You may not be surprised to know that I kept at it — after all, with that kind of response, why wouldn’t I?

And yet now I realize that’s actually a very good question. In fact, after reading Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset, when I look back on my teen years I wonder what did keep me going in dance.

See, as Dweck discovered in her research, it turns out that praising kids (or adults!) for innate ability — talent, intelligence, whatever — can lead them to believe that their ability is only innate, and that no amount of effort will change that. With this kind of belief system — what Dweck calls the fixed mindset — a person is unlikely to push themselves to try anything that might fail at, because that would prove to the world that their so-called talent/intelligence/ability was fraudulent all along.

Praise for effort, on the other hand, leads people to want to work harder, to want to take risks, to delight in the process of learning, rather than fearing exposure that they don’t already know it all.

We may not even realize we’re doing it, but those of us who were praised for how smart or talented we were often end up paralyzed by the very praise that was intended to help push us forward.

That certainly happened to me in a big way with art as an adult (more on that later). What I’m interested in here, though, is why I didn’t get paralyzed by praise for my “innate dancing ability” when I was a teen.

I wanted desperately to believe in my innate talent — after all, how validating is that, to be told you’re special?! Yet I knew I wasn’t a “genius,” because I couldn’t make my body do everything I wanted it to right out of the gate. Some things came rather quickly, but a lot of things I had to work at, and work at, and work at, ad nauseum.

Back in the most intense period of my dancing life, I remember watching a spot on Evening Magazine, a local Bay Area TV show, that on this particular night featured a young boy who was dancing in a piece (perhaps The Nutcracker?) with the San Francisco Ballet. The then-Artistic Director, Michael Smuin, asked the boy — who couldn’t have been more than nine or ten, and had only just started dancing — if he thought he could jump straight up in the air, spin around two times, then land cleanly in fifth position. This fancy feat is known as a double tours en l’air, and is something dancers struggle for years to do well.

“I don’t know,” shrugged the boy, “I’ll try.”

He nailed it on the first try.

The same thing happened with every other ballet move Smuin asked the boy to try. It was as if he’d been dancing for more years than he’d been alive.

“Why is he so good?” the TV reporter asked Smuin.

Smuin was beside himself. He couldn’t believe the kid was real. “Why is he so good?” he repeated back, eyes glazed with excitement, “Because he’s a fucking genius, that’s why!” (Actually, they bleeped out the “fucking,” this being broadcast television, but it was obvious what he’d said.)

That TV spot cut me to the core. I knew I would never be as good as that kid, and it devastated me to accept this truth.

Somehow it didn’t occur to me that every other dancer in the San Francisco Ballet — and probably 99.9999999% of the most brilliant dancers that ever existed on the planet — got where they did through hard work. Very, very few of them were brilliant right out of the gate. Yes, they had some sort of facility (it’s hard to be a ballet dancer, for example, if you were born without legs), which might have gotten them started, but it was effort and persistence that got them to greatness.

That’s actually why Michael Smuin was so beside himself that he swore on national television — kids like this don’t come along very often.

And regardless of how “talented” my dance teachers told me I was, every move I made unveiled me as Not As Talented as the boy genius from Evening Magazine. 

So what in the hell kept me at it???

Here’s what I think was going on:

1) The experience of dancing itself gave me a tremendous amount of joy, which I was (quite literally) viscerally aware of. Yes, it created frustration too, when I couldn’t do what I wanted as well as I wanted, but moving is just plain joyous.

And even more importantly:

2) Dance is done in community, and there is a culture of daily practice. In dance culture, it is understood that in order to be able to do what you want with your body, you have to show up every day. There is a cultural understanding that if you miss a day, you can tell, and if you miss more than one day, everyone else can tell. Plus everyone in the studio expects you to come to class every day, so dancers have mega-accountability working for them.

In other words, practice — showing up — is built into the art form.

I’ve talked a lot recently about the importance of community (it’s why I’ve created my Time to Glow program as a group experience, rather than as a download, or a book, or a series of autoresponders). I believe it is one of the three ingredients that foster profound mindset shifts. And I truly believe that the very fact that dance is done in community is what enabled me to keep forging ahead, when all that poisonous praise threatened to paralyze me.

Now let me tell you a story where praise really did paralyze me.

When I started doing calligraphy in my late 20s, I didn’t have that community accountability or culture of daily showing up. Typical of visual artists, I was working in isolation most of the time, except for the periodic weekend workshop or weekly class. Nobody but me knew if I didn’t show up.

This wasn’t an issue at first, when all I was doing was exploring, just feeding myself, just for me, playing in the Creative Sandbox.

I remember talking to some of my friends in the calligraphy world who were lamenting that they couldn’t seem to get themselves in their studios to make art.

Huh?

What did they mean, I wondered? The very idea did not compute to me. I couldn’t wait to get into my little “studio” (a desk and drafting table in the corner of the second bedroom).

How could anyone have trouble doing the thing they loved doing more than anything?? I would never have that problem (I thought).

How naive I was.

It didn’t take long for the Resistance Monsters to start appearing, and back then, I had no tools to deal with them. At. All.

Looking back, I think my big paralysis started shortly after I went to my first international calligraphy conference in 1996.

I arrived at the conference breathless with excitement. In the 18 months or so that I’d been playing with pens and ink I’d never been around so many fellow calligraphers at one time.

500+ people who got it, who understood my love of letter-art, lettering and all things letters!

Workshops all day long!

Exhibits (multiple!) of stunning calligraphic artworks!

Nightly lectures on topics calligraphic!

Stores set up for the duration of the week where I could finally pick up and hold in my hands the calligraphic tools, books and papers I had, until this point, only ever seen (and lusted after) in catalogs!

In short, I was in heaven. It’s truly a wonder I didn’t explode (and I remember literally jumping up and down in excitement more than once.)

Being the “do everything/check all possible options/never miss an opportunity” type, I had also signed up for optional 30-minute critique sessions with three of the “big name” faculty members. I brought my little portfolio, with the few commissioned pieces I’d made at that point, and laid myself bare, heart pounding, for their feedback.

If I hadn’t already been floating on air just to be there, I would have been floating after those sessions. I think they lifted my feet at least three more inches off the ground. All three teachers expressed astonishment at the level of my skill after only a year and a half since first picking up my pens. “A prodigy,” wrote one, in a card she gave me at the end of the week.

It was truly a dream come true.

After I came home, though, that dream sank quickly into a nightmare. Getting into my studio seemed to get harder and harder, and the exuberant Creative Sandbox explorations dried up and blew away.

Now I understand that the well-intentioned praise from those “big names” — praise which at the time seemed like the greatest gift in the world — had an unintentional poisonous edge to it. Without realizing it, I latched onto that praise and solidly plunked myself into a very fixed mindset, in which every piece I created had better be a masterpiece, otherwise I wouldn’t live up to my “prodigy” potential.

