Blast O' Joy

Can You Smell the Joy?

If your dream had a smell, what would it be? 

Think of your ultimate vision for your life.  A life of pure joy.  Now using all your senses, what fragrance can you call up to go along with what you see? What taste? What colors?

If people could smell a corporate culture, I wonder...what would Microsoft smell like?  the Trump organization?  How about Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream or....Starbucks?

I know, it's not fair; the latter two examples are of food companies, so it's easy for them to evoke a smell in our minds.  But I'm actually serious here, I think we (individuals, artists, dreamers and big companies) overlook our senses a lot in our pursuit of joy and meaning...would you agree?

In the course of your day, do you notice your sense of smell?  How does today smell to you, for example?  Like your favorite bouquet of flowers or has it been a dank-alleyway-near-the-fish-market kind of day?  We all have those.

For me, the smell of my business when it's going well, and the smell of joy, is somehow tied to lemons.  That's a regular everyday kind of smell that I associate with my work.  And it's the smell I hope subtly, and not so subtly (as when I write about it like this) gets communicated when someone visits my website or reads one of my books. 

Tangy, thoughtful, awake and energized.

On a really great day, or when I'm blissed out and basking in the bloom of full creative flow, lemons get bumped up to peaches...but lemon is still in the background.  Yum.

Here's my favorite Lemon Yogurt Cake recipe based on one from Ina Gartner, the Barefoot Contessa. It's easy, good for you and delicious.  Exactly the way I want my life and my business to be.

Andrea's Favorite Lemon Yogurt Cake

Mix together:

1 and 1/2 cup flour, 2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt

In a separate bowl mix:

3 eggs, 1 cup plain yogurt, 1 tsp vanilla and the zest of 1 lemon and 2 teaspoons juice from the lemon.  This makes it really lemony.

Then add the dry mixture to the wet mixture until just mixed (not too much.)  Add 1/2 cup of vegetable oil and blend together.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes or until golden.  A loaf pan is best but I like it when Mike makes it in a round bundt tin too.  It stays really nice and moist through the week - perfect for lunch in the middle of a lemony day.

Enjoy! 

Recommended: A trip to the favorite sections in your most glorious grocery store or market.  Leave your grocery list alone for a moment and let your senses be your guide. 

Ask: What attracts you?  Where do you find yourself most wanting to linger?

After you leave, how might you recreate the energy you feel when connected to your sense of smell? 

How I've Reconnected to Spirit

Is it a seasonal thing? An annual longing to return to myself somehow? I'm happy to report that while I was out in Taos at our annual Writer's Spa, I got back in touch with that verdant, wise, knowing spiritual voice in my head.

It happened because it always happens when I go to Taos to different degrees. And this time I was ready, standing at the precipice of a great Spiritual freefall into my next creative endeavors. I've learned over the decades that this is where my best and truest instruction lies on what to do next … and so I do my best to tap into that vein before I begin such work

It also helped that I had a reading with a well known psychic in Taos, Rhonda Flemming. Rhonda came to our evening council one night and led our group in a gentle psychic connect within the group - giving everyone some sweet guidance on how to tune into each other and provide helpful information.

Anyway, Rhonda came up to my room the next day and did a wonderful interpretation of a spread of Tarot and angel cards - what she calls Soul Readings. It wasn't fortune telling, but more an exploration of what's next for me and what I need to focus on to continue delivering my Soul Purpose work in this lifetime. It was tremendously fun.

Here's what rang true for both of us:
" I'm being guided to do my biggest work to date now - most likely my Serenity Hawkfire project that I've been chipping away for several years
" I'm eclectic; I have a lot of talents and interests and it's OK to do several simultaneously. In fact, it's what my spiritual development requires
" I'm here to teach others, and work daily with meditation, checking in with my guides, to see just how to do that.
" I'm coming into my own as a sharer of information and the best is definitely yet to come.

Hey! I mean, I'd die happy if I went tomorrow … this all just seems like more joy than I can stand! But who says there's a limit?

