Kat Eye Studio

Archives for January 2011

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Lessons from Abroad: Join the Blogosphere

Lessons from Abroad: Join the Blogosphere

[This is the last part of a five part series. See the previous parts here: one, two, three, four.]

Wow! We’re down to the last of my five lessons from abroad, to help you find your passion and purpose. The final lesson I want to share is: Join the Blogosphere.

My blog and participation in the blogosphere has been a key part of my personal journey to discover my passion and purpose, in ways that I could have never imagined when I began it in 2008. I want to talk about the two parts of joining the blogosphere that have really helped me, and show you how they can help you also find your direction.

The first part of joining the blogosphere is writing your own personal blog. This can seem daunting for a number of reasons. You are putting yourself out there in a public way – other people can read and comment on your ideas – that can be scary. You may be worried no one will want to read it. You may be overwhelmed with the idea of having something to say or share on a regular basis. You may be confused by all of the technology options, what you think you need to know technically in order to have a blog.

There are a lot of reasons to be fearful of starting a blog – but one very good reason to do it: There is no better way to get aligned with your true passion. The only way to sustain a blog long term is to write about something that you are passionate about, this is an important truth of blogging. If you are not passionate about what you write, it will not feed your soul. You may maintain it for a while but you will eventually then lose interest, drop out.

It may take a while to find your voice and topic for your blog, you might start and stop several times in writing your blog, even start and stop several different blogs. That is entirely normal, if you read the stories of long term bloggers. Finding your voice takes experimentation. You may try on different topics randomly, and have no single direction. But in the experimentation and the seemingly random blog posts, a theme may begin to emerge. You start line of conversation that you sustain for a long period of time. When this happens, it becomes easy, quite pleasurable even, to write regularly. Guess what – you are tapped into your true self, and your passion is starting to emerge. Go with it, wherever it leads.

I started my blog when I applied for this job that brought me to Italy. I thought it would be a good way to keep family and friends back home updated on what was going on, if I got the job. After moving, I found that I wasn’t able to sustain that kind of “update” blogging – I just wasn’t that interested in writing about our daily lives. After a friend pestered me to update my blog, I decided to start posting something I was interested in – a photo every day from our European travels. I would pick a favorite and then write a few words of description along with it. With that, I struck gold. As I selected the photos and wrote about them, I started to learn more about my art form and my creative process. I started to notice and write about what creativity and photography brought me at a deeper level. I started to recognize my passion, through the writing I was doing on my blog. The passion that I now realize was already there, just waiting to be noticed.

There are as many different ideas of what blogs are or are not about as there are bloggers. You will find a whole range of types of blogs on the internet. Here’s my definition, now that I’m established and looking back, and this might be a place to start if you want to begin a blog as a tool to help you find your passion.

My blog is…
A place to explore topics that interest me
A place to share my art and what it means to me
A place to share my experiences and what the personal insights I gain from them
A public place, where anyone (even my son or my boss) might read it
A place to positively connect with other people on the internet
Written from a place of honesty and heart

My blog is not…
A personal journal of all of my unfiltered emotions
A record of events
A place to vent or talk negatively
Written for show or to meet other’s expectations

If you don’t have a blog yet, there are many free options available to try it out. You can be unlisted or anonymous or use a pseudonym if you’re worried about the “public” aspects of it. The important thing is to write honestly, consistently, and about what interests you. Keep following the trail of what you seem to want to write about – your passion lies at the end of that trail.

The second way the blogosphere helps to find your passion and purpose is through participation. The blogosphere is not a one way conversation, where you put yourself out there in a vacuum. It may start out that way, but to truly expand the experience, it should be a two way conversation. Once you are consistently writing on your blog, beginning to find your voice and style and topic, it’s good to reach out to others who may have similar interests.

