Action Stations 2 – dream advice

Back to Barbara Sher‘s philosophy (think I will forget Picasso. I have digressed too far).

boo

So, if we figure out what we were put on this planet to do, what we would feel unfulfilled in life on some level if we didn’t do. Would we rush to do it?

Hell no, probably not! Our resistance rises up and stops us. It would make us anxious doing that thing we want to do, so some part of our brain says don’t do it, be safe, stay here on the sofa and eat and watch TV instead. And I do!

Do you have anything inside you, which you often ponder on and even sometimes declare you will do, but don’t even get started? For me I would like to write a book (fact or fiction) on relationships and love, or paint paintings, or create videos or an online magazine, or be the next Oprah or be a career/life coach and help people like Barbara does, or be the person that escorts VIPs onto their private jets and yachts, making brilliant conversation in 4 languages (when I’ve fully mastered them) and making them laugh along the way (most odd I know, why am I sharing my weirdest secrets here?), or write hit songs in the style of Christina Aguilera for my singing daughter Katrina Capell, or in the style of Adele for my singing daughter Lucia Capell, or be a public speaker on some subject or other (yup, got over my fear of public speaking luckily) or, or, or….. Do you see my problem? A true Scanner (jack of all trades, interested in far too many things to settle on just one).

But less about me. Have you ever brainstormed like that? Perhaps if you did it every day for a week and exercised that muscle, you might find further dreams hidden in the recesses of your wishing brain. And just maybe if you found/created a large enough group of people, they could help you achieve one of your dreams and remind you to keep going until you got there even if you had to back off for a couple of months in the middle of your journey and be mentors to each other.

And who knows how you’d feel if you achieved a dream? You might hate it. Am I afraid of success? You bet. Why would anyone pay me large sums of money to do anything which I find easy and surely anyone else could do? I would feel almost guilty. Well I plan to overcome all of that and just bloody do it! Forgive my potty mouth. It seems appropriate.  If it brings in money which I can accept, great.  If not, at least I will feel fulfilled.

Wow this was a bit open, even for me. If you don’t laugh at some of my dreams, above, I won’t laugh at yours. Apparently you should never share them with friends and family, only to strangers and preferably strangers who have already praised you and you feel comfortable sharing with. So I hereby say that you are all awesome people for being bloggers, being open enough and motivated enough to want to give you time free of charge to other bloggers by sharing your wisdom and thought with us. You are all even more wonderful for reading my blog at all and reading this far today.

Do you dare to reveal any dreams here in the comments? They don’t have to be something necessarily achievable, in case you hadn’t noticed :)!

Action Stations!

Action is the foundational key to all success – Pablo Picasso

The best time to take action

Pablo Picasso – he brings up such images that he must be an exciting fellow, right? This quote seems so obvious and boring but because it’s him, I will use it. Plus of course it means something to me today. Blogging has made me more aware of many things – which is always a good thing. One of those is my moods over time. Weeks where I am subdued (for me anyway, just call me Tigger!) and weeks where I am the most energetic person on the planet. As I prefer that last one and consider it a form of success, I have decided to ‘fake it until I make it’. By being that person of action, even though I don’t feel like it, hopefully I will find my next ‘thing’ which grabs my attention and I will be off. I read recently that to be happy, you need a project and a community. You are my community (you’re low maintenance, guys, thanks!) so now I am on to projects.

I am soon going to be taking some major ‘action’. I am gathering my holiday leave and some serious savings to go and spend 5 days at a retreat in France (from here in Sydney) with the great and wonderful Barbara Sher (please look her up). She is a no bullshit, hilarious lady who will help you find ‘success’ (achieve the essence of your dreams), even when “you have no goals, no character and are often in a lousy mood”. Barbara is an arch enemy of magic thinking, positive thinking and chanting slogans.

She says she sees people like ‘gardens’, each one a genius in their own right because we are all unique and have our own way of seeing and doing things which nobody else on the planet can do. We deserve it to the rest of the planet to spend time doing what we love so that we can develop those innate skills and share them with the world. Take action!

