Want to Be In Love With Your Life? 10 Quick Questions to Help

Want to be in love with your life?

Specifically, do you want to be in love with your creative life? (Or as I like to call it, your Creative Oasis.)

You know those creative experiences that fill you up with happiness? Anything from gardening to yoga to painting to writing to making music to art journaling to traveling to visiting museums to cooking to photography...all of the creative experience that makes your heart sing and time fly!

Today I'm sharing 10 quick questions to help shift your focus to what's working well and what could use a little help in your creative life. (You know how I love questions! Asking them tends to lead us straight to the good stuff!)

Doesn't it make sense that the more time you spend having creative experiences you love the more you will love your life? (Jack was onto something! Woot!)

To join me, set a timer for 5-minutes and quickly write your answers in your journal or on a sheet of paper.

Either way, please try writing them down somewhere. There's something powerful in the act of writing your thoughts on paper rather than just thinking them in your mind.

Ready? Here we go...

#1 ~ Are you in love with your creative life? 

#2 ~ If yes...what do you love about it? (If no...skip down to question #6.)

#3 ~ What's one simple way you can expand what's working well to enjoy it in a new and different way? 

#4 ~ What's another creative experience you've been dreaming of that you haven't yet tried? What's one small step you could take toward making that happen next?

#5 ~ What if you take a moment right now to enjoy a nice deep breath of gratitude for your wonderful creative life?  (Yay! Gratitude works like fertilizer to feed the flowers of our creative spirit and keep it growing strong! Please proceed to question #10.)

#6 ~ If no...what's worked well in the past? What's one small way you could revisit that?

#7 ~ What's one new thing you'd like to experience that you've never tried before? What's one small, doable step you could take to help make that happen?

#8 ~ If you're feeling stuck coming up with answers for 6 and 7, where might you find help? 

#9 ~ What's one way you can show some compassion and be kind to yourself around this? (*Hint: see question #10.)

#10 ~ How can you spend the next 5 to 10 minutes in a way that feeds your creative spirit and energizes and delights you?* 

(*Ideas: doodle, color, take a few photos with your phone, write a haiku, play a song on the piano or guitar, make a meal using as many colors as possible, take a walk around the block and look for pink things, write your creative self a letter telling her all the things you wish for her!) 

Questions are creative lighter fluid! Here's hoping that by pondering these questions you'll spark your creative curiosity and passion today and move one or two steps closer to being in love with your creative life!

Still need help? The one-on-one creative coaching I offer provides compassionate support, gentle accountability and ongoing inspiration to help you stay motivated and loving your creative life!
Learn more about it here.

You'll also find easy-to-use creative instigation and motivation in my "Create the Summer of Your Dreams  Kit" available here.

Until next time, all the best from my "I Love It!" Creative Oasis to yours,

Jill

www.creativeoasiscoaching.com

P.S. ~ If you enjoyed this post please share on Facebook and twitter using the buttons below!  If you'd like to receive bite-size bonbons of creative inspiration like this Mid-Week Oasis Moments plus a free copy of my e-book "Permission to Be Creative 101" join me here: http://www.creativeoasiscoaching.com/newsletter.html.

Creative-Free-Time Treasure Hunt Challenge

 If some easy–breezy, guilt-free creative time sounds good to you, I invite you to accept my 

15-Minute Creative-Free-Time Treasure Hunt Challenge.

How does it work? You simply swap 15 minutes out of your busy schedule for 15 minutes of guilt-free creative free time this week. 

Easier said than done? Maybe this will help...Did you realize you have 10,080 minutes at your disposal each and every week? It’s true! (I was kind of jazzed when I did the math. I mean, just look at all those minutes waiting to be enjoyed!) 

Sure you’ll need lots of those minutes to sleep, shower, eat, wash dishes and the like. You’ll need more to work, chauffer kids, run errands, do laundry and other assorted life “stuff.”

Even so, I invite you to go on a treasure hunt of sorts and come up with just 15 minutes (of those 10,080 minutes) to you give yourself permission to enjoy a 100% guilt-free Creative Oasis experience. (If you already have a nice creative habit going consider this Bonus Creative Free Time!)

Where oh where oh where will you find this fifteen minutes?

Here are a few places you may find hidden pockets of time. 

~ While your morning coffee or tea brews

~ Before, after or instead of Facebook time

~ Rather than laying games like Words with Friends or Candy Crush

~ Swap for online shopping or browsing

~ Instead of watching mindless TV

~ Sleep (I’m all for enjoying a good night’s sleep, but setting your alarm 15 minutes early to enjoy a little Creative Me time can be a great way to start the day!)

~ Grocery shopping (make it a game to try to finish your shopping fifteen minutes faster than you usually do)

~ Waiting in the carpool line

 ~ or better yet…RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE! 

