Wielding money as an artist wields paint



National Currencies

Money is such a big topic, I’ve been looking around for a metaphor that can free us, shift our understanding so that we can relate more powerfully to this vital resource.

As I look around me, I see many people who believe that money limits or enables the things they do with their lives. My view is different. I see money as a symptom, rather than a cause.

If we are afraid to step out and do what we are called to do, money steps in to protect us, usually by its scarcity – we can’t do what we “want” to do, it seems, because we haven’t got the money.

If we step out boldly, confident in making those dreams happen, money falls into line, either working well, or proving not to be necessary.

Money is always a symptom, never a cause.

I’ve been playing with the metaphor of money as being like air – we certainly need air to be creative: a lack of it stunts our creativity rapidly. What if we thought of money as we think of air, something we trust so much that we cease to think about it, breathing it in as we need it, breathing it out as we’re done with it, ready to take the next breath when it comes, knowing it will be there?

This goes some way towards freeing us of the “money as a limiting resource” idea, but I feel it misses something, relegates money to being a one-dimensional thing, a “have or have not” commodity, when the possibilities are so much more exciting.

What if we thought about money as an artist thinks about paint, and wielded it just as consciously? What if we saw that money has infinite facets and nuances and aspects to it, as paint has endless variety of colour and shade and texture?

Think of how an artist selects paint, going to an art supply store – shrines of sacred creativity, hushed and full of awe and vibrant life – and looks through all the varieties on offer. It is a creative act in itself, perhaps testing samples on paper, between fingers, revelling in the colours and the gloss of the fresh wetness, the jewel-like shine of light and highlight reflecting back the point-sources from the light fittings in the store, or the natural light filtering in the windows.

Imagine how artists explore fellow-artists’ supplies, the excited discussions when a new variety is found, poring over palette and canvas and tube.

Artists care very much about this raw material, and are very conscious of the quality they bring into their creations.

Then once the paint is selected, look at how they wield it. Art is not just about the paint, but about the subtleties of where and how it is placed on the canvas, how the colours interact, how the shapes form into what we perceive as images.

Think of how the artist feels as they work, and how that feeling translates intangibly into the result; the work of art holds the energy of the artist and the moment of creation, translated through atoms and molecules and shapes and textures, and the miraculous play of light on it all. In inspired works of art, the artist connects with their deep self, and the deeper consciousness of the universe, and transfers that energy into their work.

What if we consciously transferred our creative energy into our lives as we spend?

My point is that life could be magnificently enhanced if we poured this level of conscious awareness and connectedness into how we draw money into our lives, and how we spend it, thinking of it as an artist thinks about their art, as a creative act, a means of creating our lives and our world. What are we doing to earn it, and how conscious are we as we do those things; where are we looking for it, who holds the supply we tap into; and how do we spend it, what sort of activity are we supporting with our life-giving supply?

What if we considered that money holds and carries energy, of the hands it has passed through, the things it has paid for, the creations or destructions it has enabled, the intentions of the people it has supported?

Another thing: an artist trusts the supply of paint. The foremost question in creating the work of art is not: “Do I have enough?” but “How am I going to use it to express myself, my heart, my joy, my sorrow, my deeply felt sense of the world?”

If we saw money as the artist sees paint, what would alter, how would the world change?


Sustained extreme happiness



Here’s another excerpt from Easy – Deconstructing the Art of Effortless Creation. It comes after all the stuff about making the practical aspects of life easy: projects, time, possessions, etc, and encapsulates my vision and hope for the deeper side of life…

First edit is complete. Thinking about publication early July.

Chapter 45 Sustained Extreme Happiness

There’s one more chapter I want to add before the end. It doesn’t quite come into the category of making life easy, but it is certainly important for making life worthwhile.

The last few months have been rough ones for me. That thing I alluded to about adding unnecessary complexity to my relationships and emotions has been playing out on a massive scale.

Now, I know that I create whatever I want in life; I choose how I feel, how I respond to the things that happen around me, the circumstances of my life. So for a long time I asked myself: why would I choose grief? Why would I choose pain when I could choose happiness and peace. I know they exist; I know I could create them. So why not?