I could no longer play and experiment in the Creative Sandbox, because everything that came from my “talented” fingers had to be amazing! At least that’s how it felt to me.

Let me tell you, nothing could be more paralyzing.

It’s actually kind of amazing that I managed to create a business out of my calligraphic art, given the fixed mindset I was stuck in. (The secret: I only made art that was commissioned and directed by a client.) What’s not so surprising, though, is that I lost the joy in creating that I used to have. What’s especially sad is how long it took me to get it back.

(Silver lining: my stuckness around creating art got me into creating music, which has been and continues to be an enormous source of joy for me. But that’s another story.)

The good news is that I did get my joy back. And although I’m sad for the years I “lost,” I also see my decades of stuckness as an enormous blessing, because that is what has made me so passionate about helping others change their own mindsets and (re-) connect with the creative pursuits that bring them joy. If my own journey had been free of challenges, I don’t think this fire to change the world would burn so hot inside me.

So where does this leave us? What is the takeaway here?

Just this:

Imagine if, instead of saying things like “Wow — you’re a natural! A prodigy!” the “big name” calligraphers had said “Wow — you have obviously been working very hard in the past year and a half! Your effort is clear in the quality of your work — keep it up!”

It might have led to a very different outcome, no?

As a teacher myself, I know I’ve praised students as “naturals” in the past, and it makes me cringe to think about. I can’t go back and redo those moments, but I can correct forward, noticing where I jump to praising talent — both in others and in myself — and intentionally switch to praising effort.

You can do the same. With your kids, your friends, your students, yourself, remember it’s effort and persistence that lead to greatness. (And if you think about it, isn’t effort and persistence more worthy of praise and acknowledgment than simply being born with an ability??)

Everything worth doing is worth doing poorly in order to learn to do it well. Remember that. [Click to tweet this.]

Meanwhile, remember the community and culture of daily showing-up that is built into the dance world? If your creative thing is something that doesn’t have such a built-in culture and community, how might you go about creating it?

Just something to think about.

And speaking of community…

If you’d like to be part of a warm community where you’ll learn tools to get past Resistance and be recognized for your efforts and persistence (and where “talent” is irrelevant), join me in Time to Glow, a 4-month transformational journey for women who are ready to answer the call, tame the gremlins, and actually live the creative life of your dreams. Click here for details about the program, and to sign up. Registration ends Tuesday, May 22 at 9pm PDT, so secure your spot now!

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

One of the things anyone who wants to live a creative life needs is awesome role models. When we see someone else doing something cool, it’s proof that such things can be done. And when our own dreams are a little (or maybe a lot) scary, knowing that others have gone someplace similar (or if not similar, perhaps as scary) before us can make the path a whole lot clearer.

Today I want to share with you a role model who is living a creative life, and whose work I find personally inspiring: Jess Greene.

Jess is the founder of, Seek Your Course, a fantastic website you really need to know about if you don’t already. Looking for creative learning opportunities, online courses, and in-person workshops and retreats? Jess’s goal is to get every offering of this ilk from the far reaches of the internet into one central location (ie, the Seek Your Course website) where those who are looking for them can easily find them. (Some people have found my upcoming creativity workshop adventure vacation in Istanbul on Seek Your Course, so it appears to be working. :))

But that’s not all that Jess is up to. Next month she embarks on a 10,000 mile driving tour to jumpstart the creativity of North America — the aptly named Jumpstart Creativity Tour. She’ll be stopping in 50 cities with a passel of art and craft supplies in her Mobile Creativity Unit (aka her car), and setting up events at every stop for anyone who wants to play with paint, write some prose, or experiment with mixed media. (I’m super-excited that she’s coming to San Francisco and Berkeley, both within driving distance of me, and am crossing my fingers she lands in the SF Bay Area when I’m around to participate!)

Writes Jess:

We believe that the creative community has the power to create change in the world just as it did in my life and in countless other lives. The Jumpstart Creativity Tour is the beginning of the ways that Seek Your Course is getting the message out and making creative engagement a common modern experience.

Pretty freakin’ cool, huh?

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jess the other day, and am delighted to share our conversation with you here at the top of this post. (Yes, I know the video is tiny. And fuzzy. My getting-long-in-the-tooth iMac and Call Recorder are not playing nice. Anyone want to buy me a new Mac?)

When you’re done watching our interview, check out Jess’s adorable promo video for the tour:

Then hop over to the Jumpstart Creativity Tour Kickstarter page and help Jess get this show on the road! (I just donated. Every little bit helps. :))

Jess was called to create Seek Your Course and take a 10,000 mile road trip. What creative adventure — large or tiny — are you being called to take?

Hey girlfriends! It’s time to stop just dreaming about living a creative life and start DOING it! Join me in Time to Glow, a 4-month transformational journey for women who are ready to answer the call, tame the gremlins, and actually live the creative life of your dreams. Click here for details about the program, and to sign up for a free Q&A info session on Thursday, May 17.

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

Some of my most magical memories from childhood are from the couple of times my parents took me and my brother to the Renaissance Faire.

I was captivated by the Elizabethan costumes, the revelry, colorful ribbons everywhere, jousting matches, funny signs (such as the bathroom sign, which said “Privies,” hand-painted in what is sometimes referred to as “Olde English” lettering. Hmmm… Now that I think of it, the Ren Faire may have planted — or a least helped to fertilize — the seed that would one day lead me to become a calligrapher! But back to my story…)

Photo by celebdu at Flickr

Both of our visits to the Renaissance Faire found the family spending quite a bit of time at the harp booth. Not because either I or my brother had any great interest in harps (though I found the mini lap harps charming), but because my mother had harbored a dream to play the harp since she was a little girl herself.

I remember Mom asking lots of questions — How much do they cost? What size would be the best for a beginner to get? How hard is it to learn to play? What is the difference between this harp and that harp? — and she looked longingly at the beautiful instruments that the harp-seller played for her. But ultimately, she walked away.

“I don’t have time to learn to play a new instrument right now. But maybe someday…”

As happens for so many of us, someday never seemed to arrive. My mother tucked that dream away on a hidden shelf, and life went on.

But one day something changed. I’m not sure what made my mom decide that it was time to stop putting off her dreams, but over a decade later, when Mom was 50, I walked through the door to my parents’ house to find a beautiful, blonde, full-size Celtic harp in the living room, and Mom beaming with excitement about the lessons she had just signed up for.

My mother understood that learning to play an instrument doesn’t happen overnight. She frequently voiced her frustration at how long and steep the learning curve was (not to mention how sore her poor fingers were as she built up those necessary callouses that all players of stringed instruments know so well.)