There are so many blogs and websites out there, it seems overwhelming at first. When you start to narrow down your focus and interest though, you start to see that there are smaller communities within the giant internet community. You might start with a keyword search, and see what you find on your area of interest. From there, you start reading the blogs you find. These might lead you to other blogs or articles, resources you didn’t ever realize existed. Once you get brave and leave a comment on someone else’s blog, you might find that you get a comment or reply back. You start to build a community, through your interactions. You find new resources, you expand your network.

Why would you want to do that? It might seem silly, to look to expand your network or build a community if you are just trying to find your personal passion. But each interaction you have, makes you think. You further define and refine your thoughts as you read ideas and have a conversation with others in the blogosphere. The others you run into have thoughts or experiences or insights that are valuable to you as you progress on your journey. What someone else writes may completely resonate or make clear an idea you are struggling with, or vice versa.

My experience with participation in the blogosphere has been extremely positive and crucial to my discovery of passion and purpose. There have been multiple times that a comment on something I wrote on my blog came along at exactly the right time to help me understand myself in a different way. I’ve had others tell me the same of comments I’ve left them, or blog posts I’ve written. In my exploration of the virtual world, I’ve found other like-minded individuals and true friendships that cross all of the borders and boundaries that exist in the real world. As I’ve started to participate, I’ve followed trails to new people and sites and resources that have, over time, let me toward my passion and purpose.

Would I have started the blog if I didn’t move to Italy? Probably not. I didn’t “get” blogging before, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on the computer because that felt like “work.”That was before I recognized the real connections – both to my true self and to others – that joining the blogosphere can bring.

My Passion and Purpose

With all of these lessons on how to find your passion and purpose, are you still wondering what mine are?

My passion is photography as an art form and an expression of my self. I have a personal mantra that I created some time ago, through writing on my blog:

I am an artist, my medium is photography, and I have a unique vision to show the world.

This statement is continually being refined as I change and grow, but that’s my passion at the core.

My purpose right now is to help others to see that they too have a unique vision to show the world, through whatever their art or passion is. We all have creativity inside of us, but we spend too much of our time comparing and limiting ourselves, or focusing on just living in the established routine.

I’ve started down this journey of fulfilling my purpose by creating my first ever e-course: Find Your Eye: A photo course with heart and soul. It starts January 9 (that’s in two days!) and runs 6 weeks (registration is open now at wishstudio.com). The course is designed to help photographers at any level start to develop, recognize and appreciate their personal style; the unique point of view that only they can share with the world in their photography.

All this clarity came through the personal practice of the Lessons from Abroad I’ve shared with you. Pretty cool, huh?(Photo is from Venice, Italy)

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Lessons from Abroad: Put Ideas on the Table

Lessons from Abroad: Put Ideas on the Table

[This post is part four in a five part series. See the previous posts here: one, two, three.]

We’ve covered the first lessons from my experience abroad on finding your passion and purpose: Change up your schedule, Find a regular practice, and Get out of your comfort zone. This time I’m going to share a fun and easy lesson: Put Ideas on the Table.

As you begin to see the world of possibility opening up when you get out of your comfort zone, and you begin to receive all sorts of inspiration during your regular practice, you will find that you have a lot of new ideas. You need to put them someplace safe, where they won’t get trampled on. A place where they can be examined but not immediately decided or discarded. That place is “on the table.”

Let me explain what this means by telling you a story….

Early in our time in Italy, the move had definitely inspired my family to look at the world in a different way. As with any change, we were really examining our lives, both individually and as a family, and looking at what might come next. We had this opportunity, this little break from “reality” as I put it, which allowed us to dream up all kinds of crazy scenarios. The problem was, when my husband or I would bring up an idea, it was very easy for the other one of us to feel threatened and quickly point out all of the flaws – how it wouldn’t work for all sorts of reasons.

So during one of these conversations, where I had thrown out an idea and my husband was confused because it conflicted with an idea we had discussed several days earlier, I said, “I’m just putting these ideas on the table. Every so often, I want to pick one up, look at it from different angles, and then put it back on the table. We don’t have to decide right now.”

