Sparked by SARK: Delight Yourself First
Delight Yourself First
That’s the message that writer, artist, color queen SARK shared this past weekend at the annual Coaching Conference at the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts in Tempe.
Don’t just write a list of to-do’s, make the activity fun and exciting and delightful. If you want to go to Europe, she said, instead of writing down Get a Passport, find your passport application and fondle it lovingly. If your dream is to plant a garden, don’t Buy Fertilizer. Go on a fertilizer adventure.
Anyone who is familiar with SARK, free spirit and author of 15 inspiring books, knows that she lives a life of delight. Her loud laugh fill the room with her true love of living.
We all have creative dreams, she said. Your creative dreams will wait for you. They want to be made real. She shared some of her tools and tricks for keeping her own creative dreams alive. Action comes before inspiration, she said. Find ways to delightfully make micro-movements to make your dreams real.
AN INVITATION TO YOU:
Say YES to something that delights you.
Say YES to envisioning your creative dreams.
Say YES to Sparking Your Heart with one of our workshops.
For more delights from SARK, visit her wild and wonderful world at www.planetsark.com
Running with Mentors
They say that if you are a runner and want to improve your speed, you should run with someone faster than you. That the competition will motivate you, challenge you, inspire you to be better, faster, stronger.
My dream is to write my book about living creatively, travel around the country in my RV to book-signings and speaking engagements and lead guest workshops.
For years, this dream was just a quiet, private vision in my own head. It wasn’t until this past year that I have shared my dream out loud and taken action to make it happen. I am teaching my workshops again locally, and I have started writing my book. I am on my path, moving forward to realizing my bigger dream.
And on most days I feel balanced and content with the pace of how I am moving.
And then I see my mentors up-leveling their lives, offering webinars and teleconference calls, touring all over with their newest books and suddenly I feel very far behind in my own goals and I wonder if I will ever get where they are.
I could easily get stuck in this place of envy and discontent and fear that I will never live my dreams.
But then I stop and breathe and acknowledge that I am exactly where I need to be. That I am moving at my own pace, with my own plan. They have been doing their work for a much longer time. They have written many books. I’ve just started writing mine.
And once I feel grounded again on my own path, I am able to say a prayer of gratitude for them being ahead of me, holding up even more possibilities for me to imagine for myself.
A Day of Beauty
Your attention is the most powerful creative tool that you have.
We’ve all heard that energy follows thought. That if we think….. then…… is bound to happen. If you seek out kind people, you will meet kind people. If we are always complaining about something, then there will always be something to complain about.
What would happen if you shifted your thoughts? Adjusted your attention?
Would you even be willing to try?
For one day, consciously pay attention to everything that you think is beautiful.
It could be a vase of flowers, the sky, a table setting, a person’s smile, the arrangement of fruits at your local market–whatever beauty is for you–notice it, acknowledge how it makes you feel, even share it with someone else.
At the end of the day, write or draw or express how your day of beauty felt. What else did you notice about the day and the interactions you experienced?
Would you be willing to do this every day?
How to Connect in 5 Focused Minutes
For months, probably years, I have been wanting connection. Connection to others, to myself, to nature. Saying this, acknowledging this, becoming aware of this need is a wonderful first step. But I wanted more. I wanted a deeper connecting. As with everything, I had to begin with myself.
Connection happens in the quiet moments when we are able to tune out the chattering voices in our heads and move into the deeper, wider space inside. It takes patience to find this space and practice to be able to stay there. And yet, it takes very little action on our part to begin.
Every morning I sit outside with my bowl of bran cereal dotted with dried cranberries and I begin my day with noticing. I notice my thoughts, the sky, the smell of the eucalyptus leaf mulch that covers my dirt yard. I sip my coffee and delight in the fat yellow cat claw blossoms strewn on the ground from last night’s wind.
I watch the birds in my yard, but it isn’t until I notice their individual stripes and colorations, learn their names, that I connect with them. And when I write about them, sketch them, feed them, I am bringing them INTO myself, creating an even deeper connection with them. And when I share the stories, the words I’ve written, I am bringing them OUT of myself, into the world and that is a deeper connection still.
The Practice:
Find a quiet space, preferably outside, or looking outside. Nature provides a shortcut to this place of connection. Sit in this quiet space for fifteen minutes and just notice. If you begin to hear voices in your head saying you’re too busy for this sitting still, that there are a million more productive things you should be doing, take a breath. Acknowledge that you are taking this time, this short but precious time, and that you can tend to all of that stuff later.
And breathe.
What colors do you see?
What does the air feel like?
Do you notice any shadows and light?
How many shades of green can you see in the grass?
What do the clouds look like, floating by?
How many different bird songs can you hear around you?
The more often you are able to connect in this way, the quieter your mind will become and the larger the space inside of you will become, making you more connected to what you truly desire.
Homework:
Most of us can’t do “nothing” for five minutes, much less fifteen. So here is a focused activity you can try:
I ask my students to keep a Book of Observations. I used to call it a Journal of Observations but the word “journal” conjured too many bad connotations: that journaling meant writing about how you FEEL!!! This is exactly NOT that.
A Book of Observations is a place to record what you notice, where you study a thing every day, where you pay attention to the details of your life. It could be the light in your living room at sunset, the growth of a plant, where your neighbors park their cars every evening.
You can write in your book, affix daily photographs or drawings, or paste in things you find in your daily noticings. In some way, make it a place to collect the observations of what you really pay attention to in your daily life.
Taking time to notice the world outside of yourself begins to create space inside of yourself where the real connecting begins.
