According to the latest findings in neuroscience, if you balance your brain it can make you better on the job and in your personal life. The trouble is that more people than previously thought have a brain imbalance. In fact, an imbalanced brain is almost the norm in society today. I was labeled dyslexic in Grade 1 and sent to a special learning class–I could barely read and wrote letters backwards. However, after doing many of the brain balancing techniques listed below I learned how to read and comprehend at normal speed. I went onto 8 years of post secondary schooling, wrote 4 books, and have run a successful business for 22 years helping other people access their creativity, better use their brains and manage transitions more effectively.

The most indispensable people on the job today

The most indispensable people on the job today are those who can shift gears easily and bring constructive behavior to challenging situations. Brain scans can often show how brain imbalances are at the root of behaviors that cause problems for yourself or others at work such as getting too easily stressed, being a “type A” personality, or being unable to problem solve. The good news is that there are ways now to balance different aspects of the brain so you can help yourself and others move through transitions with ease and grace.

If your frontal lobes are imbalanced you cannot learn from your mistakes

The brain is a complex piece of machinery and neuroscience findings change daily, but here is a simplified version of what we know now. There are several aspects of the frontal lobes that help you be a Change Artist. For example, your frontal lobes house your ability to learn from mistakes, make plans, and reach your goals. When your frontal lobes are balanced, it helps you be compassionate towards others, expressive of your thoughts, organized, goal-oriented, flexible in your thinking, and adaptive to changes.

What happens when you get out of balance?

The frontal lobes are like the CEO of the brain. When they are underfunctioning, it’s like there is no leadership in the office, so nothing gets done, you can be unmotivated, disorganized, unfocused or too self absorbed. When the frontal lobes are overfunctioning, it’s like the boss is micromanaging everyone. You can display “type A” personality style where you make goals more important than people, you can become rigid and inflexible, being productive for productivity’s sake while losing touch with the ultimate purpose of your work.

“Type A” people often have a brain imbalance

Often people with overfunctioning frontal lobes go undetected in workplaces and can even be rewarded. They may be sales people who bring in good cash flow to the company, but they are doing it at the expense of their health and their relationships with others. They offer short terms rewards but sometimes with devastating long term costs. The overfunctioning person can have obsessive thoughts, compulsive behaviors, excessive worrying, argumentativeness, or oppositional behavior. They can “get stuck” on certain thoughts or actions such as “I must work all the time”, “I must check email every 5 minutes”. It’s the same mindset as an addict who must have a drink, a drug, food, sex, gambling, coffee, shopping, self judgment–and even when they get their fix they want it again soon. In other words, they keep thinking about or doing something that they know is harmful but feel like they cannot stop it.

What can cause Frontal Lobe imbalance?

Many things can cause the frontal lobes to get out of balance such as:

- a brain injury or even a small bump to the head
– poor nutrition
– excessive toxins in the body
– little or no reflection time
– unresolved issues from your past
– lack of exercise, sleep or water
– a habit of shallow breathing or mouth breathing
– unexpressed creativity
– not examining the validity of your thoughts
– multi-tasking

How can you re-balance your Frontal Lobes?

Here are some activities and processes designed to balance the frontal lobes:

1. Neurotherapy (see below for more info)
2. Good nutrition, supplementation and hydration
3. Detoxing your body
4. Reflection time or a regular spiritual practice
5. Cognitive or psychotherapeutic process (see below)
6. Regular exercise
7. A habit of 7-8 hours of sound sleep per night
8. A habit of full body breathing
9. Finding a meaning and purpose for your life
10. Expressing yourself creatively
11. Paying attention to the present moment
12. Focusing on one thing at a time

Here are processes and resources that can help:

1. The Change Your Brain books by Dr. Daniel Amen  http://www.amenclinics.com

2. Neurotherapy — the use of computerized biofeedback equipment to change your brainwave activity http://www.swingleandassociates.com

3. Brain Gym – a series of physical movements that enhance brain functioning http://www.braingym.org

4. EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)7 – a series of tapping procedures designed to remove negative blocks from the body’s meridian system http://www.emofree.ca

5. The Sedona Method – a cognitive process to release negative thoughts http://www.sedona.com

6. The Choice Repatterning Process with Carla Rieger – a process to re-write beliefs that cause brain imbalances http://www.choicerepatterning.com

Do you have a tip to share?

Do you have an example of how you balance your brain? If so, leave it in the comment below. It just might inspire others.

