Blog - Melissa Dinwiddie | Create the Impossible™ | Innovation Keynote Speaker & Consultant

May 2, 2013

Dare to Do It Badly

Calligraphy Art:

Dare to do it badly!

Media:

Watercolor, colored pencil, pastel, steel pointed pen on paper

Dimensions:

3 1/8″ x 6 1/8″

Creation Notes:

We all want to be good at the things we do, but if you wait until you’ve got it perfect, you’ll never start. Let yourself do it badly, so that you can learn to do it better.

In the Collection of:

The artist (that’s me!)

Want an original ArtSpark for your own collection? Watch my Facebook page, because I periodically auction off my ArtSparks there.

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

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April 25, 2013

Your Bliss is your responsibility—don’t shut it off!

Every so often I dig into the Living A Creative Life archives, and pull out a classic article that feels worthy of reposting. This is one such Living A Creative Life Classic, originally published on May 6, 2010. Enjoy, and let me know your thoughts! ~M

When I got divorced, one of the things that got me out of bed in the morning was knowing that tonight (or the next night, or the next) I was going out dancing.

Dance was my first love. I’d been on a career track as a modern dancer, and only stopped when forced by an injury (a good thing in the end, but that’s another story). Now, years later, even though I could have physically handled going out dancing, I never did while I was married.

Why? Because my husband didn’t like to dance. And because he was so jealous it didn’t even enter my mind to go out alone.

A big, important part of myself, one of my core Blisses, was effectively cut off for years.

And it was 100% my own fault.

The truth is each of us is 100% responsible for our own happiness, and I didn’t have to let my husband’s jealousy and lack of interest determine my choices. It felt like I had no choice, but in fact that was just me playing the victim and not taking responsibility.

When I finally “rediscovered” dance during my divorce, I was insanely grateful to “get dance back,” and insanely annoyed with myself for ever letting someone else’s preferences dictate my choices.

I swore I’d never do the same thing again.

Yet in my last relationship I did just that. You’d think over a decade of personal growth would have made a difference, but no.

This time the Bliss in question was music, singing jazz to be exact, and before I met my ex, my habit was to get out to a jam session or two at least every week or so, where I could get a microphone in my hand. But during the year-plus of my last relationship, I only went to jam sessions a handful times.

Why? Not because my ex forbade me from going, but simply because he didn’t like jazz, and wasn’t willing to learn to like it. So I was left with the choice of either following my Bliss, or spending time with him.

Now, I’d worked long and hard to find this relationship (57 dates in a 2 1/2 year period, in fact). I thought this man was my life partner, and our relationship was a huge priority in my life. Plus I just plain liked spending time with him! Then there was the fact that, unlike my ex-husband, he did go out dancing with me, even subjected himself to the sometimes excruciating challenge of learning Argentine Tango so that we could dance together.

The man was clearly willing, just not when it came to jazz. (Did I mention he also left the room when I played guitar? You’d think that would have been a clue…)

At the time, my choice to spend time with him rather than following my Bliss seemed tolerable. Now I’m not so sure.

Think about it: much as we don’t like to believe this, relationships come and go. Blisses endure. Perhaps the fact that this man couldn’t muster up enthusiasm for my Bliss was a clue that it wasn’t going to be a good match for the long term.

Are there people in your life who are less than supportive of you following your Bliss? Take a good, hard look. Are those relationships really going to serve you in the end? If there’s a niggling voice somewhere inside, you might want to pay attention to it.

I’m not telling you to break up with someone, but I am telling you, as one who knows, that cutting off an important part of your creative self is not the route to happiness.

You are 100% responsible. Seeking happiness is your birthright, and your Blisses are key to that happiness. Don’t you deserve to have people around you who will support you in your efforts to follow your evolving Bliss?

You bet you do. Don’t settle for less.

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

April 16, 2013

Endings, Exits, Edges and Buttered Sourdough Toast

When I was a kid, one of the best parts of the weekend was my dad’s sourdough.

Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, we were lucky to share our home with microorganisms that make the best sourdough on the planet, and my dad had it down to an art form. On Friday or Saturday night he’d pull out the ceramic container that lived in the fridge, mix the weird-smelling sponginess inside together with flour and water, cover the bowl with a dish towel and put it up on the top of the cupboard, near the ceiling, where the sourdough-making beasties were most likely to hang out and add their magic to the mix.

