expanding consciousness one stroke at a time...

I just finished facilitating a session for RISE Austin 2010 a summit for entrepreneurs and I am fired up! We had a full house/studio and a lively discussion on the intersect between creativity and business and I am blazing with creative mojo!

AND I just realized that this will be the last event held at the location at my house. <How appropriate was the title for the final class at this location? Create or Die:  The Art of Entrepreneurship.  How to Leverage your Creativity to Fuel your Expanding Business…?!!!>

Fire Tree Studios is ready to launch!

The session was such a success and I was so inspired by people and their stories and their passion that I felt compelled to share the framework for our discussion…Enjoy!

We are all innately creative.

• Creativity is our birthright
• The Myth of Creative Genius. Fantastic blog on this by Tobias Tinker of Lateral Action–my newest obsession. Amazing resource.  Love their moto:  creativity + productivity = success.  (maybe because it jives so well with the gusto the Fire Tree Method…)

FEED YOUR SELF with a regular diet of pure creative expression:  drawing, painting, writing, singing, movement/dance, drama, photography, music, sculpture, etc.

• Creativity is our Source of Passion, Life Force, Power and Potential
• Our relationship with our business is a direct reflection of our relationship to our self …and our Creativity/Life Force/Power/Passion
• Make your creative life a priority of self-care.  It is just as important as book-keeping.
• Mix it up!   Intermodal Creativity—> cross pollinates.
• Experiment & Take risks
• Play & Have FUN!!!!

“Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.”

– Joseph Chilton Pearce

Embrace the Paradox: Centered Chaos.

• Quiet Mind:  Creativity flourishes in a calm, relaxed, mind. Meditation practice, focusing, observing our thoughts.
  1. Patience
  2. Clarity
  3. Focus
  4. Calmness
  5. Insight
  6. Perspective
  • What meditation can do for your Creativity (great guest blog post by Marc McGuiness also of Lateral Action on the 99% another fabulous resource for putting ideas into action.)

• Flower in the Chaos: change & transformation are the fuel of creative flow & growth

Creativity & Expansion requires taming the voice of resistance….the inner critic. …or what Seth Godin calls, ‘The Lizard Brain’ in his latest book, Linchpin. Michele Cassou calls it The Dragon of fear in her book, Point Zero: Creativity without Limits.

• The inner critic’s job is to sabotage your creative potential
• Trust yourself. I love my friend Hugh Macleods book on taking the creative leap, Ingore Everybody. And 39 Other Keys to Creativity.
  

Leverage ‘mistakes’ as the center of the creative vortex and an opportunity to change direction and discover endless possibility.

“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”

- Joseph Chilton Pearce

Entrepreneurship is an Art. Your business is an active creative process that is ALIVE.

Dialogue with your business.  What does it have to tell you?  What do you want to tell it?

Integrating the Right and Left Brain for an experience of full brain power and wholeness

(another great book on this by my friend Dianna Amorde, Aha Moments: Where Intuition and Intellect Collide.)

• Creativity + Structure = Freedom

• The birth of The Fire Tree Method™: the creative vortex, where spirit and form collide. Structure acts as a catalyst to bounce off of— a corral for creativity to interact, experience, dance, play and discover and actualize.
• Co-Creation & Visioning
• Focused Intentions
• Inspired Action for Manifestation

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

- Goethe

What is it that keeps us from trusting ourselves?    A culture obsessed with over stimulation— encouraging us toward manic distraction from ourselves,  from the present moment, from our creativity and essentially our own power and joyful fulfillment.  A belief that we lack what we need and are dependent on finding it outside of ourselves…that we don’t know how to use it… that we are wrong…that we might fail…the list goes on.

What’s it gonna take?  What’s it gonna take believe in our knowing— to truly surrender and follow our own inner wisdom?

We become conditioned early on in our development to give our power to other people who think they know what is best for us.  We can choose to continue this painful pattern of self-sabotage or we may freely discover a different path… a new pattern that is less familiar–one of embracing our integrity with full alignment of our entire being, regardless of external responses and approvals, to honor our deepest selves-– expressing fully and fiercely in our daily lives.

Where can you trust yourself more?   Where can you honor your own intuition or connection to your innate wisdom and creative life force?

Learning to trust ourselves is one of the most challenging and rewarding journeys in realizing the internal resource of innate genius…all we have to do is access it, learn to trust it and follow it ruthlessly.

Come explore the journey of trusting your inner knowing.  There are 2 spaces available in the Monday Evening 5 week  The Art of Creation:  Intuitive Painting session that starts next week.  Also space is available in Creating from the Inner Fire:  Painting as a Spiritual Practice 8-week session that begins next Wednesday.

*Early bird pricing for the 7-day Martha’s Vineyard Painting Retreat in September ends March 1st! There are a few spots still available.  Book now to insure a space at this affordable price.

What are you waiting for?  Go ahead…trust yourself.

The picture is of Gabriel painting during the Get your Paint On for Haiti community mural a few Saturdays ago.  I observed him getting lost in his process, lost in time, lost in the flow…as he wrote the words, ‘I love you’ in the middle of the mural christening it with the final touch–

The community experience was a powerful process, which took a life of its own, yes– we raised money to support Partner’s in Health in Haiti, AND each of us were further transformed by this experience, by each other, the collaboration are hearts opening with compassion and insight at how deeply connected we all are to everything and everyone.  How simple and pure life and love can be….

So as we celebrate love today and the opening of hearts, let us remember all of the forms of which love can express itself.

Love to each and everyone of you, may you realize the love that is you in the world around you.

with love,

Melissa

Like vinegar of
Expectant grapes
The heart draws inward
To the quiet chambers
Of transformation
Waiting in darkness
For resurrection
By the thirst
Of its own juices
Spilled by life’s sacred accident,
Aching
With a now growing
Hopefulness
That comes with enduring
Grief’s deliverance
From bitter days
Waiting to ripen
Elegantly sour
Painfully sweet
And wisely aged,
Strangely blessed
Ready again
To taste the world
Anew.

- Jack Adam Weber

Life is so precious let us remember that we can make a difference in our own lives and in the lives of others. We can foster great change simply by expressing and celebrating our creativity in community.

This Saturday come support our people in Haiti who need our love, attention & creative mojo.

We are offering an open studio from 12pm to 4pm by donation.

All proceeds will be going toward Partner’s in Health.

Supervised kiddos are welcome!  Please RSVP to melissa@firetreestudios.com or register to reserve your space and bring friends!

with love, peace & creativity,

Melissa

*photo by Damon Winter courtesy of The New York Times

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” -Ghandi

Fire Tree Studios will be offering an open intuitive painting session on Saturday, January 30th from 12pm to 4pm for donation. First time painters are welcome.

ALL DONATIONS WILL GO TO PARTNERS IN HEALTH IN IT’S SUPPORT OF THE PEOPLE AFFECTED BY THE EARTHQUAKE IN HAITI.

In addition, the first person to contact me will get a complimentary 1:1 session when they donate $150 to Partner’s in Health or Architecture for Humanity.

To register for a space, or to schedule a private session please email:  melissa@firetreestudios.com. Click here or more information on classes.

Please share with anyone interested in creative exploration and personal expansion.