Week 2 - Curious George

Curiosity is one of the most powerful things you own!

As we are working to build courage, we must inevitably work to dealing with fear as well.  Because, when we are stuck in a place of fear, we are closed up and unable to see the true possibilities that lead us to our courage and thus our creativity. For Creatives and Artists this is tantamount to emotional suicide!  Our fear and curiosity are at constant odds with each other.  When fear wins the battle, we do not act, we react, and we immediately lose.  So the challenge really is to move away from fear, by choosing and creating opportunities to build our curiosity so that it is stronger than our fear.  Simply put, having more curiosity will in fact build your courage!

“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.” - John Kenneth Galbraith

So…let’s get curious…..what’s your best friend’s middle name? Where did your brother in law grow up? Who was Snow White’s stepmother? How do you recover a chair seat? At a movie theater, which armrest is yours?  Why doesn’t McDonald’s sell hot dogs? When does is stop being ‘partly cloudy’ and start being ‘partly sunny’? If bread is square, why is lunch meat round? Why is Greenland covered in ice and Iceland covered in greenery? Why are men and women’s shoes different sizes? How many seconds are in a day? Why do we have daylight savings time? Why do you hear the sound of the ocean when you put a shell up to your ear? Why does a peppermint candy placed in a soda bottle make it overflow?  These may seem on face value as nonsensical or questions that don’t matter…even a waste of time perhaps. But do you know the answers to any of them? Are you even curious as to the answers? Is there a place these answers can be found? Do you know how to find the answers?  Enter…Curiosity! It’s fun and interesting!  You have the opportunity learn, enjoy and grow in your life, your art and your heart!

Now…for the Fear:  We humans create situations in our own minds. We fear things we have only “thought” of and have not acted on.  This fortunately is a learned behavior, and it can beunlearned.  Think for a moment of how a baby learns to live and move in its environment…it is all through insatiable curiosity. Can I reach that? Can I put that in my mouth? I wonder what will happen if…?  They are not afraid because they do not know what will happen.  But as babies and children grow they learn and are taught by others around them, they learn to be less curious, they learn to guess at what may happen and not to take so many risks; as those risks may result in pain, rejection or failure. As we grow our curiosity dies, fear wins and we lose.

“Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely” ~Rodin

Most often, it is only in our mind that the fear actually resides. It is in the thoughts we have created ourselves concerning the situation we believe we are afraid of.  We need to change our programing, change our learned behavior. Instead of saying “I can’t afford that” KNOW that you CAN in fact afford anything you want…you would just have to work out the details.  Changing “I can’t afford that” – which is defeating, deflating and self-abusive and not true – to “I could buy that if I really wanted to” – which is empowering, exciting and hopeful well, and true.  If you REALLY wanted to, you could buy it, you would just need to work out the how (save the money, borrow the money, wait for your next paycheck, etc) but you COULD buy it if you really wanted to.  Just changing the mindset, changing the thought process makes all the difference in the world.  You go from feeling poor and unprivileged because you “can’t” afford it, to feeling powerful, energized and happier. Thinking “I could afford it”  puts your brain in positive gear, instead of negative, and gives your heart an opportunity to hope and open up to the possibilities.  It’s the same thing with our fear…examples:

Fearful thought: I’m afraid I’m never going to make my website work effectively
Curious thought: I wonder how much more I’ll sell if I get my site to work effectively?

Fearful thought: I’m not an actual writer, I’m afraid no one will read my blog.
Curious thought: I’m curious how many people will work along with me on my blog.

Fearful thought: I’m never going to be able to make the budget work this month!
Curious thought: What can I do to make the budget work the best way possible?

Fearful thought: I’m afraid to ask that person out, I could get rejected.
Curious thought: I wonder what will happen if I ask that person out?

Fearful thought: I’ll never be able to quit smoking; I’ve been doing it for so long.
Curious thought: If I quit smoking I wonder if I could get someone to quit with me?

Fearful thought: This positive thinking doesn’t work, I’m afraid I’m just wasting my time.
Curious thought: If I give this an honest try, I wonder how I could change my life?

Fearful thought: I’m afraid to change my job, but I’m so unhappy.
Curious thought: I’m curious what kind of job I would enjoy?

Using the words “curious” and “wonder”, or simply changing the statement of fear into a question of curiosity can change your perspective immediately…no matter what the circumstances.  These words, this action… it opens up our minds and hearts to creative ways to deal with our fearful thought, and it keeps the levels of energy shifting from fear to excitement.

