Are You Aware Of Being Mindful?

Posted on July 6, 2011 by nola

Mindfulness is the practice, the pathway if you like, of being present.

By simply pausing (take in a few deep breaths here) and then placing your attention on what you are currently doing in this very moment, will bring your mind fully to the act.

Try mindfulness when you next eat a meal or a snack.
When you eat a meal mindfully you engage all your senses in the process. Sit with your meal. Pause and smell the food and look at it for a moment and as you bring your food to your mouth, sense it. Feel each chew by simply placing your attention on the act of chewing. Eat in silence. No T.V or talking or reading a newspaper at the same time.

When you eat mindfully the taste of food is enriched and mindful eating prevents mindless snacking.
You might even want to try eating with your non dominant hand to help you slow down the process as well as create new neurological pathways.

Bring mindfulness to as many acts in your life as you can. Try it with a pencil and create a mindful drawing. Decide what it is you are going to draw. Say a still life of fruit. Pickup the pencil with your non dominant hand and move the pencil across the page, observing the still life, listening to the sound of the pencil gliding or scratching the paper. Push the pencil harder and make a darker mark, change the rhythm of the mark by moving in squiggles and purposely avoiding the straight line.

Ignore time. Enjoy the drawing moment. Expect nothing of the drawing. And when you have finished, turn your drawing away from you. Come back to it a little later – 10 mins is a good time, or longer. Go and do something else before you come back to look at your work and when you do – make sure you are in a mindful state.

________________________________________________________

Posted in Creative Problem Solving | Leave a comment

The Power of Words

Posted on April 29, 2011 by nola

Words matter. And how they are strung together matters. And how they are expressed matters.And the choice of words you express yourself with matters. And the energy you say those words is carried into the hearts and minds of others and of your own and it matters.

Is it semantics? Yes it is semantics. Thats the point.

Pause and pay attention to the words you choose to express your experiences in life. Listen to yourself when you dialogue with another. Write down the words you use to describe a situation. Really write them down. You will respond differently to those very same words when they are written, when you can see them in front of you, committed to paper with no voice to say “ah but thats not what I meant when I said that”.

Become present to how you express yourself. Become mindful of what it is you are expressing. How? Check in with yourself first. What state are you in? Frustrated, anxious, doubtful or happy, light & positive? Wherever you are you will bring it with you in your words.

Words matter. Be fearless with expressing your truth and do not hold on to it be the only right way. Accept the many right ways of others and be prepared to shift your perspective, to see the same thing anew and with that you change and you grow.

“The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in seeing with new eyes” Marcel Proust
 
OR  ”with new words” Nola
 

Watch this short video on the Power of Words.

________________________________________________________

Posted in Creative Problem Solving | Leave a comment

Make a Move on Your Creativity

Posted on January 6, 2011 by nola

The idea of having talent, or not, has come up again. Is that what drives me to create? Do I need talent first before I create? I don’t believe so. It is the compelling desire to move something from here to there, to arrange and re-arrange, whether this is in the garden, the lounge room, the canvas, or the mosaic pieces (even when they are glued I can unglue them you know!).

Each movement is an act of creation and re-creation. Each time the imagination is stimulated which means you see something in a new light, a new way, surprised that it was there all along. Ah – but you had to want to move something in the first place – talent comes with many moves.

Start moving!

________________________________________________________

Posted in Creative Problem Solving | Leave a comment

ABC Creativity

Posted on December 29, 2010 by nola

Nola was interviewed by Andrea of ABC Creativity about how the creativity, passion and commitments involved in self employment.

You can read the full interview by clicking here.

________________________________________________________

Posted in Improving Performance | 1 Comment

Breaking Into The Arts

Posted on November 8, 2010 by nola

Nola recently did an interview with the Breaking Into The Arts blog, talking about creative development and expression and the journey to accessing your inner creativity.

“There was no such thing as cubism or pointalism before somebody decided to make these marks on a canvas – in effect to break the rules of art. So what’s stopping us from just making a mark on the canvas?”

- Nola Diamantopolous

You can hear the full podcast interview by clicking here.
And you can read the full blog post on the Breaking Into The Arts blog.

________________________________________________________

Posted in Creative Problem Solving | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Coach Your Creative Spirit

Posted on September 26, 2010 by nola

We are beings of potential.

We were born with this from source. It’s there at all times and it’s there forever. We don’t have to do anything else other than to recognise the potency that resides within us and then to action it. Without action it stays within us dormant, unused, unexplored, unshared.

Many of us don’t know that it’s there or believe that we have it, yet we do.
Potential is the power of possibility.
The power of possibility is our Imagination accessed.
Are you creating with your imagination – the powerhouse of potential?
Maybe your creative spirit needs a little coaching.

Get out of your rational mind now and draw a shape that you connect with, that represents you. Draw this shape on a piece of paper. Don’t think about this too much. Intuit the shape – maybe a triangle, maybe a circle, maybe something that is organic and nameless. This shape is you.

Are you ready for the next part? Read on once you have your shape drawn down.
For the next 4 weeks carry this shape with you. In a pocket size journal of unlined pages, start documenting everything that you see, hear & feel that is that same shape. You can record it in your journal with a word, you can draw it or if you find your shape in an image in a magazine, then cut it out and paste it in your journal. You might find your shape in text form, in a poem, in a dance movement, in the sound of music. Date each entry.

As you mindfully attend to this exercise your imagination will develop and move you from the ordinary and the expected to beyond. Your imagination will awaken so quickly, so amazingly. And this little exercise alone will change the way you experience your world and the way you experience yourself.

This exercise creates a journal of perspectives. The ability to see multiple perspective, the ability to think metaphorically, is one of the gifts of our imagination.
Coach your creative spirit with this exercise.

