and actors at Saturday Night Live — can you imagine their idea-generating sessions?

The first “bad” idea is an important start. Consider it just the first in a procession of a string of original thought, creativity and eventual solutions.

And you might end up having a bit more fun, too.

Biz chick and artist Coco Chanel

My friend Jill was recently called a workaholic by some friends.

We love pathology tags these days, don’t we? But to be fair, workaholism does exist. Remember the round-the-clock work ethic of the high-tech revolution?

Here’s why Jill was called a workaholic. She just became the owner of a high-end women’s clothing store in Seattle, Baby & Co. She and her team have worked extremely hard to renovate the store, update it — and this has included many after-closing hours evenings for Jill. And remarks that go like this: “You’re turning into a workaholic.” (The comments alone are a whole separate discussion, don’t you think?)

Anyway. Jill is not just a workaholic. She is not working at a job. She’s passionately involved in and committed to her work. This is life work that is highly creative (the store is a work of art, and not just the clothes); and she has a gift for connecting with women, making them feel like they’re members of something special and she inspires/mentors women to walk out of her store and into the world proudly embracing their own style and OWNING IT (a Jill motto).

Hugh MacLeod has a great cartoon about the difference between being a workaholic in a job and being passionately devoted to your life’s work.

When Jill stays after work to get her new store into shape — to be her city’s most beautiful store in existence — she’s not a workaholic, she’s an artist.

Are you an artist or a workaholic or just punching the clock to get to the weekend?

Which one would you most like to be?

This post is brought to you fresh on the heels of reading Seth Godin’s wonderful Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? He talks in great detail about being and artist in your work and out in the world.

Fun, freedom, ahh. What's sustainable?

“I need to have more fun.”

“I’m not having enough fun.”

I hear these two statements a lot.

From friends, coaching clients, colleagues, all kinds of adults. I say adults because I don’t think kids talk about their fun index.

And lately I’ve been feeling a bit of a fun deficit myself. 

Last week I had a fruitful conversation with my friend and coaching colleague Stacy, in which we started deconstructing FUN.

• What is Fun?
• Why do we all want it so much?
• Why is there such a deficit?
• What if we’re actually having fun and just don’t know it?
• How do people identify their type of Fun and build more of it into their lives?
• How do you make shifts when yesterday’s fun is today’s boredom warmed over?
  

And so the Fun Experiment begins.

What Is Fun?

According to the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, fun is defined, in part, as:

noun 1 light-hearted pleasure or amusement. … 3 playfulness or good humour.
adjective … enjoyable.

For now I am personaly defining Fun as something that brings me a sense of enjoyment and gives me the feeling of wagging my tail. Usually it has a physical component. In other words, it’s not a state of mind. It’s more of a state of body.

I have a lot of fun by playing with others: skiing moguls and swimming my shoulders off with my masters team; trail running, writing with groups and giving workshops; running the golf course at dusk with my niece and nephew, going to a job with great people and making them laugh and write like pirates, helping people see how kick-ass creative they are, reading in bed, daydreaming out the window of a plane traveling over the Grand Canyon. I’ve had fun doing errands and cooking and even cleaning and purging — definitely purging. Some of it I know is fun, some of the fun moments surprise me.

And some days, I’m just not having any fun at all. That’s okay too. The plan is not to be Stepford Spouses on Xanax here.

The point is to identify what Good Fun means for each individual and each frame of life, and build on the activities that make us feel more playful, creative and tail-waggingly fun.

What If You’re Having Fun and Don’t Know It?

“I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.” — Katharine Hepburn

Part of my fun experiment is corralling what is already in existance around us. We all have full lives and most of us have created our lives with facets of things we like, we’re talented at, we even love and adore; fun includes doing these activities with people we care about. Fun can be alone time. Hobbies, arts, families, work, sports.

In other words, the ingredients of  fun are  already there.

Maybe it’s just learning how to use the parts of our lives in new ways. Or approach things differently. Or lose a few of the un-fun activities that we thought were fun and thread in a few new things. Purge, then add.

Like any success in life: It helps to have a goal and know where you’re going and better yet — know what that end-goal, in this case FUN looks like, feels like, tastes like, sounds like so that you’re not sleep walking through the good times of life.

I’m going to start by looking at the components of Fun in my life and seeing how I can build on the successful parts and enhance my life in all kinds of positive ways.

I’m also really interested in sustainable fun. Along with the peaks and valleys of fun, what are ways to have the mountainscapes that are more undulating and consistent day in and day out?

I have to give a shout out to Gretchen Rubin’s book The Happiness Project, which got me thinking about the daily life efforts and actions we take to improve our general emotional well-being. And using myself as a guinea pig which means I might actually have more fun.

So, here’s to Fun, and more of it — however you might define fun, today.

xo, t