The Best Way to Totally Boost Your Dream, Part III

A final idea about meditating and using it to nurture your dream. Try this exercise - you can do it right now. It's simple, and amazingly effective.

Take a pad of paper, or a favorite notebook, a pen that flows dependably, and go into a quiet place and close the door. Put the pen and pad within reach and begin to meditate. Allow yourself to go to a deep, quiet place within, then reach for your pad and begin to work. Stay loose and open, and let your pen record the guidance that moves through your mind. Don't worry about what your writing looks like, or where your pen moves on the page. Keep your eyes closed and let it flow ... you will probably be surprised at how readable this sort of writing turns out to be. Later, when you are finished, feel free to recopy what you have channeled into a favorite notebook.

You will have valuable information here that may or may not make sense right this minute. At any rate, it's a way to keep deepening your own divine connection.

Tags: Meditation, living your joy, creative inspiration

The Best Way to Totally Boost Your Dream, Part II

Yesterday, I introduced the idea that meditation is great for your dream … and I talked about how to best achieve it. Here are some more ideas.

Guided meditation recordings can be a terrific solution, especially if you're new to meditation. You can just sit back, turn on the CD or the iPod, relax and let someone else take care of you for a while.

Recorded visualizations can be wonderfully targeted, too, guiding you to work on specific issues. For many years, I happily climbed into Shakti Gawain's pink bubble on her "Creative Visualizations" tape whenever I wanted to help prod my goals along.

Over the years, I've put together my own CD's for going into your creative space, and asking for help on your dream. (The key one for creativity issues is part of my How Much Joy Facilitator's Training. I also have a guided visualization that helps you tap into your Soul Purpose in life.)

The important thing, of course, is not how you meditate but that you do meditate. This is your pipeline to your dream, the work that will bring you further along your path. And the more often you do it, the more clear and fertile that channel will become.

Just pick a regular time of day to meditate and stick to it -- first thing in the morning, right before you go to sleep, just after you get home from work, even behind closed doors on your lunch hour at the office.

Once you discover the lovely, honey-light of God's essence warming your soul, it will become too hard to resist, and you will find yourself waiting for the moment each day when you can connect.

Sit back, relax, close your eyes, and enjoy!

Tags: Meditation, living your joy, creative inspiration

The Best Way to Totally Boost Your Dream

Recently I heard from a reader that she'd like more practical, hands-on ideas about moving your dream forward in The Joy Letter. I'm all for that ... so let's talk about meditating, which is one of the key tools for connecting with the work of your dreams.

Or better yet, let's talk about finding that secret place where you feel God/Spirit/The Universe/your gut's presence in your life. For me, that's what meditation is all about, and there is no one way to achieve it.

My problem with standard seated meditation has always been that I wasn't sure I was doing it right.
I'd heard you should inhale to the count of four and exhale to the count of six or eight. Which I did for a while, and it did seem to focus my mind.

Yet, once I'd calmed down and gotten into some sort of alpha state, my mind was hardly empty. I was going through yesterday's grocery list by the time my meditation was officially over. I would open my eyes feeling vaguely guilty, and not really sure the meditation had "worked". Another option I tried was staring at a mandala, a design, or a candle flame, which was a complete failure. I didn't like the idea of staring at anything; it gave me a headache.

Through trial and error, I eventually came up with my own sort of mongrel meditation which I've found to be highly effective -- one it turns out that pray-ers have used for thousands of years.
I simply close my eyes, take a few breaths to relax, and say hello to God.

There is almost always a warm, secure, taken-care-of feeling that takes over, a sense that God is there, waiting, wanting to help. I thank God for various blessings in my life, and I ask for information and ideas, and help on challenges. Then I do my best to stay open to whatever divine thoughts or images may roll along. Above all, I let my intruding thoughts come and go, with the understanding that they will never leave altogether -- that I can simply include them, and move on.

It took some years to realize that a process this simple was indeed 'doing it right'. I was sure everyone else's technique was better than mine. And yet, when I finally gave up and trusted my method, I truly felt that nod from God. After all, God does want to speak to us ... He or She is always patiently waiting for us. The question is, can we muster up the courage to tune in?