So I am hoping she will see through me and sort out this grab bag of a person! It is thanks to her already that I am blogging, meeting you people and realising that it’s OK to be a Scanner; a jack of all trades and master of none. She calls us Ideas Factories, I guess as we can link our different interests together to come up with ideas in the real world. Where do you find a suitable career for one of those?? Diva-ish art director at an Ad Agency? Entrepreneur or inventor? I may not necessarily find a new career but will hopefully find a group of people who will be lifelong friends (10 people only on this retreat) and hold each other accountable for following up on making things happen.

Anyway, back to the quote. Who doesn’t have things, ideas, must do’s in their heads? And how often do we take action on them? Or on what percentage of them? This is where Barbara comes in. She has also been called the Resistance Whisperer. She knows full well how you get on a high with an idea, think you’re brilliant and then crash and think you’re stupid. She talks about the third phase, which is where you get back to normal and go find all the detailed notes you hopefully made while on your high and pick them up again. She says it’s a ‘sin’ not to share your gifts and take action on them. Do what you love, even if only for 5 minutes a day. Isolation is the dream killer so have someone else hold you accountable to do what you love.

To be continued…..

 

Criticise at your peril

Don’t ever run out in the road again!

This little post is a reblog in a way of someone else’s words. Or perhaps it’s just a very long quote from a Master!

Yesterday I watched a Barbara Sher video on YouTube where she says to be very careful of giving criticism. “One piece of criticism is not overcome by 20 forms of praise. First of all you might not know what you are talking about and secondly even if later down the track it turns out that you are right, they won’t remember what you said. They will remember the hurt.” Wise words indeed from one of my favourite people (more on her later, but I am spending over two months pay soon to go and meet her!!).

The bit that spoke loudest is that ‘maybe you won’t know what you are talking about’. There have certainly been times that I have gotten the wrong end of the stick and have maybe put in my two cents worth to an organisation and then been politely responded to in way which showed I had it all wrong. Ouch! but no biggie – I can do failure and sorry really well. A heartfelt apology and we are all on our way. I don’t hang on to my failures too long – too scatty to remember them, luckily. And of course sometimes ‘you have to learn to accept the apology you never got’. I like that one too. Got a few of those under my belt, sadly.

What about the times when you don’t criticise or give feedback, don’t speak up for yourself? Is it because you know you are speaking to someone unable to hear you or because you fear the venom that will pour out of you once you let loose? Nobody wants venom inside. That leads to cancer, right? So should you speak?

And again, if that venom is somehow misdirected, you will only end up feeling bad, especially if you hurt the other person and have any kind of compassion in you. Time to consider what you say before you open up. In some cases I choose not to ‘stand up for’ myself, no matter how much I am invited to. And in others I speak where clearly it is not wanted. But that is tomorrow’s post….

How to know the difference?

This quote I just found on Pinterest sure helps!

 

Connecting the dots

In the past year I have learned so much – about writing, blogging, social media, about people and about myself. And it couldn’t have been learned in a week, even if I read and wrote 24 hours a day, clocking up the same amount of hours as over the past year. It doesn’t work like that.

Sometimes you need to see a snapshot over time and I feel I am now beginning to connect the dots. What I have learned is that I am not alone in my ups and downs. I experience great highs and lows and unless the entire blogging world of writers are all bipolar, then nor am I! (Actually, don’t answer that). I read and get to experience wonderful highs in others’ posts, words of joy, wisdom, encouragement, faith and now I look on them not with skepticism, knowing that it will crash back at some point, but with love and connection. I read about people’s lows also, interpreting what’s between the lines and only guessing at the depth of pain contained therein.

But my aha moment today is seeing the ebb and flow of it all. Our inner worlds simply can’t remain the same; it’s not possible. I want to get out there and hug every blogger, whether they are at their peak or wondering how they let the joy slip away without noticing and wondering what on earth to write about if they felt their blog should be all joy and roses.