This concept, of putting ideas on the table, became a huge key for us to be able to really discuss ideas without the emotional attachments or reactions that can crush them too early or drive poor decisions. Let’s examine why…

It takes the idea from being a living piece of you, “your idea”, and makes it a thing, “the idea.” You can imagine it there as physical thing, sitting on a table, like a coffee cup in a store. You can imagine a discussion about it is the same as picking the cup up, looking at it from different angles. Then, you can just set the idea down and leave it there. No decisions or agreements have to be made from the discussion, just like nothing has to be done after you’ve looked at the cup. You’re just browsing. If the conversation starts to get emotional or personal, you can say, “Hey, ideas on the table here!” just to get the perspective back.

Not only does it reduce the emotional attachments we feel to our ideas, it also allows for several radically different and conflicting ideas to be held at the same time. Most of us probably like alignment in our lives. We have plans and like to know where we are going. When an idea that is diametrically opposed to our current direction comes up, it is easy to dismiss it without a second thought because of the disruption it would cause. But if the idea is placed on the table, it can coexist with numerous other ideas that have no relation to each other. You don’t have to think about them all at the same time or choose between them, you look at the ideas one at a time, and then put them back.

Over time, as you periodically examine the ideas, picking them up off of the table every so often, you will find that the ideas sort of magically whittle themselves down. Some of the ideas get dusty, sitting there. Some fall off the table and you never even notice, you just subconsciously discarded them. You might pick them up later, look at them, and think, “Yeah, done with that idea.” Eventually you end up with a few ideas that start to have actions formed around them. The discussion naturally transitions from evaluating the idea to acting on the idea. You may still not be fully committed to it, but you feel these ideas are worthy of more in depth investigation. Just because you choose to pursue one idea doesn’t mean the table has to be cleared off and all of the other ideas thrown away, they can stay there for the future.

This concept works with for you alone as well as with family and friends – any time a new idea comes to you. Here are some thoughts on how to use this to find your passion and purpose:

  • First, be clear that you are putting the idea “on the table.” This might mean discussing the concept of “on the table” with your partner or just writing it down in your journal that you are approaching the evaluation of the idea this way. This frees up the emotional attachment, the fear of putting the idea out there only to be crushed. If you are going to use this with other people, I recommend starting it with ideas that are not the about your core – your passion and purpose – to make sure the other person really gets it and will play along. You might need to nurture those core ideas on your personal table for a while so they don’t get crushed too early by others who aren’t playing along.
  • Once the idea is “on the table,” feel free to examine it or not as often as you like. It will be there any time you want to come back to it. If you feel yourself obsessing about it, leave it for a while. If you find you are dismissing ideas before you get a chance to get them on the table, consciously acknowledge the idea and then just leave it there.
  • Use a physical tool, like sticky notes or a journal to represent the ideas if you want to “keep” them somewhere in the real world along with on the virtual table. I have an idea notebook, where I scribble ideas as they come to me, just to put them somewhere and move them out of my mind. Sometimes, I come back to these ideas naturally, examine them and start to do something with them. Other times, I will only examine them when I flip through the notebook. But they aren’t lost, immediately dismissed to be never thought again.
  • If you find yourself starting down the path of action with an idea, either dismissing it or putting it into use, just do a quick check if that is really aligned with your true intention or if you are caught up in the “action trap” where you feel you have to decide in that moment. If your gut check says, yes, it’s time to move on this idea – then move.

The entire concept of “putting ideas on the table” has been a huge benefit for me, my family and anyone I’ve shared it with. Without this, an idea that needs time to grow and mature to be accepted can be killed too early. Or we can commit ourselves too early to ideas that don’t seem so good upon later reflection. The “table” is a safe place to keep them, examine them, and eventually sort them out – moving toward your passion and purpose all the while.

(Photo is from Dubrovnik, Croatia)

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Lessons from Abroad: Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

Lessons from Abroad: Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

[This post is part three of a five part series. You can see the first two parts on Monday and Tuesday.]