Tags: Meditation, living your joy, creative inspiration

My Own Happiness Hit List

Building on yesterday's post about how to get over a bad mood, here's my own personal list of things that bring me joy at the moment:

1. Seeing water (not ice) on Lake Champlain … and it's gloriously still and calm
2. The appearance of very young, very pale spring green leaves on trees
3. The smell of baking chicken
4. Going to our CSA (farm coop) on Fridays to pick up jars of extra creamy milk, just cut grass-fed beef steaks, fresh new maple syrup, and some gloriously old and huge rutabaga's
5. Cleaning the house with my family (and watching our kids mop floors, clean bathrooms, and empty trash cans) … that REALLY brings me joy
6. Knowing that my future truly is up to me  -- which is both daunting and joyful
7. Working with Rich and Lena, my business coaches, who get what I do better than me
8. Working with my incredible staff who turn stuff around so fast, and have such amazingly good ideas for making this little company go
9. The photo I saw of a 99-year-old Parisian woman decked out for the Paris fashion shows in black Issaye Miyake plus a lavender ostrich feather hat
10. My friend Laurie's seed incubator, which is roughly the size of a coffee table, and is hatching seeds for about 5000 flowers right now
11. The tenacity of wild strawberry leaves, the only green thing in our yard as the last foot of snow finally melts
12. My friend Trisha
13. Anticipating the first icy swim in the lake with Larry, my husband, as we plunge in in our new swim skins
14. The words that come as God tells me what to write, as usual, in this blog
15. The sanctity of doing what I am meant to do in life

Tags: Self-motivation, living your dreams, joy, happiness

How to Get Over a Bad Mood

I was in no mood for joy this morning when I started writing this post. I'd just spent twenty minutes in telephone hell, listening to one recording after another, trying to find an actual customer service representative at one of the long distance phone companies. By the time I hung up, I was convinced I was experiencing the final decline of western civilization.

Gradually, as the smoke stopped coming out of my ears, I remembered a certain page that used to appear on my web site -- a discussion board with a post called Finding Fifteen Things a Day to Be Joyful About. So I took an unlikely moment to consider mine. And as I did the smoke cleared, my mood shifted, and life was good again. It really was as simple as that.

On this thread, people listed fifteen things that bring them joy. Some of my favorites:

"A walk in the rain on this lazy Sunday."
"Sitting in my pajamas on the kitchen floor with my three year old grandson, eating spoonfuls of peanut butter before breakfast."
"The moss on a tree outside my window."
"The energy I received walking around the strip in Vegas on a Sunday morning."
"Being in bed, getting ready to fall asleep, and having my cat curl up on my belly and purr like a diesel engine."
"The dancing smiles of friends."
"That my neighbor is an 88 year old woman who grows a garden all year long, and does her own yard work."

There is something almost hypnotic about reading what makes others joyful, yet listing them for yourself is even more powerful. It's remarkably soothing.

No matter how sophisticated we think our brains may be, they don't seem capable of holding both tormented, anxious thoughts and happy thoughts at the same time. So by stopping for a moment, and forcing yourself to think about what makes you happy in life, you get a profound perspective shift. Suddenly, the telephone desert you wandered in only a few minutes earlier is gone, and you're back making brownies in the kitchen with a child, each of you licking a beater. I can't emphasize enough what a powerful tonic this is for healing the furious, fed up, frustrated, or just plain downtrodden soul.

Drop me a quick list of your top three right now - just hit the Comments button below. I'll post mine here tomorrow.

Tags: Self-motivation, living your dreams, joy, happiness

Create a Dream Binder for Someone You Love or Yourself, Part II

So … now are you ready to set up your own Dream Binder? (See yesterday's post to learn what that is.) It's easy and extremely fun - and it can be as elaborate as you want, or as simple as time will allow. Here's what you'll need:

You'll need a binder with a clear sleeve on the front for inserting cover art, dividers, 3-hole punched paper, loose leaf or filler paper, and access to the Internet.