Most people (think of yourself) when they fear something, they avoid taking action until the fear goes away. Often we will soothe our egos by saying, “I’ll do it when I’m feeling more confident.” Or “I’m just having a bad day, I’ll do it tomorrow.” Or “I just really don’t want to.” – not even acknowledging the fear to deal with it. We put it off and put it off, and often times when we do actually accomplish the task things run more smoothly, our life is a little better, and we always feel a spring of excitement for facing our fear…so why not just do it in the beginning and WIN over fear, quicker, earlier, faster, sooner and enjoy the rewards for longer?

Because the real problem we are faced with is that fear never just goes away…we can tamp it down, we can ignore it, we can act as if it doesn’t exist. But it does. It’s there. It’s a natural part of life.  Most people have it backwards, they believe they will overcome fear and then they are able to accomplish the tasks. But in fact, again, as we discovered in last weeks blog…. first you must do the thing you fear, then you gain the courage.  We must remember that fact as we work through our weekly tasks.  You aren’t going to ‘get the courage up’….you must do the thing and the courage will come! I promise!

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say that it is brave.” ~Seneca

What we need is more curiosity and less fear. I believe the key this week then  might be that we act more our shoe size not our age…we need to keep our sense of wonder, as a child does.  If we approach someone in a social situation and we are not met with a good response, keep your sense of wonder….”That person didn’t seem to want to talk…I wonder if this other person does?”

Think less about what the outcome might be and let your curiosity lead you…because people say that life ebbs and flows, but in fact fear ebbs and curiosity flows.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”  ~Mark Twain

During our courage building we have no room for fear, it create a division in our hearts, minds and worlds…so we are going to shift this week to being curious, asking questions, making requests, and we are not going to complain or worry about the answers. We are going to ask questions to confirm our curiosity, not make statements. When we use our curiosity our perceptions and prejudges go wooshing out the door this week and a whole new world is going to open up to us!  This is not just in our own thinking, not just in our minds. I want you to be curious and use your curiosity! When you don’t see the price for something, don’t be afraid to ask. Inquire about how something is made. Ask for directions. Engage another artist on how they perform their craft, or ask about a specific project. Ask your best friend for a middle name, an older person what year they were born, your neighbor where they grew up. Look up a new project and learn how to accomplish it!

This week we are not going to completely change our mindset, but we are going to open up to our curiosity. Because curiosity is full of anticipation and enthusiasm, it opens you up in a way you may not be aware of! When you are open and feeling enthusiastic and curious your mind shifts to having more fun things to focus on. Your mind knows you are about to learn, discover, explore…whether that is just a bit of information or a whole new skill to accomplish yourself.

Be Curious this week! Ask someone where something came from or was originally found, ask a friend about the town they grew up in, ask a kid what they would like to do this summer. Wander into a store you’ve never visited before and ask the sales clerk a question about a product. Drive down a road you pass all the time and wonder where it leads, answer your curiosity.  If you have a question…ASK.  Ask, wonder, wander, search, delve, question, and then learn!

Post and let us know what you discovered, what you asked and could not answer, tell me where you wandered and what surprises you’ve uncovered, let me know if you know the answers to any of the questions in the beginning…and how you found those answers! By week’s end I hope that  your Fearful Thoughts are turning into Curious Thoughts and that we have lost of fun getting us there!!.

JeaneMargherite Meria Schintgen (yep, that’s my name, don’t wear it out!)

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Week 1 -Happy Courage for the New Year

‘The world has the habit of making room for the one whose words and actions show that they know where they are going‘ – Napoleon Hill

Well, here it is….the first week of the New Year, and the week we begin building our courage, as Artists as Creatives and as Individuals. This will be a fun train, a challenging, interesting, bi-polar ride! We will have differing tasks to complete from simple to difficult, and we will have a full week to accomplish each goal…only once if we feel that’s all that’s necessary or multiple times if we dare to dream!

My own experience has shown me that we can read as many books and blogs, listen to people speak at conferences, hire life coaches, and banter with friends…but unless we actually DO something, we will not grow, we will not learn and we will not accomplish our goals.

SO to that end, I’ve created an outline of mini Acts of Courage (Or Creative Courage Builders) that we can accomplish one week at a time that will help us work, develop and grow our courage … in small baby steps. Things that are challenging of course, but not so intimidating that we won’t do them – hopefully. The main point is to DO the tasks, not to simply read them, but to DO them….it is our actions that make what we do possible. Reading, saying it sounds good and you are going to do it – it way different than actually taking the time to accomplish, and flex our courage goals.

