articles excerpts & index

“Knowing your Soul Purpose can mean the difference between slogging off to a ho-hum office to do ho-hum work every day, and rising every morning with a fire in your belly, full of happiness and eager to get to work. ...

"This is how romance novelist Barbara Cartland wrote a staggering 900 (yes, that's nine hundred) books. She knew her purpose in life, and set about accomplishing it very neatly. The night before she began each new book, she'd ask her soul to get ready to deliver the next book."

Suzanne Falter Barns [left] - from her article Your Soul Purpose

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"The real power of the 80/20 Principle — the secret to using it as a tool for massive life transformation — lies in finding, focusing on, and exploiting the most important 20% of your resources in every situation in your life... learning to identify the things that matter most to you and add the most value to your life... shifting the majority of your energy and attention to those things... and disregarding everything else."

From article Live the 80/20 lifestyle, by Vic Conant

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image from book Lucid Dreams in 30 Days

“For many anxiety sufferers, the worry of the day and the battle to fall asleep is followed by disturbing and sometimes violent dreams. Many anxiety sufferers fear disturbing dreams because they feel out of control and have the mistaken idea that these events will happen in real life. However, dreams are not to be taken literally.”

From Understanding Disturbing and Violent Dreams that Create Anxiety - by Deanne Repich

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"I'm not quite ready to get started on this canvas."
"I couldn't ask such a famous artist to look at my work."
"I can't draw on muggy days."

> Some of the “common linguistic tricks we pull to help mask our budding anxiety” - from the article The way that we say things often masks the anxiety that we're feeling - by Eric Maisel, PhD

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“Among examples of such dramatic inner transformation, bordering on psychic dissolution are Leo Tolstoy [left], Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Franz Kafka, Soren Kierkegaard, Abraham Lincoln, John Stuart Mill, Isaac Newton, Gautama Buddha, St. Paul, St. Francis, Blaise Pascal...”

> from article Theory of Positive Disintegration as a Model of Personality Development For Exceptional Individuals, by Elizabeth Mika

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It was an amazing experience, creating a fictional Map. It brought me back to a childlike state of mind, where I got to make my own rules. Imaginary continents got to float next to real ones. It was so freeing!

Since then, I've started seeing and experiencing great ways to incorporate maps into creativity...

from article Exploring Creativity, On and Off the Map, by Marney Makridakis

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When we approach that blank canvas, empty stage or notebook paper in a state of curiousity, we're truly opening the door to the muse – to our "inner artist", our "higher power" and the creative flow of the universe.

In "How to think like Leonardo da Vinci", Michael Gelb tells us just how curious Leonardo was. In fact, curiousity is one of the "seven steps to genius" that Gelb walks us through in this fascinating book.

from article: Curiousity, da Vinci Style - by Linda Dessau

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''Sometimes creativity is a compulsion, not an ambition.''

Edward Norton [ew.com] - about the documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2006) - about a manic-depressive singer

> photo: with Evan Rachel Wood in "Down in the Valley"

"Negative obsessions are a true negative for everyone, but most creators -- and all would-be creators -- simply aren’t obsessed enough.

"For an artist, the absence of positive obsessions leads to long periods of blockage, repetitive work that bores the artist himself, and existential ailments of all sorts."

> from article: In Praise of Positive Obsessions - by Eric Maisel, PhD

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Gifted, Talented, Addicted - by Douglas Eby
A number of people with exceptional abilities have used drugs and alcohol as self-medication to ease the pain of high sensitivity, or as a way to enhance thinking and creativity. Sometimes they risk addiction. Beethoven reportedly drank wine about as often as he wrote music, and was an alcoholic or at least a problem-drinker.

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10 Ways to Thrive as a Creative Artist - by Linda Dessau
Connect with your “INNER ARTIST” - That part of you that's naturally exuberant, joyful, free in its pure expression of creative thought; undamaged, unhindered, unencumbered. Daily Practice: Approach your art as child's play. Start your creative work time by playing your instrument “wrong”, switching hands or in two different keys at the same time. Write a song using only words that start with the letter “d”. Make mistakes. Laugh.

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