But somehow, the idea of “happiness” just didn’t attract me. After the intensity of the everyday experience I was creating with my grief, how could mere happiness compare?

In common human experience, there are two experiences we associate with vivid happiness: new love and new babies. All other forms, as far as I could remember, tended to deliver a much milder form. Nothing special. Nothing wildly exciting. And that’s what I craved.

Then I stopped myself. I recognised a semantic pattern, a resignation to something just because it was common in the status quo. I was assuming that just because sustained extreme happiness was not common in the world, I could not create it. But of course I could.

So here I am, having formed the idea of sustained extreme happiness. People I tell about it respond sceptically at best. There’s the caution of someone confronted with mania, fearing the depression which traditionally follows.

But why shouldn’t I create this? We see prolonged grief all the time. I myself have lived it, brilliantly, for months on end. Why not flip the coin, live the other side. The intensity is possible, we all know that; it’s just the flavour that would be different.

Having seen the vision, I’m certain it’s possible. Having chosen it for myself, and, by contagion, for the people around me, I am sure it’s on its way. There are clear moments of it already, glimpses of how it looks in reality, how it feels, how it is.

I’m eager to see the form it takes longer term, the circumstances of life that form around the central emotional experience. Life is already pretty good here: close relationships, physical expression, beautiful environment, work I love, plenty of time and money, and vibrant good health.

What more is possible? Watch this space.



Dream Project Challenge



What if the thing you thought would take your whole life could be done in ten months, in half an hour a day? What would you do then?

Consider the possibility that everything is much, much, much easier than it seems. I have this theory that everything is easy. It’s just our way of looking at things that makes them seem as they seem.

I’ll get into the history and origins in a minute; first, here are the guidelines of the Challenge itself:

Dream Project Challenge Guidelines

1. Be a busy, successful person, with lots of great stuff happening in your life
2. Think of or recall a Dream Project, one you’ve had shelved for a long time, or never really thought you would be able to do, or perhaps never thought you would have time for
3. Commit half an hour a day to that project – think where you could find half an hour a day, if you really wanted to, if that meant this Dream Project could become reality
4. Do half an hour each day, each day thinking what is the best use of that half hour to move the project forward
5. At the end of the half hour, stop! Experience the magic of what can be achieved in a tiny amount of time, once you allow it

Then rinse and repeat. You can miss one day if you need to, but never two in a row – the magic is in reconnecting with the project daily, even if that’s just talking about it to a friend, a colleague or a stranger…

And then, would you do me a favour?

There are a couple of extra things I’d love you to do, once you get into the challenge itself: first, let me know what you’re up to – I’m collecting stories for a book, and I’d love to hear yours. Email me with your project, and update me with your progress. If you like I’ll add you to the Facebook group, so you can share what you are doing with others.

And second, issue the challenge yourself, personally, to the people you know who have bigger dreams, bigger capacity than they are currently living, people who could do more, love more, change the world faster than perhaps even they know is possible. They might already be doing huge, amazing things, and you know they would love the challenge to do more, in a different way. Send them to this page, and tell them to get going!

So how did it all start?

I was on the train back from the airport yesterday. My husband, daughter and I had spent a few days in Florence looking at art.

Paul was asking me about my New Universe, how it works, and I was describing the idea of projects in the new paradigm, not problem-based, but creating without historic constraints. In the New Universe, as I see it, we create whatever we can dream of, according to positive constraints we set ourselves.

So here’s what I said.

“You need to get people’s minds to shift, to see how things can be easy. If you put people in the same office, working the same hours, they’ll continue to work the same way – you can give them a new job title but nothing fundamental will change. You have to change something fundamental – like tell them they’ve only got half an hour a day to work on a project. Then they’ll do something different.”

“And you’ve tried this, you’ve tried it out on people?”

At this point I got grumpy. “I’ve done it myself, with my books. And I’ve suggested it to people. But no, I haven’t conducted any kind of systematic experiment.” I stared out the train window, feeling inadequate.

