Burford Designs

I Think, Therefore It's Thinkpad

Christmas came early for me this year.  I decided to stop hoping and wishing for a laptop computer and decided to finally purchase one.  One really nice thing about my job is that we are able to purchase computers through the district and then have it come out of our paychecks, the only requirement, other than being an employee, is that the purchase has to be paid off by the end of our fiscal year (August).  That means that I have the next nine payrolls to spread out my repayment. 

I already had some money saved up and I didn’t want to put the purchase on a credit card and have to deal with any interest so once I figured out what I wanted I set about figuring out my finances and moved some things around so that when I came across the deal I wanted I could get it.  Just such a deal arrived last week in the form of a Black Friday sale.  I was hemming and hawing between getting the laptop I really wanted and one that was smaller and slanted more towards my frugal side.  I knew that I could deal with the smaller computer but I also knew that I would be settling and that ultimately I would only regret I had made the purchase I really wanted.  The difference in what I was getting was pretty significant; however the price was about $200 different. 

 

My first instinct, and in fact my first action, was to put the cheaper laptop in my shopping cart.  Once in there I saw that the ship date was slated for 3/14/2011.  Wait, what????  March??? Oh, heck no, I quickly removed it from the cart, went back to my original desire and placed it in my cart.  The ship date for that one was 12/14/2010… I could deal with that.

 

On Tuesday I received a notice that my laptop had shipped and yesterday I came home and it was waiting for me on my dining room table. 

 

One of the main reasons I wanted a laptop was because I always felt that I would be more productive.  I like to write (type) and edit photos, but I hate having to sit at my desk in my room where my desktop is located in order to do it.  I like to be out where everyone else is, I like to be able to work wherever I am and this is what I am now able to do.

 

Here’s to being more productive! 

How to Get Discovered and Be a Big Huge Star

by Christine Kane

Recently, a well-known agent was teaching a music business course to singers and performers. 

In the class, this agent told his students that they probably weren't going to be able to make a living at music. His message was simple:

If you don't have something special, then there's no hope for you. There's no harm in throwing in the towel and making music your hobby. "But," he concluded. "Get real about it."

I was talking with a friend about this agent's philosophy. I fired off the names of several people who have "made it" in a non-commercial niche way. Each person I named is successful at her work, but isn't the very best with regard to talent or "sell-ability."

So, guess what? That agent is 100% totally and stupidly dead wrong.

Yes, I do agree that there are lots of people who aren't all that great at what they do, hoping to be "discovered" or "rescued." But the issue is NOT that they aren't great at what they do. That can be improved. The issue is that they are waiting for someone to give them permission, or discover them, or rescue them. To paraphrase Yoda: THAT is why they fail.

The good news is this:

Getting discovered is an inside job. You discover yourself. You become the star regardless of how "famous" you are. Here's how to do just that:

Be Yourself

Find your own voice. Be authentic. The world needs YOUR voice and YOUR wisdom. As Arnold Patent said: "If you genuinely have something to say, then there is someone who genuinely needs to hear it." That's true for songs, blogs, books, talks, paintings, everything. Strengthen your strengths. Don't try to fix your weaknesses.

Guard Your Thoughts

Your thoughts are things. They can be powerful tools, or devastating weapons.

You may be cleaning up years of negativity. But you are the only one who can do just that. If you're constantly berating yourself or doubting yourself, then set your intention to turn that around.

Remind yourself: "Energy flows where attention goes," and place your attention on gratitude, love, and joy. Be relentless! You can't afford the luxury of a negative thought - or of sitting in a room with an agent who tells you there's no hope for your career! Move away from snarky people. Guard your thoughts. They're your power tools!

Work on your Craft

Write. Coach. Perform. Speak. Sing. Paint. Work at this stuff. It will make you better. It will make you happier. Looking outside of you for approval makes you unhappy. Creating makes you happy. Deeply happy.

Stop Waiting

If you are waiting for permission or discovery, stop it. Give yourself permission. Rescue yourself. Discover yourself. 'Nuff said.

