Tag
creative presence
Mindfulness Poetry For Creatives
Allowing Now, my new book of mindfulness poetry for creatives is out. And while they are aimed at the general reader, I have a particular interest in mindfulness poetry for creatives. I’d love you to buy it, if that sort of thing appeals to you.
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Mindfulness and Poetry: Introduction to Allowing Now and a Mindfulness Poem by Thich Nhat Hanh
Practicing mindfulness, though they would never have called it that, is something that poets have always done. And poetry readers too. Reading mindfulness poetry requires as much creative attention and presence as writing it. I’d been writing for almost a decade before I was introduced to the word and the concept of mindfulness, by the Vietnamese zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh, dubbed “the father of mindfulness in the west”. So that’s what it’s called, I thought, when I first heard his succinct explanation of what it is to experience mindfulness. Suppose you are offered a cup of tea, very fragrant, very…
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Doing Creative Business The Creative Way: Tools for Creative Entrepreneurs
I offer a variety of tools and learning resources for those who want to do creative business the creative way. Creative Business The Creative Way: Go Creative! Workshops These workshops are for creativepreneurs (people who run passion, mission and purpose centered businesses or non-profits). The workshops take place on the 3rd Tuesday of each month online at 7pm London time (Facebook Live Video) but the advice is timeless and you can catch up with the replays anytime. Conventional business advice often feels too mechanical and one-dimensional for creatives. Based on the principles and practices outlined in the Go Creative! in Business books, these monthly…
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Haiku: Moments of Creative Presence. This week: Waterfalls
at might of water / crashing down a fall we can / but stand and stare. . Haiku Moments of Creative Presence: Waterfalls. Every Friday on the blog I showcase one of the haiku I’ve posted during the week on my Instagram account. This week’s was inspired by the Dublin canal. I write and read haiku because I love how it cultivates mindfulness and creative presence. Writing a haiku is an act of transcription. The moment of life that we’re experiencing through our physical senses gives us the poetry. We see and hear, taste and touch and inhale the moment. Then we allow…
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Haiku: Moments of Creative Presence. This week: fog
out of sea fog wave edges dressed in white foam oceans unseen . Haiku Moments of Creative Presence: Fog. Every Friday on the blog I showcase one of the haiku I’ve posted during the week on my Instagram account. This week’s was inspired by an early morning fog at St Leonard’s on Sea. I write and read haiku because I love how it cultivates mindfulness and creative presence. Writing a haiku is an act of transcription. The moment of life that we’re experiencing through our physical senses gives us the poetry. We see and hear, taste and touch and inhale the moment. Then…
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Creative Business Block 4: Type Three: The Strugglers
You know your calling and your customer. You’ve made a good start, perhaps experienced some beginners’ luck, but then comes the dawning realization of the challenges—the gap between where you are and where you want to be. The work involved in getting to the next step. You’re overworked and underpaid, and not having the impact you believe you should. Everything feels like a struggle. You may have read the blogs and books, invested in courses or coaching, even called in some consultancy. Still, you feel blocked or confused. And meanwhile, there’s so much to be done. There are business reasons why you’re struggling:…
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Creative Business Block 2: Type One: The Don’t Knows
A lot has been written about writers’ and artists’ block, but very little about business block. It has seven manifestations. Creative Business Block 1: You don’t know what business you want to create You’ve heard Steve Jobs’s 2005 commencement address at Stanford, or something similar, and agree that our time on earth is limited, that living someone else’s life, living with the results of other people’s thinking, living within the noise of other people’s opinions, is wasteful. You’re drawn to the idea of creative business. You want to connect with your truest wants, to have the courage to follow your…
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Beating Creative Business Block: Part One: O Sorrow and Shame
Are you suffering from creative business block? Wherever block presents itself, it always feels the same. One of the most famous descriptions of creative block was given by the the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the day after his thirty-second birthday, in October 1804. “So completely has a whole year passed, with scarcely the fruits of a month,” he wailed to his notebook. “O Sorrow and Shame … I have done nothing!” Alas, it was true. After a period of flow in his twenties, which produced unforgettable poems like “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla Khan,” Coleridge was, by…
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2018: Week 8. Sunday: Day of Creative Rest with Jennifer Piercy
For a creative, or creative entrepreneur, rest isn’t a break from the process. It is the process. So around here, we start each week with day of deliberate creative rest… A day to switch off. Lie low. Be present. Let go. For me, that day is Sunday. Maybe that doesn’t suit you but one day out of seven, have a lazy day. All your projects and people will benefit, and none more than you. Each Sunday I link to a teacher who specializes in intentional rest. This week it’s the great sleep maven, Jennifer Piercy. You’ll find her website here. And she…
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Go Creative! Business Planning: Five Year Vision
Are you surprised to hear me talk about a five-year vision? Isn’t that a bit bureaucratic, smacking more than a little of Stalin’s five-year plan? Aren’t we supposed to be a lot more free-flowing around here? This is a process of wishing, dreaming and visioning that turns into goals, intentions, projects, assignments and tasks. Visioning Imagine a future world in which your business is doing really well. What does your world look like? What affect is it having on where you work, on your colleagues, on your home life? What about money? What is the best financial outcome you can imagine, five years from…
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