Category: Life

On Sunday afternoon, I decided to go for a walk after lunch. The weather had been nice and I had been for a walk for days.

I choose a path I hadn’t traversed before and as they say, it made all the difference.

First, I was greeted by a bunch of rabbits who were playing in the grass. I tiptoed to take a photo they heard me and ran away except one who looked a the camera and stayed just long enough for me to capture him in the camera.

Then, two unusual colored objects caught my attention and I made a point to climb the hill to check them out. They turned out to be broken witches’ hats.

But when I turned the corner, a tree made me stop in tracks. A mature tree, old enough to be a grandfather of other trees around it, stood proudly at the intersection perfectly balancing its foliage on two arms like an old man with grandchildren on his shoulders.

I stood still in front of it for a while, listening to its leaves rustling in the light breeze. It sounded as if it was talking to me. Often used as a metaphor for life itself, trees are most penetrating preachers (borrowing Herman Hesse’s words). Their message is of strength and endurance; renewal and growth; shelter and being grounded.

Harmen Hesse wrote an essay on trees:

I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche.

In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves.

Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree.

Often we get sick of our surroundings and want to escape secretly harboring a desire to travel to faraway places to grow and to renew. But trees stand at the same place at all their lives and are still revered.

I walked further and soon after was stopped by another one. This one had a wrinkled trunk like the neck of an old man.

A few hundred meters later another one beckoned me. Now I was on a familiar stretch, how come I had never noticed it before. It had a lump, like a hunchback but it stood proudly, unperturbed by its deformity.

“This is what happens when you take the road less traveled”, I said to myself, “you look at things with a new perspective, you notice things which you wouldn’t on a familiar path, you strike conversations with strangers.”

Kahlil Gibran wrote, ” Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky.” I think he must have been referring to this tree.

It reminded me of a poem I had read once by Joyce Kilmer:

I think that I shall never see

A poem as lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast.

A tree that looks at God all day

And lifts her leafy arms to pray

A tree that may in summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair.

Upon whose bosom snow has lain

Who intimately lives with rain

Poems are made by fools like me

But only God can make a tree.

I think the exact quote is:

The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality. 

Conan O’Brien

It took me six months and hundreds of dollars worth of courses to get this piece of clarity which I am happy to share with you for free.

An artist’s blog is her sketchbook, diary, scrapbook, studio, and gallery. It is a place to put her work out there in the universe without restraint or judgment.

Gone are the days when artists would share just the finished work while carefully hiding the messy process of creation. Today’s audience wants to know about the actual process of making art. They want to see raw work, the artist’s hands smeared with paint, her floor covered with crumpled paper.

This is what I will be sharing with you from now on.

The other clarity was about productivity.

How would I know my day has been productive?

I have finally figured out if I have something to share on the blog (whether it is a paragraph, a quote, a sketch, anything) I have been productive.

Daily dispatch is the only way to make sure that I have not wasted the day. I am accountable to my audience.

If I live by this rule, then I will be working on something that will go on the blog from the start of the day. I am free to do whatever I want to do each day. Whether I want to write an article or a story or even a poem or whether I feel like sketching, painting, or making a travel journal. Or it might just be my thoughts about a book I am reading… they all count. The rest, so-called ‘work,’ is just noise.

The above canvases are this weekend’s work; this post is today’s.

Dear Creative Souls,

Time for a heart to heart conversation.

Yesterday, some of you received my post Why I Started This Blog and it was an accident. It is a year old post and I was adding a pin to it and accidentally reposted it. But sometimes accidents are the best things that happen to us. Reading that post again reminded me of the commitment I made to myself.

In Hindu mythology, life is divided into four age-based stages. The first is called Brahmacharya, which is the first twenty-five years of one’s life which one should devote to learning. One should remain celibate during this period in order to concentrate on learning.

The second is Grihastha, the period to get married, raise a family, fulfill the duties of maintaining a home, educating one’s children, and leading a family and religion centered social life.

The third is Vanaprastha which starts when a person hands over household responsibilities to the next generation and takes an advisory role. It is considered the time to give back to the community and the universe in lieu of all that that one has taken from it.