Take Risks

Take a few chances. Get a little scared. Everyone claims to want security. But security is a myth. And your life will be more exciting if you get a little insecure.

Uplevel Your Business®

Take yourself seriously enough to learn the business of what you're doing. Study with coaches. Go to workshops, retreats, events. Learn about marketing. Study and build systems. Take time away to work ON your business. Hire people to help you. Create a structure that supports your stardom! (By the way, it has never been easier to do this!)

Adjust to Overwhelm

Overwhelm is a lot like stage fright. It's not that it goes away. It's just that you get better at channeling it!

One of my coaches used to have a mantra for those moments when I got overwhelmed: "At least you're not bored." When you're on the path of discovering yourself and being a star, you are always learning and expanding. Get used to it!

Expect Criticism

Criticism is not a risk. It's a guarantee. As it is wisely said, the only way to avoid criticism is to do nothing, be nothing and try nothing. Stop worrying about criticism. Instead, create support systems.

Don't try to get discovered and be a big star on your own. Invest in a coach. Create a mastermind. Take part in a live event that will help you find other people like you who want to be big stars in their own big ways! Those people are out there. And believe me, they aren't wasting time listening to agents who claim to know who will and won't be discovered!

*~*~*~*

Christine Kane is the Mentor to Women Who are Changing the World. She helps women uplevel their lives, their businesses and their success. Her weekly LiveCreative eZine goes out to over 12,000 subscribers. If you are ready to take your life and your world to the next level, you can sign up for a F.R.E.E. subscription at http://christinekane.com.

How to Reclaim Your Attention and Get More Done

Stop the Splatter! How to Reclaim Your Attention and Get More Done

by Christine Kane

Have you ever been at home all day when there's nothing in the fridge?

You open the door. You poke your head in. You hum a little tune and look around. You sigh. You grab a handful of pine nuts. You go back to your desk.

About an hour later, you're hungry.

So you go back to the fridge and look again. Nothing new has appeared. You pull out some black olives, put them on a saucer, and go back to your desk.

You think, "I should go out and get something to eat." But you don't. A part of you is convinced that a solution will appear. Maybe a Sous Chef will arrive at your door.

Amazingly, this doesn't happen.

Eventually you're back at the fridge. You look in. Then, you close the door, reach up to the cereal cabinet and grab a handful of Kashi...

What happens in this scenario is that you eat all day, but you never feel satisfied. By 5pm, you're strung out, unfulfilled, and you wonder why.

Here's why:

You ate. But you never actually fed yourself.

We do this exact same thing with our attention. We dabble in random things. But we never really commit to anything.

I call it Attention Splatter. It's when you mindlessly and half-heartedly splatter your attention on non-activities. But you never fully engage.

Remember this: Your attention ultimately feeds you. It feeds your heart and your mind. This is why it's so important to notice what you give your attention to. This is also why splattered attention leaves you unfulfilled. You never actually feed yourself.

The most common Attention Splatter culprits are:

• Email
• Cell phones
• Clutter
• Internet
• Television

If you are prone to Attention Splatter, here are seven ways to feed yourself and get more done.

1 - Have no more than three priorities for the day.

There's only so many things you can get done in a day and still enjoy the day. Get into the habit of spending five minutes each night deciding what one thing you want to get done the next day. Ask yourself, "If I only accomplish one thing tomorrow, which one thing would make me most happy?"

2 - Know the task before you sit down at the computer.

This is a must. When you don't do this, you can get lost in the millions of non-items that any computer has to offer.

Assign tasks. (i.e. "Clean out email folders") Assign times. ("From 1pm to 2pm") Stop as soon as the end time arrives.

3 - Put an end to activities that leak.

Make a list of "leaky" activities, and stop the leak by scheduling these activities. (As opposed to letting them take over your day.)

For instance, instead of letting email leak all over your day - all day every day - schedule email as an activity at a certain time each day. Every activity should have a home - a space for its completion. Otherwise, you set yourself up for a full day of splatter.

4 - Leverage your small slices of time.

