I know.  I’ve been posting ArtOMatic Interviews for weeks now (daily up to #17 so far – weeks.  Wow.).

I love these interviews.  The questions I ask and the answers I get help me to integrate new ways of seeing my art world – and that can never hurt!  I learn ways to deal with being stuck (not just in art, either.  Techniques for getting unstuck work on the big life stuff too).  I learn to see possibilities through others’ eyes, which broadens my own world.

But I thought I should drop in and post something a bit different if for nothing else than to keep my hand in writing other than direct interviews.

The artist in me loves to live in the question (like:  is what I’m doing synchronized with who I believe I am.  Which of course leads to:  Who am I today?  It’s not so much what you’re doing as who you’re being that moves you forward).  It makes me curious about what’s next, how to solve technical problems around skills (but NOT technical problems around computers.  That’s why I have Daughter and Husband – no point in duplicating memory banks).  Lately I’ve been practicing turning things inside out/negative-positive (two sides/one coin).  Following are some of the things I’ve come up with:

1.  How would your life change if you believed that when that shoe you’ve been waiting to fall does indeed fall, it would bring you grace and blessings?

2.  Do you have a life task you can devote your entire passion to?  (Which begs the question, Do you know what your life passion is?  And I’m a big fan of serial passions, so don’t get stuck on “one thing forever.”  Follow your heart because it will lead you.)

3.  Would it make a difference if you realize you don’t like the way your day is going and decided to celebrate because it can only get better?  And I mean REALLY celebrate:  time out, party hat on, candle lit, hands in the air in the victory sign!

4.  How would that presentation go if when someone says just be yourself you smile because they just helped you remember you can be any one of yourselves that you want – and you pull out the extroverted, happy speaker self that just LOVES this presentation stuff?!

5.  Can you remember a time that seemed awful beyond measure but in hind sight brought you unexpected gifts?  (Write it down and carry it with you as a reminder.  My own experience was being in a battering relationship:  when I finally left it (at 34, after 17 years:   do the math – half my life), I grew into an understanding of empowerment that led to 20 years of community-based work in social justice and which now informs my one-on-one-coaching.)

Next time you catch yourself reacting negatively, stop.  Take a breath.  Revise the cynicism or sarcasm or woe-is-me to wonder, adoration and gratitude.  See if you can feel the shift.  Watch what happens.  Make expecting grace and blessings becomes your default.

Wylde Women’s Wisdom

The task of genius, and humanity is nothing if not genius, is to keep the miracle alive, to live always in the miracle, to make the miracle more and more miraculous, to swear allegiance to nothing, but live only miraculously, think only miraculously, die miraculously.  Henry Miller

Go to the ugliest or most forlorn place you know – a drugstore parking lot, the front porch of a crack house, a toxic waste dump, or the place that symbolizes your secret shame – and build a shrine devoted to beauty, truth and love…to put in your shrine:  a silk scarf; a smooth rock on which you’ve inscribed a haiku or joke with a felt-tip pen; coconut cookies or ginger candy; pumpkin seeds and an origami crane; a green kite shaped like a dragon…a rubber ducky; a bouquet of fresh beets; a print of Van gogh’s Starry Night.  Rob Brezsny