The next morning we’d be treated to a super-sour batch of pancakes (my favorite) or waffles (my brother’s favorite), or sometimes biscuits (okay, I lied — these were definitely my favorite).

Weekend brunches were the best at my house!

In addition to the quickbreads above, there were a couple of years there when Pop also made killer sourdough bread once or twice a week. He even bought a special set of Pyrex™ baking tubes, which made eerily perfect cylindrical loaves, which we in turn sliced into perfect rounds of bread.

Sourdough bread is definitely best toasted, and the toaster in our house got a lot of use.

Which meant, of course, that we got very practiced at buttering said toast.

My dad was the pro — his toast was always impeccably buttered, with an even layer of melted butter (or more likely in our house, margarine) from edge to edge. Mom’s technique was more slapdash, resulting in a big lump of butter (margarine) in the center, with the toast getting progressively drier and more butter-poor the closer you got to the crust.

Mom loves butter (margarine too, actually), and would be happy to eat it straight out of the carton, so her technique worked great for her needs. When you’re sprinkling your cinnamon sugar, however, and you want it to cling consistently to every millimeter of your toast round, a mostly-dry piece of toast with a chunk of partially-melted butter (or margarine) in the center just doesn’t cut it.

I was determined to learn to butter toast like my dad did. What was Pop’s secret?

Edges.

Pop learned a saying from someone else (his own father, perhaps?), which stuck with me:

“Butter around the outside, and the inside will take care of itself.”

Or, to be a little clearer:

“Butter along the edges, and the middle will take care of itself.”

In other words, start spreading your butter not in the middle, but along the outer edges, by the crust. As you circle around your slice of toast, keep spreading the butter at the outer edge of the still-dry part of the toast. You’ll end up buttering in an ever tightening spiral, until at last you reach the center.

It’s a thing of beauty.

What does this have to do with living a creative life?

I will explain, dear reader.

Several months back I had a half-day studio session with Cairene.

(Brief interruption to say: Run, do not walk, to work with this woman! And no, that is not an affiliate link. Virtual hugs to the wonderful Laureen for pointing me in Cairene’s direction. And yes, it’s a random coincidence that their names sort of rhyme.)

When the student is ready, the teacher appears, they say. I was oh-so ready for Cairene, who pointed out (among many other things) the importance of giving attention to the edges of your work: exits, endings, transitions from one “container” to the next.

Exits, Endings, and Transitions

The time I spend writing this post, for example, is a container. At some point I’ll need to shift my attention away from writing a blog post and toward the next thing.

Picking my sweetie up at the airport, say. That’s another container, and something else I have to do today (in about twenty minutes, as it happens).

If I’m going to get to the airport in a timely fashion, so my sweetie doesn’t have to wait out on the curb for a ridiculous amount of time, I need to plan ahead not just for the time it will take me to drive to the airport, but for the time it will take me to transition out of writing a blog post and into the next thing.

What do I need to do to wrap up my writing session? Save the blog post, or if it’s done, schedule it for publication. Bring my attention out of my computer and onto what I need to get myself safely to the airport.

But I actually need to do a lot more than that.

In this case, I need to put on some real clothes (unless I want to drive to the airport in my pajamas), feed the cat — and, oh, yeah, since I’m dog-sitting for my parents’ German Shepherd, Chloe, I also need to let the dog out and feed her, too.

So it’s not really just a matter of stopping writing and *bam!* instantaneously driving to the airport. There is a whole slew of “transition stuff” that needs to be taken into consideration if the rest of my morning is to go smoothly. And just like the buttered sourdough toast, if I pay attention to those edges, I’ll have a much more pleasant experience.

When I get back from the airport, what needs to happen in order for me to turn my attention back to writing, or to whatever container is next?

If I think about these things in advance, it’s truly amazing how much difference it makes!

My Usual M.O.

What I typically tend to do is forget about things like the fact that I have to feed the critters before I can hop in the car, so I extend my writing container for longer than I really have time for. Then I end up scrambling like a madwoman, cursing a lot, and being embarrassingly late for things like picking my sweetie up from the airport.

What I typically tend to do is not think about endings, edges, and transitions, and that means great stretches of otherwise productive time gets lost in a void of never-ending-transition.

