rainbowsoverruins

Living the Fairy Tale

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This has been an incredible week. I spent a few days sending messages to everyone I knew to let them know that Noah St. John and I would be appearing on Hallmark Channel’s Home and Family Show. Noah was doing the same thing – letting his list know that we would be on the air. We appeared together and Noah did a fabulous presentation. Then he made the most of the appearance with a follow up blast. Talk about an opportunity to learn so much just by observing Noah and his team in action!

Toward the end of the week, I received a series of congratulations. The one that surprised me the most was when someone told me someone they hadn’t heard the title of my book and did not have any idea of what it was about. (I don’t know why it surprised me. Advertisers tell us that your message has to be seen multiple times before people notice it.)

So I posted the following message in response:

“If it wasn’t a true story, Rainbows Over Ruins would be a fairy tale. I can’t tell you all about it in a post like this, but I can tell you that it happened to me and is the subject of my book Rainbows Over Ruins. That’s why I appeared on The Hallmark Channel’s Home and Family with author Noah St. John.

After the show we talked a little bit more…
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=679559178790919&set=vb.344485392298301&type=2&theater

I didn’t get to say very much there because posts have space limitations. What I wanted to share was my slightly edited version of what Noah sent out to his list:

Imagine you rebuild after a landslide. Imagine it inspires you to help others turn crises into opportunities.

Imagine that you’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on training programs and business opportunities to move in that direction. But all it has done is dig you deeper in debt. Imagine you are completely dependent on your spouse for everything, including basic necessities like groceries, clothes, and utilities.

Now imagine you hear an author speak on an interview and what this author says has such a profound effect on you that you decide to try what he’s suggesting.

You start to use his technique and it starts to work and things start to get better

And your life starts to turn around and you get offered your dream job

And publish your first book and start bringing in a six-figure income.

Sound like a fairy tale?

It happened to me and is the subject of my book Rainbows Over Ruins.

Yep, that’s why I appeared on The Hallmark Channel’s Emmy-nominated talk show Home and Family with author Noah St. John.

As one of the show producers, we discussed how I used his method to go from $60,000 in debt to a six-figure income…

If it wasn’t a true story, Rainbows Over Ruins would be a fairy tale.
After the show we talked a little bit more…
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=679559178790919&set=vb.344485392298301&type=2&theater

(What I also wanted was someone to write copy like this to help me grab attention the way Noah did.)

So in case you haven’t heard, in Rainbows Over Ruins, I share the creative thought process that has made such a difference for me. I want other people to be able to use it as well. Noah St. John wrote The Book of Afformations and created The Power Habits System, explaining the techniques he discovered that became the “secret sauce” that moved me forward. I utilize his techniques in my book and in my creative work with others.

I’ve learned a valuable lesson this week. People are so busy that it’s important to keep telling them the name of my book, what it’s about and where they can find it. The challenge is to make sure they gain something from the conversation when telling them.

To Your Success,

Susan

The Joy of a 3 Day Weekend

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I really needed this fabulous weekend. The past couple weeks have been stressful as we strive to create great shows, while facing the challenge to bring the season in “on time and on budget.” So, it has felt great to kick back, curled up to finish a novel I’ve been slowly reading. I had planned to do things around the house and to promote Rainbows Over Ruins.

If you haven’t read my book yet, the story focuses on my growing awareness that there is a creative thought process that makes it possible to identify what you truly desire, choose actions that support it and get the results you want. Since my entire career has centered on producing, facilitating, and supporting the unfettered creative spirit, coaching this process in order to achieve our creative potential is a natural outgrowth. The book has been a first step in that direction.

Anyway, a funny thing happened on the way to making progress on my To-Do list. One of those items was to focus on the needs and desires of my target audience. Because the book is about our recovery after a landslide destroyed our home, I was looking for people who have to change for any number of reasons or survive difficult situations as I have done. They will have to prepare to transition to new opportunities, develop their outer game by setting goals and taking positive actions as they rethink, redefine and reignite their purpose. If they are developing businesses (and a significant number are), they will engage in strategic planning, team building, and deal with conflict resolution. It will be easier if they ask for help.

As I meandered through the Internet doing a Google search, the keyword I liked most was the word “creativity.” When you are in recovery mode, you benefit from the ability to access your creative potential. This involves the inner game, connected to limitless possibilities. As new creative techniques are learned and applied to common life and workplace challenges, an entirely different energy emerges. It yields a positive outlook and forward looking capacity, even in the face of adversity. It energizes the creative spirit and makes all things possible. If you learn how to flip your thinking, pop paradigms, ask better questions and use power habits, you find your creative self and reap the full benefit of the creative process for personal development and business projects.

