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?

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Who we are, what we do, what we say shapes the world around us. Every pound or dollar we spend feeds someone and starves someone else, through our choices of where to spend, and what to buy. Are we supporting someone who loves their work and their place in the world, or encouraging someone to stay where they are when they would be better to move to something else?

The modern world is about infinite choice and immediate feedback. The cross-section of “likes” on a Facebook post tells us vast amounts about the landscape of our world and our place in it; what we “like” is a feedback loop that shapes what we see. The way we move through a crowded street impacts the way the people we brush against spend the rest of their day; fully, deeply connecting with our family and friends shapes the quality of their lives, and ours.

My working world has been, till now, a world of books; but with the exploration of the last week, a new vista is opening. My work is all about message – my own and my clients’ – and getting that message out into the world. That isn’t changing. The medium, however, is more fluid than it was.

The timescales involved for getting a book written and out into the world, read and integrated and responded to make books a specialised endeavour. They make sense as part of a total package, a body of work with depth and breadth; for immediate impact, however, our choices are wide open: YouTube, blog, social media, conversation, live speaking, workshops, radio interviews, television. If your message is important, then let’s get it out as fast and as clear (and often, as brief) as we can.

I started doing my video writing blog because my publicist suggested blogging more regularly. It seemed to me that blogging daily would mean I did less of my “serious” writing, so I chose video instead. The first few were awful. Then I got a little better. Now, when I look into my handheld iPhone, wherever I happen to be, I sink into a place of connection, look into the lens and let go. I talk about what’s happening, in my work and my life. Life. For me, it’s about taking a snapshot and revealing life, truth, in a soundbite, short but real.

This isn’t stuff that would make it into a novel or a self-help book – not without being refined beyond recognition. It’s  immediate, about struggling mid-process, or responding to something in the moment. And in the background, the message of my approach to life comes through – the essence of who I am. Regardless of what I say, that truth comes through.

We might be less guarded, less thoughtful, when we dash off a Facebook comment or a tweet than we would be writing a book. In fact that doesn’t matter. What matters is, do we care, are we loving, do our actions match our words?

In this immediate life, our thoughts are read by those around us; who we are is what shapes our world.

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Wrapped in the warmth of a beautiful welcome at The Oxfordshire Project yesterday, I met an inspiring group of people who, each in their own way, are changing the world. Ben Molyneux, founder of the project; Katie Read of Read Publicity, taking books and their authors out into the world; Susanne Austin and Ben Jackson in the field of eco construction; Placi Espejo, working to incubate new businesses; Paul Mabbutt, Managing Director of ethical business leader Jennings; Shaun Fagan at Black Dog New Media and many more.

Today, though, I’d like to talk about an unexpected stand-out of the morning, venue restaurant owner Max Mason. The event was held at The Big Bang Restaurant in Oxford’s Castle Quarter, and listening to Max talk about the events he is planning over the next months, bringing together all the restaurants in the quarter, was like watching an unexpected firework display. The list of events relating to Movember; his passion for the Castle Quarter Christmas – beautiful! Poetry in schedule form!

Talking to Max later in the day, he described his vision for the future of this area of Oxford – not just his own corner, but effervescing out into the surroundings and wider world.

It reminded me that whatever we are doing, wherever our heart and vision and purpose lead us, we can use that place as our platform from which to inspire, to energise and revitalise, to make the world and its people sing.

If you want to see passion in action, I recommend a meal at The Big Bang Restaurant in Oxford. Tell Max I sent you.

And if you’re in business in Oxfordshire or nearby, get in touch with Ben Molyneux, and catch his particular vision for changing (to begin with) this part of the world.

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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.

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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.

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Let’s consider for a moment the idea that creation and destruction, hate and love are not opposites, they are the same. Contrasting sides to the same coin, one implicitly holding the fact of the other.

It gives us a beautiful way forward through the things we are resisting, if we see that the things we want to change hold the absolute truth of the things we want to create.

I love being with people who are angry, who are taking huge grief and spinning it into wild destruction, either outwardly or within their own lives, because I see so clearly the bedrock of love and connection that is witnessed through the destruction.

They could not be as they are without the seeds of huge passion, huge love, huge hope, even. Somewhere in their anguished attempts to hurt and revenge is a vision of something entirely different, entirely opposite. They see the possibility of wild, enormous love, and ache at its apparent absence in their lives and in the world.

These are the people we can learn from.

It is numbness that saddens me, the world of small lives, where imagination is stifled in favour of conformity, where people are taught to toe the line, as if a row of identical workers could create the world we see as possible. They can’t. At best, they can keep us on our current trajectory, wherever that may lead.

My vision is to listen to the impassioned, to admire them, love them, hear what they have to say. We may need to wait through some ranting, some fearful scenarios, some recounting of woeful wrongs; and these we can learn from, also, if we’re truly listening for the nuggets of gold that pepper the diatribe.

