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How to Actually Manifest Your Dream, Part 4 of 7

How to Actually Manifest Your Dream, Part 4 of 7

Blueheron
In the last post, we discussed having a daily action partner and dealing with the inner critic.  At this point, you're ready to let your creativity soar!  If you're still finding it a challenge to let go, try this exercise, and then return to Part 4.

This is it!  Find your magic creative place, plunk yourself there, and get into it!  You might find you work best at night or during the day, standing or sitting, at home alone or surrounded by lots of people.  If you're writing, instrumental music can help put you in the mood.  A study found that people exercise 25% longer when they listen to music.  I would bet the same principle works for creative work. 

This is the time for you to create and create and create.  Your inner critic is not needed here.  Everything you need to create is in you now.  

"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it/ Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."

-Goethe

How to Actually Manifest Your Dream, Part 3 of 7

How to Actually Manifest Your Dream, Part 3 of 7

Friends
Find a daily action partner.  This will be the person who you check in every day with about the plan you made in Part 2. Call them every morning, state what you will do for the day, what might get in your way, and what you will do about it.  Your action partner should be someone you can discuss your logistical issues with as well as emotional issues that may come up in response to the new level you're working on.  Let your action partner know that what you'd like from them is to listen and be supportive and to call you out when you're off-target.  Know that just taking the action to call another person who really gets what you're working toward will bring you strength. 

Each time we move up to a higher level of productivity, creativity, or integrity, the part of us that has been stuck can get scared.  You can address that part of you by actually talking to it, respecting it's concerns, and giving it a voice.  Once you've done that, "mine" what your inner critic has told you.  (Don't bother arguing with it; it's not reasonable!)  Is there anything your critic said that you can use creatively?  Sometimes our greatest treasure is the same thing that holds us back.  If your critic were giving you a gift, what would it be? 

After you've listened to and mined your critic's message, move on.  You can even set a timer for, say, five minutes, to listen to you critic.  When time's up, set it aside and begin your creative work.

"Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief."

-Marcus Tullius Ceicero

The Possibility Tree

The Possibility Tree

Treeinhand
So, you’ve got a clear vision and a CPR (a statement of the results you want from your work , what your purpose is, and the context you’d like to pursue your results in.) Now, what, Ms. Creativity Coach? If you’re at all like me and like to create big visions for yourself, you can get awfully excited and awfully overwhelmed by it all.  Questions arise, like, "Where do I start?" and "Which is the best, most effective task to perform at this moment?"  The intensity of the wonderful vision you have created for yourself can become another block to having what you want if you let it overwhelm you! (It’s easy in moments of overwhelm to lose sight of goals and get lost in distractions like over-checking email…)

So, take some time to brainstorm the steps that will bring you from where you are now to where you want to be breaks everything up into manageable chunks.  And if you are someone with a lot of different goals and a lot of different projects all in play, drawing a tree of possible courses of action can be really helpful in visualizing what steps you need to take to arrive at your aims.  Then, you can choose which "branch" you want to focus some time on, take specific actions, and see measurable results.  And whenever necessary, you can re-assess.  Perhaps you’re a violinist, and you know you want to get more work playing the violin.  One possibility branch for getting more work would involve networking with other musicians at parties or at the symphony…  Another possibility branch would involve building a website, posting examples of your work online, and attracting customers through internet searches.  Yet another possibility branch could be learning new pieces of music and auditioning in different cities.  Of course, the knowledge of your tree branches will evolve as you grow, but you will create a great picture of how to achieve your goals.  And then you can build a treehouse.

"Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars."  -Les Brown

Dressing the Part

Dressing the Part

In order to illustrate a few points, I’ll tell you a bit about me today…  When I was in high school, I dyed my hair every color of the rainbow.  Green was my favorite.  I pierced my ears, my nose, and eventually I even pierced my lip. As a filmmaker and standup comedian, my image was a powerful statement.  It certainly helped me on stage at a time when I wanted to feel assertive and commanding.  My punk aesthetic was a way to stake my claim for freedom and individuality and playfulness.   