We’ve talked about how to Change up Your Schedule and Find a Regular Practice as keys to finding your passion and purpose. The next lesson from abroad is this: Get Out of Your Comfort Zone.

Certainly, moving to a new place is a big change for anyone. Moving internationally, to a different culture is even bigger, because it goes to the fundamental assumptions of everything in your daily life. How you interact with other people, how you pay the bills, even how (and where) to find the essentials you need for daily living. Add in a different language, the added complication of not even being able to communicate basic questions and ideas, and you are set back even further. I literally felt like a child, and for a while my independence was completely gone and my confidence shattered.

For some people, an international move may be a piece of cake. For me, and probably for many, it was significantly outside of my comfort zone. It seemed a big choice, a big risk in the initial decision. And it was a big stress, with the move and subsequent adjustments. Not only dealing with my own insecurities and stresses, I had my family along in this adventure – I had to worry about them too. We went through all of the phases with any big adjustment – the “what the hell did I do” phase, the honeymoon period of excitement, the frustration period of learning to do things differently, and finally acceptance. I am in a good place now, in our second year of the assignment. I have learned to love much about this beautiful country, and accept the things that I don’t.

When you have the opportunity to really shift out of your comfort zone like I have, you start to see things in a different light. In addition to really looking at the fundamental assumptions I was making in life, I have noticed where I was placing unnecessary restrictions on myself. I can now recognize the rules that I had placed on myself and my life, as well as the rules that our culture places on us. I’ve started to question those “rules” as they come up. I examine each one and ask myself, “Do I need this rule? What does it get me? What does it provide others? Do I want to keep it or throw it away?” And I recognize that for each one I throw away, others in my life might not understand or be happy about it. I have to be willing to deal with the results, but it’s important to first be able to see the rules, or you can’t ever decide to change them.

Getting out of my comfort zone with this move has also shown me that I was expecting perfection of myself, or something close to it, since I was comfortable where I was. When you get to a place you are good at something, it’s hard to go back to being a novice again, in any area of our life. It’s hard to accept the fact that you make mistakes, because you get so used to not making them. You have to learn to laugh at yourself again, enjoy the new-ness of something, delight in those first experiences. Let yourself be the beginner for a while. The only way that you can learn something new is to open yourself up to risks and move beyond the current state. You can’t expect perfection right out of the gate.

In reflecting on this experience, I can see that this move was not unlike other times in my life that I’ve gotten out of my comfort zone. Whether big or little changes, they have had similar effects. Getting out of your comfort zone does this amazing, wonderful thing – it doesn’t just shift the realm you are comfortable operating in, it grows it. That’s why difficult situations are often called “stretching” or “growing.” When you get out of your comfort zone, there is that initial discomfort, but over time, with practice, you gain new skills and confidence. You’ve added to what you can manage in your life, the landscape you can negotiate.

When you can add to your life in this way, there is this important side effect that can directly lead you to your passion and purpose: You can begin to see new possibilities. Thoughts or ideas that would never have seemed plausible before can become real. As I was walking in the park this week (part of my regular practice), I was enjoying the first fog of the season and came up with a wonderful analogy. Often, when you get out of the comfort zone of your life, it can feel like you’re in the fog. You can’t see to far ahead, only the next few steps in front of you. More and more is revealed as you move further. It can feel scary and uncertain. But once in a while in the fog, if you stop and look around, look up, you can see a glimpse of what the day is going to be like – the blue sky and sun. That’s the new possibility that you can only see as you start to look at the world in different ways, because the fog obscures your normal view. You won’t notice this little glimpse of your future, without the fog, or the shift in your comfort zone.

How can you get out of your comfort zone, and gain the benefits of this new perspective? How can this help you connect with your passion and purpose?