Just to make it really easy for you, I've also put together a free download of Dream Binder workbook pages you can print out and use in your binders. They include exercises, questionnaires, and some helpful general articles on dream pursuit. (When you download it, you'll also get access to my free, award-winning ezine, The Joy Letter.)

Then print them out on 3-hole paper and pop them in the binder. The cover art I created is only a suggestion - feel fr.ee to make your own very personal image for the recipient.)

How to Make It:

When you sit down to make your Dream Binder, take a blank piece of paper and ask yourself just what your friend's dream should have in it. Let your mind wander deliciously, and capture all the inspirations that come up. Then get on the Web and start surfing - I promise you all the information you're looking for is out there.

You can make your Dream Binder as simple or as complicated as you like. Divide it up into sections that seem most useful for the recipient.

Include web sites, product or site reviews, free software URL's, and just about anything else you can think of. You can even give them gift certificates to helpful subscription services or retailers who sell dream-related products, if you want to add monetary value to this gift

Also look for
" Inspirational biographies
" Stories of others who've succeeded in the field your friend wishes to go into
" Helpful contacts
" Could be names/addresses/etc. from anyone you can find in their dream field who might serve as mentor, or even cold contacts you don't personally know.
" Notes or messages from supportive friends/family
" Free articles
" Great books/programs/tools

Are there helpful books that have good reviews that might somehow assist them? Think not only of technical books from experts in their field, but general dream books like my own, Living Your Joy.

Give the gift that really DOES keep on giving? Let someone you love (yes, that can include yourself) know that their dream matters and that you believe in them completely. You'll be so very glad you did.

Let the dreams begin!

Create a Dream Binder for Someone You Love or Yourself, Part I

Recently, I came up with a big idea: creating a binder of goodies that supports the dream of someone you love. I'm all for homemade gifts… and letting a friend or family member know their dream is supported is just about the best gift anyone can give. (Think Graduation, Mother's Day, birthday … or just make one for that other best friend - yourself!)

Here's an example.

My daughter Teal has a big dream of being a country singer. Teal has a great voice and has been performing pretty much non-stop since she was about 6. And she spends a considerable amount of time every day simply singing … sometimes for hours at a time. So for her 15th birthday, I made her a Dream Binder.

A Dream Binder is a great big book of support for any dream. Teal's Binder included photos of her favorite country singers and stories of how they got discovered. Plus I included information on contests, contacts at local radio stations, inspirational quotes for down days, helpful Web resources, and worksheets on things like keeping track of key contacts and planning next steps.

Her Dad, her brother, her godmother, her friends and I also added fun, mushy letters of support for her dream. And they also added more elements of their own, so the Dream Binder became a family effort.

What's really great about these Binders is that you only start them. The recipient then takes the binder and can keep on adding lots of support pieces as his or her dream builds steam. (Hence the need for loose leaf in the back.)

So who do you know whose dream needs a boost… beginning with you? I invite you to make lots of dream binders and share them with your fellow dreamers. They're easy and truly fun to make.

I'll post more tomorrow on just what the dream binder should include. If you'd like a template to work with, drop by my website and pick up your own copy of my Create Your Own Dream Binder kit. (You'll also get my excellent ezine, The Joy Letter, too.) It's all free … and it's all good.

Mandisa rules!

Last week us American Idol fans (I know, I know - enough with the prime time TV, right? Actually, this is highly informative stuff for creative souls!) … we all got to watch an absolutely KICK-ASS performance by the AI artist known as Mandisa. This woman rocks the house 100%!