The fourth is Sannyasa, which is marked by the renunciation of material desires and prejudices and leading a spiritual, peaceful, and simple life.

According to this philosophy, I am in the third stage of my life and I am surprised at the urge I have to give back to the universe. During my life one thing I have taken most from this universe is the knowledge. And it is what I want to give back to the universe too. The knowledge I have gained so far and the knowledge I continue to gain.

This website is my platform to be able to do that. Writing is my medium and studying creativity is my passion. I am sharing as I am learning.

I am not a ‘guru’ in any field, just a ‘forever student.’ But sometimes students are the best teachers because they can teach at a beginner level. It is very difficult for experts to bring themselves down to the level of their students because their minds have expanded to a much higher level.

Whereas, ‘student teachers‘ are at the beginning level. They have learned something recently and know extactly how to communicate that. They know where the pitfalls are and what to do when the going gets tough. Because they have just gone through that themselves. And they share their learnings with the enthusiasm of a novice. This is where I stand. A really ‘excited’ novice.

When I thought about sharing these thoughts with you this morning I was hesitating. Will I be making myself vulnerable? Shouldn’t I be establishing myself as an authority on ‘creativity’ and ‘writing’ if I am writing about these topics constantly on my blog?

Call it serendipity when today morning, I came across a video by Tony Robbins where he and Dean Graziosi talk about how the face of teaching is going to change in the next twenty-five years. That there will be more and more of ‘student-teachers’ sharing their knowledge as more people prefer to learn from them rather than an expert.

I found it to be true from my own experience. I follow a lot of blogs and listen to a number of videos where people like me, have learned a skill and share how they learned it. I want to know their process and want to figure out how can I use it to learn it myself.

The experts talk from a different level, and I feel I can’t reach their level. But a beginner talks to me in my language and give me hope that I can reach there too. She shares her mistakes and warns me against the pitfalls. I love her for her honesty. And I trust her more than the expert. Nothing against the expert but he is too far above in the sky.

Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi shared that Forbes is predicting that the knowledge industry which is currently 355-million-dollars-a-day industry and is going to be a billion-dollar-a-day industry by 2025. And the ‘student-teachers are going to be at the forefront of it because the current model of classroom learning is outdated. I have linked the video below in case you are interested in viewing it.

I wanted to share another thing. Earlier in the post, I mentioned I was adding a pin to my post Why I Started This Blog when I accidentally reposted it. There is a story behind it.

A few days ago I came up with this idea to make a visual aid to share the creativity and writing tips I have been writing about in my posts. I was becoming increasingly aware that the key messages are getting lost in lots of text. So I decided to make ‘pins’ of the ‘tips’ and share them on Pinterest. I also decided to sprinkle them in the previous posts as a ‘take-home’ message. This is what I was doing with the first pin I created of the series when Why I Started This Blog got accidentally reposted. Now I think it is not such a bad idea and perhaps I should repost some of the posts as I include pins in them.

Here is my first Unleash Your Creativity Tip #1:

Pint them to your Pinterest board and to collect them all subscribe to my email list below.

For some time I have been writing about how I quit my job and made the transition from competitive to the creative life. It might sound like; I walked to my boss’s office, handed in my resignation and stormed out never to come back. That is not true.

I didn’t quit my job on a whim and then sat at home twiddling my thumbs thinking ‘what next?’ I planned it and gave myself two years to transition from a competitive to a creative life.

The transition was not easy. While planning on my own, I wasn’t sure whether I was covering all the grounds. Imagine my surprise when I found out that there is a ‘coach’ out there who specializes in helping people ‘quit’ their jobs.

I found Blaire Palmer who runs a website A Brilliant Gamble and coaching business after I had already quit my job and established my business. But Blaire has more than twenty years of experience helping people to do just the same.

Many of my readers want to get out of their jobs to lead lives inspired by their creativity but find it too hard to break the cycle.

I decided to ask Blaire how she did it and how she advises her clients to do it. Below are her responses.

Would you please let us know about your own journey from competitive to a creative life?