  • Actively seek an opportunity to move out of your comfort zone. Maybe it’s a job change, taking on a different assignment. Maybe it’s a new activity. Have you had an urge to take an art class, even though you have no previous experience? How about drama – putting yourself out there in front of others? Maybe it’s learning about an aspect of technology. Maybe it’s a change in relationships – adding, removing, changing your interactions with people. Maybe it’s travelling to a new place. Anything that you might have the thought, “Yeah, that looks interesting but I could never do it for reasons x, y, z.” Why not try? I started painting while in Italy, just because I got the urge. That activity led to me really exploring my creativity and the beauty of the world around me in a whole new way.
  • Recognize that uncomfortable feeling you get when you step out of your comfort zone. Acknowledge it, accept it, but don’t run away. A natural way to react when you feel uncomfortable is to turn around and go right back to where you were. The first step to recognize, acknowledge and accept. Then take a deep breath and move forward. The uncomfortable feeling will still be there, but know you are doing this for a reason – it’s called growth.
  • Be willing to let yourself be a novice. People who are new to things make mistakes. Their work isn’t the best. It’s really hard to go from being on the top of your game to being the newbie when you step out of your comfort zone. Instead of avoiding mistakes, give yourself permission to be bad at whatever you are doing, but keep going. Learn from the mistakes, the “failures.” Laugh at yourself as much as possible, and seek others who will help you keep this light-hearted perspective. You might find that the failures aren’t so bad after all. One of the best things that I have learned in this experience is to laugh at myself. To marvel at just how little I actually know!
  • Keep track of those little rules that pop into your head. The ones that say, “I never…” or “I should…” Write them down, really take a hard look at them. Are they real? What can you do to remove them? What would life look like if you no longer lived by this rule? Make a decision, whether or not you want to keep this rule. Maybe observe when you use it, and if it’s serving to keep you safely rooted in your comfort zone or if it will help you move in the direction you want to go.

I have recently been pondering the quote, “If you do what you’ve always done, you will get what you’ve always gotten.” I can’t really argue the truth of this statement. How do you get something different, something better, if you do the same things all of the time? You can’t. Life doesn’t work that way. The only way to get something more – whether it’s time or money or relationships or personal growth – is to do something different, take a risk, move through the fear that holds us at the status quo. Move out of your comfort zone.

(Photo is from Parco di Monza, Italy)

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Lessons from Abroad: Find a Regular Practice

Lessons from Abroad: Find a Regular Practice

[Today’s post is the second part of a five part series. The first article was published here.]

In the last post I talked about how changing up your schedule can help free up your creative energy to find your purpose and passion. Today I’m going to explore the next key element I’ve learned during my time in Italy: Find a Regular Practice.

In many personal development books I’ve read, the idea of a “daily practice” is somehow incorporated. One of the first ones I encountered was in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, where the “morning pages” are a crucial part of her process. Over time I’ve noticed almost every personal growth or spiritual philosophy incorporates and encourages some form of contemplative activity on a regular basis.

I have started and stopped different daily practices depending on the books I’m reading or the programs I’m following. Over time though, with trial and error, I have settled in to three main things that work for me as part of a regular practice: Inspirational reading, journaling and walking. These three items are complementary and work together for me to keep me balanced and centered, as well as open and ready to receive ideas. They help keep me in touch with my intuition and those messages from my authentic self.

I don’t have a regimented schedule with my practice. In fact, that’s why I say “regular practice” and not “daily practice” in the title. Here’s what my practice looks like:

Most mornings of the week I will get up and get my cup of tea (I guess we can add “tea” in as part of the practice), and then sit down to read something that I’m interested in. This is not fiction reading – it could be essays, part of a book on creativity, something on personal development. I have a number of books in progress sitting next to me, and I’ll pick up whichever one strikes me. I read a few pages and then I journal for a little while. Sometimes the journaling is on what I’ve read, sometimes it is on a problem that is on my mind, sometimes it’s just random ideas I want to capture. Once I start to write, I write until I feel done. That could be one paragraph or several pages, depending on what’s coming. Later in the morning (that morning creative time I talked about before!) I will often go for a walk or jog, with no music to distract me, in the park near my home.