If the Industrial Age was built on people’s backs, and the Information Age on people’s left hemispheres, the Conceptual Age is being built on people’s right hemispheres. We’ve progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we are progressing yet again – to a society of creators and empathizers, pattern-recognizers, and meaning-makers.

Companies need highly creative people at all levels

No matter what business you are in these days or what role you have within a company,you are required to operate at a much higher level of creativity than your predecessor did 20 years ago.
As the rate of change speeds up companies that are full of change resistant and uncreative employees cannot stay competitive. These are people I call “Change Artists” — they can create something out of nothing, demonstrate high emotional intelligence, recognize patterns and create meaning out of chaos. These are all the skills that you learn when you study the arts. The trouble is, arts were often considered just an elective, not something you had to study in school. Therefore, unless you chose to study an aspect of the arts in depth, chances are you didn’t get to activate the skills of the “change artist” as often as you could have.

Given the right environment most people love to be creative

If you give people the opportunity to consume something creative or create it themselves, most people will choose the latter if they think it will be a safe environment to experiment. Luckily, creativity is innate and just needs to be activated. The best way to activate it is to give people permission to fail, to try new things, to break free of convention. It also helps to give people parameters — so their creative brains have a focus and a deadline. Finally, people tend to be more creative in groups than alone, so set people up in teams. Many businesses today are using some aspect of the arts as a teambuilding experience because it can help to improve problem solving, innovation, teamwork and performance in their employees.

Mercer Bradley – Group Paintings

One example is one of my clients, Mercer Bradley.

They specialize in recruitment and job fit analysis for accounting and finance professionals. The company was founded by Cliff Kanto in 2007 and he understands the importance of being as innovative as possible at work—for both his employees and the employees they place.

At their last all team meeting in January 2011 here is what they did:

We took our company and divided them up into 3 random teams of 4 people. The objective was to create a painting together as a team. Interestingly, there were 3 approaches to how the groups chose to do their painting:

Team 1 jumped in and began to just paint randomly

Team 2 divided up the canvas into 4 sections so each person had their own section.

Team 3 discussed how best to approach the painting and created a unified theme for the painting.

As the paintings began to develop, we had certain people move from one group to another. What became quite obvious was that people approached their painting the same way they approach their work and even though each painting started out differently they all ended up looking very similar.

At the end of the painting session, there was a greater feeling of cohesion and unity amongst the entire company because we had all worked together to create something and a sense of pride in what we had created.

We are going to hang one painting in each of our offices: Vancouver, Winnipeg and Edmonton.

– Zoya Kanto, Director of Operations

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Has your company or organization ever done anything together involving the arts — painting, theater, music, comedy, writing? If so leave a comment below, we would love to hear about it.

Teaching people how to learn, how to create something from nothing, makes more sense than teaching facts that will soon become irrelevant. Having spent years in the arts while also coaching change leaders, Carla couldn’t help but notice that leaders with some kind of artistic training could lead change more fluidly than those without. What did they have that others didn’t have? The ability to let go of assumptions, thrive in chaos, redesign and reframe … in other words they could learn on a dime.

The most indispensable people in the world today therefore are those who know how to learn. So is our education system doing enough to prepare students to be indispensible in this way, or is it just preparing them to be good contestants on Jeopardy?

There are thousands of students who would actually contribute greatly to the world, but who can’t survive a system that only rewards factual regurgitation. The good news is that the forest floor is alive with new life with alternative forms of education that prepare learners to thrive in our brave new world.

Being an artist of your own life

Yet, there is a part of everyone’s intelligence that can see beyond the horizon. I call it being a “Change Artist”. It is the part of the human psyche that can sense into possibilities before they become manifest. Pablo Picasso once said “Everyone is born an artist, the trick is to recapture that artist as an adult.” When I once asked a group of kindergarten students to raise their hand if they considered themselves an artist, all hands went up. When I asked that same question of a group of adults instead, what do you think happened?
Only about 25% put their hands up. Somehow the older people get the less they seem to frame themselves in terms of artistry. Perhaps it’s how you define artistry. How I like to frame artistry is that it is not about doing something such as drawing, playing music, or writing, it’s about who you are being. For example, you can play music very un-artistically, whereas you could plan your busy day very artistically. To be artistic in conducting your life is to sense into the natural creative flow of life and to get in synch with it, using that energetic flow to manifest just the right outcome in just the right way. It’s an intelligence beyond what we typically call IQ. Let’s call it AQ….your Artistic Quotient.