And then I thought, why not? Why not conduct a systematic experiment? There are plenty of people I could ask who would rise to the challenge. I’m looking for the examples that push the envelope – what’s possible, not what’s guaranteed. It’s easy, like everything – issue the challenge, let people be inspired by what they themselves can achieve.

So here I am, issuing the challenge. What could you achieve in half a hour a day? Why not try it, see for yourself, and then let the whole world know about it?

Let me know about your Dream Project by email, or message me via Facebook and if you’d like information on how to get personal support, see the Dream Projects page.



 

How I write in Flow – nonfiction



If you’d like a day out and support and guidance to start Flowing your book, come along to one of my Book Shaping Days – I’d LOVE to see you there!

The process of Flowing nonfiction is slightly different to fiction – at least for me – and much easier.

Creating structure

I find creating a planned structure essential for nonfiction, whereas for fiction, I let my unconscious mind take care of that for me.

Personally, I find seeing structure easy: dividing content into chapters and then points of interest, but if this isn’t you there are some easy processes you can use to clarify the structure of what you want to say – I’ll talk about one of those further down.

Who is the audience, and what do they want?

The first thing is to know who I want to write for, and how I want their lives to change as a result. It’s an easy question to answer, and in answering it, I clarify my direction.

Creating the document

Then there is the mechanical process of creating a document for the book, with chapter headings, sub headings and point by point headings. I put all these in italics, and appropriate heading styles, and get the word processor to create a contents page automatically.

Filling in the blanks

Writing from here is very, very easy. Any time I have a gap in my schedule, and time to write a little bit, I scan down through the headings to see what I feel like writing today. It works really well if the headings are in small, bite-sized chunks, so lots of them. Then I can write that small piece, turn off the italics, and either go on to another one or come back tomorrow.

The first time I wrote a book in this way, I didn’t even realise I had finished. I came back to it to write some more, and there were no more italic headings, I had done them all!

If writing isn’t your Flow

If writing isn’t easy for you, think about what is.

  • Could you record a short audio for each heading, and get it transcribed and edited?
  • Could you get someone to interview you, creating questions for each of the headings, and speak your content in conversation to a fascinated listener? These questions can make thought-provoking headings in the text, often more engaging than a factual heading.
  • Have you already recorded the content in workshops or speaking?
  • Do you have a series of blog posts you could adapt?

Or is it the size of the task that daunts you, in which case just having it divided into small sections may be all you need to make it possible to write.

An easy way to plan

If you tend to think big picture, and three-dimensionally, with ideas connecting in many different directions, an easy way to create a structure and order to your book is to get a pile of blank cards and write a point on each, in whatever order they occur to you, until you have everything you can think of down.

Then shuffle them up, go through them and divide them into piles of related ideas. Five to twelve chapters is usually about right, so group or separate the piles until you are in that range. Think of chapter headings that will appeal to your target audience.

Divide and divide

Then take each pile and divide that up again into logical groupings. Think of more subheadings – and consider the use of questions again for these, to engage the reader’s thinking.

The last step is to put the cards in order, then type the headings into your document, and get started on Flowing your content, step-by-step.

Good luck, and if you have any questions, please ask!

Would you like some help?

If you’d like a day out and support and guidance to start Flowing your book, come along to one of my Book Shaping Days – I’d LOVE to see you there!



How I write in Flow – fiction



People often ask me about my writing process, how it is so easy for me; so it seems a good idea to describe how writing works for me.

The process has evolved over time, refining and simplifying, until it is very, very easy, very consistent, with just one or two small provisos about sitting down and getting on with it, no matter how I feel on the day.

Most often it’s exhilarating, sometimes it’s not

Perhaps that has been the big key, the big element to my consistency of Flow – ignoring how I feel in any given moment, not waiting for the moments of inspiration, just trusting they will come once I get the keyboard under my hands. Most often it’s exhilarating, exciting, energising. Sometimes it’s not. But we’ll get to that…

I work with clients mostly on non-fiction works, taking their message and getting it out to a wider audience in book form. Most of my own big projects have been novels, however, so let’s look at how those have worked for me.