But she kept at it.

Mom didn’t let her frustration stop her. She just got more determined. She committed to her daily practice time and guarded it as if it were her very life. She bought a “travel” harp to take with her whenever she and Pop went on a trip, so she would never have to skip a practice session. “I have to keep up my callouses!” she would say.

Inspired by my mom’s new musical passion, about 6 months after my mom took up the harp, my dad came home with a flute. ”Now we can play the Mozart Concerto for Flute and Harp!” he announced.

I believe Mom’s response at the time included much rolling of eyes and head shaking. “Honey, that concerto is one of the hardest pieces ever written for harp,” she protested. “It will take YEARS for us to get that good. Don’t hold your breath.” [Correction: after reading this post, Mom said her response was more like "Yeah, right -- in your dreams!"]

Undaunted, Pop started taking flute lessons, and now their commitments fed each other — they could help keep each other on track, and the goal of performing as a duo added fuel to their fire.

Mom started off performing with the “beginner’s group” in the annual recitals put on by the harp studio where she studied. There was mom, with maybe one or two other adults and a gaggle of little kids, plunking away at the simple tunes arranged by the studio master.

It’s not easy to stand up and declare yourself a beginner as an adult, especially up on stage surrounded by kids (who always seem to be zooming past you!), especially when you’re not a ham (like your daughter!) and playing in public makes you incredibly nervous, but Mom did it.

And she kept doing it, year after year. She kept putting in daily practice after daily practice, and performing at those annual recitals, sometimes with my dad making a cameo appearance on the flute. (What a treat, by the way, to be able to go to my parents’ recitals and concerts, after they went to so many of mine when I was growing up!) Every year she got a little better and a little better, and got to play more and more complicated parts.

My parents also started taking their show on the road, performing here and there, getting gigs by word of mouth. Over time, their gig schedule filled up with concerts for senior centers and retirement homes, and the occasional church service or wedding.

All because my mom followed her dream, baby step by baby step.

Mom in her dress - isn't she gorgeous?

Two years ago my parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. They rented out a restaurant and threw an enormous party. Mom pulled her wedding dress down from the attic and found a seamstress who altered it to fit her 21st century form.

(I should hasten to point out, because I’m sure she’d want you to know, that my mom weighs exactly the same as when she and Pop got married in 1960… it’s just that gravity has shifted things around a bit.)

Pop rented a tuxedo like the one he wore back then. (Which I don’t think was quite the same size as the one he rented before, but who’s counting?) They even hired a designer (guess who!) to create beautiful invitations, and a jazz singer (guess who!) to sing during the cocktail hour.

Me and the band

It was a lot like a wedding, but without the ceremony part. (I made them the book in the photo below, 50 Reasons Why We Love You Mom & Pop.)

50 Reasons Why We Love You, Mom & Pop

My favorite part of the whole evening, though, was after dinner, when it was Mom and Pop’s turn to play. They had arranged a medley of songs that represented the sound track of the last five decades of their life together, from Around The World In 80 Days (their theme song, since my mom literally left on an around-the-world trip with her own mother days after their first, very romantic meeting on the campus of Scripps College), to When I’m 64, by the Beatles, and a bunch of others. It was delightful.

The real tour de fource, however, was what came next.

It makes me tear up even now, remembering how beautifully my parents played that Mozart concerto. They’d gotten private tutoring with a master harpist and worked for hours and hours to learn the piece. And now, some 60+ years after my mom first dreamed of playing the harp, and over 20 years after my dad set his sights on playing the Mozart concerto, here they were, celebrating a lifetime together, through thick and thin, past untold obstacles, sharing their dream with everyone in the room.

Mom (and Pop, too), you are my hero. Happy Mother’s Day.

Do you have a Mother’s Day hero? Share in the comments!

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

Roses photo by Charles Sporn at Flickr

Women: ready to answer the call of your heart and bring your own dreams to life? Join me in Time to Glow, a 4-month program to get you from dreaming to doing, living the fully creative life you really, really want. Click here for details about the program, and to sign up for a free Q&A info session on Thursday, May 17.

There’s such great stuff inside, this book should be required reading for any creative. (In fact, I’m thinking of creating a online course/study group/support group to dive deeper into the book, but that’s down the road…)

Anyone who has a calling to create faces a daily choice about whether to spend their limited time and energy on what really matters to them… or on the bazillion other things that pull on their proverbial sleeves. With so many distractions in our lives, learning to boost and leverage willpower is an essential skill.

In one of the early chapters of the book, Dr. McGonigal looks at why we keep putting off the thing we really want to do. (Sound familiar?)

You know how most exercise equipment people buy ends up gathering dust? Well, two marketing professors were curious about the mistakes consumers make in predicting how much they’ll use their exercise equipment, and decided to study this phenomenon.

They asked a whole bunch of people to predict, “How many times per week (on average) will you exercise in the next month?”

Then they asked a whole bunch of OTHER people the very same question, but with one important preface: “In an ideal world, how many times per week will you exercise in the next month?”

Turns out that everyone assumes an ideal world — the groups’ estimates were no different.

McGonigal writes:

We look into the future and fail to see the challenges of today. This convinces us that we will have more time and energy to do in the future what we don’t want to do [and I would add -- what we want, but are not quite yet willing or ready to do] today. We feel justified in putting it off, confident that our future behavior will more than make up for it.

It gets more interesting, though.

Perhaps, thought the researchers, prompting more realistic self-predictions would make a difference.

Nope. When the experimenters gave people the explicit instructions, “Please do not provide an idealistic prediction, but rather the most realistic prediction of your behavior that you can,” those people showed even more optimism about their behavior and reported the highest estimates yet!

Not surprisingly, when the researchers invited these optimists back for a reality check, they reported that the number of times they had actually exercised was lower than predicted.

“People had made their predictions for an ideal world,” writes McGonigal, “but lived through two weeks in the real world.”

And it doesn’t stop there. McGonigal continues:

The experimenters then asked these same people to predict how many times they would exercise in the next two weeks. Ever the optimists, they made estimates even higher than their initial predictions, and much heigher than their actual reports from the past two weeks. It’s as if they took their original predicted average seriously, and were assigning their future selves extra exercise to make up for their ‘unusually poor’ performance. Rather than view the past two weeks as reality, and their original estimates as an unrealistic view, they viewed the past two weeks as an anomaly.

In other words, people use positive expectations — optimism — to justify present inaction.

Kinda depressing, huh?

Thankfully, there are tricks for handling the down side of optimism.

Behavioral economist, Howard Rachlin, offers one: when you want to change a behavior, aim to reduce the variability in your behavior, not the behavior itself.

Huh?