Symptoms that you may be in The Winter of Change

Using your AQ during The Winter of Change can be very beneficial because it’s usually the time in your life when your outward creative abilities are lying fallow and replenishing themselves. When you feel less outwardly creative, it’s time to tap into a more inward creativity. Few people in our goal oriented culture effectively model this inward creativity and so it’s not as well practiced. The tips below may help you tap into exactly what you need to move forward. Symptoms that you are in a replenishing phase may be:

• Feeling low energy and unmotivated
• Confusion and having little clarity about what’s next
• Grieving the old identity that has fallen away

What’s going on is that the old identity that was tied up with your previous life is breaking down and dying. It’s like what happens in your garden when the cold rain and snow set in. The remains of the last harvest start to disintegrate and the soil begins to compost to get ready for Spring. Humans have an aversion to death and dying, so it’s natural to feel uncomfortable during this phase. But ironically the more you resist it the longer it seems to take. Also, if you try to skip this step, you may find you miss out on the next harvest of your life, or at least miss out on having the best possible harvest. Here are some tips to make it through the Winter with more ease and grace allowing you to get to Spring faster while also replenishing yourself more fully for what’s next:

1. Focus on the breaking down process: If you find yourself wanting to escape the discomfort of the breaking down process, try giving yourself just 10 minutes of being with it. Often people avoid going into those sensations because they are afraid they may end up being consumed by the feelings of loss. However, feelings are like clouds. They come and they go. The focus of your attention on them ironically causes them to evaporate. Just sit quietly in a private place and breathe into the areas of discomfort and see what happens. You may be surprised about how much relief this can bring. If you don’t allow yourself to grieve the old and let go, then you cannot make way for what is next.

2. Time out: People are far more validated in our culture when they are in the Spring and Summer of change than during the Autumn or Winter phases, yet you can’t have one without the other. Giving yourself permission to be less active, less productive, to just rest and muse, will actually make the Winter phase easier and quicker. Different types of “time out” activities work for different people. It may be short, regular activities like walks in nature or meditating, or spending more time doing something you love like a hobbies or a sport. Or it could be a longer activity like a vacation or focusing for a few weeks on your gardening or writing. Be mindful however of doing activities that bring rejuvenation rather than just distraction, for example the difference between watching a soul stirring movie, and watching 10 episodes of The Simpsons.

3. Explore new options: Give your imagination time to explore that is beyond the horizon. Gurdjieff, a Russian thought leader (1866-1949) once suggested that within each person is a committee of voices. Sometimes that committee is in harmony, sometimes not. If you have spent 20 years being a parent some members of your committee may have had to be overruled. For example, if you are recently an “empty nester” chances are those more silent committee members are now voicing their interests. Exploring new options means focusing your attention on areas of your life that may have been ignoring, or welcoming in new inspirations or new committee members who have something valuable to contribute to your next phase of life.

If you would like a process to help you explore new options feel free to check out The Art of Reinvention. It is a 19-page white paper that allows you to explore the next phase of your life from various angles. It only takes about an hour to complete and can be surprisingly rejuvenating, insightful and can help you more quickly usher in the Spring.

I would love to continue this conversation with you. Feel free to post comments, insights, or questions below.

Thank you and best of luck with your reinvention!
In Friendship
Carla

God, grant me the ability to be as good of a person as my dog thinks I am. – Anon

In a previous blog post we explored The 7 Mistakes Change Leaders Make, and how mistakes are necessary to actually develop success habits. Using the metaphor of the growing cycle we explored Mistake #1 which is Planting Your Idea in Barren Soil. Then we looked at mistake #2 which was Choosing the Wrong Kind of Idea Seed. The 3^rd mistake many change leaders make is to not watering or fertilizing your idea enough.

Linda wanted to help address exhaustion and tension at work. There was a bad “vibe” ever since the latest project went overtime and over budget. While a problem solving meeting had helped, she knew people needed something that buoyed their spirits but that didn’t take much time or money.

She had heard about the simple idea of creating fun contests that would run in the organization’s online newsletter. She went to her boss and shared stories of other companies that did a baby picture contest and a cartoon caption contest and how it improved the mood at work, enhanced relationships between people, and sparked creative thinking. Her boss reluctantly agreed as long as it didn’t pull too much focus from their deadlines.

The pilot project included asking people to send Linda a photo of their pet for a contest in which everyone was then invited to guess who the owner was. Within half an hour Linda was inundated with photos of Portuguese Water Dogs, Persian cats, and love birds. One staff member complained that she wanted to participate in the contest but didn’t own a pet due to allergies. They decided instead that she would send a photo of her favourite Boston fern.