Going off-piste

I started writing when I was six and I’ve always known it was what I wanted to do. Then at around 15 I went off-piste, into the wilderness of science and IT, through the wilds of small business, writing always in my spare time, but generally just distracting myself from what I knew in my heart I needed to do. It was a momentous, but at the time insignificant day, when I promised myself that whatever else I did, I would take at least five minutes a day to follow my passion.

Five minutes a day

So I did just that. Every day (or almost, I wasn’t fanatical about it, just felt a strong tug in my heart at the end of the day if I had missed) I sat down at my computer, document open, and let out whatever came through my fingers. Most days I had no idea what I would write; but I always knew something would come. Sometimes I would hear the words before I started to type; sometimes my fingers would begin to move and the words formed on the screen, coming from a deeper part of myself than conscious mind. But they always came.

I used to plan my novels, but then I’d sit down and write something different; so I gave up planning and trusted the creative process, the single creative arc that happens when you reconnect with a project every day.

No jugdement…

And here’s the thing: I had no judgement about how much I wrote on any one day, as long as I reconnected with the story. Some days it was one sentence, and that was enough to reconnect. Most days, however, I would look up and see an hour had gone by, there were 1500 more words on the word count, and the story had significantly progressed. Most days. Some days not. And that was okay.

I also had no judgement on the quality of the writing, just kept going, head down, every day, and this turned out to be the game-changer, the thing that allowed the Flow to really accelerate. More about that later, too…

Building momentum

An interesting thing happens when I write in this way, every day, reconnecting… the story becomes part of me, sitting in the background of my life with the characters continuing off-stage lives. I get drawn in, caught up, and the story builds momentum, to the point that once the final act climax is in sight, it takes me over, and in a two day rush the last 10,000 words appear at speed – that has been my experience for each of my novels so far, and that time is such a buzz, such an expressive, creative joy, it’s almost worth engaging in the process for that alone.

The single creative arc

So what about when the story is complete? Where does the book go from there? There were two things I discovered once I started to write in this consistent way: first, that even though there were days when the writing seemed to flow and it felt great, and other times it was the opposite, when I looked back, there was no difference in the quality of writing at all! This astounded me, and it was immensely freeing. It meant I could keep going, with no judgement, day to day, just trusting the process.

The other thing was that when I reconnected to the story daily, there was very little editing required. The story structure was perfect, I just needed to change a word or sentence here or there to make the writing more elegant; the story as a whole needed no change.

So editing became a simple task, I’d do what I could myself and then hand it over to a professional editor for a last run through, engage my team of selfless proof readers and be ready to publish.

Last tips

Robert McKee’s Story: Even though I’d been writing my whole life, my craft as a writer took a significant leap when I read Robert McKee’s Story, a comprehensive study of the structure of satisfying, successful stories through history. I also attended his workshop in New York, delivering the same content – an enormously valuable experience.

Painting myself into a corner: If at any time I felt the story was flagging, I would paint myself into a creative corner, have a character do or say something surprising, that I would then have to explain and incorporate into the wider story. This creative pressure produced some of my best moments as a writer.

Find my novels online

You can find my novels online at bookdepository.co.uk, amazon.com or search Jennifer Manson on any ebook site; or have a look at my author page.

And now, non-fiction – see the next post.

Would you like some help?

If you’d like some support and guidance to start, or to move a project along, I’d LOVE to see you on one of my Book Shaping Days. Book online or email me and we’ll have a chat.



Life at full speed




It seems that all my life, people have been telling me to tone it down, pull it back, lighten up, not be so intense…

Nah, not doing it.

Watch out, world, maximum expression and speed is on its way, is here. Accelerating today, terrifying tomorrow. Get used to it.

Anyone care to join me?



Life, marketing and sales made easy




Amongst the many wild theories I am known to expound at length any time someone or something sets me off, is that everything is easy, and in many cases, things are far, far, far easier than they seem.

People seem to like this idea. They take enough interest to stay with me as I fizz with enthusiasm, and tell some of my stories of when this has been the case for me.

The vision of Project Flow Days

Dining room, Cobham Hall

We did our first Project Flow Day on Saturday, a glorious day, filled with sparks and flashes of inspiration, of vision, and of seeing how those projects could be easy, too. For me, being in that beautiful room, with those beautiful people, being part of that flowering of life and purpose, was in itself a vision come true – I’d seen it, experienced it, in moments of daydream – to the point that I surprised myself when I remembered I had not actually lived such a day before.