Rachlin did studies with smokers, asking them just to try to smoke the same number of cigarettes every day, not to try to smoke less. Guess what? Those smokers actually decreased their overall smoking.

Writes McGonigal:

Rachlin argues that this works because the smokers are deprived of the usual cognitive crutch of pretending that tomorrow will be different. Every cigarette becomes not just one more smoked today, but one more smoked tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. This adds new weight to every cigarette, and makes it much harder to deny the health consequences of a single smoke.

So how does this apply to your creative thing?

Just this: aim to reduce the variability of your creative practice. Instead of asking “Would I rather do this today or tomorrow?” ask yourself, “Do I really want the consequences of always putting off my passion?”

Then let me know how it goes.

Tell me, how will you apply this willpower lesson to your own life?

If you’re ready to stop putting off your passion, join me in my program for women, Time to Glow, starting May 24.

We’ll cover more tools for turbo-charging your willpower, for moving forward despite fear & doubt, for taming that Inner Critic Gremlin grumbling away at you that “you’re not good enough” or “you don’t deserve to create” or “everything/everyone else is more important,” and a whole lot more.

If you’re ready to create what’s calling you to be created and share it with the world before it’s too late, click here to join a circle of amazing, generous, warm-hearted women. We’re waiting to welcome you.

Early bird pricing ends at 9pm PDT tonight, May 11. Click here to learn more about the program and to take your place in it.

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

Given how much press the man has (deservedly) received, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone might not have heard of Chris Guillebeau at this point, but then Chris also looms very large in my own world. He is, in fact, the role model who kicked off my journey toward living the fully creative life I really, really wanted, rather than the “not quite” life I’d been settling for.

With his writing, his blog The Art of Nonconformity, and his business model, Chris showed me that yes, people actually can make a living doing what they love. And they can change the world along the way.

Of course Chris is by no means the only person doing this, but he’s the first one who landed on my radar when I was ready to take notice. My life was forever changed as a result. I started this blog. I started looking for the sweet spot in my work, where what I love to do intersects with what other people are willing to pay for. I started seeking out other people on a similar path — a supportive community to help me along the way. I started seeking out tools to get me where I wanted to go.

All catalyzed by Chris. Role models can be that powerful.

I have some more to say about Chris, but let’s get back to his new book for a moment.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advance copy, and what a treat it is. My own mission is not to get people to quit their jobs and strike out on their own — I want to get you creating, doing the thing (or things) that fill you with joy and make you glow with life; I don’t honestly care one way or another if you want to make your creative thing your livelihood as I’ve done and am doing. I just want to see you doing your creative thing, period.

If you do want to build a business doing what you love, though, The $100 Startup is an essential addition to your library. Using dozens of case studies of all different kinds of businesses — from a guy who sells mattresses and delivers them by bicycle, to a professional dog walker who nets over $88k/year — Chris brings together the major lessons he shared in his groundbreaking Empire Building Kit into an easy-to-use (and fun to read!) guide. There’s also a multi-media component, with additional resources over on the book’s website, 100startup.com.

In short, it’s awesome. Highly recommended. Go check it out.

But back to Chris.

Here’s a guy who created a $50k/year business from his website in under a year (279 days, to be exact — and it’s waaaaaaay beyond $50k/year at this point…), who’s published two books, who created an amazing conference (the World Domination Summit, headed into its second year, also highly recommended), and who is well on his way to visiting every single country on the planet before he turns 35 — mostly on frequent flyer miles, by the way — just because.

From that list of accomplishments you might think Chris is some sort of superhuman. The truth is, though, that he’s no more of a superhuman than you or I. There is one big difference between Chris (and people like him) and most other people, though, and it’s this:

Mindset.

In short, “impossible” is not in Chris’s vocabulary. As a result, he doesn’t limit his dreams. He might be scared of them — scared of failure, scared of success (I don’t know, I haven’t asked him) — but he dreams BIG and (just as essential) he takes real steps to bring those dreams to life, to get from dreaming to doing.

Imagine if Chris had thought (and acted on — or rather, not acted because of) any variation on the following:

“I’m not smart enough.”

“I’m not capable enough.”

“Who am I to try to do this?”

“I don’t have enough experience/the right credentials yet.”

“Other people could do that, but it’s just not in the range of what’s possible for me.”

Any of these sound familiar? I’ll be honest, those are the beliefs I’ve held about areas of my own life, beliefs I didn’t even realize were beliefs. I just thought they were The Truth.

Which brings me to one of my favorite metaphors:

The Self-Installed Glass Ceiling

I call these kinds of beliefs self-installed glass ceilings, because they limit possibilities just as much as any rule or policy designed to keep you down.

Your mindset can be a glass ceiling that keeps you hunched over and playing small, or like Chris, it can be a source of incredible power that enables you to accomplish great things.

Which do you choose?

A Note on Sexism and Glass Ceilings:

It’s important to note that, because we (still) live in a sexist culture, the self-installed glass ceiling syndrome tends to operate in different ways on women than it does on men. No matter how much progress we’ve made as a society, there are still unspoken cultural beliefs and expectations about what women should/shouldn’t do, what women are/aren’t capable of.

Those unspoken beliefs and expectations are like a soup we all swim in, and until they’re pointed out to us, we have about as much awareness of them as goldfish have of the water in their tank. It can be hard to recognize them as cultural beliefs and expectations, and as a result, they affect our beliefs about ourselves.

We see them as just the way things are.

A glass ceiling is, after all, practically invisible, but you still bang your head on it when you try to stand up straight. It can take awhile to realize the problem isn’t with YOU (ie, “You’re just too tall, and that’s why you keep banging your head!”), it’s that there’s a sheet of glass in your way!

Men certainly face self-limiting beliefs — I in no way mean to imply that they don’t. But I submit that women have additional layers (or at least different layers) of self-limiting beliefs that need to be peeled away and deprogrammed in order for us to reach our fullest potential. This has certainly been the case for me.

The good news is that beliefs can be changed. Mindsets can be shifted.

Elsewhere I’ve talked about the 3 ingredients that together lead to the fastest mindset transformations:

1) An inspiring role model (like Chris has been for me)

2) A supportive community

3) An effective toolkit

Those are the ingredients that have made the most difference in my own self-installed glass-ceiling busting. (Click here for a blog post and video in which I talk about each of those ingredients in a little more detail.) And not coincidentally, they’re the ingredients I’ve brought together in my new program for women, Time to Glow, which you can read about here.

Perhaps even Chris Guillebeau had to bust through some self-installed glass ceilings to get where he is today — I don’t know, I haven’t asked, though it would be interesting to find out! I kinda like to imagine he did, even though his glass ceilings might be different from my own, because the fact that he shattered them would make him an even more awesome role model.

Not that he needs to be any more awesome than he already is. Love ya, Chris! Congrats on the book launch!