I don’t do all of these every day – in fact most mornings I do 1 or 2 of the 3 – but over time I engage regularly in all of these activities.

This group of practices combine in an amazing way for me. It’s as if I get creative fuel, raw ideas, from the reading. The journaling helps me clear out the blockages in my brain and my emotions from daily life, which creates the space in myself for new ideas to be generated. With that open space and creative fuel available, the walk becomes where I receive the resulting messages and ideas. Sometimes the reading sparks an idea that I subsequently write about in my journal, which leads to making a connection or discovery about myself. Sometimes something I’ve written about in my journal or something I’ve read will sit in my mind and I’ll mull it over, and it comes out as some new idea during a walk – possibly days later. It is amazing how many creative ideas, how many realizations that have led me to my passion and purpose, have come to me during these walks. I now keep a small notebook with me at all times, just to capture the ideas.

I also find, in the process of all of this amazing idea generation and self discovery, I gain perspective on my life in general. I’m able to let go of the damaging focus on stressful situations. I am able to disconnect from the things that previously would wrap me up – preventing sleep, contributing to bad moods, generally coloring my life negatively. I can see problems with a new view.

There is nothing new in the ideas of a regular practice, or the activities that comprise my practice. As mentioned above, many personal or spiritual development programs have incorporated these elements, time and time again. They all have a plan – if you do it this way, on this frequency, you will reap these rewards. While that is probably true for the creator or author of the program, I think part of this key is that each of us has to find what works for us. If we follow a regimented plan that doesn’t really connect with us, even if we see some initial benefit we won’t sustain it long term.

One of the most important elements of defining a practice is occasionally losing the practice – falling off the wagon, stopping it, letting it dribble away. It may seem counter-intuitive, but these are actually very important occasions for really integrating and owning your own practice. It’s through the losing of it, and seeing the results of losing it in our selves – how we feel, how we interact, how it affects our lives – that we become truly committed. For me, it’s taken time – starting and stopping and restarting again – to finally come to the point that I learn to choose the practice over the other things that compete for my time.

That’s not to say that I don’t skip it sometimes for an extended period. Vacations, business trips, certain busy times come along for a week or two. But during these times I know they are coming, consciously prepare myself and make the choice to skip it, and then make the choice to come back to it when that brief time is over. I’ve found that for me, a week or so of skipping isn’t damaging. I can remain centered and grounded and can come back to it. Beyond two weeks, however, and I start to lose some essential pieces of myself, my connection to my core. I now recognize this change and am not willing to lose my practice anymore. It’s a wonderful feeling – to make the choice based on what’s best for me.

Here are my ideas about how you can apply this key concept of “Find a Regular Practice” to your life too:

  • Start experimenting with some different practices. These could be similar to mine, or they could be other practices like running, yoga, meditating, creating art, etc. You might already have something that you’ve started and stopped over time.
  • When you find one that makes you feel good – when you are done you feel refreshed, revived, centered, clear – stick with that one for a while. Note how you feel when you do it, and when you don’t do it. Experiment with different times of the day, tap into the peak of your energy cycle as discussed in Change up Your Schedule for maximum impact.
  • Start with one practice at a time, don’t go overboard trying to start two or three new things. You will probably give them all up if you do that! My practice has evolved over time to these three, but I didn’t start out with all three. I started with the journaling, eventually added the reading and latest the walking. I’ve done them all off and on but have recognized over time how they work together.
  • Don’t follow someone else’s regimented schedule. Maybe start out with suggestions, but experiment, shift, tailor your practice to yourself. We all have different needs, consider any defined practices a starting place. It’s like a buffet, you get to pick and choose what you want to incorporate into your life. There will be people who swear by their schedule, their program – because it works for them. Remember you have to find what works for you.
  • When you have let the practice go, and realize that you have let extraordinary circumstances or even everyday life run you over, be kind to yourself. Notice how you feel without it, contrast that with how you felt when you were regularly practicing. Decide if the practice is something you want in your life or not, if it’s worth it to you to make the changes to incorporate the practice as a regular part of your schedule. It’s a choice, it’s up to you. Don’t judge yourself or place unnecessary rules on yourself, be honest and true to the answers you find within.

