Celebrate Yourself!

When was the last time that you actually stopped to reflect on yourself and your life and celebrated any part of that?

I bet it is a hard question to answer and sadly that should not be the case. We really should take time out to reflect and be grateful for who we are, what we have and to celebrate the success we have in our lives. Gratitude and success are so important to our self-worth and self-esteem and when we don’t celebrate these things it’s difficult to see or remember what is great about what we have in our lives

I love working with women to teach them about celebrating themselves and find personally that this is a fabulous exercise to do at the end of the year or just before a birthday or other personal milestone (but it really can be used at any time as we shouldn’t have to wait for a celebration to celebrate ourselves!). The focus is on creatively exploring your achievements to the point at which you complete this Creatip and then to take time to consider your future goals and creative ideas

Here’s what you will need;
• A large piece of paper suitable for both glue and drawing / painting on
• Scrap paper for notes
• Old magazines
• Coloured pencils, oil pastels, markers and other things you can draw and write with
• Paints, brushes and water container if you would like to paint
• Glue
• Scissors

Here’s what to do;
1. Take your piece of paper and place it in front of you
2. Use the old magazines and tear out a single image that you believe represents or sums up the year you have had to the point you start ‘celebrating’ yourself and then stick the image into the centre of the paper
3. Next think of all the great things you have achieved this year and all the positive and inspirational qualities you have as the unique and amazing individual you are. You might want to write them down on another piece of paper while you work them out
4. Draw your own images and symbols that are important to you around the central image to represent these qualities. You can also add words to help you remember your qualities

Once you have finished make sure you hang the picture in a place you can see it every day and celebrate the wonderful year or time you have had, reflecting on all the achievements you have made and thinking about what it is you might like to achieve in the coming year or period of time!

Take it to the next creative step;
Spend some time defining creative goals for the coming period of time and then you can add to your image by writing / drawing the ideas you come up with – look out for upcoming posts describing different goal setting methods that you can use if you are not sure where to start with this one

Alternatively start a new image inspired by your reflection and plans for the coming month, quarter, year or so on

Until next time… stay creative and celebrate yourself and I look forward to creating with you soon!

Managing Creative Blocks Creatively!

Do you ever find yourself challenged by the blank piece of paper in front of you? Not sure where to get started when asked to create something? just feeling blocked or like you just aren’t creative in any way?

When faced with a bit of a creative block recently I did what we all should do when we feel blocked in any sense of our lives and I turned to the amazing resources I have at hand for a little inspiration

The first thing that I came across is a fabulous book I have by SARK entitled “SARK’s New Creative Companion, Ways to Free Your Creative Spirit”. I randomly opened the pages and found the following message;

“What do you do with creative blocks? Build a creative castle!”

So why not consider building your own creative castle and get started by asking yourself a couple of questions;

• What are the many creative resources you have in your resource bag?
• What sort of things do you define as creative that you currently do and
• What else would you like to add to a new block to help you build your creative castle?

Here’s what you will need;

• A large piece of paper suitable for drawing / painting on
• Smaller sheets of the same type of paper as your large piece for creating your blocks
• Coloured pencils, oil pastels, markers and other things you can draw and write with
• Paints, brushes and water container if you would like to paint
• Glue
• Scissors

Here’s what to do;

1. Brainstorm and think about your creative resources
2. Drawing some blocks in different shapes and sizes and then cut them out
3. Add words to each block to describe one of your creative resources and then decorate your blocks any way you wish – you might paint them, colour them in, draw images or symbols on them as reminders of your resources or simply be creative with how you write your resources to each block
4. When you have a stack of blocks get another sheet of paper
5. Arrange your blocks onto the paper and build your own creative castle
6. You might find that there is space for new creative blocks so add some of those in so you can add new creative resources to your castle in the future. Be warned, once you get those creative ideas flowing you may find your castle needs a new room or a new wing!

Now you have an amazing reminder of all the wonderful creative things you can do or want to try! You can refer to this any time you feel blocked and not sure what creative direction to take

Until next time… happy building and I look forward to creating with you soon

The Power of the Mind – Embrace Thoughts of Love

“The universe supports the reality of your beliefs absolutely.
When you believe you must struggle for abundance,
then it will bring about situations that are conducive to struggle;
when you believe you cannot experience love without pain,
the universe will give you exactly that – love with pain;
when you believe it takes time for an illness to heal – then so it will.
There is not a single force opposing you, there is only ONE force supporting you absolutely.
It is called LOVE, the force that birthed you, that created you in its own image.
This love is so magnanimous it will give you exactly and absolutely whatever it is that your reality entails.
Change your beliefs and you change your reality.”
~ Author Unknown ~

I came across this poem while researching information on the power of positive thinking. It got me thinking about the power of the mind in relation to us being able to create things in our lives for ourselves

In the last 2 art-e-Blog posts I talked through the process of creating POSSIBLE affirmations and then described how combining creativity with affirmations makes them so much stronger and creates the potential for far greater power (and therefore, I believe, a more concrete and beautiful outcome). In each of these previous posts I highlighted the importance of positive thinking and positive intent and how we could turn our thoughts into positive affirmations – statements of intent to live our lives by

Well this post is, in many ways, an extension of those previous posts as I am being reminded time and time again of the power of the mind and the thoughts that we create. Therefore we need to think about the creative power of the creative mind and exactly how powerful that can be in terms of us manifesting what we need, want and desire in our lives. You may have heard the saying; “Be careful what you wish for” or you may have personal experience in placing a lot of energy into something you didn’t want to happen by thinking about it all the time only for it to come true – I have also heard this called a ‘self fulfilling prophecy’

If we really believe that the universe supports the reality of our beliefs absolutely (which I do) then we really do need to be aware of our thoughts and the power they hold in the reality they create

Can we change our reality by changing our beliefs? We certainly can! If we use the advice from this poem and embrace love, or if you can, self love, then the thoughts that you create and that influence your life are more supportive, nurturing, gentle, encouraging and grounded in positive energy. What a beautiful place that is to create the thoughts that you have every minute of every day

And one last bit of advice from the last line of the poem – “Change your thoughts and change your reality!”

Next time you stop to consider what you are thinking and find that your thoughts are not based in love I hope you think about this post and hold awareness of what you do think from that point forward…. and think from that place of love