I must admit that I am the perfect example of, hmmm…lets just say it out loud shall we…LAZY….if a thing appears too difficult from the star or requires too much effort initially, I may lose interest half way through or not even attempt it. My goal here is to start slowly, to work our courage muscles a little bit at a time so by the middle or end of the year we will look at a more difficult challenge and say “Really? Come on that’s so easy!” There will be funny silly challenges sprinkled all over the place, so please don’t give up and don’t give in to the lazy naysayer of your ego! This is for everyone! I am especially gearing towards Creatives and Artists, because we often have trouble with courage outside of our art, but I can guarantee that all of these tasks and accomplishments are for everyone, everywhere!

Its so common place to second guess ourselves when we are trying to do something totally new and generally beyond our comfort zone. Its natural. Yet once we are used to our creative process, and build our courage…just as with any experience, it becomes more familiar – we begin to notice certain milestones and recognize what is happening at various stages of living our dream and exploring our passions! With familiarity of course comes comfort…and our comfort zone is autonomously and actively enlarged!

It takes great courage to commit to our projects, our dreams, to explore our passions, our art – our creative process – don’t give up just yet. In fact, the fear that you are experiencing is actually a good sign. When we begin our creative process on any level, or when we commit to a project – often after the initial excitement, folks sometimes begin to experience fear (even paralyzing fear) that can stop us in our tracks, and it makes us question whether this is something we want after all. I urge you if you feel this fear at any point in this project, that you push through it, experience the fear….”Feel the fear and do it anyway” as one of my favorite business books from the 90′s quoted constantly!!

This is a convo from a movie that you may or may not have seen called “Three Kings”….the scene is a quick one between Major Archie Gates (George Clooney) and a younger solider Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze) there is a plan of attack, that has some of the team has doubts about….

Archie: You’re scared right?

Conrad: Maybe

Archie: They way it work is, you do the thing you’re scared shitless of, and you get the courage AFTER you do it, not before you do it.

Conrad: That’s a dumbass way to work. It should be the other way around!

Archie: I know. …. That’s the way it works.

It’s a scene in the movie that goes so quickly if you weren’t looking for it, you might miss it, but also pivotal in the action of the movie. A soldier was motivated to go beyond himself when he was impossibly frightened, worried, scared, concerned,and doubtful about what was about to happen and the outcome of those actions. The dialog though was particularly spot on. One never ‘gets’ the courage to jump off the high dive, they climb the ladder scared inside regardless of what they show on the outside. We only gain courage AFTER we accomplish the act. The more often we practice what we fear, the more courageous we become – which is why I suggest doing the tasks more than once. It gets easier and easier as our courage builds and grows…..THAT is exactly what we are going to do this year!! By the end of 2012, you’ll look at your unfinished business plan, your website, the world… and say “What was I so scared about!”

All of the mini things that we blow off on a regular basis, thinking they are no big deal… well, we are going to accomplish, conquer, and take advantage of all those things this year. We are going to use that rush of adrenalin that fear brings about as FUEL to accomplish what we want!! We are going to slowly build what needs building, so that we can improve ourselves, our craft, our business sense, all of it! By the end of 2012 you will not even recognize your artist courage!!

For those who generally need the quick fix, who don’t want to wait a full year to build your courage muscle….trust me when I tell you that it will NOT take a full year to feel it…I’ve just planned a full year of tasks…you will begin to feel the effects fairly quickly, depending on how strong your courage muscle is now and how often you are willing to complete the tasks – so stay with us – it’s entirely in your hands how hard you work! By the end of the year, I’m hoping you will be able to accomplish that “BIG” task you have always thought was too big…but really isn’t!

Those of you that think it may be too much…please don’t worry, I’m here with you! I’m not a life coach that has accomplished every success I’ve ever planned and telling you how to do it from experience…we are doing this together! This is a life experiment that I fully believe and am invested in. I have done some work with these steps, and KNOW it is the right way to work with most Artists and Creatives. I’ll be working with you and accomplishing these goals the same time you are….I’ll be scared and worried and intimidated the same time you are – or maybe at different times. My point is that I’m not just writing this…I’m WORKING this! We are working this together!! So let’s do it!! We’ll keep each other going!!