I’m curious, have you shattered any self-installed glass ceilings in your own life? What made the difference for you?

If you’re ready to bust through your own self-installed glass ceiling, to dream bigger and go from dreaming to doing, join me in Time to Glow, my program for women who want to answer the call of their heart, tame the gremlins, and finally live the fully creative life of their dreams. Doors open tomorrow, May 9. Click here for more info and to sign up.

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

Let me tell you a story about how a shift in my own mindset led to my becoming a teacher, to my teaching all over the country, and more recently, to the foundation for the realization of a long-held “impossible dream.”

Cue the harp music

Signalling going backwards in time, of course…

Back in ’97, when the internet and my career as an artist/calligrapher were both in their infancy, before Yahoo groups, Google groups, blogs, Facebook and online forums, I joined an email listserv for calligraphers, Cyberscribes.

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, my marriage was just 2 years from disintegrating into divorce. My husband’s father was in poor health, and my husband moved out of our house and in with him in order to be his caregiver. I was lonely inside this crumbling relationship, and I found the connection I craved — with people all over the globe — in the Cyberscribes emails.

I didn’t identify myself as “a teacher” AT ALL back then, but teaching is in my blood (I kinda can’t help myself), and I leaped at the chance to offer helpful info whenever anyone posted a question I had any knowledge or experience with. People noticed.

I also must have sensed that my marriage was on shaky ground, because when a fellow Cyberscribe named Sheryl posted a real-life cautionary tale that she was divorcing after 20+ years and now had only her part-time income from a freelance calligraphy and teaching business to support her, her situation really resonated with me.

What if that happened to me, I wondered? (Not really believing it ever would…)

Sheryl and I started chatting offline, and soon became fast friends. A few months later, right before Sheryl was scheduled to drive from Maryland to New York to teach a workshop, I flew across the country to meet her.

This was back when 3D relationships that started online were still pretty new, and I think my parents and husband were a little anxious that Sheryl might turn out to be an axe murderer, but in fact, she was delightful and lovely, and our friendship was very close for years afterwards. But that fall day back in the late 90s I met her at the train station in Washington, DC, stayed in her house, and the next day we had several hours to talk in her car, on the drive to Long Island where her workshop was to be held.

“You should teach,” Sheryl announced, mid-way through our long drive.

“Yes, I’d love to, someday,” I said. It was a dream of mine, though a far-off one. I certainly wasn’t ready yet.

“No, you should be teaching now,” she countered.

“Now? What could I teach?” Didn’t she know I wasn’t ready?

“I can think of at least 8 things you could teach, right off the top of my head,” said Sheryl. And she went on to list them: numerous different lettering styles, book arts, a survey of calligraphy tools, collage…

Huh. Turns out I knew a lot of stuff… Still, the idea felt rather overwhelming. I wasn’t “a teacher,” remember?

Later, on day 2 of her workshop, Sheryl gave me an amazing gift. She took a detour from the topic at hand and invited me to do a demonstration of my signature version of Neuland, a calligraphic hand I developed based on an early 20th Century typeface of the same name.

It was maybe 20 or 30 minutes, max — not much — but it was enough to give me the guts to go home and organize my first full-day workshop, where I taught Neuland to an enthusiastic group of 10 scribes (and sweated like a pig from nerves the whole time!)

As an itinerant teacher who traveled the country giving workshops, Sheryl was a wonderful role model. She made me see that yes, this was something I could do too! She was also an amazing and generous mentor, giving me that demo opportunity, and connecting me with the workshop chair of a guild in New Jersey who soon thereafter booked me for a weekend workshop on the strength of Sheryl’s recommendation and my Cyberscribes reputation alone. (I find it amusing that the first workshop I was ever hired for was on the other side of the country! Getting hired for local gigs proved much harder, as everyone seems more interested in the “expert from out of town” than the “local yokel.” Also, note the power of being helpful. People notice. And remember.)

For awhile there, back in the late 90s, itinerant teaching was a big part of my tiny business. I taught in a multitude of cities in New York and New Jersey, Connecticut, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and all over California.

But in order to get there, I had to make a major mindset shift. I had to stop thinking of myself as “not a teacher” and start thinking of myself as someone who could totally learn to teach well, and continue improving as a teacher.

Did I feel ready at the start? No. But the truth is, you’re usually ready long before you think you are. Taking actual steps toward that big dream almost always feels scary, because you haven’t done it before. If you had, it wouldn’t be in your “I want to do that someday” list anymore, would it?

Back in the present…

There’s a more recent chapter to my teacher story. Although I’ve been hired to teach all over the US, I’ve always had a dream of teaching in other parts of the world. A week-long workshop overseas… Imagine! But it seemed a rather impossible dream. The logistics alone always felt overwhelming, beyond me. So the idea remained in my “maybe someday, when I’m ready,” category.

Once you’ve experienced one mindset shift, though, it creates space for others. And when fellow artist & creativity coach Kelly Hevel signed up on my email list last fall and I discovered she lived in Istanbul (where I’ve always wanted to visit), and that she also had a dream of teaching creativity workshops around the world, we kicked into gear. We both shifted from thinking of ourselves as “someone who dreams” to “someone who does.”

Yep, we’re offering our very first in what we hope will be an ongoing series of creative immersion vacations and retreats in inspiring locations around the world. Starting in Istanbul — September 30-October 7! Click the banner to read all about it. (and save $100 if you put a deposit down by May 31).

Meanwhile, I’ve channeled that “someone who does” thinking into creating my latest program, Time to Glow, the culmination of what I’ve learned over my lifetime about living a creative life.

This is the course I’ve been wanting to offer for years — combining tools to battle sexism, self-doubt, fear, procrastination, perfectionism and more — but until now I didn’t know quite what, exactly, it would look like and how to make it happen. The mindset shifts I’ve experienced thanks to my blogging journey, lots of inner-work, and lots of wonderful teachers, books and online courses, have helped me identify my most precious gifts and strengths, and how I can best share those.

Do I know everything? Lord, no! But I’ve shifted my mindset to be able to see that what I do know is enough to share with others, and to be of tremendous value. My goal is to help you shift your own mindset, to see the amazing value you bring to the table when you use your creativity, to get you from dreaming to doing.

You may not feel you’re ready, but I know you actually are.

I’d be honored to have you join me on the journey.

How have you shifted your mindset to get from dreaming to doing? Where are you still stuck?

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

Hey! Hello! Announcement!

Come hang out with me at 5pm PT tomorrow, Wednesday, May 2nd at my free monthly Hangout! I’ll be jamming with fellow Passion Pluralite (she calls us Multipotentialites) Emilie Wapnick, of Puttylike.com, and we’ll open up the conversation to everyone there, so bring your thoughts and questions!