Relative speed

I was also surprised when someone pointed out to me how quickly the day had come to fruition. “You were only talking about it three weeks ago, as an idea, and now here you are!” My head tilted to the side as I considered this. In my world three weeks is a long time, but their surprise that something could happen so quickly triggered curiosity in me. How had it happened? What made it so easy?

Well, it just was easy. We set a date, my co-host Dave Kibby called someone he knew who had a stately home library for hire, and we started inviting people.

First Project Flow Day, Library, Cobham Hall

What is it for you?

I already knew the idea captured people’s attention, because for the few weeks before, I’d been asking everyone I met: “What is it for you? What is that you know in your heart you need to be doing?” and seen their faces go pale, or light up, or their mouths drop open. I knew people knew what they wanted and needed to do, I was pretty sure the offer of space to do it would be attractive and I knew, deep down, it was a good thing to do.

And as soon as we started talking about the day online, people started taking notice, sharing it, talking about it, and then they started booking to come.

Vision unfolding

From there, what? My vision was of a day of space, for people to work on their projects away from their everyday lives. The plan of how the day would unfold came to me complete, easy. It took me five minutes to write it down. I had some thoughts of what to say at the start, about how life is easy for me, and had a chat to my friend Stuart, who knows about these things, about how to introduce Dave so that his genius and vision would flow easily from there. All easy.

Endless examples

I was going to talk here about other examples, of similar moments of ease, but I won’t, for now. There’s just one more point I’d like to make: for me it’s passion, excitement and clarity of vision that fuels my choices of what to do. It’s that light in the eyes of another that tells me “Yes, this is it, this is the next thing, this is something that will make a difference.” When I feel that, I don’t even need to think “how will I do this?” – it simply unfolds.

With thanks to Lucy Whittington for her wisdom on “doing your marketing Thing”.



Soul of a Nomad


I wonder what it is that makes me happiest when I’m wandering from place to place.

The flow of the road or the waves or the tracks brings a sometimes ecstatic joy to my heart, which rises in a soaring movement in my chest that is an expression of pure joy.

The view through my car window of a familiar and unfamiliar landscape: sunshine on brilliant green foreground hills against a backdrop of thunderous sky; light through autumn leaves in a glowing, glorious display of colour; the sparkle of sunshine off water; the shifting pattern of cloud as the road worships a rising moon; the glimpse of a long snaking train as we round a curving bend, the transient view of the engine like the promise of infinity – all these things combine into one truth: that all that matters is that the view keeps shifting, keeps changing.

It is the constant change, the truth of now and the unknowability of the future that makes me feel so at home in the journey.

This week I’ve stopped and taken rest with some wonderful old friends. This, too, is part of the shifting view. I love to connect and reconnect, to ask the questions that only seem to get asked within a limited time-frame – the bigger questions of health and happiness and life.

The potential frictions of people living together are suspended when the visit is closely finite; an impertinent question brings a moment of surprise, the head of the person questioned pulling back a fraction; then comes the moment of magic: the eyes shift focus to a point not in the room; there is a pause of sacred anticipation, and then the answer comes, fresh, true, honest, enlightening. Reality may change or not from that moment, but somehow, their hearts and mine are touched and altered by the space of honesty and truth that is outside our normal, everyday experience.

For me, the epic journey requires being at the level of land or sea – it cannot be made by air. Perhaps it requires the physical connection the the medium of travel: up and down with waves or landscape. Perhaps it is that our eyes have evolved to make sense through a horizontal view, that looking down on something makes it unreal, unrelated to ourselves and our lives.

I recall the two great Australian train journeys I have made, one with each of my children at the sacred age of twelve: the Indian Pacific with my son, Perth to Sydney and with my daughter, the Ghan, Adelaide to Darwin, with a side trip to the nowhere-ness and everywhere-ness of Uluru.