That’s right. You heard me. You’re sitting someplace reading this email, so why not set a timer and use the next 15 minutes to treat yourself to a Creative Oasis moment?

When you find your hidden pockets of time please take a moment to see them for the gems they really are! They're time you get to  choose to spend freely on your creative passions!

Don’t know which Creative Oasis you'd like to visit? Here are a few ideas:

~ Open your journal and enjoy some free form writing

~ Listen to music that you love and haven’t heard in ages

~ Dance

~ Fill an entire page with doodles

~ Pick up your knitting, crocheting or needlework

~ Make a homemade card for someone you love

~ Write a letter to your creative idol (you don’t have to send it)

~ Come up with as many creative ways to use paperclips as you can think of (you can think way outside the box here if you like ~ curtains anyone?)

~ Look through a coffee table, art or other creative book or magazine for inspiration

~ Play an instrument

~ Sing a song

~ Pick up a creative project that’s been gathering dust lately

~ Make up your own yoga routine by stretching and breathing in ways that feel good

~ Make a list of as many creative experiences as possible that you’d like to try

~ Sit and breath (outside if the weather’s nice)

Of course, once you enjoy your 15 minutes of Creative Free Time you may decide you want to find another 15 minutes to play again.

To that I say, go for it! Rinse and repeat! Do it to it! By all means! Be my guest! Excellent! Yay you!

Please share this with your friends and invite them to join us in The 15-Minute Creative-Free-Time Treasure Hunt Challenge.

If you’d like to share your experience please do so in the comments below! I’d love to know the details of your challenge experience. Where did you find hidden pockets of time? What did you swap to make time for your Creative Oasis moments? How did it feel to give yourself permission to really dive in and enjoy your creative time guilt-free?

You may be surprised at how truly rewarding, relaxing and freeing 15 minutes of creative play can be. And 15 minutes of creative fun is way better than no creative fun at all!

Until next time, all the best from my Creative Oasis to yours,

Jill

P.S. ~ If you enjoyed this post please share on Facebook and twitter using the buttons below!  If you'd like to receive bite-size bonbons of creative inspiration like this Mid-Week Oasis Moments plus a free copy of my e-book "Permission to Be Creative 101" join me here: http://www.creativeoasiscoaching.com/newsletter.html.

Culitavting Abundance - guest post by author Brian Leaf

I'm happy to introduce you to Brian Leaf, author of the recently released "Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi." Here are his thoughts on cultivating abundance. Love the confidence/dating analogy! All the best from my creative oasis to yours,  Jill

Cultivating Abundance

We’ve all experienced it. In our most pathetic, clingy, desperate hour of need, the Universe delivers … absolutely nothing.

It seems a sick joke, but, in fact, whatever force or God runs the show seems not to respond to disempowered displays of self-pity. She seems, instead, to respond generously to empowered non-attachment (which reminds me quite a bit of dating in my twenties – I always seemed to do best when I was already feeling attractive and confident.)

So why? Why does God (and dating) reward confidence? Why is it that when I am freaking out, feeling that I will just die if I don’t hear from my agent, that I hear only crickets? But that when I get to my cushion to meditate, and when I let go, releasing to faith, that I return to my inbox with a fresh book deal awaiting me?

Here’s the answer. This place where we live is a gymnasium where our souls do soul push-ups, and since self-pity does nothing to build these spiritual muscles, it is discouraged. It is our path to find our true selves while here on Earth. To drop into our hearts and souls. To experience that we, ourselves, are each part of God. Claiming the opposite, that we are helpless and alone, is incorrect and ineffective.

When we are lost in clinging and self-pity, we’re like toddlers tantruming for chewing gum. And God, like a loving parent, won’t give in to something that isn’t healthy or safe for us.

Nice idea, right? But how do you get confident and become grounded in the seat of your true self? The answer: meditation, of course. Meditation is the practice, over time, of switching from indentifying with our thoughts and transient emotional states, to identifying instead with our deeper selves. And when we are connected to our deeper selves, if even for only moments, we can see more clearly and choose the path that works out our Karma and brings us toward freedom.

When we get grounded, resting in the true seat of our selves, in our authentic nature, seeing clearly and choosing that path of vitality and freedom, energy flows unbidden, the world falls at our feet, and God unlocks the arc.

Brian Leaf, M.A. is the author of Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi. He draws upon twenty-one years of intensive study, practice, and teaching of yoga, meditation, and holistic health. Visit him online at http://www.Misadventures-of-a-Yogi.com.

Based on the new book Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi ©2012 by Brian Leaf.  Published with permission of New World Library http://www.newworldlibrary.com

Glad to see Brian made it to the great state of Texas!