________________________________________________________

Posted in Creative Problem Solving, Imagination Exercises, Improving Performance | Leave a comment

The Messenger

Posted on September 19, 2010 by nola

We are all sent messages.
I believe this.

I call the obvious ones coincidences. They’re obvious because we experience them as a cluster of different messages that allow us to see their connection.
But there are more. Some are so subtle that we miss them. Others create a curious feeling within us and then we get distracted and forget them.

I am acting as a messenger now to remind you to become aware of your messenger(s). They come in a variety of ways – a word from a child, an image from a doodle, a smile from a stranger, someone you keep thinking about, a book title, the curious markings on a tree, something in a magazine that you just randomly picked up, the spontaneous desire to pop into a store on the way to somewhere else.

I believe our messenger’s like to mix it up – keep us curious and alert – giving our imagination a true work out if we choose to use it.
Imagination is the key to our creativity – our ability to create our life, manifest our hearts desires, discover our souls purpose and be all that we can be.

All we have to do is exercise our imagination – we don’t even have to work out the exercise routine – our messenger’s do that for us. We just need to get on the program.

So do you want to activate your imagination, access your creativity – then listen, look & feel into the messages – they are there. I wont tell you how though – I’ll let you use your imagination instead!

________________________________________________________

Posted in Imagination Exercises, Improving Performance, Team Building | Leave a comment

I’m Perfection

Posted on September 15, 2010 by nola

What a funny thought that anyone can be imperfect when indeed they are. Our uniqueness comes from that that distinguishes us from the perfect straight line. Bend a little. You might see something differently when you do.

Imperfection is I’m perfection.

With all my quirkiness and sometimes not niceness, my goodness and my forgetfulness, my smartassness and my love for all, and there is more… creates the recipe for the life that I am living and the more I bend to see myself, accept and love myself, the more I deeply respect the perfection of every other living soul on this planet – however this is a work in progress!

At any given point in time, in this very moment, as we breath life into our body, this very given moment is a gift and cannot but be perfect.

________________________________________________________

Posted in Creative Problem Solving, Improving Performance | Tagged | Leave a comment

Uttering’s Of The Inside Voice

Posted on September 14, 2010 by nola

Utter, mutter, blah, blah, blah… the sound of the Inner Critic that talks to us uninvitedly and always in an unkind way, lacking compassion or any concept of the power of positive thinking. What is that about?

These toxic thoughts that say ‘no don’t do that, you aren’t good at doing that, you are not talented, that person doesn’t like you, ask someone else to do it because they are better at it, you cannot learn creativity, just go back to your day job” & the nicest of all Inner Critics might say, “Don’t attempt the drawing until you have been given all the instructions and make sure you follow all the instructions sequentially, that’s important because if your drawing is not good then its not your fault.”

This little voice (sometimes the Inner Critic appears as a feeling that physically creates discomfort – sweaty palms, nausea), intends to protect you from experiencing failure, and whats the best way to not experience failure? Simple. Avoid the experience altogether. And you intuitively know that avoiding experience means to avoid life.

Experience, from the Latin experientia, knowledge gained by repeated trials. No trials, no experience, no knowledge.

So get to know your IC. The IC truly wish’s the best for you and you can help them by listening to them and re interpreting their fear based language with positive language.
Yes – have a dialogue with them – and it is best in the written form. Get a pen and paper and write down what the IC is saying. Then respond – on the same piece of paper and continue the process. let the dialogue be one that seeks to understand – do not fight each other – accept the right for each others point of view even though the language of the IC maybe harsh. The IC has had to get your attention quickly – that’s been his/her strategy – hence the very strong & judgemental language.

Each time you do this you will be creating a wonderful supportive inner voice and it won’t even take very long for the conversion from an Inner Critic to an Inner Coach.

________________________________________________________

Posted in Creative Problem Solving, Improving Performance | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Archetype Creative

Posted on September 13, 2010 by nola

How curious that I have only just made the connection – that of the archetype creative being. That is, many of us have a very strong image of what a creative person looks like, what they can do, and how they feel & think.

So what are the characteristics & aspects of the archetype creative being? Here is a short list of what my students have said over the last 12 years.

A creative being is a person who is talented, expressive, can draw, is enthusiastic, extrovert, curious, unique, original, is born that way, can imagine, creates all the time, is different to the norm, doesn’t care about external opinions, is sensitive, is egocentric, goes within, struggles with their art, is pained and is not understood.

Dark and light plays in the archetype creative being – as with all archetypes.
However my point is, if we could see that we are comparing ourselves to a ‘collective concept’, then we can become aware of our “personal divergencies”. But to even do that is to be be hooked into the predetermined definitions that we have thoughtlessly accepted AND then limited our experience of our creative being, because of it.

And it looks like this, “I’m not creative because I cant draw.” Many can relate to this.

Everyone can draw. When someone says I can’t draw, what they are saying is I can’t draw well. What that means is that they cant draw realistically.
So that means that everyone can draw unrealistically!

Unrealistic drawing is a genre in art. It is bold and expressive, freed from the limitations of rules and guidelines and where things should be. Guided instead by the joy of moving a pencil across a paper and making a mark that is yours. Ah, do you have the courage and desire to continue?

And as a final point, lets say you do want to draw in a realist style – here’s a clue – go to art school and learn to ‘see’ form and contour, just like you learnt to ‘see’ letters to be able to read & write – it’s the same – its a learnable skill and just because you can read and write doesn’t automatically mean you will become an author.

However, that does not stop you from experiencing the joy of reading or writing.

________________________________________________________

Posted in Creative Problem Solving, Imagination Exercises, Improving Performance | Tagged , , | 1 Comment