I still have the sense with me of endless desert, not empty as I expected, but always dotted with scrubby trees, points of curious interest on which to momentarily rest my eyes  before the train whisks me on to the next view; that magical pattern allows me to be in two places, two worlds, on two planes at once, with the rich added dimension of the spirit of my children accompanying me. I am here on earth, and I am floating in the world of my imagination, free and connected simultaneously.

I look at my business card now and see it gives no location: there is no physical address, no country-based phone number; it is a virtual homing beacon, with web address, email address, Skype ID. With this I can be found and not found anywhere in the world. For the person wanting to connect, it doesn’t matter where I am, or rather, there is the illusion I am always in the same place… which I suppose, given that my heart is my home, is the truth.

My heart, in connection with the hearts of others: that’s home.

The Illusion of Control


I had a great conversation with my good friend, Yvette Lamidey, The Business Locksmith, on Monday, one of those conversations where prophetic things get said; we both heard Oracle statements for our futures.

In amongst a wide range of subjects, the idea of control of life came up. It’s an idea we like to cling to, that we can directly manipulate the objects and events in our lives, that things are stable, that the possessions and people we live with now will be with us forever.

But actually, we know that isn’t true. We know that things are temporary, that even the ground beneath our feet is less stable than it seems.

So what is going on here? Why do we ignore the evidence, and keep holding on tightly to what we know? Perhaps it’s the devil we know… that the things we can’t imagine look more frightening than the things we can. Perhaps it’s that we doubt our ability to handle something new. Perhaps it’s just the energy that it takes to run a hundred different scenarios, pre-planning contingencies, exploring the “what-ifs”. For lots of different reasons, it seems simplest to assume what has happened before will happen again, the same action will produce the same result… but we know, deep down, this isn’t always true.

So what then? What’s the alternative?

How about this? What if we were to surf life, moment by moment; watch the waves with a sense of the direction of movement, and trust in the thrill of the ride? What if we were to allow the roller coaster of emotions to freely move through us, bringing vivid experience, a continuous rush of beautiful, wild life, exhilarating?

There’s a lot to let go of to do this. Loosening the grip on possessions is the first, looking at everything we have around us, everything we hold in our hands, as a momentary thing that may or may not continue into our future. It requires letting go of thinking ahead with rigid expectation, of the sense of disappointment when things don’t go as planned, of judgement, comparing this moment to what it might have been; and then, once these are let go, living life this way consists of simply looking around the moment we have with wonder.

It also involves letting go of people: letting go of the picture we have of who they are or ought to be, and letting them be who they actually are, in the moment. None of us stay the same; we change powerfully from moment to moment: sometimes serious, sometimes sad, sometimes playful; but always, deep down, we are always love. We just bring that love in different forms, moment to moment.

It’s that truth that makes it safe to trust life, in the moment, and let go of the illusion of control.

(Thanks to inimitable Thinking Coach Dave Kibby: I can no longer tell which ideas are yours, and which are mine…)

Are we ready for greatness?


Are the problems we’re wrestling with too small?

Just as our fears shape us with their negative contours, so, too, the challenges we choose to conquer define our lives.

What questions fill our minds during most of our days? Is it

What will I make for dinner tonight?
When will I find time to tidy my desk?
Am I going to be late for my next appointment?
How will I make conversation at the family dinner on Sunday?

Is it

How can I motivate myself to go to the gym?
What car do I aspire to next?
Does that person like me?
or Is my best friend’s brother having an affair, and should I tell his wife?

Or is it

How can I use my enormous, God-given talents to change the world, to create a vision that no-one has conceived of before, and then live it into reality?

If we have to eat a little more simply, or live in a more modest home, would that matter if we were significantly changing the world?

When J.K. Rowling was asked how she found time to write Harry Potter, she answered (apologies if the quote is not 100% accurate – I’m open to correction) “I didn’t clean my house for four years”.

What are you going to not do, so you can do what you have to do?

Joan of Arc was 17 when she answered the call, left her home and led troops into battle for something she believed in.

Do you feel your purpose rising in your chest, undeniable?

Is it time for you to answer your call? I think it’s time for me to answer mine …

To get you in the mood for greatness, try Katy Perry’s “Who am I living for”