It's easy to look up at the clock and see that you have, say, 45 minutes before an appointment and think, "Well, I don't have time to do anything substantial. So, I guess I'll just go on line."

Turn your thinking around! Learn to fit constructive things in to small slices of time. It's amazing what you can complete in a short focused slice of time!

5 - Use your intention.

Before you begin any activity, set an intention for that activity. Intend your desired outcome and how you want to feel during the activity. This is the ultimate act of creativity.

6 - Get rid of anything that doesn't feed you.

Incoming emails, group emails, magazine subscriptions, news aggregate feeds, TiVo, memberships, unread books...

The list of incoming stuff goes on and on.

Get your life in order. Get rid of anything that doesn't feed you. If you subscribe to it, ask yourself why. Start letting go of stuff. Doing this one thing has helped me create a home and office environment that is healthy and sacred. Be ruthless about keeping the incoming stuff to a minimum.

7 - Be present in your down-time.

When you take a nap, take a nap. When you take a Saturday off, really take it off. Don't spend the day obsessing about the things you should be doing. Turn off the computer. Get out of your office. Go away.
Fully disengaging from all of it for fun is imperative. Plus, this will allow you to return with renewed energy and attention!

---

Christine Kane is the Mentor to Women Who are Changing the World. She helps women uplevel their lives, their businesses and their success. Her weekly LiveCreative eZine goes out to over 12,000 subscribers. If you are ready to take your life and your world to the next level, you can sign up for a F.R.E.E. subscription at http://christinekane.com.

Begin Your Day

Here’s another great post by Christine Kane.

“I’m going to begin this post with a Really Lame Metaphor. (RLM, for short.) When you wake up each morning, you’re in a vulnerable place. You’ve been sleeping, you’ve been dreaming, you’re wide open. You’re receptive. You’re a vessel. In my RLM, I’m going to call you a big bowl. AND, since it’s your life and you’re creating it, you are also the potter, the creator of the big bowl. When a potter makes a bowl, she designs it, sits with it, shapes it, makes it beautiful, and then she sends it out into the world to contain whatever it will contain. Someone could put a plant in it, or soup, or cigarette butts. The bowl is still beautiful. The artist created the bowl to be beautiful no matter what other people decide to put in it.

So, my RLM actually brings me to a Really Important Point. (RIP?) One of the best things you can do, as the artist of your day, is to start it by consciously designing who you choose to be, by setting intent, by praying, by reminding yourself of your dreams and goals. Any practice that works for you, that connects you to something deeper than, say, Fox News. I don’t think it matters how you do it. I think it matters that you do it.

Reaction and Pro-action

I’ve written about the onslaught of unconscious emotions and thoughts, and some of the ways I’ve learned to respond to and become more conscious of such onslaughts. This is a good practice, and is always going to come in handy. But in my own experience, a more proactive approach was eventually necessary, too. At some point, I realized that living in a constant state of reactivity wasn’t healthy. “Oh no! Here comes another emotion! Quick! Do something!” It left me feeling panicky whenever I woke up in the morning. So I began a morning practice a few years ago that has been invaluable. It’s how I shift from that feeling of always being “on guard” to knowing that my life is my choice, my own work of art. It’s how I start my day. The difference is palpable.

The potter in the aforementioned RLM doesn’t sit with a big root ball or a bunch of soup trying to shape the bowl around some pre-determined contents and try to figure out a way to make the bowl beautiful with all this crap she has to put into it. Likewise, if you’re the artist and the big bowl, and you start your day without shaping or refining or defining what you are or want to be (setting your intent) then it’s like allowing the world and all its drama to decide how to shape you. (Okay, I TOLD you it wasn’t the best metaphor – but you do get the idea, no?)

Begin your day with some kind of practice — renewing your commitment to your dreams, setting intent to be peaceful, remembering who you want to be. Eventually, you create yourself so that no matter what comes in, you’re able to remain centered and focused throughout the day.