My experience is that once people who haven’t felt heard feel heard; once those who haven’t felt respected feel respected, once they experience someone who can stay with them, accept them, love them, something alters – their ideas shift and come to the forefront; their anger becomes possibility and love, and something totally new opens up in front of them, something that will benefit us all.

Let’s play with the idea that passion is good, always, that it just needs channeling to become something wonderful, beautiful and new.

It may be that the coin needs flipping, but really, how hard is it to flip a coin?

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Excerpt from my forthcoming book: Making Projects Easy – Deconstructing the Art of Effortless Creation

Chapter 19 In case anyone’s interested, here is my simple strategy for creating world peace…

You know that little voice inside you that tells you what is right for you to do and what isn’t – and I don’t mean “right” in a moral sense, something you could argue about or discuss, I mean it in the sense that it feels right, you just know it.

You know that voice?

It’s my theory that that voice always leads us perfectly; and more than that, it fits us in with everyone around us, so that when others are following their voice, and we are following ours, the world fits together like a jigsaw puzzle and everything falls into place.

We don’t need to think about what other people are doing – we only need to pay attention to ourselves, and what we are doing.

Even less than that, we don’t need to do anything right away at all. We just need to listen to that voice, and if the thing we are about to do does not feel right, we just don’t do it. Do nothing.

Within minutes, another action, another option will appear. Check that as well – if your internal voice and feeling tells you it’s right, do it; if not, don’t, and wait for the next option to appear.

If we look at all the things around us that seem to cause problems: pulling triggers, making guns, mindless consumption of resources, if we just stopped taking those actions, almost all of our current “problems” would disappear.

As for what happens next, once we start taking the right actions, the gut actions, the things we know in our hearts are what we are supposed to do… Imagine that. Imagine what would happen then.

To find out how you can have me support you in your projects, take a look at Project Flow!

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The following is an article shortly to appear in Business Matters magazine – thank you, Paul, for giving me this opportunity.

Your Message, in Your Voice, Delivered to the World

Getting your book written can be fast and easy, and can have a massive positive impact on your business

Corporate social responsibility, a unique way of working, innovative ideas… What is it your ideal client needs to know about your business to become brand loyal, to love working with you, and to know they want to buy from you again and again and again?

Books are a fantastic way to let your customers know all about you. In this world of competing attention, we’re often led to believe a sound bite is all we will get to deliver. If we can’t sum up our value in twenty words or less, we haven’t a hope of being heard.

What if that weren’t true? What if you could get 40-50,000 of your words into the hands of your ideal client, hold their attention for four or five or six hours of their time, and leave them with a full, positive picture of who you are?

Let your customers know you want to make a difference

If things have been operating in the normal way of the world for your business, chances are that your customers think you are motivated primarily by money. You and I know that’s not true, that your motivation goes much deeper than that.

Money is important – very important – but it’s not the most important thing. And chances are that once your customers know what is the most important thing to you, a new bond will be formed, a new trust, a new level of doing business.

You may be asking yourself: Could I really write a book?

Many entrepreneurs are not enormously confident about writing. The creative brain is not always compatible with the confines of spelling and grammar, and that’s completely fine. There are plenty of people who can take care of that – the important thing is that you get your message out, into the world where people can hear it.

Simple book process

Most of my clients are more fluent in conversation, or in public speaking, than in writing. The process of producing their books is easy, outlined here so you can follow it yourself.

Step 1. decide who is your audience, and what difference you want to create in their lives

Step 2. decide what you want to say, in what order, and draw up a detailed plan of headings – have an interested friend or colleague help with this

Step 3. do a series of recorded interviews, where your helper asks you questions about each of the headings; or deliver the material in workshops or speaking events, once again recorded; include lots of stories to make the points come alive

Step 4. have the recordings transcribed

Step 5. have an editor transform the transcripts into correct written grammar, leaving your voice, your choice of words, your way of expressing yourself intact

Step 6. review the text and make any necessary adjustments

Step 7. have the text laid out into book form

Step 8. publish: cover design, print and digital publication

When I work with clients it takes 3-4 days of their time to plan, record and consult through the process. In around six weeks their book is completed, ready to take their full message out into the world.

7 Ways you can use your book to get your message out

1. Give copies of your book to clients and potential clients
2. Have copies on display in your waiting area, for people to read as they wait
3. Get your PR people to generate television and radio interviews to talk about your book
4. Have written and audio excerpts on your website
5. Put excerpts in your newsletter
6. Build a following on Facebook using quotes from the book, and discussion around it; link to excerpts on Twitter
7. Build a marketing campaign around the book

Jennifer Manson is a writer who works with speakers and other experts to get their message into book form easily and quickly. www.theflowwriter.com and www.facebook.com/theflowwriter

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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!

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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.

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