Reflections by lensburg.chandru

Prosperity Pie: How to Relax About Money and Everything Else

SARK

ISBN 0-7432-2920-7

Amazon link

SARK (which is short for Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy) has written several highly-creative books. They are published in her handwriting—or, in someone’s handwriting—and contain drawings carttons, lists, etc. I love mind-mapping so this book appealed to me as a way to remember to color outside the lines.

Prosperity Pie, as explained in the author’s foreword, means plenty of everything, with enough to share. As with most books that guide us toward greater self-discovery, she begins by talking about our inner critics. She states that as soon as we improve in area of our lives that our inner critics have been harping on, the critics start harping on something else.

Some of her statements from this book are:

1) Whatever has happened to us has contributed to us.

2) You are enough. You have enough. You do enough.

3) You are not alone.

4) Even when we are surrounded by and with love, we must still face ourselves alone every day. How much love gets inside?

5) As humans, we need to give ourselves mental, physical, emotional and spiritual care on a daily basis.

6) There are specific ways to practice healthy self-talk, and I frequently use writing to calm and center myself.

7) Challenges help us grow in prosperity and every challenge is a teaching.
We can relax into our tension.

The chapter headings for Prosperity Pie are: self—challenges—love—work—money—time—inspiration—teachers—adventures—and, prosperity pie.

More about her and her work can be found at www.planetsark.com.

The website is as creative as her books. Enjoy!

Boat by MorBCH

The Changemaker Library has been divided into ten categories. These are core, creativity, exercise, food, health, meditation, peace of mind, personal development, spiritual direction, and stress reduction. A few of the books have been recommended for more than one category.

Creativity is the secret to being in our passion. We are in our “flow” when we are working and time seems to disappear. Joy can’t be discovered by the mind. Joy happens when our total being–thoughts, words, feelings–are all focused at the same time. Joy comes from the heart.

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly states that flow has the following components:

1.  Usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing
2.  We must be able to concentrate on what we are doing.
3.  Concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback..
4. One acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes  awareness of the worries and frustrations of everyday life.
5. Enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions.
6.  Concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over.
7.  The sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes.

Also to create harmony in whatever one does is the last task the flow theory presents. Athletes call this phenomenon being in the “zone”.

The Changemaker Library recommended these books for creativity:

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

Julia Cameron

ISBN 0-87477-694-5

Amazon link

Fingerpainting on the Moon: Writing and Creativity as a Path to Freedom

Peter Levitt

ISBN 0-609-61048-1

Amazon link

Prosperity Pie: How to Relax About Money and Everything Else

SARK

ISBN 0-7432-2920-7

Amazon link

The Vein of Gold: A Journey to Your Creative Heart (Companion to The Artist’s Way)

Julia Cameron

ISBN 0-87477-836-0

Amazon link

Tags: creativity, prosperity, relax.creative, spiritual, writing

By faith goble

“A veritable gold mine of possibilities is hidden within each of us-aptitudes, attitudes, characteristics, and traits that once may have been conscious, but for some reason slipped away or were pushed away into our unconscious. In addition, there is great potential within each of us that has never had the opportunity to see the light of day. William A. Miller

I didn’t realize that I loved writing until I began my first blog in Nov. 2004. I soon developed a daily habit of writing 10-12 hours. I rarely grew tired of the routine and/or the discipline. Many of the following writers have given me great guidance and support.

