Wake Up By Looking In

"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.
Who looks outside, dreams - who looks inside, awakes."
~ Carl Jung

Mitch Ditkoff says "Find A Collaborator!"

Mitch Ditkoff sent a message to the members of Create! Innovate! Get Out of the
Cave!
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Subject: Find a collaborator!

You are very close to a breakthough. Your ideas are inspired, your commitment is
commendable, and your timing is right on. All that's missing is a collaborator.
Give up the notion that you have to do it all yourself. You don't. Since we're
all one, anyway, finding a collaborator makes perfect sense. Your collaborator
is really just another aspect of you -- the part of you that may, indeed, be
the missing piece for your project. So go ahead! Invite someone in! Let go of
the reigns of control. What would Lennon have been without McCartney? Hewlett
without Packard? Crick without Watson? Sonny without Cher? Penn without Teller?
Barnum with out Bailey?

WHO CAN YOU INVITE INTO YOUR MOST COMPELLING PROJECT THIS WEEK? What's your next
step?

Anne Lamont On Writing

Apply this to anything creative you want to do.

“I used to not be able to work if there were dishes in the sink.
Then I had a child and now I can work if there is a corpse in the sink.
Because you’re always on borrowed time. None of your favorite writers,
let alone your own personal self, sits down in the morning and just
feels great about the work ahead of them. No one sits down and feels
like a million dollars. People sit down and go into either fugue states
or into this highly aerobicized sort of up-down thing.

During the O.J. [Simpson] trial all hell broke loose ‘cause I work
downstairs in this office; some people might call it a garage. And the
TV is upstairs and so I’d sit down, get up, sit down, get up, sit down,
get up, say my little prayer. I’d pray, Please, God, help me get out of the way so I can write what wants to be written.
And then I’d sit down and I would do a little bribe and I would say,
‘If you stay here for half an hour and you write that one tiny little
moment where the uncle sees the shores of Inverness, California for the
first time in his life then we will get up and watch a little O.J.’”

Visualize Tremendous Success

Stop Picturing Failure. Instead, Visualize Tremendous Success...

How Bad Do You Want It?

To increase your motivation for any project, increase what you believe will be the reward for your effort. The bigger, brighter, more immediate and more personal you can imagine the payoff, the greater will be your desire to put forth the necessary effort to succeed.

Increase your enthusiasm by imagining inspiring, magnificent, stupendous even ASTRONOMICAL rewards.

"There is great treasure there behind our skull and this is true about all of us. This little treasure has great, great powers, and I would say we only have learnt a very, very small part of what it can do."~ Isaac Bashevis Singer

Seek Some Form Of Completion

Seek Some Form of Completion
Before Moving On...

How Many Unfinished Projects
Do You Have Lying Around?

Action directed toward a single focused outcome is always preferred to going in a hundred directions at the same time.

Completing some stage of each project before moving on helps you give all your attention to the next one.

"Delegating work works, provided the one delegating works, too."~ Robert Half

Create Highly Compelling Visions

Create Highly Compelling Visions. Clarify. Evaluate. Commit...

Do You Have A Vision For Your Life?

A vision is your picture of an activity, setting or situation which manifests your deepest values. Don't hold back. Anything's possible when there's enough commitment to your dream.

A vision is a picture of the future you intend to create. Create a perfect vision for each of your major interests, and roles.

"If, before going to bed every night, you will tear a page from the calendar, and remark, "there goes another day of my life, never to return," you will become time conscious."~ A. B. Zu Tavern

Jill Badonsky Tells How to Make the Most Out of Your Rebelliousnes

Making the Most of Your Rebelliousness: A Quick Tip

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." ~ George Bernard Shaw

"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who had read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made." ~ Oscar Wilde

Thanks, Oscar and George for those thoughts. But what happens when man AND woman rebel against themselves?
Being creative, in a sense, means rebelling because we are inventing something new rather than just accepting what's already out there.
As a creativity coach I frequently see the creative person set up time and intention to do something creative and then rebel against themselves by aimlessly surfing the Internet or watching TV passively for hours.

Here's a tip that works for me:
Take your calendar and actually write in it:
9-11 am Aimlessly Scan the Internet Googling such things as Chicken Mole', Edible Journals, How old Holly Hunter is, and the History of Safety Pins
6- 10 pm Have My Brains Sucked Out by Watching TV

and then... REBEL!!!! Instead of doing those things, spend some time, EVEN IF IT'S JUST 5 MINUTES, working on your creative passion. Rebel in the right direction. Tell yourself not to do something creative.. and DO IT ANYWAY.

Creativity Prompt:
May 6, 1851 Dr. John Gorrie patented a 'refrigerator machine'
What if you had to limit your subject for writing, art, photography, or music to your refrigerator? What refrigerator adventure would you write about? What photos would you take? What sketch would you make? What poem would you channel? What butter would you sculpt? Can you Photoshop something into your fridge.. like a landscape? space? or the family reunion?

Links for Fun
Creative Advertising from The Netherlands
The Voca People... Yikes!
Spread Random Laugher!
More Laughter

Visit The Awe-manac Blog for regular prompts