Here is my hug people, whether the sun is shining, your world is simple and the decks are cleared, ready for the fun times ahead to be enjoyed or whether you are wondering why you are bogged down and nothing seems to interest you these days. I truly believe we are ultimately all the same and there is nothing wrong with that. Remember to connect your own dots and see the picture you are creating.

need a hug

 

 

Do you believe yourself?

Believe yourself

This isn’t a typing error. There should be no ‘in’ after believe in that sentence. We surely all believe in ourselves to some extent but do we believe ourselves and why does it matter? 

When I was a kid my siblings liked to stir me up by pretending they didn’t believe me when I told them something. I would get all upset about it and promise and swear on my Tiny Tears, in all earnestness that it was true.

It’s all too easy unfortunately to be mean to a child as they take things so seriously and believe in justice, right or wrong, black and white. It takes a while for them to realise that others sometimes like to be mean for the fun of it. It still eludes me today and I don’t enjoy practical jokes that can cause even a nanosecond’s discomfort to someone else.  Perhaps it’s because they have the tools to deal with that kind of thing, they assume everyone else does and that it won’t do any harm. Go pick on someone your own size!

Anyway it’s taken me a lifetime to realise that it doesn’t matter if others believe you as long as you believe yourself. If they say that red is green and you are an honest person yourself, not understanding why someone would lie, you might start to question yourself and look for proof that red is in fact green. What a waste of energy, better spent questioning why someone else would lie or try to stir you up. Better yet, accept that people are different, their journey is theirs and let it go. It doesn’t have to be part of yours. What they believe or what they tell you they believe is their business. Nothing to do with you. Have faith to believe what you believe until such time as you no longer do.  No one can take your beliefs away unless you let them.

This blog is for all the sensitive people out there on a journey to lose that sensitivity, see the rest of the world for what it is and accept that people do things which are incomprehensible to you. All we can do is get out of their way, not try to control or even change anyone else and work on our own filters, our own minds and our own stories. Most of all we need to believe ourselves. A lifetime of genes, experiences and decisions has brought us to where each of us is now, doing our best with what we have.  Further observation of life will take us onward, hopefully to a place of peace and understanding. All we ultimately have is our thoughts. Guard and protect them well.

The Quandary and the Shoe

Don’t type

Bad things happen to good people all the time, right? There is no rhyme nor reason and the best thing the ‘good’ person can do is not react, not take it on board with self blame and with any luck learn to let it go and become stronger in the process. Bad things don’t happen to you all the time, and the person doing the bad thing has to live with those kinds of outcomes day after day until they stop doing it and the lesson is learned. Karma.

However this ignores one tiny problem.

Eternal Newbies

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there – L.P. Harley

So what? I ask myself, things move on and what’s gone is gone, irrelevant isn’t it?

However it is relevant because we learn from past experiences, hoping that this ‘knowledge‘ will serve us well in the future i.e. the here and now. Our brains get wired in this way. Unfortunately many things we’ve learned in the past just would not apply today. I am not even talking about caveman times. The changes in our own lifetimes are astounding. What worked for us 10 years ago or even last year may not get the same results today. And many careers are having to change because of it. I’ve heard that what Uni students learn in first year computer studies, is probably outdated by the time the course ends. It really helps nowadays to learn fast and think on your feet!

Candy to a Blogger

No one would remember the good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions. He had money as well – Margaret Thatcher

This is the second time I’ve used a Margaret Thatcher (R.I.P) quote and again I realise I have to disagree with it to a point. See Twice the Battle. They say that any publicity is good publicity or that the only thing worse than people saying bad stuff about you is people not taking about you at all. At least she’s still being remembered and perhaps so will we bloggers be remembered in some way. 

Open mouth long enough to change feet

Keeping your mouth shut. Quite often for some of us we only open our mouths long enough to change feet. Of course our mouth only opens when our brain tells it to.  And the brain has different states. Present, calm and focused, on autopilot or ‘off with the fairies’. Then you have to factor in mood, sensitivity and excitability and you never know what your mouth will come out with when it opens.

In the last week I came across a hideous situation where

The Lazy Creative

I found this on Pinterest this morning and I wanted to comment on it. It seems so unusual to call someone organised ‘lazy’.