A

51 Over-Used Adverbs, Nouns, and Cliches in Writing

Author, Jody Hedlund: One Pilgrim’s Progress to Publication and Beyond…An Uphill Climb

Author’s Echo

B

Bill Ward: Genre Writer and Reviewer

A Lesson from Curious George for Bloggers

Bookends, LLC–A Literary Agency

Booking It

C

Chapter-a-Week Book Club

Countdown to Publication

110+ Resources for Creative Minds

D

E

Ebook publisher–Abbott ePublishing

How to Write an Ebook in 24 Hours

The Elegant Variation: A Literary Weblog

Eye Feathers

F

Far Seeing Fairy Tales

Fiction Bitch–world of fiction reading, writing and publishing

13 Free Things for Writers

Emotions of Setting Your Freelance Rates

Free the Princess

Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator

The Freelance Writing Jobs Network: Writing for a Living

G

The Great Sea: Thoughts and progress regarding the epic fantasy saga, “Swords of Fire”

Gutsy Writer: From Freeways  to Flip-Flogs

H

How to Set Your Copywriting Fees and Earn What You’re Worth

How to Write an E-Book in Just 14 Days

I

J

Jen’s Writing Journey

Joy on the Journey

K

Keeping the Feast by Paula Butturini

Kiersten Writes

Kill Zone: Insider Perspectives from Today’s Hottest Thriller and Mystery Writers

KT Literary: full-service literary agency

Kudsu and Kindle

L

A Life in Pages

Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules for Writing

The Long Road to Heaven

Living a Life of Writing

M

Miss Snark’s First Victim

The Mouse That Roared (publishers)

The Forgotten Muse

Musings of a Would-Be Writer

N

Nathan Bransford: Literary Agent

Neither Here nor There…

New Adventures in Fantasy Fiction

The New Author

Not a Blog

O

Oldman’s Cantankerous Point of View

Oldman’s Inspirational Thoughts

P

The Blood-Red Pencil: Sharp and pointed observations about good writing

Pimp My Novel

Prompt Romp

How Publishing Really Works

The Ups and Downs of Publishing

Q

The Art of Asking Questions

R

Rants and Ramblings: On Life as a Literary Agent

Reading Adventures

The Rejectionist

Where Romance Meets Therapy

Roses and Thorns

S

Screenplays–James Russell Publishing

The Scribbling Sea Serpent

How to self-publish–U-Publish.com

The Serenity Gate

Smashwords (an ebook publisher and distributor)

Something She Wrote

Speak Without Interruption–a writers’ community

Spellmaking: Adventures in Writing Fiction, Poetry, Stuff

To Stalk a Publisher

At the Starting Gate

Susan J. Reinhardt’s Christian Writer/Reader Connection

T

A Tale to Remember

Terri Tiffany Inspirational Writer

Thru My Eyes: Thoughts and Reflections

Times and Troubled Times of a Hungry Writer

Tobias Buckell: Science Fiction and Blogger

U

An Ulterior Motive

V

My View From My Window

W

White Platonic Dreams

The Witching Hour

With Pen in Hand

Writing Advice for the Absolute Newbie

The Written World

Written Expressions

A Writer’s Edge

A Writer’s Guide

A Writer Wannabe

The Writer Today

Writing About You

Writing Quote, January 29, 2010-”Because You’ve Got Something to Say”

X

Y

Z

Action board—use a large bulletin board to post 3×5 index cards for the 5 main categories of your life. You may wish to use general categories; such as goals, deadlines, dreams, etc. of be more specific, such as marketing, sales, etc. Using different colored 3×5 cards may help you to see the categories more easily.

Every Sunday evening or another evening of your choice, review your boards and update them for the upcoming week/month/year depending on your system. This update will go quickly and will give you a clear, concise review of where you are and where you are going. This will lead to greater confidence. Remember if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.

Begin keeping a creative basket—pretend you are 10 years old or ask a young friend and/or family member to help you. Take a large basket with a handle and put all the things in it you might enjoy using to create a new project. You may include sequins, glitter, paste, colored pens, watercolors, sketch pads. You may use these materials to play with often as way to express your creativity.

