20 creative challenges to make this week Shine!

I recently released a book on embracing a new perspective on creativity called Embracing The Spark: A Simple Guide for Using Creativity to Live Brilliantly.

Soon, I will be holding a couple workshops to play with some of the tools in the book so that people can start implementing some amazing and joyful changes in their lives. The first workshop will be in Ft. Myers, Florida at The Mystical Moon this Sunday, April 12th, 2015 at 1pm. The second one is being held in Naples at Goddess I Am on Saturday, May 23rd, 2015 at 1pm. Hopefully one of these days will work for those who would like to attend. I will have books with me and be doing book signing on these days as well. Feel free to print out one of the flyers from the images at the bottom of this blog.

Tonight, I was sitting here making a list of creative challenges I could give myself for the week, based on teachings of applying creativity the way it is explained in the book and other classes I am currently exploring. That's when I had the idea to share that list with all of you. Feel free to use this list to lighten up your week as well and share anything exciting that may come up for you! You know as I travel my path, anything that comes up worth sharing with you, I share, and will do so in more of the blogs to come! Happy Creating!

1. Discover something new about yourself!

2. Concoct insanely good compliments to give to people-- Because of my reluctance to receive compliments, I often withhold giving them in fear to make other people feel the way I feel when I get them. That ends now.

3. Share a dessert or meal with a friend or loved one.

4. Give a person a hug you don't normally embrace that way.

5. Imagine you are having a conversation with your heart and say something loving to it.

6. Nurture your inner child by doing something you used to do when you were younger. Color, dance, play hide and seek, a board or card game or a game of twister.

7. Journal about something going on in your life, whether it's just a word document in your computer or a specific journal you use. It can even be a voice recording in your phone. Make sure to date it. You may want to know when it was later.

8. Pick a character from a movie or a book and act like them during a conversation with a friend. Who doesn't like talking like a pirate? Hee hee.

9. Devise a sneak attack "Boo!" on someone close to you. Please do not do this to someone with a heart condition or anywhere near ice or stairs. Just keep it simple, clean fun.

10. Visit sunset and build something like a sandcastle or bury a friend in the sand.

11. Listen to a new perspective of a belief you have and try to conceive something within the perspective rather than disagree, correct, or change it.

12. Dance- listen to music that moves you and dance standing up, sitting down, or use your imagination.

13. Embark on a journey, even if it is the neighboring town or even only a couple of hours, and do one thing for each aspect of your emotional, physical and spiritual selves while on that journey. (Three actions total.)

14. Initiate a conversation with a stranger. Hint- you can start by giving one of those insanely good compliments from earlier. Double creativity points!

15. Day-dream about some form of abundance coming to you. This doesn't have to be financial, but can be abundance in any form such as chocolate!

16. Love more.

17. Set in motion a dream you have had. Remember even baby steps move forward!

18. Make your favorite meal.

19. Organize one area in your house that makes you even slightly uncomfortable. Is it just me, or do I have many of these, like books piling up the wrong way on bookshelves, or craft supplies that are overflowing onto the floor from my spur of the moment rummaging. How about the old bills I never know what to do with once they're paid-- save or shred??

20. Start by doing just one of these creative deeds or making a list of you own inspired by these!

I'm looking forward to finalizing the class preparation for this weekend among taking on as many of these other ideas as I go along. I should be able to incorporate at least one. No pressure these days, if I do one this week with the intent to be more creative for the sake of all, I've done better than last week, and that is good. 

If these are too basic for any of you, feel free to flow where your heart leads you. These are definitely specific ones I would like to work on for myself, but explore the more if you so desire! Have fun. Be playful. Life is too short to go through the motions of the same ol' day after day routine. Playing with any of these ideas will raise your vibration, no doubt and bring you a little more laughter, a few more smiles, and a lot more joy.

from my heart to yours,
jodi

Hope to see you all soon! Possibly one of the workshops! Here are the flyers below.

Is Bigger Necessarily Better When It Comes To Creativity

Have you noticed everything has grown bigger over the past few decades: bigger T.V.s, bigger ideas, bigger fitness plans, bigger bank accounts, bigger houses, etc. Better, better, more, more!

Creative ideas come in and we judge them immediately. Is it perfect? Is it great? Is it going to make me rich? Is the idea enough? Am I enough? Will it make a difference? Will it be easy? Will it be worth it? Do I have the time for that? I couldn’t do that. Could I?

Whoa! Let’s stop.

Take a deep breath-

Allow yourself to stop for a moment and breathe.

 

We are constantly viewing in social media pictures with famous, brilliant quotes that are meant to inspire us, healthy lifestyle movements whether food or fitness, technology changing into bigger and better versions of itself, or simply hearing new music on the radio. We have the world at our fingertips at any moment. This can be a very powerful tool when used properly, but what if it’s stunting our ability to be creative. What if it’s all the great and better around us that is causing us to judge the subtle and the tiny nudges of the creative source within. The good news is once you realize it may be affecting you, the awareness stops the destructive backfire of the process.

Maybe the next creative idea or action you feel inspired to initiate won’t be better than Einstein’s ideas and discoveries. Maybe it won’t be what gets you the bigger house. Maybe the idea won’t get you fame. But acting on it, no matter how small, does change your world. It will change our world.

