by leonie allan

* S t r e t c h
* Create a little beauty shrine on your desk
* Compliment someone in the lift* Make a home for laughter and love in your workplace
* B r e a t h e…Do breaths weight-training .Do reps of deep breathing to build your inner peace muscle
* Drink water
* Leave loving phone messages all over a friend’s computer
* Make yourself the designated Joy Bringer and Glitter Fairy of the floor
* Have solo & communal picnics & artist’s corners at lunch time. Make it a mini holiday.
* Know This:
You are beautiful.
You are deeply important.
You are in exactly the perfect placeon your journey this very moment.

Goddess Leonie is an artist, writer, photographer and creator of women’s circles and retreats. She creates art to celebrate the Goddess in every woman and all parts of her journey. Visit her at http://www.goddessleonie.com/ and http://goddessofleonie.etsy.com/

I recently had a delightful morning with one of my favorite artists Jennifer Murphy . We discussed art, business, inspiration and life. I posted on my blog many pictures from her whimsical studio full of her original art work and vintage-inspired goodness. You can view them here. She clearly has a love for handmade quirky toys of yesteryear. We touched on her childhood with an artist mother, attending many antique shows and accompanying her mother to art shows. She began making her own bears at the age of 11. She loves all things handmade and the quirks that make it unique.

While I was in awe at every little thing in her studio, it was when she brought out an old elephant pin cushion that was beautifully weathered and worn that I was enthralled with its history. She told me that it’s from the 1950’s- Japan. She thinks it was her grandmothers, and while she never used it, it was always on a low shelf her mother’s sewing room. As a young girl, Jennifer would pick it up and play with it… it was her first “vintage” item that she became really attached to. I loved this story. Do you know where did your love of things that are “real” (in a Velveteen Rabbit sense) began? Do you remember a particular object with a history that you were drawn to?

I talked with Jennifer further about her love of vintage. I found her answers fun and thought provoking. When asked what types of items she prefers, she said, “I’m a sucker for old craft supplies. I’m a basement digger at estate sales. I’m always fighting that to find where the stuff that’s been untouched and unsorted for years. I can’t get enough of great vintage clothing, accessories, and funky weird objects for my house.”

I also asked if she had certain items she always look for when thrifting or does she just buy what she loves? Jennifer said, “I’m always looking for that thing… I think my aesthetic is really specific, but to anyone looking at what I get excited about, I might seem all over the place. I have so many little collections, and while they’re not connected by color, medium, or decade… they all strike my fancy in some way. That said, a few of my favorite collections are: vintage lucky objects and charms, old flowers and millinery bits, fabric, odd nature items (like anything that would be in a natural history museum or science class room), pin cushions, hmmmm… old paintings and other weird “art” objects. Anything that’s a mystery. If I don’t know what it is… it’s coming home!” I love her aesthetic and her deep connection to what she loves.

by Jennifer Lee

Daniel Pink, author of the brilliant book A Whole New Mind, asserts that right-brainers will rule the future (woohoo!). Success is no longer achieved through merely crunching numbers, analyzing data and sequencing steps to reach strategized goals. What’s just as valuable, but until recently often overlooked, are abilities like seeing the big picture, telling compelling stories, synthesizing disparate elements into new concepts, empathizing with others and creating beauty and meaning.

What a relief for us musepreneurs, wouldn’t you say?!

Still, we may have a lingering sense of duty to our left brains. When it comes to traditional business planning, do you find your creative right brain getting shoved into the back seat? While valid yet heavy questions like “How much revenue should I bring in?” and “What do I need to do to break even?” hog the wheel? If you’re not careful, your overworked left brain can hijack your best intentions leaving you stalled, frustrated and without any plan at all!

If we take a clue from Pink, we get permission to let our right brains lead us in the realm of business.

You might think that business plans must look a certain way. My fellow musepreneurs, the truth is, your business plan (especially it’s for your eyes only), can look any way you want. The important thing is that you understand your goals and you get something on paper!

The Right-Brain Business Plan is an out-of-the-box approach to planning your business goals.
To begin crafting your own Right-Brain Business Plan, imagine where you see your business one or two years from now. What would bring you joy and fulfillment? What kind of impact are you making? What milestones have you achieved? Collect images that resonate with your vision and collage them. These will be important visual touchstones as you start fleshing out your Right-Brain Business Plan to include your marketing plan, financial goals, etc.

If you want a little more guidance in your planning process, check out the new Right-Brain Business Plan e-Book and Guided Visualization. If you’ve already created your own Right-Brain Business Plan, please share a link to it in the comments!

In an upcoming column we’ll explore some simple left-brain approaches to help structure your creative ideas. Like Pink says, left-brain thinking is still important. It helps us articulate the details, sequence our action steps, analyze options and the like. Yet, when we allow ourselves to lead with our right brain we are free to wildly create. We are not bound by what makes sense. And isn’t that how the most innovative ideas emerge?

Here’s to ruling the world musepreneurs!

Jennifer Lee, of Artizen Coaching, is the creator of the Right-Brain Business Plan. She blogs at Life Unfolds.

A Creative Living Companion by Jamie Ridler

In the past month, I hope you had fun noticing what you already do that’s creative. It was great to see Sunny share that she’d completed an art project and Suzie share how her choice of jewellery and clothes were mermaid-inspired and how Alex made a cheer-up CD for a friend. You can check out everyone’s shared creative acts here. And if you have more to share, I’d love to hear them. Creativity really does extend into our every day.

So, how do we make even more room for creativity in our lives? This month what I recommend is breaking some habits. Routine and order can be really important in our busy lives and creating habits of things like journaling or exercising can really support us in aligning our actions with our goals.

But habits can also stop us from experiencing our everyday. We go through our routine so sleepily that we get to work and barely remember how we got there or what our breakfast tasted like. We go on automatic pilot as we clean our home, plan our meals, get to work, balance our budget, organize our to-do list, etc. And suddenly we’ve missed our morning, our day, our life!

My invitation to you this month is to break out of some of your habitual behaviours and experience the moment. I’m not suggesting that you throw your life out of whack, fall off the exercise wagon, not buy groceries or live in dirt. What I am suggesting is that by playfully making a few simple changes to your routine, you can awaken yourself to experiencing each day and remind your brain that it can create explore new ways and try new things.

To be creative, you have to be open to life and have the capacity to connect, to experience and react in your own unique way to whatever it is you encounter, whether it’s a touching moment, fierce weather, a grumpy cashier or powerful music. And to do that, you must be awake.

Here are some playful suggestions for breaking out and waking up:

Sleep on the other side of the bed
Browse a section of the library or bookstore you’ve never been in
Brush your teeth or tie your shoes with your non-dominant hand
Change the part in your hair
Wear a colour you never wear
Listen to a different radio station
Dance while you do the dishes or load the dishwasher
Order something different
If you normally don’t, say “hello” first
Read a different section of the newspaper
Take a different route home
Wear that outfit you’ve been saving
Try a new fruit
Leave your iPod at home

The key is to awaken yourself to sensation and to remind yourself that things can change. After all, creativity makes things happen – and so can you!

Jamie is a professional life coach and leads Circe’s Circle, a weekly coaching circle supporting creative bloggers in moving their creative dreams forward.
For more information visit http://www.openthedoor.ca/ or email jamie@openthedoor.ca.