Make something beautiful in June: Week 2

What kind of creativity brings you joy? Gardening, cooking, drawing, writing? Maybe it’s baking or woodworking. There is something, beautiful someone. And you know what? Maybe it isn’t a traditional creative pursuit. Making something beautiful doesn’t necessarily mean creating art or having a unique idea.

Maybe you lose yourself solving a problem at work. Or resolving a dispute between two people in your chosen family. Making a difference in your community is creating beauty. So is trying a new, out-of-the-box solution to a annoying problem. Or encouraging someone who’s feeling despair…all these and more create beauty in the world.

Read More

Make something beautiful in June

“And since all this loveliness cannot be Heaven,
I know in my heart it is June.”

– Abba Woolson

June comes bearing many gifts. Here in the northeast, it’s finally sunny and warm again. Roses and peonies are blooming and strawberries are ripening. We’re planning vacations and sitting poolside.

Surrounded by this gorgeous bounty, I hope we’re inspired to create something beautiful ourselves.

Maybe we plant a single rosebush. Or an entire garden.

Cook a beautiful meal for people we love with unique dishes–in colors, textures, and tastes we’ve never tried before.

Read More

Courage to create

Please enjoy this excerpt from Braving It, one of my absolute favorite books. You gotta read the whole thing…there’s so much in here about living boldly and freely! This post is from the chapter: “Create your joy”

“Creativity takes courage,” said master French painter Henri Matisse. It definitely does take courage to dance and sing and paint when we feel like we can’t. We don’t know how, and even if we do, we’re not “good” at it. One look at the stores on Etsy, at what people are creating, or anyone whose work is on display at a gallery or museum, or dancers online or on stage is enough to stop us. We could never…

But, beautiful someone, we can.

Yeah, we can

We can move our feet to music. We can open our mouths and make sounds to musical notes. We can put pencil to paper and draw lines. We can look through the lens of a camera, find a gritty urban scene, and capture it in a compelling composition. Read More

Dream your dream

Your dreams are one of the truest parts of you.

To have the energy and passion you need for any dream, it’s got to be first and foremost about what you want to bring into your life. It’s easy to get distracted by what other people think, even people we love and care about, or even by what the headlines say.

We tend to listen too hard to other people’s ideas about what we should and shouldn’t try or what we’re good at or how we should spend our time and lives. We take the headlines too seriously and immediately apply them to ourselves, when they don’t.

Read More

Gratitude: the miracle-magnet

When the sky brightens, and the day is suddenly new…what do you dream of then?

A friend told me this amazing story: attendees at a seminar are shown a video of two people playing catch. They’re told just to focus on counting the number of times each person catches the ball.

In the middle of the clip, a gorilla walks into the frame and waves at the camera. When the clip ends, attendees are asked what they thought of the gorilla. Every single person is positive there was no gorilla, and when they look at the clip again, they swear they’re looking at a different video.

Read More