The next week the photos went out to all the staff with a deadline. By Friday, you had to guess the owner. The person with the most correct answers would receive a $75 gift certificate to a nearby restaurant. The restaurant owner had gladly donated the prize. The contest entries came through in droves and one man in accounting got all but four answers correct. He took his two colleagues out for lunch the next week.

Linda’s boss was thrilled with the results of the contest because he saw people laughing again while they tried to trick people into divulging the type of pet they owned. He noticed two people who barely talked to each other were now comparing notes on the idiosyncrasies of Portuguese Water Dogs. Meetings had a more light-hearted atmosphere, ideas about dealing with the project seemed more innovative than before, and less people seemed to be showing up late or calling in sick.

Linda got the green light to do a new contest each month. The only problem was that sometimes people attracted to leading change are not the same type of people who like to maintain the change. Change Artists are those who can do both or at least delegate to and steward those who will maintain it. Linda was enthused about the pilot project, but lost enthusiasm when it came to the on-going “watering and fertilizing” of her change initiative. The next month’s contest was to name the organization’s mascot (a wind up pig that grunted), which was successful, but not as successful as the first one. She skipped the third one because her idea ended up seeming too complicated. The fourth contest didn’t seem to appeal to people, and so by the fifth month she dropped the project.

Linda overhead one day, though, that people were disappointed that there were no longer any contests. She realized that she needed to delegate the on-going maintenance of this idea to someone who liked maintenance. She asked four people with that personality style and one of them agreed to take it on for the next 3 months. Walter in IT made the whole project take off again because he was already handling the “news” section of the organization’s web site, so it was easy for him to do. He elicited suggestions from staff and searched the web for new contests ideas. He made sure others helped him during busy months. And generally, he enjoyed the monthly attention to detail and the joy it seemed to bring people. After five years this organization still does about 10 contests a year. The role of contest maintenance has been passed along gleefully several times to people who enjoy this kind of task, and thus the spirit and purpose of the original idea stays well nourished.

Like a silently ticking time bomb, a habit of shallow breathing could be eating away at your health until one day it’s too late. Too many people these days are lost in the trance of scarcity around time, money and resources. This means you probably have a habit of operating too often from the reptilian complex, or flight or flight response.

In this state of mind, your entire system functions much less efficiently. The stress response halts or slows down various processes such as digestion, blood circulation and creative thinking. Prolonged stress responses may result in chronic suppression of the immune system, leaving the body open to infections and disease.

Most people in today’s society are having to do more with less, constantly adapt, be innovative under pressure, re-design everything in a moment’s notice–all because of constant change. Those who can stay calm, confident and clear-headed in constant change are the leaders of the future and indispensable to those they serve.

I call this being a “Change Artist”. Change Artists have regular habits that allow them to benefit from the changes affecting their world and inspire creative thinking in others, all the while staying grounded in integrity. One of the top habits of Change Artist is that they breathe more fully than their more “Change Challenged” counter-parts.

For a fun perspective on the situation check out this mock commercial for breathing:

Breathing is one of those safe, inexpensive, readily available techniques that doesn’t get used often enough.

For an easy to follow conscious breathing technique you can practice check out this video below. If you do a technique like this enough times consciously it will eventually become an unconscious habit.

Once that is done, now you are ready to plant the seed of your idea, which leads to another common mistake: choosing the wrong kind of seed. There are plenty of examples throughout history of “wrong seeds” being planted in fertile soil — in society, in organizations or within an individual. CBC TV is right now airing a documentary entitled Love, Hate and Propaganda, about leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini and how they manipulated a populace aching for change. Had their intentions been benevolent and focused on the common good, their ideas could have been sustainable. Unfortunately, they were planting the wrong kind of seed.

The Fast Ferry Scandal is another example of the wrong seed being planted in the right kind of soil. A major impetus for the program was in direct response to public complaints. Citizens wanted less waiting traffic and quicker transit times between Vancouver and Vancouver Island. The idea was planted in fertile soil, but the idea itself was flawed. The project had massive cost overruns and long delays. The ferries also created such a huge wake that shoreline eco-systems were being adversely affected. In the end, the ferries were sold for a fraction of their original price.