Remember that even the most confident of people always feel an element of fear when they step outside their comfort zone. Always! Try to think of anyone that you can imagine that is successful, anyone from the POTUS to your current next door neighbor who has a beautiful garden…that person has felt fear, but they faced it and gave it a go anyhow! Use your fear to build your confidence! We are all a little (or a lot) afraid of roller coasters…that’s what makes them sooo exciting!! But we get our ticket, and we wait in line and we get on the ride….despite the fear…because the pay off is about 30 seconds of extreme fun we can not get elsewhere! Well, I urge you to get your ticket and get in line, because you may feel fear here, but the pay off I promise will be waaaay more than 30 seconds!!!! Ha!!! Let’s get to our first challenge!!!!!

By the by….as you read the post through the next few weeks or months, I beg of you not to give in when you feel as if …”I can do that already, I don’t need to accomplish the challenge” or “that’s too hard, I’m not doing it”…

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy!” ~Dale Carnegie

And if you feel as if you don’t have time to work the weekly challenge, as if the opportunity will not arise, because you are not leaving the house, studio or whatever or you’ll be on vacation, whatever….when you don’t feel as if you need to actually DO the challenge, (don’t forget I am a Creative too…and I know how you think!) when you think that you don’t need to actually DO it, that just reading about it will be fine, and if a situation comes about that’s great, but just READING about it will help you to understand the meaning of it…I implore you, I beg you, I am on my hands and knees telling you….you need to actually DO the challenges, regardless of how silly or difficult they appear on the web! : ) You need to actually make the effort, do the task, accomplish the bullet point. Please don’t just “know” you can without making the effort…you will only lose the lesson, and that doesn’t help anyone!

“Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.” ~ Thomas Carlyle

I’ve also decided to give you a list of the challenge items or blog titles for the bulk of the year…I believe that I’ve already bloggidy blogged longer than I wanted too. Too much information is not always better….as all artists know… “Part of art is knowing when to stop”….so I will stop, give you your challenge and I will see you next week!

Our first task is going to be to take 20 mins for ourselves as creative people and artists, to gain some perspective in the minds of other creative people. I would like you to please watch/listen to this inspiring video, in which Elizabeth Gilbert, who is the best selling author of Eat Pray Love. She shares her thoughts and insight on the creative process and has an incredibly interesting and amusing thought process. The challenge is to actually LISTEN to it, WATCH it, listen. Don’t have it on in the background while you are cooking or working on paperwork. Actually take 20 minutes (which isn’t very long) and allow an incredibly creative person to join you on your journey. I believe the part that got to me and made me giggle the most is when she talks about how creative people across all genres have a reputation for enormously mentally unstable! Well, duh! LOL

List of Weights & Measures

Happy New Year everyone!! I have been working on the blog, and have been a bit worried about the first blog of the year…quite a bit of intimidation there, making sure it’s right…it’s one of my ‘challenges’ right now. I’m not quite finished tweeking it, but didn’t want to leave you all in the lurch…and I also knew that most of you would be interested in what I might have planned for the rest of the year. So I decided to make a preliminary list of all the blogs I have planned! I’m very excited!! This is not in any type of order, just a list of what’s happening! These are the “weights” we will be using to build our muscles! The “measures” as to how we will gauge our process! I’m really looking forward to the next few weeks and hope you are looking forward to this project as much as I am!!!

So, here’s a little taste of what I’ve got planned!

• The Sound of Music
• Green With Envy
• Character Witness
• And The Winner Is…
• Googley Map
• It’s A Small World Afterall
• Playdate Personified
• Money for Nothing
• Staycation Test
• Pink Cadillac
• I Wanna Thank You
• Bachelor#3?
• Joy To The World
• The Eyes Have It
• Solitary
• Somebody’s Hero
• Not Guilty!
• Front & Center
• SAY
• R U Kidding Me?!
• Curious George
• Walking Tall
• Patience…A Virtue?
• Two Steps Back
• Blogedy Blog Blog
• Take This Job And…
• Split Personality
• Easy A
• The Morning After
• You Ate What?!
• Bad To The Bone
• Buttcrack of Dawn
• Dis A Pointer
• UnderPerfect
• No Way Jose!
• Judge Judy
• Just Breathe
• Socialcicity
• My Genius Costume
• A Word From Our Sponsor
• I Urge You
• Unblockentitice
• Swing Shift
• Excuuuuussse Meeee!
• Time to Make the Copies
• Potential for Brilliance
• Semi-Nar
• A Good Bra
• Vampires & Werewolves
• You’re Speaking My Language
• Love It or Leave It
• Vampairitious
• Speaking My Language
• Love It or Leave It
• Big Fat Juicy
• Pick A Card

Cheers and Welcome to the Ride!! Wwwwheeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

JeaneMargherite Meria McMahon Murray Schintgen (yep, that’s my name, don’t wear it out!)