Love Jar—collect a glass or clear plastic jar. Using bright construction paper, cut into strips. On the strips of paper, write down short suggestions for yourself of ways you can feel greater love in your life. These activities will also add new confidence skills. For example:

• Clean out a cupboard or drawer today.
• Take a warm bubble bath.
• Explore a new lake or a nature retreat.
• Make a list of 15 of your strengths and put it in your wallet
• Create a bulletin board of special cards others have sent to you or go to a card store and pick out 5-10 cards that you really love.
• Make a picture wall of your favorite picture.
• Make a cassette tape of your favorite inspirational quotations.
• Trade skills with a friend to explore new ways of doing things.
• Choose a new hobby or improve on an older one.
• Have company for dinner and create an original menu.

Begin keeping a loose-leaf notebook I call my “life-book”. The 5×8 size is convenient. I keep everything I might need to know in the immediate future. I also keep an index-sized Rolodex but the lifebook goes everywhere with me. It is a great companion when you’re remodeling or moving. You may have a companion on your computer.

Play is essential everyday for everyone. Plan to play everyday. The time you allot to play will repay you in increased productivity. Be sure to set time limits for play so that you don’t use play to prolong procrastination for some work you need to do.

Carny by kevindooley

I believe that emotion is energy. So choosing to use your energy positively is a choice you can make any time of the day. Staying in your fear won’t help you in any way except to keep you from moving forward. So the first thing I ask myself when I am feeling fearful is, “What am I trying to avoid not completing?”

Procrastination is one of my favorite methods to stay in my fear and not move forward. I have had to put several action thoughts, prayers, and deeds into affect to change my old self into new and better action goals.

1.  I use the focus–refocus –then review action steps to plan my day.

2.  I always keep small legal pads at each place I use in the home and/or office. I work at home but have three work places. The variety gives me new scenery and different computers. A writer’s life is a solitary profession. Writers also have to be relentless about rewriting. I have found physically moving to another work space helps to help me find a new train of thought.

3.  After I have several ideas on several note pads, I do a “brain dump” of organizing for all the material I have notes. Sometimes I do a mind map (xmind) to see what is the direction I want to go in. I have been training my brain for 30 years how to be my servant instead of my master. I believe this is one of my life issues. I call my main lessons life lessons so that I can remember they will be with  me for life. Prior posts about what I call finding the observer mind:

How to Retrain Your Brain

We Feel What We Choose

Learning How to Reframe Our Thoughts

4. Writing down my goals or plans in a large, hardcover notebook that I have divided into 3 sections helps me to keep it simple. Then I use a red pen and circle my goals for the day. I may use a different colored marker for each day as I move through the week. But usually I have to move on to new topics.

5. For translating my goals and plans into action steps, I use clipboards. I learned clipboards from the Navy when I worked in Guantanamo Bay. I keep 5 clipboards focused on 5 different directions I may or may not be following. If something loses favor with the direction I want to go in, it is easy to discard that topic. I generally keep a clipboard free for home care and/or personal errands.

Some goal-setting links:

Goals are Dreams With a Deadline!

Living a Balanced Life

6. In the past few years, I have kept alphabetized white cover notebooks to keep all aspects of a topic I am researching. But, for now, I have so much material I no longer follow that smaller notebooks serve me better.

“When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work.  I told her I worked at the college – that my job was to teach people how to draw.  She stared at me, incredulous, and said, “You mean they forget?”               ~Howard Ikemoto

“Walk in the rain, jump in mud puddles, collect rocks, rainbows and roses, smell flowers, blow bubbles, stop along the way, build sand castles, say hello to everyone, go barefoot, go on adventures, act silly, fly kites, have a merry heart, talk with animals, sing in the shower, read children’s  books, take bubble baths, get new sneakers, hold hands and hug and kiss, dance, laugh and cry for the health of it, wonder and wander around, feel happy and precious and innocent, feel scared, feel sad, feel mad, give up worry and guilt and shame, say yes, say no, say the magic words, ask lots of questions, ride bicycles, draw and paint, see things differently, fall down and get up again, look at the sky, watch the sun rise and sun set, watch clouds and name their shapes, watch the moon and stars come out, trust the universe, stay up late, climb trees, daydream, do nothing and do it very well, learn new stuff, be excited about everything, be a clown, enjoy having a body, listen to music, find out how things work, make up new rules, tell stories, save the world, make friends with the other kids on the block, and do anything else that brings more happiness, celebration, health, love, joy, creativity, pleasure, abundance, grace, self-esteem, courage, balance, spontaneity, passion, beauty, peace, relaxation, communication and life energy to…all living beings on this planet.
-Bruce Williamson, It’s Never Too Late To Have A Happy Childhood, 1987

