Creativity and TEDxCalgary Talk

My friend Joyce Wycoff at Peaceful Legacies is an amazingly heart-driven, lovingly conscious woman. Yesterday, she wrote about beginning a 21 Cay Creativity Cleanse. In her post she lists 3 things she learned at at Laura Hollic's website about creativity and the 21 day challenge she is leading:

1.  Give yourself permission to fantasize, dream and imagine. Put yourself in the land of possibility about what your life could be like.
2. Honor your ideas as much as you would money that came to you unexpectedly. Write them down and celebrate them.
3. Do some action that moves you in the direction of making the idea real.

As I am working on my presentation for the TEDxCalgary event on November 18, I'm finding myself blocked, spinning wheels, crazily creative, -- going all sorts of places that enhance and detract from my creativity and my voice.

While meeting with a friend he said -- don't think about what you need to say to 'them', out there. Focus on what you need to say to you, inside.

I am filled with ideas on what to say, how to say it, what props to use -- and I keep changing my mind :) as to what to say, how to say it and what props to use.

And then, I listened to a video on building your business online and the speaker said -- to figure out what you want to say, ask yourself -- what am I most passionate about, and then, speak to that.

Ah, that's it. I am absolutely, completely passionate about awakening people to their magnificence. To opening their eyes to their beauty, their brilliance, their divine essence.

The story I have to tell is about losing my sense of wonder in who I was, and then finding myself lost on the road to hell. In finding myself there, I was given the gift of my life -- and that is what I am speaking about. How in uncovering the gift of my life, I have come to see the world through eyes of wonder. A place where every human being, even those with whom I have discord or disagreements, is a beautiful, brilliant being of light. My desire is to love the human condition, no matter how it presents itself in my life.

And I believe we can. I believe we must.

Love our human condition. Completely.

Thank you Joyce. In reading your post this morning, I have been inspired -- and in that inspiration lay the seeds of my story unfolding. In your spark of joy, I found myself opening up to what I want to share -- joy, love, and laughter. 

I want people to know -- they are not alone. That we all fall down. It isn't in the falling down that we die, it's in the never getting back up.

and we can 'get back up'. It takes, commitment. Determination. Focus and, most importantly, LOVE.

And that is the power of opening up and letting the muse flow through me.

When I 'Think', I get stuck in my head. My ego gets engaged in the process of creating, and whenever my ego is taking the lead in the creative process, what appears is formula driven, outcome centric and dull.

When I let myself sink into my heart, when I open up to the muse flowing through me, ideas form organically, thoughts cascade  into streams of light and I become the conduit, rather than 'the builder'.

I have a story to tell, and in its telling, possibility awakens for all of us to embrace the beauty, and the beast, within. In my story, the ending is just the beginning of life unfolding in all its rapturous wonder, in all its brilliant design.

We all have a story. It's not the story that makes the difference. It's what the story inspires us to let go of, let be, let become, that makes our world a radiant place.