Obstacles

DSCN3253It is hard to see obstacles as anything but stops. You bang you head against the wall and it will not move. One way to get past this is to change the only thing you can. Your perception of them. If you see an obstacle and think of it as a blessing instead of a curse your mind will start to go in that direction. How is it a blessing to you that you get rejected from a publisher or lose your job or get sick. Just by looking at it as a new thing that will eventually help you will make you relax more and you will begin to see the possibilities. If you were in solitary confinement in a jail cell, then you options are limited but at least you can still think.
Most of us do not have that extreme of an obstacle and we always can do something in the world to move ahead.
I always try and think of all the things I have right now and they always outnumber the obstacles. Always. If you are not scared and looking only at what bad thing happened, you are free to think of how to use it to your advantage. If you only look at the obstacle you will be totally unable to move. The obstacle will own you. Change your focus and any obstacle will be unable to stop you from moving ahead.

what you need

Every big idea starts with just a glimmer of an idea. A concept floating around in one persons head. Think of the Taj Mahal. This guy liked his wife a lot. That was all it was at first. If he was not crazy about her the Palace would not have been built.

It is mind boggling to think of where something can go. Just a glimmer of an idea. How many ideas do you have that stay in your head and no not get born. We all have a lot of ideas but we need to do the next thing. The next thing is always tell someone what your idea is. Once it is out of your head you can look at it better. Then start writing about it. Look at all the ways to do the idea. Get a little plan. A short plan. Pick the top three practical possible ways to do the the top three most outrageous ways. Do not discount outrageous. sometimes outrageous is genius. write write write to you self and read it over. Red line the parts that stand out when you reread your musings. follow the red lines. Those are the steps to do anything and everything. Start now.

the unexpected

We delight in the unexpected. Someone stops by that we havent seen in years, we get a surprise at work. We crave the unexpected. It makes life feel present and wonderful. Working in the studio for hours and hours can be taxing so every so often I will do something just fun for myself. This painting was going to just get painted over but I decided to have some fun first. I painted the zebras just for me and no one else. The funny thing is they look so great I am going to not paint over the painting now and just call it done. It reminds me of surprises and how we can make them happen even in our work. Things don’t have to be so serious that you can’t just have fun and relax. I hope you put zebras into your life somewhere today. They are the most delightful animal.

change and your mind

I think it is important to move the furniture around and paint the walls and  change your surroundings every so often. Our minds are stimulated on several levels when we see new things.

If your house looks the same as it did three years ago, your mind will not see anything in the room any more. We are made to be creative and when everything we look at every day is the same same same same, we die a little. My husband got into an argument with me about this and thinks that keeping things the same gives us comfort. That is funny from him, as he lives with a person who changes his surroundings a lot – all the time. I get sick to my stomach if I have to see what I did last year.  Grow and change and get better and better.

I have a theory about fashion being a reflection of this basic need in us to change. It is stimulating to do something new and it will affect your ability to see new possibilities. That is what it is about on a deep level. Growth. Stimulation. How important is creativity to everyone at all times. Its is the difference between being dead or alive. Thats all. Go move a couch and get new curtains. Move, change, grow, live be alive and firing on all five cylinders.

encouragement

It is surprising where we get encouragement from. We get it from strangers when they pay you a compliment. We get it from our friends who have seen us at our worst and still think we can do something hard. I don’t think people realize how much an encouraging word said just at the right time affects the outcome of our entire life.

We say to ourselves all kinds of discouraging things. If people heard out loud what I am thinking half the time they would say “How do you even get out of bed in the morning?”

It is a constant battle to stay focused on what you can do at any given moment. One discouraging thought can stop us from taking that step in the right direction and do the worst thing in the world. Waste time. We do not have tomorrow guaranteed and so we should not waste a moment being discouraged. When we are dead then we are out of options but until then we have so many if we would only look. Discouragement stops looking and freezes you in place. Frozen in time is where no options are. You move ahead with your thinking. That is what this blog is about. Being unfrozen.

image from ‘free hugs’ event by ricardomoraleida

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