My day is in constant danger of becoming a black-hole of spinning my wheels. Or to stick with my toast metaphor, a piece of mostly-dry sourdough toast with a clump of mostly unmelted butter in the middle.

But now, thanks to Cairene, my usual M.O. is changing. Instead of just focusing on what I have to do, I’m learning to shift my focus just an inch to the left and right of that, to how I’m going to end a given container, transition out of it, and transition into the next thing.

Butter around the edges and the middle will take care of itself.

Focus on the edges, endings, and transitions of the tasks, activities, and “containers” of my day, and the whole day flows ever so much more smoothly.

Now I’m going to get dressed, feed some hungry critters, and make myself some cinnamon toast before heading off to the airport to pick up MB.

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

Photo by Thristian at Flickr

April 7, 2013

Are You Sabotaging Your Progress With this Common Mistake?

I’m very careful these days when I congratulate someone on progress toward a goal.

You see, I don’t want to sabotage them.

You’d think that a “hey, congratulations!” or a pat on the back would motivate us to further progress, but according to research, the opposite is often the case.

What the..?

It sounds counter-intuitive, but congratulating yourself on progress toward your goal may actually undermine you in making further progress.

As Kelly McGonigal writes in her book, The Willpower Instinct,

Maybe we should think twice before we hand ourselves the gold star. While most of us believe that making progress on our goals spurs us on to greater success, psychologists know we are all too quick to use progress as an excuse for taking it easy.

Researchers Ayelet Fishbach, professor at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and Ravi Dhar, professor at the Yale School of Management, have demonstrated in their research that making progress on a goal actually motivates people to self-sabotage on that very goal.

In one of their studies, they congratulated dieters on how much progress they’d made on their weight loss goal, then offered them a snack as a reward — either an apple or a chocolate bar.

One might assume that anyone with a big goal of losing weight would opt for the apple, but 85% of the congratulated dieters chose the chocolate bar.

The control group, who were not reminded of their progress, still opted for the chocolate bar more than half of the time (58% percent), but statistically, a simple message of congratulations for their progress had a dramatic impact on the likelihood that someone would do something in direct contradiction to their stated goal.

In other words, focusing on progress was strongly correlated with self-sabotage.

Fishbach and Dhar found similar results with academic goals: when they were made to feel good about the amount of time they’d spent studying for an exam, students were more likely to spend the evening partying.

What is going on here?

You know that image of an angel standing on one shoulder, and a devil standing on the other, each whispering in an ear, trying to get you to follow their advice? It’s pretty smack on, it turns out.

In a way, we are not one self, but two competing selves: the self that’s thinking about long-term interests, and the self that wants immediate gratification.

At any given time, we are dealing with multiple, often conflicting goals.

We want the weight loss, and we want chocolate.

We want a good grade on the exam, and we want to party.

We want to get the novel written/the paintings made for the show/the CD recorded, and we want to play on Facebook/read Game of Thrones/go to that late-night rave.

We feel conflicted about these goals, so in order to accomplish our big goals, we need our higher self to take command.

Whenever you experience a feeling of success in a self-control challenge, though, it has the effect of temporarily satisfying your higher self… which leads it to take a nap, right when you most need it to take charge.

Focusing on your progress toward a long-term goal turns off your attention on that goal, and your brain then turns its attention to the other goals that have not been satisfied — immediate gratification! self-indulgence! chocolate! beer! Facebook! etc.

Psychologists even have a term for this: goal liberation.

As McGonigal puts it in The Willpower Instinct,

Progress can cause us to abandon the goal we’ve worked so hard on because it shifts the balance of power between our two competing selves… The goal you’ve been suppressing with your self-control is going to become stronger, and any temptation will become more tempting.
In practical terms, this means that one step forward gives you permission to take two steps back. Setting up your automatic retirement investment may satisfy the part of you that wants to save, liberating the part of you that wants to shop. Getting your files organized may satisfy the part of you that wants to work, liberating the part of you that wants to watch the game on TV. You were listening to the angel on your shoulder, but now the devil seems much more compelling.

Even your To-Do list can end up sabotaging you. When we make that trusty list, it can feel so darn satisfying.

But we can mistake that satisfaction from creating the list with actually doing the tasks on it and making progress.

McGonigal quips, “Or, as one of my students said, he loves productivity seminars because they make him feel so productive—never mind that nothing has been produced yet.”