Allow yourself to begin remembering that all ideas and acts of creativity, no matter how small, are significant. Each inspired idea comes from a place within you, connected to your heart and soul and interpreted through the imagination. These ideas are guiding you and building the bigger picture of your journey.

By listening to these gentle nudges, you open the door for them to come through more frequently and consistently. You align your energy with the creative source you are made of by acting creatively. This naturally raises your vibration, energy, and vitality, giving you the ability to share this with the world around you. By sharing this with the world around you, this is what reveals itself in the reflection of the reality you see around you.

So the next time you rip out that recipe, make it. The next time you’re driving to a restaurant for dinner and see a new one you haven’t tried before, go there. The next time you feel you need a little nap, take it. Missing the sunshine? Just step outside for five minutes, close your eyes and feel it. If it’s cloudy, just pretend it’s sunny and use the imagination to see it and/or feel it.

Your imagination is here to help you shift your frequency! It is not something you only needed as a child. Use it! It is holding hands with your inner child, missing you, staring at you from within, waiting for the next tea party or fort building. As an adult these tea parties may be coffee with a friend or building the fort may feel more like the inspiration to paint the bathroom the color of the ocean. The energies of these are all the same if we embrace them with the same excitement.

Creativity isn’t only for the known genius. It is connected to the genius within. Creativity isn’t a thing for kids. It is a tool for living life and every moment fully.

Creativity is infinite! How much bigger can you get?

The secret is it may be getting overlooked in the tiniest of places!

 

LIghting Our Path With Creativity!

 

 

Have you ever experienced that moment, when your path aligns and you feel like your purpose begins to expose itself with greater clarity? This recently happened for me again. Little bits continue to reveal themselves as I align my energy and actions with a more natural perspective of creativity I will be sharing in the re-release of my edited and expanded book, Embracing The Spark: How Creativity is Shaping Our Reality.

This blog is basically me meditating while I am writing. It is an example of how the imagination can guide us, using intuition and information connected to the higher self. The heart lights the path when the mind can cloud or dim the same light. By writing out my thoughts in this manner, a new revelation came to me in regards to my journey. Enjoy!

It’s as if you have been traveling along the journey at night, and as the sun slowly begins to rise. Even though you may not be able to see the sun, the light finds you through the trees, revealing a little more of the road ahead.

Negative beliefs quickly attempt to extinguish this new, fiery enthusiasm and hope. The thoughts of many who walk near me in this forest, and many who have walked before me, leave a lingering energetic impression on my belief systems. Knowing this, I begin to sort through them, looking to find my own compass. It is not lost. It is only covered up in this bag of unnecessary belongings.

Gratefully, I quickly find the compass, because this new path has led me to a dense and overgrown area of the woods. I can tell it has been traveled through before, but it is all completely new to me and definitely has had a lot less traffic. The brush has grown up tall and thick. I have no idea where to begin. I trust I have been led here for a reason, so I know there must be a way for me to move forward.

Determined, I bend back the first branch which blocks my path and I am face-to-face with spider. She has started to fade into sleep after an evening of feeding and diligently working on her own intricate home she now rests upon. Although I love her energy, I much prefer to stay out of her personal space. A moment of hesitation and fear creep into my thoughts again. Can I move forward through the unknown without disrupting her or will she be upset with my intrusion? She notices my eyes gazing at her, and turns her body to face me.

She is a mirror for me. Here she is, at the entrance of my path, representing one of my greatest gifts (creativity) and one of my greatest fears (spiders). There is no coincidence she has come to be my teacher. It is here I am able to recognize for the first time it was never her I was afraid of. It was of the gift itself. Spider was only holding the space for me to recognize it. As my eyes soften from this new awareness, she scuttles off to the edge of her web to let this lighter version of me pass by.

I have found the entrance. The sun continues to rise and the path before me is brought a little more into the light.

I am so grateful that tears of joy, rather than tears of pain, begin to flow from my being. They have become more common place in my life these days. I wish the same for each and every one of you. I know the reflection each one of us sees can be a beautiful.

As I discovered from spider during this writing meditation, even my gifts can be scary. When I wrote about the negative beliefs that come in, I am referring to ones attached to this. For example, I fear if I fully embrace my creativity and the beauty I see all around me, others may perceive me as living in a fantasy world. Heck, some of them already do! “How dare I talk about how great and grand reality can be when there is so much discord going on in the world right now?”

That’s just it! I know everything we can imagine can be real. Energy grows where attentions goes. By me focusing my efforts and energy in the areas that make the living experience a positive one, I am contributing more positively to the whole. As I continue to embrace my creativity, which by nature is always building, I can participate by helping build the new world. We all can participate in building the new world. All we have to do is believe in the fantasy or construct the beautiful in our own reality, through one creative action at a time. I have been watching this manifest around me in such magnificent ways. This is what I want to share with all of you.

Take today to play with your imagination. What is it whispering to you or showing you? What is your heart inspiring you to build around you? Start there. Did you know starting is an action aligned with creativity? It is possible. It is not fantasy. It is just as real as anything else. True creativity is always building, without hurt or harm to yourself or others. When we align our actions by this definition, we automatically stay out of any area that is destroying the world around us. Your imagination knows, your heart knows. All we need to do is listen.

(Any of the words highlighted in orange are actions that align with creativity. Use these if you are feeling less than creative, or blocked. They will help you begin aligning your energy with the creative.)

Love light and hugs!

     jodi lynn