In contrast was Gandhi’s idea of a non-violent approach to attaining independence for India. Because it was the right kind “idea seed” it was both sustainable and led to other such successful approaches around the globe.  Another example was David Packard decades ago in the early days of Hewlett-Packard. In an era when bosses dwelt in mahogany-paneled sanctums, Packard took an open-door workspace among his engineers. He practiced what would become famous as “management by walking around.” Most radical of all for the time, he shared equity and profits with all employees. This seed of a great management idea ended up effusing the spirit of Silicon Valley even to this day.

Sometimes, however, the wrong seed can be transformed into the right one. An organization I worked with needed a culture change. They wanted to turn around a habit of complaining amongst staff. In response, the director of one department made it mandatory that staff only comment on what was good, what was working, and what they appreciate about any idea or project. What happened was that negative comments went underground and grew toxic. It was the wrong kind of solution. I helped them alter it. We decided to safely allow staff to comment in both negative and positive ways. They were encouraged however, to express negative comments in terms of what’s they’d like to see instead so that it was a solution-focused comment. This made all the difference to the idea “sticking” and an effective bottom-up communication process that improved all aspects of the department.

The metaphor of the growing cycle, is a useful one for change leaders. Creating fertile soil is your first task towards ensuring the seed of your idea can thrive. Have you broken down the old fears, learned from them, and therefore created a rich and “alive” environment that invites excitement?

Why people paid so much for tickets for the Winter Olympics

Some people paid as much at $750 to $1500 per ticket to see an event at the Olympic Winter Games here in Vancouver this week. When I surveyed these ticket buyers as to why they would spend so much on a two-hour experience I received the same general answer: “It’s so alive and exciting, and those kind of experiences are rare in life.”

An innovative way to bring awareness to your cause

Here’s another example. An innovative organization called Imagine 1 Day was seeking to gain attention for their cause: providing primary education for all children in Ethiopia. They organized a flash mob dance during the Winter Olympics games in downtown Vancouver. The idea was to teach a choreographed routine to a group of people who would then spontaneously break into that dance in a public area — an idea no doubt inspired by the Improv Everywhere events.

They invited people in their network and staged several rehearsals to teach a dance routine to the hit song, Dancing in the Street. They expected about 200-300 people to show up. In the end, over 3000 people learned the dance. The crowd took up an entire city block in Vancouver. Ten times more people than they ever expected to attend were there, and all of those people got to hear about their cause. Not only that but another thousand watched from the sidelines. Add to that all the videographers who posted it on YouTube. Even CNN reported on it. Why would that many people spent so much of their precious time and energy to learn a rather complicated routine and then drag themselves out on a cold and rainy day to dance it? I was one of the participants along with many of my friends. The answer seemed unanimous. Because it was exciting to be part of a huge group of people harmonizing our energies together doing something fun — all for a great cause. In short, it made us all feel more alive.

Here’s a short clip of the event:

Regardless of your opinion about an organization’s goals, Olympics Games or educating children in Ethiopia, creating an atmosphere of aliveness invariably attracts people and opens minds.

Trying to plant your seed of change in unbalanced soil

In the last blog post we talked about one of the main mistakes change leaders make–which is trying to plant the seed of change in unbalanced soil. When there is an over focus on protection at the expense of growth ideas can’t get traction. People have a deep need to feel alive, to grow and thrive. They also have a core need to feel safe and protected. The problem comes when those two needs get out of balance. The tendency in many organizations especially after an economic downturn, is for there to be an over focus on protection which tends to kill off growth and aliveness. Many organizations are not open to change because there is a long standing habit of operating mainly from a fear-based need to simply survive. This survival mindset may have some basis in reality but more often it is simply a bad habit of catastrophic thinking. As a change leader you may need to address this issue before people will be open to your idea for positive change. Organizations and individuals get stuck in protection mode due to perceptions. No change can occur unless you help stakeholders perceive the situation in a more growth-oriented way. This usually cannot be done with logic alone as fear is an instinctual emotion and therefore you will need a more “alive” approach.

Case study – focusing on growth and aliveness to change perception

For example, a privately-owned software company had a culture clash between the sales force and the product development and tech support teams. The owner felt that the majority of resources and decision-making power should lie in the hands of the sales force because they drove revenue. As a result, the sales team decided on timelines and deliverables without consulting the other teams.

Naturally, the stress levels and subsequent resentment within the development team grew. When the development team presented their concerns to the owner he simply asked them to “think more positively” — and you can imagine the response to that. The owner had tunnel vision about the structure and system needed for his company to survive. The previous two years had been a tough. Cash flow suffered due to an economic downturn and they had barely avoided bankruptcy. As a result all he could focus on was cash flow, and the sales force meant cash flow. Now that sales were flowing they were taking every contract without communicating with each other before signing the deal.