We’ll hang out together in a special online “room” where you can participate via text chat, audio and/or video, or just observe if you like. (Don’t worry, nobody will see you unless you specifically fire up your webcam!)

Read more about it and sign up here. (Did I mention it’s free? Really! It is!)

Now, being empowered is actually pretty essential for living a creative life as a woman, but in college, my head wasn’t in creative expression; it was in Feminist theory.

After my first year in college, at UC (Cal) Berkeley, I spent my sophomore year following my first great creative Bliss (dance) to New York, where I’d been accepted at the Juilliard School. I was there to pursue my grand dream of a professional dance career, and when injury derailed that dream I came home to California, re-enrolled at Cal, and had what I now fondly (heh) refer to as my Radical Feminist Awakening.

As a Junior in need of a major, I declared as a Social Science Field Major with an area of concentration of “Gender in Contemporary Society.” (Which conveniently allowed me to take classes in a variety of different discipline, satisfying what I now recognize as my Passion Pluralite tendencies, of which I was totally oblivious at the time.)

I enrolled in classes that opened my eyes to the ways in which sexism pervades society, and lit a fire beneath me.

Or, to put it more bluntly, I got seriously pissed off.

I learned how patriarchal systems oppress all of us, how class and race oppression intersect with patriarchy, how we learn to be complicit in our own oppression (hegemony), unconsciously embracing belief systems and mindsets that hold us back and keep us down, as well as keeping us disconnected from each other.

(Think about it: when members of different oppressed groups are kept apart — whether through external forces or internal programming — they cannot work together for change. And when members of oppressed groups and members of groups historically seen as “the oppressor” are kept apart — again, whether through external forces or internal programming — they never have a chance to understand each other and join forces to make things better for everyone. But I digress.)

I could spout all kinds of academic jargon back then (Hegemonic systems! Objectifying complexes! Yadayadascoobydooda jargontalkthatnobodybutacademicsunderstandsorcaresabout!), and because I was filled with the passion and conviction of youth (not to mention being a redhead, AND a Scorpio, AND a Fire Horse [according to Chinese astrology]), my Feminist Awakening was rather… fiery.

(God bless my ex-husband, who met me right about then, poor soul…)

Where this is leading…

I tell you this, because it helps explain why I felt such a resonance when I encountered Tara Mohr of Wise Living, writer, coach and expert in supporting women to share their authentic gifts with the world.

Random fact: I actually first encountered Tara back in 2006, long before the blogosphere was even on my radar, when she purchased a ketubah from me for her wedding. I really knew nothing about her except that she was lovely to interact with via email, and she obviously liked my art (two very fine qualities, I must say).

Then in late 2010, we ran into each other again online, where I discovered that my former client was now coaching, writing for the Huffington Post, and clearly a kindred spirit. Tara has had a passion for making women’s voices heard since she was an adolescent, and she’s run an annual blogging campaign for the Girl Effect which turned me (and countless others) on to that wonderful movement (check the brilliant Girl Effect video out here– it’s awesome. I’ll wait. Bring tissues.)

Playing Big

So when, last spring, Tara launched the inaugural version of her flagship program for women, Playing Big, I took notice. Although I was sorely tempted, I didn’t sign up at the time, but I did join her team of affiliates, and I watched as the Playing Big participants transformed. (And yes, those are affiliate links, though the program is not currently open to new participants.)

Something really special was happening here. Something I was hungry to be a part of. So when Tara opened a second round of Playing Big in January, I not only re-upped as an affiliate, I joined the program myself.

That was one of my best purchasing decisions in recent memory.

The Playing Big experience has been nothing short of amazing. Tara has created a space where, instead of competing, women are supporting each other to leap forward despite our fears.

We’re learning to recognize the voice of the Inner Critic (or, as I like to call it, the Inner Critic Gremlin) and distinguish it from the voice of Truth — and how NOT to take direction from it.

We’re learning to trust our instincts, to dream bigger, and to NOT let the size of our dreams paralyze us, but to get on with taking little “leaps” toward them.

We’re learning tools for unhooking from criticism, and — just as importantly — unhooking from praise and the need for external validation.

Throughout it all, each of us in the program is working on our own Playing Big project, drawing strength and encouragement from our cohorts as we practice playing bigger by going after a goal that scares us and sends our Inner Critic (Gremlin)s into hyper-drive.

“You can’t do that!” says the Inner Critic Gremlin. “Who do you think you are to even try?”

But where such negative self-talk has shut us down in the past, we now have the grounded wisdom of an Internal Mentor to shepherd us forward. We’re harnessing the butterflies in the stomach and making them fly in formation!

I’ve had a lot of practice with the butterfly harness since starting Playing Big. First, as I approached my initial Playing Big project: to write my story into a book sharing how I went from being plagued with eating disorders, self-doubt and a belief that “I’m not creative” to living a more fully creative life than I ever imagined — and how YOU can do it too! Butterfly-harnessing tip: calling it a Book-Like Object seems to quiet that Inner Critic Gremlin a bit. The ICG doesn’t know enough about a BLO to tell me I’m not up to the task, or “who are you to think your story is worth making into a BLO?”

The second big practice area for managing the butterfly harness is via two other, more immediate projects I’m currently working on. One is not quite ready to share (stay tuned), but the other is.

Time to Glow

One thing Playing Big has really helped crystallize for me is that who I am and what I already know (ie, everything I take for granted about myself) is actually of tremendous value. I’ve been experiencing revelations around this, and I’m now truly seeing how just bringing bringing my full, authentic self to the table is the greatest value I offer. I’m realizing how much I already know, and it has been feeling increasingly important to me to share what I know in a more systematic way than I’ve done so far.

Just as Tara Mohr has brought together the sum of her wisdom, knowledge and experience around women playing bigger to create Playing Big, I have been feeling a powerful call to bring together the sum of my wisdom, knowledge and experience around living a fully creative life and share it in a structured format.

And despite the chatter of my Inner Critic Gremlin — who keeps waving its arms and shouting “You’re not as famous and accomplished as Tara Mohr!” and “Who do you think you are to try something like this?!” and “You’re surely going to fail — just give up!” and “You’re not ready! You need to do more research/get a credential/be more accomplished/have a larger audience!!!” — despite all that negative self-talk, that (ie, sharing what I’ve got) is exactly what I’m going to do.

In fact, I’m doing it next month!

Get Your Glow On

I see too many of my fellow creative women hiding their lights under a barrel, NOT making time to feed their creative spirit and pursue the passions of their hearts.

I see too many creative women with stunted dreams that are just waiting to blossom forth — all they need are the proper conditions for growth.

