5 Inspired, Juicy, Creative Living Tips!

1. Clear Your Creative Mind
Sometimes we need to let go of what we don't need to have room for new ideas to grow. The amazing benefits of meditation and journalling are well-known, but have you yet to incorporate them into your daily routine? As part of InnerVitality's Art & Spirituality Series, I'll introduce you to some of Julia Cameron's freeing and inspirational ideas (including Morning Pages and weekly 'Artist' Dates)...these techniques change lives, and I can't wait to share them with you! You may also enjoy this free link to an on-line LuminEssence meditation to Clear Your Creative Mind, and if you're free on a Tuesday morning, come join us for our InnerVitality Meditation Sampler!

2. Shake it Up
Take a risk, break a habit, do the same things differently! "The power to live well and prosper is yours for creating, so plant the seeds of heightened intelligence, creativity, courage, and gracious change in the garden of your mind. ~BARBARA MARCINIAK. Does each step of your daily routine bring you joy or is it time to shake things up a bit? Explore how you can bring more pleasure and fun into an everyday simple activities...like brushing your teeth, for instance. Hay House author Denise Linn speaks of how changing a habit can alter your aura and how having fun can stimulate the immune system. Do you expose yourself to new activities, cultures, foods, textures, colours, music? Are you taking responsibility for keeping your own life, career and relationships exciting? "I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious." ~EINSTEIN. Exercise passionate curiosity and take some planned risks, and watch your view of the world and what you know to be possible expand. "Your life can explode with potential that had little possibility of developing the day before, if you are open to it!" ~GARY ZUKAV.

3. Do It Badly!
Sark, author of Succulent Wild Woman (how great is that title!), is a wonderful teacher in how to find and live our creative dreams. She writes, "I knew from experience that my perfectionistic ways were inhibiting my joy, so I began consciously practicing doing more things badly, or imperfectly. It's such a relief to give up so many of the 'rules' I'd grown up with and then imposed on myself. So that's when I began doing things like eating a chocolate cake with no silverware, lying down in line at the bank, and singing Amazing Grace at the department of motor vehicles. I'm a pretty high achiever, and in some cases, an over achiever, so my dialing down from a 10 (on a 1 to 10 scale) to a 5 or 6, is barely noticeable to anyone else!" Wow, how fun were her examples! And there are many tiny ways you can exercise this same liberation from perfectionism in your own life today. "Even an hour of creative play can go a long way toward offsetting the sense of workaholic desperation that keeps dreams at bay." ~JULIA CAMERON.

4. Invite the Divine to Join You
"Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art." ~LEONARDO DA VINCI. When we take a leap in our lives, trusting that a bridge will be there, living with faith, trust and surrender ~ it's incredibly exciting to see where we'll be guided next! Request to be a channel of love, creativity and inspiration...and be ready for your life to change in leaps and bounds. You may wish to keep a pen handy, to jot down all the inspirational ideas that will be flowing to you! I've adopted this attitude of requesting to be a channel while painting, seeing the brush and canvas as one...if I'm painting a landscape I ask to be the water, the greenery, the sky...and I feel I encounter even more timelessness, joy and vibrancy in creating my art. For you it may be in music, gardening, running a marathon, entrepreneurial business ideas, poetry, or the way you read your kids a bedtime story....

5. Do It Now!
"Love deeply. Love NOW! You never know when your last breath, last rainbow, last chance to say 'I love you' will be." ~DENISE LINN. Do one thing, just one, TODAY that is on your wish list or is a step towards achieving your dreams. Or choose one small action towards facing your fears each day...how liberating and self-empowering! And who says we need to work before play? If this ingrained idea is hindering you from ever engaging in the hobbies that bring you joy...do your passion FIRST. Indulge, indulge, indulge in all the small healthful pleasures that put a bounce in your step. "Don't die with your music still inside you." ~WAYNE DYER. "The greatest opportunity for healing and happiness has been, will be, and always will be NOW!" ~ROBERT HOLDEN.