Circusoh
Several years ago, I started a circus and took it on tour across the country.  My circus’s gypsy aesthetic of the motley tribe of wanderlusts sent me fishing through antique clothing stores to invent my ringmaster costume…  It was another avenue for creative expression that was powerful and unique in a new way. 

Aliciaindia_headshotRecently, I traveled in India for several months.  I spent time at ashrams, learning yoga, meditating, meeting new people.  I packed one pair of jeans and a few t-shirts from home.  It was with a delicious contentment that I gathered beautiful, flowing scarves and punjabi pants at each stop along my dusty journey.  I had removed my lip ring and let my hair grow, and it’s now past my shoulders.  For many years, I enjoyed playing with people’s perceptions about appearance, knowing all along that the essence which radiates from deep within is more true than what clothes I put on, what shape my body is, where wrinkles have settled in from smiling, or what color my skin is.

Alicia_headshot
And today, I enjoy a sense of confidence, creativity, and freedom that I wear along with my long hair, high heels, and a new brown jacket.  I am having a ball dressing in a commanding way, and fully inhabiting this new space.  My interactions with people feel unfamiliar.  Along with a sense of power, I also feel a sense of responsibility with the power I’m commanding, and a desire to increase my humility, my grounding, and my compassion to root myself. 

How we present ourselves is a manifestation of how we see ourselves, and a wish for how others might see us.  I encourage you to experiment with your appearance.  Step outside of your comfort zone. If you always wear suits or dresses, try putting on a crazy hat and wearing your clothes backwards to the park.  Creativity is about exploring possibility, and it’s fueled by your willingness to be in the unknown. Are you ready?

        "When one lives with concepts one never learns.  The concepts become static.  You may change them but the very transformation of one concept to another is still static, is still fixed.  But to have the sensitivity to feel, seeing that life is not a movement of two separate activities, the external and the inward, to see that it is one, to realize that the inter-relationship is this movement, is the ebb and flow of sorrow and pleasure and joy and depression, loneliness and escape, to perceive nonverbally this life as a whole, not fragmented, nor broken up, is to learn.

        -Krishnamurti

Vision and Heart

Vision and Heart

Collage
In my creativity coaching practice, I work (and play!) with artists who want to elevate their lives to a new level.  I work with people who have never picked up a guitar but really want to play, and I work with people who are long-time artists who want to make a living at their art and finally quit their day job. 

I believe there are a million ways to be creative, and that the most important thing is to give your gift to the world.  It doesn’t matter if you make money at it or not.  That’s up to you, and if it’s your dream to make a living doing your art, I can help you with that.  Hell, if it’s your dream to make a living making sculptures from discarded subway signs, I can help you with that. 

I delight in guiding people along the path they set out for themselves.  It’s one of the most fun things in the world to watch someone truly, deeply want something, dedicate themselves to it, and achieve it.  And I’m going to tell you a secret:  the final goal is never as satisfying as the process… in fact, some of the biggest pleasures are in really feeling and articulating what you want. 

That’s why, the first thing I do with my clients is to get crystal clear on what they want.  We explore what sensations, what colors, what textures, what emotions, what values, and what truths you want to express.  We create a visual representation of that vision that you hold in your heart.  And then we create concrete aims out of that vision.  Your heart and mind are keepers of your vision, and the fire in your belly is the fuel.  When everything you do emanates from your highest vision, and your actions are aligned, you can’t help but find fulfillment, spread inspiration, and achieve your aims.

A great way to hold your vision is to make a collage.  Get a bunch of magazines, cut out the images that appeal to your deepest sense of yourself, paste them together, and then post your collage in a prominent place in your home. 

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        "Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so you shall become.  Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil."

        -James Allen, As a Man Thinks