This isn’t to say that we’re not meant to have compassion or sadness or grief. This IS to say that the average person is somewhat addicted to negative emotions and fear — otherwise, Fox News wouldn’t be nearly as successful. When you have a morning practice you return to again and again, then you find the grounded and centered part of you becomes much stronger and stays with you for longer periods throughout the day. Does it guarantee a perfect day with no depression or ups or downs? Not at all. But do it a few days, and then don’t do it a few days, and you’ll see why I’m sitting here making up pottery metaphors to prove my point. It’s cumulative and it works.

What To Do

Morning Pages: My personal favorite for about 10 years now. I had a writing teacher who was into The Artist’s Way from the day it was published. She assigned us Morning Pages, and I’ve been doing them ever since. This is three pages of long-hand unedited bad writing. You’re allowed to write anything. The idea is to get it all out and just keep writing.

Prayer and Meditation: Don’t let the fundamentalists scare you away from your own definition of the word “prayer,” okay? I was having lunch recently with two of the coolest women you could ever know. Both of them work for the Dogwood Alliance, my favorite environmental group, and we were discussing despair and burn out in the world of saving forests. I asked them how they continued on in spite of so many challenges and obstacles. Without hesitation, both of them said, almost in unison, “Prayer.” Daily prayer. They each talked about their own practice and we all agreed in the power of that daily connection the divine, meditation, whatever. When I first graduated from college, I used to write daily letters in my journal to God. I was crazy unhappy in my PR job, and I wanted to be a writer or songwriter, and I filled page after page admitting this dream to my angels and myself. Eventually, my soul had to stop ignoring my words!

Vision journal: When I facilitate retreats we do this as an activity. You cut up magazines, pull out pictures, paste them into your journal, onto a poster, anywhere that allows you to see visual ideas of your idea of beauty, peace, a bigger you. There aren’t any rules to this one, but people just love it.

Dreams and Goals: Remind yourself of your dreams and goals. Write them on postcards. Write them in the present, in the affirmative. Read them aloud to remind yourself that you get to decide what’s going to happen in your life. (In my previous blogs on bulimia, I talked about setting intent to heal — this is the time to do that as well.)

There’s also yoga, there’s visualization, there’s much to say about meditation. You will find your own practice once you get started. I change routines depending on what’s happening in my life at the time.

Choosing

Living clearly and consciously takes work. I don’t mean struggle. I mean that it takes choosing. And choosing again. And then again. As I get clearer in my own daily life, I am less tolerant of my own whining and my own unhealthy patterns. With daily practices, these old patterns don’t stick around as long anymore. And that has taken work. It’s easy to be someone who gets up, grabs the paper, turns on a TV, and gulps down a few pots of Starbucks. It’s easy to let the world shape you, piss you off, make you self-righteous about all the wrongs to which you have fallen victim. It’s easy to rush, to fill your every minute with to-do lists, and to live a distracted life so full of “stuff” that you never ask yourself who you want to be. It takes courage to make a choice daily to be bigger, to get clearer, and to recognize when you are reacting. It takes daily practice. Begin your day. Now. And begin it again tomorrow. And the day after that. And in the meantime, I’ll try to find a better metaphor!”

___________

Performer, songwriter, and creativity consultant Christine Kane publishes her ‘LiveCreative’ weekly ezine with more than 12,000 subscribers. If you want to be the artist of your life and create authentic and lasting success, you can sign up for a FRE*E subscription to LiveCreative at www.christinekane.com.

Planning It Out

For those that have seen the Ashton Kutcher Cameron Diaz movie "What Happens in Vegas" I tend to be a little like Joy (Cameron's character) especially when it comes to planning to plan.  Usually I can just sit down with a pad of paper and a pen and crank out a plan for whatever I'm doing.  However when I deal with Mommy she freaks out about lists, planning, and the like so if it's just sprung upon her we have to plan to plan...a date has to be set so that she can mentally prepare for whatever it is that we need to plan. 

Because of this I feel the need to schedule time to prepare my calendar, list of things to do, make, get, etc.  I enjoy being organized and organizing my organizing.

That's how I plan on spending my day today...planning, organizing, cleaning so that I can begin 2009 with a fresh start.

 

Happy Monday!!