When you do these things, when you find a regular practice that truly works for you, I can guarantee you won’t want to let it go. The connection that you gain to your true self, your center, becomes vital. The clarity that you will find, the ability to be open and listen to what your authentic self has to say, will help you to discover your passion and purpose better than any other prescribed method around.

(Photo is from Murten, Switzerland)

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Lessons from Abroad: Change up Your Schedule

I am off to Spain and Portugal this week for vacation so I decided to schedule some posts. I recently wrote a series of articles entitled “Lessons from Abroad” for a friend’s coaching newsletter and blog about lessons I’ve learned from my experience living in Italy which helped me find my passion and purpose. I never posted links to the last two articles here, so I decided to repost all of the articles this week to give them a home on my blog as well as share them with you.  Enjoy!
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Lessons from Abroad: Change up Your Schedule
Imagine… dropping out of your normal life for a couple of years, having the chance to completely immerse yourself in something new, and reevaluating your direction in life. And then, when it’s all over, come back to where you started again.
That’s where I am, what I’m doing – living and working in Italy on a two year assignment. Two years ago, my corporate management job led me to a project that would require placing people on temporary assignment abroad. I was to be the hiring manager for two positions, yet after my first business trip to Italy, I found the growing urge to apply for the job myself. Fast forward a few months of family decisions and applications and interviews, and I had the job. Months of immigration applications and paperwork and waiting and waiting later, and I had moved to Italy.
Now what? The plan: Learn to live in Italy with my family. Work. Travel. Then come home a little wiser about the world and ready to take up my career track again. I was all set. But life has a way of surprising us, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. What I’ve discovered in my time in Italy is my true passion, where my heart and purpose lies, and it’s not the management chain in a corporate job.
How did this happen? I wasn’t really looking for this, at least not at the beginning. But somewhere along the way, the changes I have made in my life while living abroad have led me to find something new. I’ve learned to follow my heart, listen to my intuition, and it’s been amazing what I have learned about myself. The move to Italy has, first and foremost, made me more aware: Aware of my surroundings, and how they affect me; Aware of the limitations I have been putting on myself; Aware of the choices I truly have, if I let myself be open to possibilities.
You might be thinking, that’s great and all, but how can translate to me? I’m not ever going to live abroad. I don’t have any plans to just pick up my family and move for two years. I can’t risk the stability of my job, my life, my family in order to seek my path in this way. But I believe that there are some key things that moving to Italy has done to increase my awareness and my ability to understand myself, and it’s not all about living in another culture. I have boiled it town to five things that anyone can do, no matter where you live or what you do for a living. In practicing these you can open up the possibilities, become more aware, and find your true path that lies somewhere deep within.
Over the coming days, I’ll go through each of the five, explaining why these have worked for me and some ideas of how you can use them too. The first key I’ll share today, starts with finding your creative time: Change up Your Schedule
My job in Italy requires an altered work schedule. I still directly work for an organization on the west coast of the United States, with a nine hour time difference from where I live. This means that I have to work both on site in Italy and on the phone back to the US on a daily basis. On one of my early business trips, before the move, I realized that it’s easy to work two full work days in this situation – head into the office in the morning, wrap up the day up with teleconferences in the afternoon, and then, in the evening get on the computer for more work at the same time everyone back in the US is working. While that was sustainable for a week long business trip, that just wouldn’t work for me and my family over the next two years.
The schedule I practice to limit the “two work day” situation is this: I work afternoons, from around noon to six, in the office. Then I head home, have dinner, hang out with my family, do my personal things, tuck my son into bed and get back online and on the phone for a couple of hours of work with my coworkers in the US. This may sound awful, and it certainly makes for short evenings, but the side effect is the most amazing thing – it has freed up my mornings.
I am a morning person, I always have been. I like to get up early, have my quiet time before getting into the day and interacting with people. The morning is also my creative time. Ideas come more readily, I have creative energy and everything just flows. For the first time in my life, on a regular basis more than the weekends, I now have this creative time every day. To do what I want. Read what I want. Journal. Explore and play creatively. Go for a walk.