And though I’ve been witness to the spark and flame of rejuvenated creativity in my Creative Ignition Circles, I want to do more than spark people up and help them stoke their creative fires. YES, I want that — always that — but I also want to foster a persistent and steady connection to creativity (and each other!), the kind of fire that doesn’t flash and extinguish, but continues to radiate — that glows.

Next month that’s exactly what I’m doing, with my new program for women with a creative hunger, Time to Glow. It doesn’t matter to me what form your creative expression wants to take. (Right now, mine is almost wholly absorbed by the creation of courses and workshops — just as exciting and fulfilling to me as when I’m in “paint-all-the-time” mode or “write-and-perform-songs-all-the-time” mode.) As far as I’m concerned (and I’m not alone in this), creative expression is simply what humans are made to do — whether it comes in the form of painting or sculpture or designing a robot or crafting a product launch.

If it feeds and nourishes your creative spirit*, it counts, baby! *(And you know what that is for you.)

Whatever lights your fire is what I want to see you doing more of and sharing with the world — because that is exactly what the world needs most!

That’s what Time to Glow is designed to help you do.

Click here to read more and sign up on the advance list for priority access.

It’s time to get your glow on! I hope you’ll join me.

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

What’s the #1 thing that gets in your way?

It keeps you from living the fully creative life of your dreams.

It gets between you and the happiness you desire, between you and joy, between you and contentment.

It stops you from doing what you love.

It keeps you stuck, convinces you you’re not good enough, prevents you from dreaming big, setting big goals and going after them — holds you back from playing big in your life and in the world.

It’s not time. Or money. Or your job. Or your boss. Or your family and friends (or enemies for that matter).

The #1 thing that gets in your way is something you actually have control over (though it often feels like you don’t).

Have you guessed it?

It’s your mindset.

With the right mindset, you can achieve anything.

Mindset is key to answering the call in your heart, and…

…to getting past fear and uncertainty

…to overcoming perfectionism

…to taming the gremlin voices that hold you back

…to living the truly creative life you long for

But how do you get into the mindset to do all this?

I won’t lie to you, it takes some work — inner work.

And it can also take time. In my case, it has taken years — a lifetime — to really live the creative life of my dreams.

But it doesn’t have to take that long!

When I was ready and willing to make the shifts, they came extremely quickly — quite literally overnight, or even faster. (It was the build-up to being ready and willing that took so long…)

3 Essential Ingredients

I’ve learned from experience that where there is willingness and readiness, there are 3 very specific ingredients that together work like a pressure cooker to bring about the internal transformations that result in profound mindset shifts, AND the necessary actions that bring about life change.

Those 3 ingredients are:

1) An inspiring role model (or more than one)

Knowing even just one person who has walked the path before you can give you a vision of possibility for yourself.

2) A supportive community

Other people who “get you,” who are walking side-by-side with you on the same journey, who can act as sounding boards, who show you that you’re not alone, and cheer you on.

3) An effective toolkit

Psychology, neuroscience, the field of coaching and the world’s spiritual traditions have each spawned powerful tools (many of which overlap) which can not only help you shift your mindset, but can leverage it to turbocharge your willpower (not to mention your “won’t power” and “want power”!) to create what you want in your life.

When I look back at the moments in my life when I’ve made the most profound transformations, those three ingredients have always been in place. I’m an introspective sort, so I’ve sought out these kinds of experiences throughout my life, and I’ve been fortunate to have many amazing teachers over the years.

Now I’m ready to bring together everything I’ve learned about creative ignition and pay it forward.

This is my best stuff — the work that I know I was put on the planet to do.

If you’re a woman, and you’re ready for a program that will incubate the kind of mindset shift you need to really live the creative life of your dreams, stay tuned for all the details. (And sign up on the list below for first dibs and early bird pricing.)

It’s time to glow, baby!

Have you ever experienced a mindset shift that got YOU to the next level? What were the ingredients that led to that shift for you?

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

Hey! Hello! Sign up here!

Update 5/1/12: Click here for details and early bird info.

Sign up here for advance notice & early bird pricing, and I’ll also send you info for how to attend a free Q&A call next month…

Listen or download audio only: Susan Falcone Interview mp3 (38:20)

I’ve written before about the fact that the Universe is quite the Trickster. Yessiree. Yesterday was yet another example.

Some background: Susan Falcone is the inspiration behind my decision to make Self-Compassion the first of my 3 words for 2012. Plus I just have a humongous girl-crush on her, so I interviewed her back in March, as part of my ongoing (if sporadic) Inspiring Subscriber series. Thanks to my Self-Compassionate slow-down, it’s taken weeks to get the interview edited, which I find rather ironic.

But fine. Susan of all people would get this. As we discuss about 25 minutes into the interview, slowing down in order to treat yourself as well as you deserve to be treated means that things (ahem) slow down. I get that. Blog posts don’t always get up as quickly as I want. New courses and ebooks don’t always get birthed and out into the world as quickly as I want.

That kinda sucks, but on the other hand, my quality of life is waaaaaaay better. So overall, I’m good with it.

Sometimes, though, the Universe likes to drive the lesson home with a little more oomph, just to see if I’m really paying attention.

This is where we come back to yesterday.

Truthfully, it all started on Tuesday, which is when I’d originally intended to get Susan’s interview edited and loaded, scheduled for posting on Wednesday.

Except that all sorts of other things got in the way. And even though I’ve eased up a bit on my 11pm “in bed with lights out” rule from the Great Bedtime Experiment, when the choice is between self-care and staying up late to get stuff done that really doesn’t have to get done right now, I choose self-care. (We talk about this in the interview, too, btw.)

Which means that blog posts do not get posted on a rigid schedule in these parts.

Then Wednesday AND Thursday turned into one long string of meetings and phone conferences, and suddenly it was Thursday early evening, and I was finally finishing up those edits.

And I was actually fine with that. The interview would go up on Thursday night, and I’d still get to have Date Night with my sweetie, and all would be well with the world.

Except that that was the very moment that Trickster Universe chose to crash my iMac and wipe out 90 minutes worth of carefully crafted subtitle additions to the video interview.

Yep.

So. I had a choice. I could rant and rave (which, I’ll grant you, I did do a teensy weensy bit of), and spend the bulk of what was going to be Date Night scrambling to recreate all those carefully crafted subtitles, export the video, write the accompanying post, and get the damn thing published while it was still Thursday, goddammit …

Or I could say “To Hell with it — the subtitles are so not important in the scheme of things, and getting the damn thing published while it’s still Thursday is so not important in the scheme of things, so let’s go have Date Night, sweetie, and I’ll deal with it tomorrow!”

With a hat-tip and very broad wink to Trickster Universe, for ever-so-ironically using my interview with Susan about this very topic to hand me this decision, I chose the latter.

