Category: Creativity

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David Delp on Connecting with What’s Important

Focusing
The energy of the new year inspired me to attend a zealous talk given by David Delp about connecting with what’s important.

A designer by trade and an artist by heart, Delp is creative director of Designing a Balanced Life. He teaches a 10 week course of the same title at a local college and has invented the Attentionometer and The Game of Goals. (See future postings for more about the Attentionometer and information about his upcoming workshop).

“Goals don’t make us happier. What we really want is feeling immersed in something important to us,” said Delp. He referred to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book, Flow.

“Our attention is our most precious resource. Yet we give it freely to strangers who also take our time, money and energy and give little back. Learn to focus your attention and everything else will follow. Learn to lose yourself doing something you care about, and the world is yours again.”

What we are striving for is resonance. And Delp said resonance is when our hearts line up with our minds. Our breath is what gets our hearts connected to our minds. So we took a long pause and a deep breath.

Read my next posting for more of David Delp’s inspirational talk.

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A New Use for a Wine Bottle

Are the holidays putting you in the mood to cook? Want to bake fruitcakes or cookies? I ventured to make some sugar cookies from a Martha Stewart recipe today. I needed to roll out the dough and couldn’t find my rolling pin. I was about to dash out to buy one when I realized I just needed something of similar shape. What did I have in the house that was the same shape? My ah-ha moment was realizing a wine bottle wrapped in plastic would do. Add a little flour to ease the rolling and presto I was in business! Don’t you love improvising?

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More on Overcoming Procrastination and Moving Towards Completion

Continuing from yesterday’s post about moving past blocks to your productivity, here’s the rest of the suggestions Sterling (Jeremy Fansen) shared in a podcast:

3. Set up accountability. Start your own meetup or find a group to interact with. Or join a master mind group that meets regularly in person or on the phone. Don’t operate in a vacuum.

4. Remember the important thing is progress not perfection.

5. Be aware of and rephrase the voice in your head, particularly when you “I should” on yourself. Reprogram the self-talk.

If five steps seems overwhelming, try putting any one of these steps into action in order to get in motion.

I am on the email list of various noted internet marketing gurus – which is how I came upon the above podcast. This particular one invites you to visit strategiccoach.com where you can click on the strategic coach opt-in kit. (You will have to share some info such as your email address in order to receive the free kit). For more info on the Internet Business Mastery Academy visit freeaudiogift.com.

Alrighty, do I sound like a commercial? I am not benefitting in any monetary way from suggesting the above websites. I hope this information has assisted you in some positive way.

Happy Creating!

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Steps for Moving Towards Creative Completions

Here we are, two weeks away from 2011. It’s a popular time to see headlines about the new year, goals, time management, how to change your life in a nanosecond. Have you decided to handle this season or the upcoming one any differently than before?

Yesterday I heard a podcast presented by Sterling (Jeremy Fransen) of the Internet Marketing Academy that encourages you to ease up on how many “shoulds” you shower on yourself. That was among the five suggestions he had for overcoming procrastination.

The podcast was officially titled: “How to Break the Cycle of Procrastination and Finally Take Action”.

1. Focus on the starting rather than the finishing. Concentrate on the next action (one action that may take 15 or 20 minutes). Cut off all distractions and don’t answer phone or email when you’re performing this task.

2. Only spend time learning the things that apply immediately to what you need to do next. Fransen calls this a “just in time” learner.

Tomorrow I will share the rest of Fransen’s suggestions. I’ve done a lot of research on procrastination and realize constructive “moving forward” exercises can work for some. Others may find it takes thinking of what will happen if this doesn’t get done in order to even begin. What will happen if you don’t even start?