(love this diy play dough!)

Expanding, stretching, creating, fulfilling your life, utilizing your talents…living with passion, loving with all your heart, feeling completely integrated as a being…

All truly awesome forces.

And all a part of our innate nature.

Nature is actually our most powerful creative force- outside of us and even with us. Our bodies are brilliant creative machines fueled by energy and inspiration.

But if everything is so open and “create-able” why do a lot of us get stuck with soul-crushing jobs or no jobs (!), relationship problems, unfulfilled dreams, money droughts and even body “stuck-ness” as well?

(via)

Have you been itching to create something new, toy with new idea or even expand your career in ways that are unique, perhaps a bit “crazy” seeming in a great way? Are you sure of yourself yet terrified to begin? Are you treading water hoping that one day the starts will align and you will have an opening, a perfect opportunity, to express yourself?

After leading few hundred people through Julia Cameron’s amazing creative-unblocking book The Artist’s Way (and leading myself through it 9 times alone!) there are a few themes that emerge time and again. These are just a few of  the very logical and rational reasons we give ourselves to stay small, stuck & blocked from all we know we are supposed to be doing:

This is not practical. I have a real job and I’m not a teenager any more.  

This isn’t the way the world works. I just can’t “change” the way things are.  

I don’t have time for this. 

I am “not that kind of person” who just does things that are artistic. 

I’m not talented. 

I can’t stay motivated because I have too many demands on me from my real life. 

These are all another way of being very rational about fear.  The unknown is scary.

FEAR IS AWESOME & IT MEANS YOU NEED TO TAKE AN ACTION.

In his uber-classic book” The War Of Art”  Steven Pressfield writes about the fear phenomenon mixed into the glory of creative self-actualization:

“Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”

LOGIC IS ANOTHER WORD FOR LIMITATION. 

Logic is a process that relies on what you know to draw conclusions based on what you know. So, you are limited by what is known if you value your logic mind.

You might be insatiably grasping for knowledge to help you make broader “logical” decisions. Still, you are limited.

But… if you can integrate logic with the highly illogical and yet very rational creative impulse… you get Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein… the innovators, the trailblazers, the world-shapers.

Idea for the week:  make a picture or a painting or write a story about what your life would be like if you could take the lid off of your creative nature and let it flourish.  What does that do for your lifestyle?  Love life?  Money?  Home? Is it logically worth facing fear to get to the other side of a block?

Let me know what you come up with.  The willingness to even look at this subject often creates enough of a spark to move forward a bit in this direction…!

This year, I’m dedicating myself to giving you everything under the sun moon and stars of value to break free of blocks and  expand your creative life wide as well as deep. A large part of this is a conversation. So email me or leave your thoughts and feelings below!  xoxo Dana