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

April 19, 2012

The #1 Thing That Gets In Your Way

The above video says pretty much the same thing as the post below, but with talking. (6 minutes)

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? [Read more…]

April 13, 2012

Inspiring Subscriber: Susan Falcone – Creativity, Self-Compassion & Trickster Universe

[s3mv]SusanFalconeInterview3-20-12.m4v,640,360,false,false[/s3mv]

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?

xo, Melissa <3
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!

April 9, 2012

When everything you do feels like something you have to do, not something you want to do

My friend Amy asked me to write a post with the title “When everything you do feels like something you have to do, not something you want to do,” so here it is. This is for you, Amy.

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?

xo, Melissa <3
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on! Share, tweet, G+. You know the drill.

April 5, 2012

How Amazon Can Help You Unhook from Criticism

Uncharacteristically short for me today. Just some brilliant advice I learned today in Tara Mohr’s Playing Big program (aff).

The theme in Playing Big for the next two weeks is unhooking from criticism. Kinda (ahem) critical if you want to play big, because the bigger you play, the more you stand out, and the more criticism you’re going to get.

It just comes with the territory.

Criticism is a sign that you’re doing important work.

And as Tara pointed out, criticism tells you a lot more about the critic than it does about YOU.

Someone doesn’t like your writing?

That doesn’t mean your writing sucks, just that it’s not the writing for them.

Your painting didn’t sell?

That doesn’t mean your painting sucks, just that it’s not the right painting for this particular audience.

Plus you know you can’t please everyone, right? The truth is, if you’re getting criticism, it probably means you’re onto something. Think of the heroes in your life. I’ll bet at least some of them have been targets of a lot of criticism. Did they let it stop them?

If they’re one of your heroes, I suspect not.

Homework!

On our call today, Tara gave us a bit of homework that I thought was absolutely brilliant, and which I’m now going to pass on to you:

Head over to Amazon.com, and look up your favorite books by your favorite authors. The books you absolutely LOVE. Scroll down to the reviews and read some of the five-star reviews.

Then (and this is the brilliant part), read some of the really bad reviews. The one- and two-star reviews.

Then ask yourself, do those lousy reviews mean that the book that you loved actually sucks? Ask yourself, do those reviews tell you about the book author, or about the person writing the review?

I spent maybe ten minutes over on Amazon earlier today, checking out bad reviews of books I loved. Wow.

I may just have to add this to my weekly routine, along with reading through the emails I’ve saved from people who have been touched by something I’ve written or created. (Though I also need to learn to unhook from praise, which is the theme for the next Playing Big call.)

Try it, and let me know your reactions.

xo, Melissa <3
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

April 1, 2012

Trickster Universe and the Truth About Being Enough

In honor of April Fool’s Day, a post about Trickster Universe that’s no joke.

—

The Universe can be a real trickster.

Sometimes this comes in the form of whacking you upside the head with a 2×4 when you haven’t listened well enough to the whispers (and later louder statements, then shouts) it’s been telling you.

Other times there’s no 2×4, just the same message over and over in different forms and from different messengers.

We call this serendipity.

This past week has been a brilliant example of this (much more fun) side of the Trickster Universe.

One of my three words for 2012 is Self-Compassion. One way I’ve been practicing self-compassion is by making an effort to take care of myself physically. Like sleeping in til after noon on Friday to try and nip my cold in the bud. (Which made a huge difference, by the way.)

Being the gogogoGOGO sort (my top Strengthsfinder 2.0 strength is Achiever, so I come by it honestly), learning to slow down and take a nap is not easy for me.

Way harder, though, is the self-compassion to accept myself as enough, just as I am.

Turns out I’m not alone.

Brené Brown’s book, The Gifts of Imperfection, and her viral TED videos on shame and vulnerability, have made me much more aware of something I kinda already knew: we all feel like we’re not enough.

Something must have opened for me recently, though, because this week the Universe showed me, for the umpteenth time, that who I am, what I bring, really is enough, is good, is of benefit to others.

Yes, the Universe has tried to tell me this many times before. The difference is that this week I finally started to get it.

Here’s just some of what happened:

The Message of the EBook Cover

I wrote earlier about how my wonderful subscribers helped me see that my belief that my art couldn’t possibly make a good-enough ebook cover was a just my Inner Critic Gremlin talking. With their encouragement, and brilliant art direction from Seth Watkins, I threw out bland and generic, and went back to my drawing board. I worked through the hard, and found the real.

—————————————————————–

VERY LONG TANGENT!

Here’s a bit of the progression, in case you’re interested.

My publisher’s suggested design:

Lovely, but a young white woman on the cover felt to me like it might inadvertently make anyone who isn’t a young white woman feel like the book isn’t aimed at her.

So I decided to try my hand at some designs of my own. Still, the Inner Critic Gremlin had me convinced my own art wouldn’t work well. Stock photos — that was the way to do it right (I thought). These are what I cam up with:

Again, basically inoffensive, but still (except for the sticky notes design) implying a limited audience, whether by race, gender or age. And though I do find that happy toes image delightful, it doesn’t really fully express me and my message.

