Meeting with girlfriends is a wonderful thing, especially when your girlfriends are astute business women. A recent meeting with two wonderful such women left me reinvigorated and with a purpose – to revise my business plan. Back at my office, I went to work…and remembered that my business plan no longer existed. Stolen last year about this time, along with my laptop, never to be seen again. Curiously, while searching for it, the following blog post I wrote after Thanksgiving (2010) showed itself. The post talks about living in gratitude, and some steps to do that. How did I do with those steps? Read on…results are at the end of the post.
Like many Americans, I have spent the last few days gorging on delicious food, spending time with friends and family, and generally being grateful for what I have. And trying like heck to NOT focus on what I don’t. Hoping and trusting you were able to do the same thing.
Paired with that thankfulness has been the loss of my business computer AND backup hard drive, and dealing with the doldrums during the aftermath. Without going into the gory details, let’s just say I type this from ground zero. There exists a certain nervous energy surrounding starting over, technology wise. On the one hand, it’s great having a new computer. While I’m all gaga about getting it whipped into shape so it can take care of me and my bidness, I don’t want to backslide into “reaction mode†regarding the loss of my entire virtual world of technology and the slog of recreating it from scratch. So, Monday marks a new, important week of moving forward into creativity, even if it’s in tiny steps! Interestingly, my inspiration is not wrapped in a shiny new package of magic tricks. Right now I need comfort and familiarity. My focus is on a tender mashup of five little tools in the creativity kit already at my disposal.
1.     Meditate – even though it’s not done in a true Zen way (I mean, who can sit like that?) I do plan on sitting for at least 15 minutes and visualizing nothingness. Doing nothing clears a path.
2.      Write – since this summer, I’ve kept a dream journal. I write in it a lot, and often take extra time to look up my dream symbols in The Dreamer’s Dictionary: Translations in the Universal Language of Mind by Barbara Condron. It’s been deeply helpful and brings me a kind of secret powerful joy that I’m getting to know the workings of my dream-brain better (say that three times fast).For example, last night I dreamt of dozens of cooing babies floating before me as I swaddled them in soft translucent netting cloth, wove the cloth with satin ribbons, tied the ribbons into bows, and then folded the cloth down and around the babies like the petals on a flower. Happy-happy joy-joy. In the dream book, babies are new ideas. Coolness.
3.      Listen to music that makes me feel like dancin’ just for the fun of it.
4.      No TV. Sitting there staring at that cube really sucks creative motivation out, like totally!
5.      Be grateful – each night, 5 things I’m grateful for will be listed in my gratitude journal. This gets me thinking of gratitudes during a regular day, and noticing with joy the things I’ll be able to write down later. WOOT! SCORE ONE FOR GRATITUDE!
The results of moving forward? Pretty good, I must say. All five items got great attention for weeks after that 2010 Thanksgiving. The first to fall, though, was no TV. So I like reruns of The Office! Of all the tools, writing has been the one thing that has gotten regular, dedicated attention.
The Business Plan will be reinvented. But just as important, re-dedication to the now-revised list will be key: Meditate Write, and Be Grateful. Simple and easy. The Business Plan, therefore, will be simple and easy. That’s my intention.
P.S. Thank you, Jeryl and Jenny, my great girlfriends!