I was a BBC Journalist for a decade before starting my coaching business in 2000. Having said that, as a student I’d been a volunteer for a student counseling service called Nightline. We were trained by The Samaritans in non-judgemental, non-directive questioning to access the wisdom of the other person so coaching was kind of in my blood from a young age.

But when at the age of 29 I read a newspaper article about the new profession of coaching, I realized that it was perfect for me. I got a coach (the one from the newspaper piece) and started planning my exit from the BBC.

Having trained with Coach U I grew my business to nearly seven figures before having another change of priorities and deciding to reduce the size of the business and get back to my roots – coaching and speaking rather than running a business where other people in my team got to do the work I loved while I spent hours on budgets, salary negotiations and trying to pay the bills! 

When you decided to make the transition from competitive (job) to creative (leadership coach) life, what planning you did? How long it took you to make the transition?

I decided to become a coach about a year before I actually left my job. I had done some coaching first to ensure it was the right choice for me and then began my training about 3 months later. I started working with non-paying clients first just to get some experience but quickly felt like I was adding value so I started charging.

After 6 months I had 6 clients, paying me the equivalent of half of my BBC salary, that I was working within the evenings and weekends. I’d been saving that money to build a financial runway so that I had a bit of money to live on once I left my job and then felt confident it was time to leave. I couldn’t take on more clients AND keep my full-time job.

It took another 3 months to get all the pieces in place (I tried to negotiate to go part-time or taking a sabbatical but my organization wouldn’t agree) so I handed in my notice in the August of the year and was sitting at my desk, at home, thinking ‘What now?” by the September. 

What are the main key areas to plan during the transition to lead a creative life?

The money! That is critical. It can take a year or more to get your business off the ground. And even then you’ll have bad months. Lack of cash flow kills businesses even if you’ve got a healthy pipeline and you don’t want to pressure clients to work with you before they are ready just because you need their money. So get some savings in place, cut your outgoings if you can, have a backup plan if things don’t work as quickly as you hoped. 

Test out your business model. You might know what you’d love to do instead and think that other people would be willing to pay for it. But you won’t know for sure until you try. Start your new venture as a side hustle and see if you can get customers or clients to part with their cash. You might have to tweak your idea or think again until you find the right services and products. 

Create networks. This might be a network of people who can refer business to you, a network of your ideal clients/customers, and a network of other business people who can offer support and advice. You’ll need all three! And the earlier you start the better. Their advice and feedback will be really helpful and later you can give others the benefits of your experience. 

Financial worries are the main reason that stops people from quitting their job, what advice do you give people regarding that?

Yes, you’re taking a financial risk when you quit your job. But you’re also giving yourself the chance to earn more doing something you love.

Everyone worries about money. Some worry so much that they stick with a job or lifestyle they hate just because it’s relatively secure. For me, security isn’t as important as some other things that matter to me. I’d rather live with the insecurity than do something I don’t like and that I can’t change.

With a business of your own, if it’s not working you rethink, pivot, do some more selling, change your pricing…you have options. It suits my character better because I trust that I will be able to come up with ideas and just keep plugging away until something works.

So if security is top of your list of priorities running a business probably isn’t for you. If it’s up there but other things are more powerful for you, then you’re more likely to take the plunge.

Plus, you do become more comfortable about the insecurity the more you live with it. You’ll get more risk-tolerant with time. But it doesn’t suit everyone. 

What are the pitfalls of earning a living from your creativity one should be aware of and plan for?

While you left your job because you wanted to be more creative there’s a lot about running a business that isn’t creative at all. Budgets and finance, sales and marketing, answering emails, and dealing with customer queries…You only get to spend a small proportion of your time doing the thing that makes the money. The rest is all the other stuff that keeps the show on the road.

Someone I spoke to a few days ago who has a very successful VA (Virtual Assistant) business aid 80% of her time is marketing, creating content to promote herself and her business, handling queries. Only 20% is the actual VA work. I’d say this is pretty typical. So when you imagine your day just crocheting baby booties or coaching people or teaching the violin to kids remember that’s just a small part of running a business. 