SDN Clubhouse Community MindSpace by cote

Visual thinking is becoming more and more dominate. I am looking forward to being able to get a tablet PC maybe even smaller than a netbook and just write and not use the keypad. I know it is coming. Thinking visually will be a lot easier than it is now.

Mindmapping (from  Wikipedia)–

“A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.”

“The elements of a given mind map are arranged intuitively according to the importance of the concepts, and are classified into groupings, branches, or areas, with the goal of representing semantic or other connections between portions of information. Mind maps may also aid recall of existing memories.”

(1)  I first read about mind-mapping at Squidoo. (My Squidoo lens are here.)

(2)  The Mind Mapping Wiki

“This wiki covers the many types of maps – mind maps, concept maps, argument maps and others.  It explains the variations and how you might choose one type if you’re learning something, another type if you’re planning a new project, and something else again if you’re doing some deep analysis.  The main map types are introduced in a summary article here that branches out to many other pages.”

(3)  Alltop has 20 blogs/sites about mind-mapping I will post about these at a later time.

(4)  The power of mind-mapping by Dan Woods is about how visual outlining provides a shareable snapshot of ideas.

(5)  Litemind (exploring ways to use our minds efficiently) has 11050 readers. One of the mind maps it has is a mind map of a book entitled: One Small Step can Change Your Life.

(6)  20+ resources to help you mindmap is on the Mindmap blog.

(7)  MindMapArt showcases the world’s finest mind maps. It has categories of arts, business, education, lifestyles, mind mappers, offbeat, sports, science and technology. Raising Self-Esteem Mind Map Mind Map Art shows the causes and cures for self-esteem.

Enjoy the following links to awaken your creativity:

Time management secret: do it tomorrow–“trick your reactive mind into doing what your rational mind wants.”

How to shut up and enjoy the silence–”Silence is becoming a luxury—the kind it’s still okay to want. Silence lets you rest and reset, ponder and pontificate. The ideas that seem just beyond your mental grasp the rest of the day float effortlessly into your mind. And the world slows down, perhaps by just a few seconds, but enough to catch your breath.”

Fast company slideshow–What’s Disney’s Inspiration? This slideshow features 8 creators with answers to what inspires them.

The powerful link between creativity and play–video from TED ideas worth spreading–”Here’s an incredible video for people struggling with the tension between being “creative” and “playing”. Tim Brown does a wonderful job explaining why “play time” is mission critical to any creative person’s workflow. Hint: We have a lot to learn from children.“

How much is your creative time worth? “One of the biggest lessons I learned from reading a bunch of stuff on entrepreneurialism was not how to make money – it was how to put a price tag to my time. Honestly, the first book I read that made me think about that was The Four Hour Work Week, but for one reason or the other, it didn’t click.”

Finally, I will list the main ideas from this link as I need to remember them daily–from David Pierce writing for LivDev–

Finding and storing the creative juices–

“My solution to this dilemma has been to create a system that takes advantage of my creative moments to make my uncreative ones less problematic. In my experience, I’m feeling uncreative far more often than I’m feeling creative. Creativity comes in furious spurts, and I’m slowly learning how to take advantage of those in order to make feigning creativity easier, using tools like these:

1.  Keep a list   2.  Don’t finish what you start   3.  Find new directions 4.  Ask around  5.  Bail