When I spend my mornings this way, on my creative endeavors and activities of choice – I find that I am refreshed, balanced and ready for the rest of the day. I am able to disconnect with all of the stress that my corporate job brings. I also have found that I have all sorts of ideas that come to me in the morning, along with the time to explore them. I can search for more information, try out something new, build a plan.
The irony is, I’ve always known mornings were my creative, productive time. For years I’ve gone to into the office early in order to have this time to get my best work done. Then I would leave in the afternoon to get home early and spend time with my family, but I never felt creative in the afternoon or evening. It was more about recuperating from the day and getting to bed early so I could do it all over again. By managing my schedule this way, I contributed at a high level to my organization, but the sacrifice was that I was giving my most creative energy to the company. I didn’t have that much left over for me.
Where you spend your creative energy is important. Having some creative energy to spend is one of the keys of finding yourself. How can you find your true path if you don’t have the energy to explore ideas? If you don’t have the open time to imagine, build up and evaluate the dreams that come to you along the way? I had never thought about those things before this change in my schedule, but it makes so much sense now. It’s important to understand what your creative energy schedule is, and then look at how and where you are spending that energy. A simple change in schedule can reap huge rewards.
Now that I’m not spending my most creative time at work, you may wonder if my job performance has suffered. The answer is, really, no. Work takes a different part of my brain, and when I’m working I’m there and focused and productive. I work the same number of hours; I have the same amount of time free as before – it’s just when. I honestly don’t think that anyone at work has even noticed there is a change. The difference for me personally is huge though – I can now disconnect from work, use other parts of my brain, and am more centered. I think this ultimately makes me a better employee, and it certainly has made me a more pleasant person to be around for my family, friends and coworkers.
Here are my ideas about how you can apply this key concept of “Change up Your Schedule” to your life too:
  • Figure out your most creative, productive time of day. I think we might all instinctively know it, as I did. If you are not sure, keep some notes, check in with yourself. Try out some different times of day as “free.”
  • Then, work toward carving out some or all of that time for yourself. Can you rearrange your work schedule? Can you schedule a meeting with yourself? Get out of the office and go for a walk? Start with just a day or two a week, and work up. You don’t have to explain it to anyone else, just do it, if you can.
  • When you get that time, don’t waste it. Use it for things that build you up in some way – engage you creatively, working toward some dream or goal that you might have. That might be as simple as reading a book that sparks your interest or searching out websites that help you in some way. But use that time for you, not for anyone else. You will be surprised what blooms in the garden of time and creative energy that you create.
For me, the next challenge will be protecting this time when the assignment is over, I move back and have to adjust my work schedule again. I’m already strategizing on how to do this. It will mean changing things up from what I did before, and I will have to work through and reset expectations of those who have worked with me for years. But now that I know this important key, this secret to harnessing my creative energy, I’m not about to give it up.
(Photo is from Bologna, Italy)

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Start Close In

A new year, a new beginning. What castles do you want to reach this year? I have my own castles, dreams that float in my heart and my head. Dreams that require plans and effort. I could set resolutions, or choose a word of the year to move toward them, but this year I decided to choose a poem.

I wrote recently about my journey, and taking the step I can see in front of me. I plan to continue with that idea in 2011, and here is the poem to inspire me along the way. It is by David Whyte from his book River Flow.

START CLOSE IN
Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.
Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way of starting
the conversation.
Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people’s questions,
don’t let them
smother something
simple.
To find
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes a
private ear
listening
to another.
Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,

don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

Happy New Year! Today ends 9 Muses Musing with RESOLUTION. I hope you’ve enjoyed the party! Come by, link in, and see what others are planning for their year.

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