Another pitfall can be that the thing you love turns into your business which might make it less fun. Now you’re doing it because it pays the bills. You can’t just wait for your muse to strike. You have to get yourself into the right frame of mind like it or not!

What rewards you had for making the transition to a creative life?

The biggest reward for me is the freedom to make my own choices. Having run a business for 20 years I’ve changed it many times. I’ve had to adapt to changes in the market, my life circumstances, my needs…but all of that is in my power.

I don’t have to ask permission to change the copy on my website or create a new product or take a course. I don’t have to do office politics, or presenteeism or apply for a promotion. I choose my clients as much as they choose me. I don’t think I could ever give that up!

That makes sense.

The decision to quit your job and being an entrepreneur or a solopreneur is a big one and not to be taken lightly.

It is worth reading Blaire’s post signs it is time to quit your job and getting her free Escape the Rat Race Checklist to have a handy list of tasks and questions you need to consider if you make the decision to live the life you want to live.

If you found this post helpful you might want to join my email list. I publish two to three new posts every week, to help unleash your creativity. 

Top Photo by Alvaro Reyes on Unsplash

Today is a ‘complete waffle day’. A day to intentionally write meaningless, useless, off-the-cuff post just for the sake of it. If you don’t want to waste your time reading it, I understand. You can stop right now. But if you want to go on a journey to find out where it will take me, you are welcome. Keep reading.

Idea of this post came from Austin Kleon’s Book Keep Going:

“Another trick: When nothing’s fun anymore, try to make the worst thing you can. The ugliest drawing. The crummiest poem. The most obnoxious song. Making intentionally bad art is a ton of fun.”

Today is my day to write the worst post. Aimless writing, without any subject matter. Reminds me of the days when I would wake up five in the morning, open the 750Words (a website based on a writing exercise introduced by Julia Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way) site and stare at the blank screen. I was supposed to write 750 words in forty minutes before getting ready for work. Nothing would come to mind. Absolutely nothing. The dread of the blank page, new writes call it.

Then, out of complete frustration, I would type a few words, something like, I feel like sh*t… when will I have something to say… And off I would go, on and on, pouring out my frustration, filling the page with useless, meaningless writing.

Soon the blank page of 750Words became my friend. I could write anything on it and next day it would disappear. I could go back to them if I wanted and salvage if there was anything worth salvaging, usually there was none, so I didn’t bother. That was my akin to what Kurt Vonnegut wrote in a letter to a group of high school students assigning them this homework:

Write a poem and don’t show it to anybody. Tear it up into little pieces and throw them into the trash can. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow. That was the whole purpose of making art: Practicing an art no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.

From Keep Going by Austin Kleon

Vonnegut would suggest his daughter Nanette that she should make a piece of art and burn it” as a spiritual exercise. “There is something cathartic about burning your work,” writes Austin, “Artist John Baldessari, disgusted by his previous work, had it all cremated and put in a ceremonial urn.”

I need a ceremonial urn too, to keep all my old journals and notebooks, may be to be cremated with me. At the moment I am not ready to burn my old notebooks and journals. However shitty they are, they are part of me. Each page reminds me of the day I lived. Daily writing is so addictive, the day you don’t write feels like the day not lived.

Somewhere along the line I developed the habit of dating each time I put pen to paper. Now I have started a project to put all those writings – some on pieces of paper, some on computer, some on the backside of to-do lists – and compile them in chronological order. It is taking time, too much time, because it takes me back to the memory lane. Many writers can’t bear to read their old journal, I enjoy mine, laughing at absurdity of my thoughts, fears and plans. That is all I have in them, my thoughts, fears and plans.

The biggest dilemma new writers have is what to write, as I have observed at various writing workshops, particularly if given the freedom to write anything. They stare at the blank page and wonder for hours. But give them a topic and they write pages and pages. I am an exact opposite. Give me a topic and I freeze. I need to do research, analyze, evaluate, form my opinion and then figure out how I am going to structure my response. But give me the freedom to write anything and I can waffle for hours. That could be due to training on 750Words or it could be due to fact that after twenty years of writing practice I still don’t have anything to say.