So what do we do about this?

The important thing to note here is that progress is not itself the problem.

The problem is focusing on progress.

And even then, it’s only a problem if you pay more attention to the feeling of progress than to your commitment to your goals.

If you can see your progress as evidence of your commitment to your goal, if you can conclude that you must really care about your goal, it will help you to do even more to reach it.

As McGonigal notes, “This perspective is easy to adopt; it’s just not our usual mind-set. More typically, we look for a reason to stop.”

Instead of thinking “Look how much progress I made! Now I can do what I really want,” try thinking “I did that because my goal is important to me. I’m going to keep going after it!”

Researchers at Hong Kong University of Science and the University of Chicago did a study that showed this to be an effective strategy.

When they asked one group of students to remember a time they turned down a temptation, 70% took the next opportunity to indulge. But, when they also asked the participants to think about why they had turned down the temptation, 69% resisted the temptation.

In other words, simply remembering the “why” completely flipped the results!

When you focus on your commitment to your goal, rather than your progress, that chocolate bar/Facebook dive/party night that seemed so tempting may look like less of a treat and more of a threat to your goals, making it easier to say “no” to it, so you can get back to working toward the Big Yes that you really want.

The upshot

The next time you receive congratulations for progress, whether from someone else or yourself, turn your focus from your progress toward your goal to your commitment to your goal. Take a moment and remember why you worked so hard to get where you are, and recommit to going the distance.

Then let me know what happens!

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

Photo by lisadragon at Flickr

March 31, 2013

News from the Creative Cave!

Well, hello there (she says, blinking at the bright sunlight).

You’ll have to forgive the blinking and squinting — I’ve been deep in the creative cave for the past couple of weeks.

I love when this happens — I never feel so alive as when I’m in Manic-Obsessive-Create-Mode!

I also a little bit hate when this happens — I never feel so wrung out as when I’ve been in Manic-Obsessive-Create-Mode for awhile…

This is where it’s especially important to pace oneself, get adequate exercise, get outdoors, allow one’s sweetie and friends to pull one away from the computer (hell, conscript one’s sweetie and friends to pull one away from the computer!)

Most of the time I coach and counsel people how to get creating. Sometimes I have to coach and counsel people (read: myself) how to stop creating, and allow time for rest!

This is one of those times…

So what have I been up to?

First, I’ve been getting Creative Sandbox 101 relaunched and out into the world (yay!).

If you’ve ever designed a course, you know it’s a lot of work. And if you’ve ever built a virtual classroom on a website, with membership site software and autoresponders and such, you know that’s a lot of work.

There are a lot of moving parts to these things!

So yay and hallelujah for completion! (And if you haven’t signed up yet, click here — it’s free!)

Second, I’ve been working on my new signature program for women, Your Big, Bold, Creative Life Academy.

This program is basically the live version of my book, Your Big, Bold, Creative Life: A User’s Manual, and it has even more moving parts than Creative Sandbox 101 (not surprising, since Creative Sandbox 101 is a 7-day e-course, and YBBCL Academy is a 6-month live program!)

And I have a big announcement: the Your Big, Bold, Creative Life website is up!

Check it out here.

I’m especially delighted with the video I made, which you can see at the top of the page. It was great fun to make (including the jingle at the end!), and it’s a living example of imperfectionism at its best.

MB pointed out that the white font is hard to read on the light colored background, which I knew already, but you know what? It was DONE. I was done. It’s a 2 1/2 minute video, and it was time to say “ship” and turn my focus to something else.

So I did.

Here’s the video in all its imperfect glory — enjoy!

And if you want to read more about the Academy program, and/or sign up to get my Book Reports in your inbox, just click.

Meanwhile, remember what I always say, “The most important practice is the practice of getting back on the wagon”? It’s time for me to get back on the daily exercise wagon, so I’m letting MB pull me away from the computer and so we can go on a much-needed walk.

Yay for sweeties who can be conscripted to help drag you out of the creative cave when necessary!

Happy Easter!

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

Calligraphy Art:

Media:

Dimensions:

Creation Notes:

In the Collection of:

Exits, Endings, and Transitions

My Usual M.O.

What is going on here?

So what do we do about this?

The upshot

So what have I been up to?

Would You Like Some Cookies?