Well, in truth, my sweetie (aka Miracle Boyfriend — or MB for short) spent a good half hour working his technical magic trying to find a way to somehow salvage the lost data (which he’s still gung ho to figure out, being much more of an enthusiast for these kinds of challenges than I am [which is one reason why he's Miracle Boyfriend]), and then I said “Come on, let’s go get some dinner.”

And truly, all was well with the world.

It helped that Trickster Universe ever so conveniently provided me with the above story fodder at the same time it foiled my original plans. Neat, huh?

Trickster Universe has a sense of humor, but sometimes seems to have a heart, too.

Anyway, check out the interview. It was great fun, and all that time I spent on the (now lost) edits reminded me of what a freakin’ great conversation Susan and I had!

We discussed such things as the power of identity as a Certain Type of Creative, and how being tied to that identity can actually quash your creativity. And the difficulties — and gifts — of facing physical challenges.

And we talked a lot about self-compassion.

Have a watch. Or listen to the mp3 audio. Then let me know what you think.

Oh, and be sure to visit Susan over at Powering Possible, too. She rocks.

Tell me, where have you learned to bring more self-compassion to your life?

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

Hey! Hello! Announcing a Free Thing!

If you liked this interview, did you know you can actually participate in these kinds of discussions with me live? Every single month?

Just click here to sign up for my free monthly video Hangouts. I chat with a different inspiring guest every month, invite Hang-Outers to “show-and-tell” what’s going on in their own creative lives, share my own creative process, and even play my ukulele.

It’s fun! And it’s free. The next one is on May 2, and it features fellow Passion Pluralite (or as she likes to call us, Multipotentialites) Emilie Wapnick, of Puttylike. You can participate via text chat, audio and/or webcam, or just lurk. And yes, if you’re on the list I’ll send a link to the recording, too. Join us!

Honestly, whole years of my life have seemed this way, struggling to pay the bills and do piles of stuff other people expect or need from me, with not nearly enough time for the stuff that makes life worth living.

For maybe a decade, as I built up my ketubah business, my motto was “this is not how I want my life to be!”

My other motto was “I wish I had time to make the art I really want to make!”

In fact, the only time I made art for me was for 4 1/2 days once a year, at the Friends of Calligraphy Annual Retreat.

You may not be surprised to learn that I was not a very happy camper during this part of my life.

Year after year at the Retreat I would swear to myself that this time I’d go home and set aside one weekend a month as a “staycation,” cover my computer with a sheet, and spend Friday to Sunday making art. This would be the year I’d set aside one afternoon a week to play in my studio.

It never happened.

Instead, the days, weeks and months would slip away, and I’d find myself back at the opening circle of the Retreat once again, astonished that the only art I’d made over the preceding 12 months was commissioned by clients.

I just never seemed to have the time to make art for me.

Somehow I managed to do other creative things in those art-deprived years — I learned to play the guitar, I dove into jazz singing, I learned Argentine tango — but it wasn’t until last year that I finally realized that what was different about my doing those other creative things was simply this:

I made the time for them.

It wasn’t until last year that I finally got it that if I waited until I had the time I’d be waiting my entire lifetime.

I had to make the time.

But how in the world does someone as busy as I am make the time??!! Honestly, it seems impossible.

In fact, it was simply a matter of shifting my paradigm.

If 4 1/2 days in a row of uninterrupted time for art-making is the only way to make art, then yeah, it’s probably only going to happen once a year at the Retreat. But if I open my mind to the idea of tiny baby steps, of tipping my toe into the Creative Stream in bits and snatches — say, for 15 minutes a day, perhaps — suddenly the world opens up.

Yes, it seems impossibly tiny. “15 minutes? What the hell can you possibly do in just 15 minutes??”

Actually, a lot more than you might expect. 15 minutes is enough to start to get into flow. And if you truly give yourself that time every day (or if not daily, on some regular schedule), it’s amazing how connected you start to feel to your creative spirit.

Even if you only spend 15 minutes doing your creative thing, you may find yourself thinking about your creative thing throughout the day. Don’t underestimate this!

When you think about your creative thing all day long, even if you’re only doing it for a few minutes, you’re more consistently connected to that nourishing Creative Stream than if you do your creative thing for 4 1/2 days in one go, and then abandon it for the other 360 1/2 days of the year!

Plus there’s this: if you’re anything like me (and just about every client I’ve ever worked with), if you set a tiny goal like 15 minutes for your creative thing, on some days you’ll end up creating for a lot more than that 15 minutes.

The truth is, the hardest thing is starting. If you can take care of that part, continuing usually takes care of itself. (Not always true with finishing, but that’s another blog post…)

In fact, I’m coming to believe that an even smaller goal may lead to even more creative-thing-doing success. Can’t get yourself to do 15 minutes? How about 10? Or 5? Or one?

It may sound ridiculous, but I’ve extended a one-minute-a-day challenge to clients whose stuckness was too sticky to allow them to sneak in even 15 minutes. And miracle of miracles, people who couldn’t manage 15 minutes a day were suddenly putting in 20, 30, 45 minutes playing in the Creative Sandbox!!!

My philosophy: whatever works.

And though one minute a day may mean you can’t clean up your studio, pull out your paints, or use your optimal tools, it might just force you to be more creative! It will almost certainly force you to let go of some perfectionist tendencies that only get in your way anyway.

“I only have X minutes? Okay, I guess I’d better focus on process and let go of attachment to an outstanding end product…”

Yep. I guess you’d better. (And isn’t that what you’ve secretly been wanting to do anyway? Imperfectionism is a helluva lot more fun, after all.) And/or work inside a different structure.

Don’t want to try to spend a meager 5 minutes working on your novel? Well, what kind of story can you write in 5 minutes then? You might even find yourself discovering a passion for a new genre!

At Jazz Camp West last year (which, if you have even the slightest interest in playing jazz music, you really MUST go to), I took a songwriting class, where the teacher gave us 5 minutes at the start of each day’s session in which to write a song.

Five freakin’ minutes!

Did I finish a song that I was proud of in any of those 5 minute bursts? No, but I wrote some interesting stuff I never would have written without the prompt. And the exercise made me realize that even writing (even songwriting, which I’m notoriously slow at) can be done in short bursts. And those short bursts can even “force” you to try things you’d never do if you had the luxury of uninterrupted hours or days.

So what do you do when everything you do feels like something you have to do, not something you want to do? Figure out where you can hornswaggle in 15 minutes (or 10, or 5, or 1) for something you DO want to do. Make it happen, and commit to making it happen consistently.

It could change your life.

What can you do in 5 minutes today? Or 15 minutes? Or one minute? How can you challenge yourself to play in the Creative Sandbox today?

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on! Share, tweet, G+. You know the drill.