When your fans and followers ask you why your art isn’t on the cover, it becomes easier to unmask the Inner Critic Gremlin for the liar it is.

Back to the drawing board…

That’s when the brilliant and talented Seth got involved. Here are some of the images I sent him, this time using my own artwork (but still not “it” yet…):

Seth, that clever monkey, sent me a PDF paste-up of covers from a multitude of creativity-themed books, which helped me see what I like (rainbow colors, a “handmade” look). And he also included some art and graphics from my own site, which helped me see that, contrary to what I believed, I did have some very graphic art in my catalog! Namely this piece:

Aha! Back to Photoshop I went, where I created this mockup, combining my artwork above and rainbow colors (the handmade look I would do later at my actual drawing board — this is just a concept sketch):

Closer! We’re getting closer! And when I sent this to Seth, and he sent back this modification:

Eureka! He took my concept and made it exponentially more interesting! I knew we had it!

I then pulled out my calligraphy pens, watercolor paper and a cheap, Prang watercolor set and got to work. I scanned the resulting artwork into Photoshop, and (after much tweaking) this was the happy result:

Much better, no? So much more ME! Read my Facebook page and profile for some of the responses that validated what I felt.

Now back to our blog post already in progress…

—————————————————————–

Message from the Universe: your art, your unique expression, Melissa, is good enough. Is, in fact, better at expressing the unique message of your own writing than any generic stock photo design that you, or anyone else, could brew up.

(AND, a good art director can take what you already do well and make it waaaaaay better.)

Bonus Message: What your Right People want from you is what YOU naturally bring to the table.

The Message of the Group Coaching Call

My partner, Cory, was out of town on a well-deserved vacation, leaving me on my own to run our monthly group coaching call for our online course and community for artists, ArtEmpowers.Me. Surely people would feel cheated not to have his technical wizardry and marketing expertise on the call! Yes, I bring my own expertise, but my expertise is not his expertise, and he brings so much to these calls, I thought for sure a call led just by me would be a massive disappointment.

What happened instead was that the call serendipitously seemed to draw people with mindset-related questions (my genius zone), and I facilitated what turned into a really interesting, more philosophical, more mindset-than-marketing kind of discussion.

Which the people on the call really loved. (One even said it was the best call yet.)

Message from the Universe: What you naturally bring to the table is actually enough.

The Message of the Online Class

My other partner project, Playing Around Online, had its 3rd class meeting the following morning. My co-teacher and fellow Poobah of Play, Kelly Hevel, allowed the energy of the class to determine the class plan, veering from our intended curriculum when the conversation seemed to want us to do so. We allowed ourselves to be in the moment, to be in flow, to improvise — just bringing our full selves to the table and being fully present.

The response from everyone there reinforced the following…

Message from the Universe: What you naturally bring to the table is actually enough.

The Message of the Hangout Idea

This past week was also when I officially announced that I’m bringing back my free monthly telephone chats, but in a new, turbocharged, totally remodeled format — as video hangouts!

I emailed my peeps to let them know what was coming, and invited them to sign up on the special hangouts mailing list, if they want to get the login info for the hangouts, and access to the recordings afterwards.

What are these hangouts? Nothing more than me, a special guest-of-the-month, and everyone participating at that given hangout, bringing ourselves to the table. Sharing our creative process. Sharing our art, or music, or poetry. Sharing our thoughts, our tips and techniques for keeping Resistance and the Inner Critic Gremlin at bay, and getting to the important work of doing our creative thing(s).

No Get Rich Quick schemes. No Secrets of Instant Success.

Just real people, embracing our creativity and being real.

The response kinda blew me away. What had been my telephone chat list (and is now my hangouts list) increased by 37%, just like that.

Yep, people are hungry for this. (If you are too, please join us! You can sign up right here.)

Message from the Universe: What you naturally bring to the table is actually enough.

Wrapping up

There was more. The inspiring recordings inside Jennifer Louden and Michele Christenson’s truly amazing course, TeachNow. Which led me to subscribe to Susan Piver‘s newsletter. Susan’s video of this week. The conversation with my best friend in which I realized that there might possibly be some shades of grey between running myself into the ground and being comatose.

All of these and more drove home the same message from the Universe in gentle, powerful ways.

Message: I am enough.

Confession: I’d be lying if I thought my deep feeling of not being enough was permanently liquidated from this week’s serendipitous messages from the Universe. But I am starting to believe that perhaps I really am enough.

And that’s a great start.

Where can you see that you are truly enough, just as you are?

xo, Melissa <3
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

Hey! Hello! Announcing a Free Thing!

Homework!

The Message of the EBook Cover

The Message of the Group Coaching Call

The Message of the Online Class

The Message of the Hangout Idea

Wrapping up

Would You Like Some Cookies?