So I've been thinking about why … what did she have in that performance of a Chaka Khan tune that set her so far above and beyond her peers?

a) Complete confidence. Mandisa - a large woman who definitely doesn't fit into the conventional vanilla US definition of beauty - is beautiful because she totally owns who she is. The song she sang, rightly, was 'I am Everywoman' … and man, she WAS everywoman! Mandisa loves her differentness.

b) Maturity. This is probably the natural advantage of her and Taylor Hicks ('the gray haired guy') who are both listed on the AI site as aged 29. I'm guessing that may not be totally accurate, but who cares! They have the wisdom of going out there, having triumphs and disasters, and living life for a while. No matter how talented the young fry are, they simply can't compare.

c) Groundedness. This is really more of the maturity message, I think. Mandisa knows she's worked for this all these years - she's already a professional performer. AND, she knows she deserves everything she gets. Her public forgiveness of Simon (just before the final cut) for his abusive remarks regarding her weight were a pure example of this.

d) Spiritual connection. Mandisa has publicly thanked Jesus a few times on her web page, and acknowledged her spiritual guidance. I'm not saying you have to be a holy roller OR even remotely spiritually inclined to be a great artist. Not at all! I'm just saying this is totally working for her - she obviously find great strength here, so good for her for owning it, sharing it, and living it.

If you have a chance, tune in. American Idol is Tuesday at 8/7central (a 2 hour special) and 9/8 central on Fox.

Getting Outside the Box

One of my business coaches, Lena West, recently won a writing contest with an excellent essay it is my privilege to share with you. The gauntlet was tossed by Roy H. Williams of Wizard Academy, a copywriting website. The idea was to do something that firmly launches you out of your box, and then write about it.

Lena wrote about going out for breakfast in a diner on 'the other side of the tracks' in the Bronx at 3AM - a dangerous place compared to her ivory tower suburban neighborhood just across the county line. Her essay is profound, and so true, and yet, funny and inspiring. And yep, it just about moved me to tears.

You can read the whole thing at  http://www.wizardacademy.com/lenawest.asp

Here's what makes this kind of writing excellent: It's totally, 100% honest. Even about the stuff we usually try to cover up, like her assumptions about what 'those people' are really like. And how she'll have to run for her life at any moment. All of which are thoughts many of us have at such times - and yet, here we can see just how ridiculous they really are.

Read this for a shot of just how naked you want your creative expressions to be. Power to Lena! (And thanks….)

Magical chance encounters with critters

In response to my post about Hershey the Wild Mink, I got the following from a reader named Rhonni:
"A few years ago I was doing some sightseeing in Georgia before I travelled on to Nashville for a songwriting school. After riding the cable car up to Rock City, I found a low stone wall on which to sit and journal. I was feeling low and alone, but being outdoors was refreshing.

Soon I noticed a bird hopping along the wall, coming toward me. Probably an ordinary sparrow - or so I thought. I held very still and watched. A few moments later he hopped up to the edge of my journal (which I held in my lap) and perched there calmly for what seemed like a long time, before taking flight.

Some encounters with grace make me laugh, but at this one I wept. It helped affirm the stage name I had taken and the fact that I was privately referring to myself as a songbird!"

Great story ... do you have a spontaneous animal encounter that reaffirmed your dream somehow? I'd love to know!

A Dream I Had Last Night

What better place than my new Joy blog to post about a dream I woke up pondering this AM? As many of you know, I’m in the process of really turning up the heat on both of my websites. Just Friday I talked to a new literary agent about getting How Much Joy Can You Stand? back in print, with a new slant – necessary to attract the right publisher.

Then I woke up this AM with images of building stove tops with my creative partner, Ryan Brown. (Ryan and I will be leading East and West Coast tours in 2006 on how to use technology to come out of hiding and find the people who need your work.) My husband, Larry Barns, was teaching us how to do this. (Larry has had a major career as a photographer in NYC, made and wisely managed good money and commanded his niche – all with a minimum of stress.) Specifically, he was teaching us how to install heat tiles that would allow things to become manageable, even when scalding hot.

This makes me think the Joy work is meant to merge with my Get Known Now work, specifically through a possible republication of the How Much Joy  book. I see now that the new edition could discuss what we all struggle with most right now: how to grow bigger and be of greater use in the world WITHOUT landing in overwhelm. That’s the biggest fear I see among all the people I coach.

Interesting …..