I pause to check my word score. It is exactly 747 words. Three more words and I am done for today’s writing. Then I will put it the ‘ceremonial urn’ to be burned with me.

“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.” writer Robert Byrne has summed up such a complex subject in one line.

Ever since humans invented languages and started expressing their thoughts in words they have been asking questions such as – who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? Is there any higher purpose I need to fulfill?

Earning a living and raising children can’t be the purpose of life of human life. It could be the purpose of animals’ life. Humans are designed with much more intelligence, much more empathy, much more love, and care. We ought to serve a higher purpose in the universe. That much is clear. What is not clear is what is that purpose.

Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning:

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

In other words, each human being has to find meaning in his own life. No one is going to give it to them, not even the almighty god (although some religious being might beg to differ here, that is fine, they can believe in god’s calling, they still have something to contribute towards it as you will find out later in the article).

What is the difference between the meaning of life and the purpose of life? I am glad you asked because Pablo Picasso answered it about seven decades ago:

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. – Pablo Picasso

If you want to live a happy, fulfilling and worthy life you need to find the purpose of your life. Without it, your life will be rudderless and incomplete. If you buy that you have some work to do.

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for. – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

But if you don’t, no need to despair. A vast majority of people don’t indulge in philosophy and are perfectly happy chasing the pleasure and satisfaction from their daily activities – however mundane or heroic they may be. You can stop reading right now.

For those of you who believe that self-actualization is an attainable aim and that there is a higher purpose for their existence, you are at the right place. Continue reading. I have good news for you.

Your purpose is not something you don’t need to make up. It’s already there. You only have to uncover it. You can do that by first finding our what are you passionate about. Take out a pen and some paper and start answering some questions.

What do you love to do?

What comes easily to you?

Once you have figured it out you will have an idea what your passion is. Not the purpose yet, just the passion.

Because even when you find out what you love to do and what comes easily to you, it will still take work to develop talent. Most gifted musicians still have to practice. I love to write. It comes easily to me but I have been practicing for years and will continue to do so to get better. If it didn’t come easily to me, if I was suffering in order to do it, it was not my passion.

Effort and courage are not enough without purpose and direction – John F Kennedy

Staying on the topic of passion, ask yourself:

What two qualities you most enjoy expressing in the world? Mine is ‘love of learning’ and ‘can do’ attitude.

And.

What are the two ways you most enjoy expressing these qualities? Mine is by inspiring and empowering people.

Write down the answers.

If the answers these questions don’t come easily, you can take The Passion Test. Developed by Chris and Janet Attwood, it is a simple, yet an elegant process.

Another technique you can use to help you identify your passion is to conduct a joy review. Simply set aside about 30 minutes and make a list of all the times you’ve felt the greatest joy in your life.

Once you have done these exercises you will have enough material to work with. Now the fun part starts.

To find the purpose of your life, let me introduce you to a new technique I learned not so long ago. It is not something new, hot out of the oven and hence untested. Instead, it is an old Japanese technique called which had been used for ages in Japan. It is called Ikigai.

Ikigai is a Japanese concept that means “a reason for being.” The word “ikigai” is usually used to indicate the source of value in one’s life or the things that make one’s life worthwhile. The word translated to English roughly means “thing that you live for” or “the reason for which you wake up in the morning.

To learn more, and before preceding to work on your life’s purpose, I suggest you watch the following 13 minutes Ted Talk by Tim Tamashiro.

How did you like it? Did Tim make it clearer?

Now you get to use it to discover your own purpose with the use of the Ikigai model. Use the answers to the exercises above to fill in the circles.

The sweet spot in the middle is the purpose of your life.

My ikigai, the purpose of my life is ‘to inspire with my writings.’ That is why I get out of bed each morning. That is why I spend seven hours a day to write a post. That is why I am awake way past midnight getting better at the craft of writing. And I don’t mind any of it. Rather each moment I spend reading, writing, learning, and sharing makes me immensely happy.

Once you know what your life purpose is, organize all of your activities around it. Everything you do should be an expression of your purpose.

I would love to hear how you went? Please write to me and share your experience with the tools.