Over the years I’ve learned that there is no end to ideas. They just keep appearing in the thoughts. I used to think that I had to act on every one of them. I drove myself crazy for years, thinking that I was somehow shorting someone if I didn’t play out every single good idea I had. Sheesh!
I’ve finally come to realize (slooooooooowly) that just like every thing else in nature there is lavish abundance of everything that is a gift from the True Source. The apple tree is not faulted for producing more apples than get consumed by folk and wormy, furred or flying ones. The beach is not somehow at fault for hosting all those grains of sand. I am ok when I don’t act on all my ideas, and it is natural that I have many of them.
When I am creating for a custom creative job of some kind (art, illustration, graphic design, web design, etc), I am always gifted more than one idea. It has been my challenge to reduce the number of choices, because people seem to be overwhelmed by too many of them.
Today my job is one of a simple kind of creativity: I am doing a calligraphy assignment – hand addressing 130+ envelopes. This is more time consuming than I ever imagine. I don’t have to come up with too many ideas for it though.
Tomorrow my job may just be coming up with more ideas!
I decided to improve my brand. Me, Dena McKitrick: not one of my businesses, but me, the individual.
Recently, I have been thinking about who I am on the inside vs. how I appear on the outside, with the focus on congruency. Am I congruent with myself in appearance and deed? What experience of me do others have? And even more important, does that experience reflect who I truly am? I’ve worked a lot of years to be more in integrity with myself and others. Is that apparent to the world. That is part of my brand.
It’s not all just about a visual image. I mean, yeah, we all recognise the famous logos of the world, and that is part of their brand, but it is not anywhere near all of it. It includes things like how they treat their customers, how quick they respond to a call for help, and what they do with their profits.
So, how does that translate to me, the individual? Simple really. I am looking at things like how I treat those around me, how quickly I jump in and volunteer to help at a meeting, and whether or not I “put my money where my mouth is.” It’s not that I haven’t looked at those things before. I have – lots.
Lately, though, I seem to have come upon a deeper level of self-reflection, which is aimed at being as aligned as humanly possible with who I have been guided to be and do, and to shine that person into the world with clarity. That’s the brand I wish to present: the best me possible.
Many, many years ago I was first starting on another path toward living my life in integrity with my spiritual self when I came into an inspired epiphany: that I could choose how I experience my life. Simply put, no matter what it is that I am walking through, I could choose what my outlook would be, what my perceptions of it would be, what I experience. It occurred to me that I could metaphorically “get a new pair of glasses” to have a new view of the same landscape.
I decided then that I choose joy! I could be scrubbing the porcelain repository with anger or miserable victim thoughts, or I could be scrubbing the same vessel while singing and giving thanks for my health that I could accomplish the feat. It is ok either way. I still get a clean bathroom. So, I decided to sing at it. I decided that I would dance through the grocery store, and that I would love what I do and do what I love.
We’ve all heard the saying, “calling the glass half full, or half empty.” I knew that then, but somehow getting that I could choose joy really turned my experience of my life around. So, when I am doing things that just don’t feel good at all, I still work on putting on my joy glasses. And when I get to do things that make my heart soar like creating a really superb graphic or writing a song, the joy part is easy.
I love to sing. I love to dance. I love to write a well-turned phrase. And I love to express through pen or brush or camera or carving tool or with my well-worn mouse on the computer. To me it is all the same in that it is a place of joy I enter when I open up to be of service through inspired and guided creative expression – no matter what the media. It is a blissful state of consciousness I enter when engaged in active creativity and I am ever grateful for the gift and opportunity that blesses me with the experience of it.
Even further, the more that I have allowed myself to this blissful state of grace, the more I have discovered that I can feel that all the time. It is as if the world is my canvas, and every moment my brush. Each moment consciously engaged in doing “thine will, not mine” in service.