Meanwhile the product developers and tech support team suffered. Several of their best people quit. Back room gossip escalated. Interpersonal conflict grew. When the owner heard that clients were leaving because of the bad “vibe” there, he hired an HR person to sort things out. She tried everything from disciplining the gossipers to sending them off for motivational training to help them “get over their resistance to change”. Not surprisingly, the resentment just seemed to grow.

After assessing the situation we helped the HR person come up with a new tactic. She led a team building day with everyone in the company that started with a fun activity. Once they were relaxed and enjoying being together, she illustrated the growth potential of a more collaborative decision-making process. She addressed all concerns such as the fear that consulting with other team leaders would mean losing contracts. She provided facts to prove that an over-focus on sales was ironically costing everyone in terms of morale, productivity, customer service, employee health, and ultimately revenue. Even though it looked like the focus on sales was all about growth, it was coming from a fear-based mindset. She offered success stories of similar firms that were consulting with each other before signing deals and still thriving very well.To make a long story short, they found a way to restructured resources in a way that seemed more equitable to all concerned and decided that all team leaders would be consulted before signing any client contracts. In the end this allowed for much better external (and internal) customer service.

Habits got you where you are and so the good news is that new habits can eventually get you where you want to go. Habits write new neuron pathways in your brain. Over time this creates a new default. This of course isn’t new information.  Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, once said:”We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.”  Here’s a couple of examples, Linda’s new habit of walking to the gym instead of driving helped her lose 5 extra pounds over one year. Mark’s new habit of getting all his supplies ready by the door the night before helped him stop being late.

Here are 5 tried and true habits for creating the change you want:

1.  Create an ideal outcome

David Whyte, an expert on workplace creativity, is quoted as saying “The antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest, but often it’s wholeheartedness.” Often you can’t change something because you are far too focused on what you don’t want. This only reinforces it and can make you exhausted. See if you can reframe in terms of what you do want. For example, “I don’t want to attend these long boring meetings,” becomes “I’d like to have shorter, more engaging and productive meetings.” “I am tired of this constant back pain” becomes “I’d like to have a healthy spine.” Sounds simple, but do you do actually practice this as much as you could? That habit alone of reframing could create a sense of wholeheartedness that will fuel your change like nothing else.

Bottom Line

Here are 4 short activities to help you try these habits:

1. Write out 3 complaints you have in your life and reframe them in terms of what you want instead.
2. The next time something happens that triggers an “unhelpful” negative response throw both arms in the air and yell out “Excellent!”
3. Spend an hour this weekend de-cluttering one area of your home. While doing it, think of a goal you’d like to manifest and see if this helps move you further towards your goal.
4. Think of a change you want to make and then simply ask yourself “If I were exceptional at ___________ (being the change I want to see) – what would I do?”

For more ideas, tips, programs and support go to The Artistry of Change web site

We need more creativity and less consuming

This “always busy” mode partly comes from an underlying cultural belief that our economy cannot grow unless we are always consuming. Yet, it’s becoming clear that the financial crisis is being caused by the over-consumption of things we can’t afford such as cheap mortgages. The environmental crisis is being caused by the over-consumption of things we can’t afford such as the earth’s resources. The health crisis is being caused by the over-consumption of things we can’t afford, such as calories. It seems as if the whole underlying belief of endless consumption is the problem.

Maybe what we really need are some new ideas. More creativity and less consuming.

What would it take to give yourself some “down time”?

A great way to kill creative inspiration is to have no “down time”. If your whole life is about rushing from one obligation to the next, there is no chance for greater wisdom to enter your consciousness. Even if you only take 10 minutes at the beginning of every day to sit quietly uninterrupted, it can make all the difference. Walking silently by the ocean or in nature is another great way to reconnect to your creativity. Be warned however, that you may first need to pay heed to the shadows of your life before you can find peace. Peace sometimes needs to be earned. You may need to allow the negative voices to die away first, and sometimes those voices will fight to hold on.

Breathe through it, hold the hand of the part of you that needs to die away. All things must eventually die to make room for the next. Make a habit of quiet time and you will create space for inspiration and for what’s the next best step.

Sometimes having guidance, a supportive community, a natural setting and a break from your regular life—to REALLY reinvent your life. If so, join us for our Artistry of Change 4-day retreat at Hollyhock on Cortes Island, BC, Canada, October 1-4, 2009.