With thoughts about creativity tumbling around my mind, I felt a call to look over the draft of my business plan. If you’ve read the book, you know that I have a dream to create a center where people can learn these skills, as well as writing an additional book about the creative workplace. Turning again to the draft proposal, I was reminded of one of my Dad’s stories. It was a bit of a horror story, really, about the tragic ends to doctoral students who could not answer one key question when they went before the panel for their doctoral review: What is the benefit of this work for individuals and businesses? What is the value? In the case of the business plan, the questions would be: Why do we need a Center? Why do we need to improve our creativity?

So my last day off is being spent answering those questions. It has been very helpful to turn to the work of Bruce Nussbaum, author of Creative Intelligence. (I had picked up a copy of his book several months ago in one of those serendipitous moments – a Godwink – when an entire table at Barnes and Noble was dedicated to books on creativity.)

It feels good to hear my own words validated on his pages. We are all creative, even when we are just doing our jobs, even if we don’t think of ourselves that way. But Nussbaum also makes two points that address the question if this work has value to others. Of course, he believes it does.

From a needs perspective, everyone feels the effects of a rapidly changing world. We live in what the military calls VUCA, a time that is “volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.” Nussbaum observes his students coping with this by an awareness that they need to create their own opportunities “in order to survive, and they [want] to learn how.” (Creative Intelligence, p. 16). Of course, it isn’t just the students who face this. All of us do. “We need to prepare ourselves for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t been invented, to solve problems that we haven’t recognized” (CI, p. 33).

This affects anyone in transition or any form of life crisis. Just as the rug is pulled out from under them, they face the need to redefine and recreate themselves in a new world they barely understand. They need a way to raise their awareness that there are creative skills they can learn so that they have the means to face these issues in a proactive way.

But the joy of this work – and I’m all about joy and well-being – does not center on the needs aspect. Bruce Nussbaum also mentions Sonia Manchanda, of IDIOM (India), who asks: “Why not focus on aspirations – dreams that we may not believe are even possible?” (CI, p. 29)

Remember, within each crisis is opportunity. Each of us has the chance to learn to focus our ideas into creations that have value and bring us joy, a sense of accomplishment, and the chance to help others. Great potential comes from strong aspirations coupled with the willingness to flip one’s counterproductive thoughts, develop power habits and direct them toward successful results.

I may not have a center yet, however, thanks to a strange meandering 3 day weekend, I am centered on its value. May you find similar times to discover your aspirations and begin to see them unfold.

To Your Success,

Susan

Why do you want to develop power habits?

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You are what you think. I know, you are more accustomed to the saying, you are what you eat. But really, even what you eat is a result of what you think. All the silly, seemingly mindless things we do are the result of what we think before we do them. They are only mindless when we have done them so long that they have become automatic habits.

One of the most important aspects of the creative thought process involves catching ourselves in a detrimental habit and changing it through the creation of more positive ones. Noah St. John calls them Power Habits. Those of you who have read my book Rainbows Over Ruins with its foreword by Noah St John know that Noah played a key role in helping me get unstuck when I was going through a difficult time.

It wasn’t so much that negative thought habits were undermining my personal and professional aspirations. Rather, I was not developing the power of my thoughts in a more positive direction. At first, Noah taught me about Afformations – the positive why questions that make a powerful shift possible. They enabled me to make a rapid turnaround in my day to day experiences. As I saw the results unfolding, I wanted to learn more about this technique, as well as Noah’s Power Habits system.

I found both techniques to be easy to understand, simple to learn and practice, and extremely beneficial. They are useful whenever you encounter a contrast or conflict in your activities or relationships with others. In practice, they provide a means to examine what’s creating the conflict and find creative solutions to it.

Here’s an example. In my work as a line producer, it’s very easy to become buried in financial details. At certain points, like someone who cannot see the forest for the trees, all we can see is financial limitation and we start saying “no” to every request. We husband our resources to make them stretch over the required period. We may not feel happy about it, but we do feel justified. In some way, we feel we are serving the best financial interests of the organization. What we may not realize is that we are not only not very popular when we do that, but we are also chaining the spirit of everyone trying to create on the project. When you are developing and producing creative content, that’s a pretty big problem.

Thankfully, once you are aware that a negative mindset can be “flipped” in a more positive direction through the use of afformations, you may choose to turn this situation around to keep the creative spirit on your project unfettered. In my case, I realized that I would be better served if I focused on developing thought habits with limitless possibilities. Everyone involved would have more fun and be able to work from their most creative perspective.

What did I start doing? Afforming. “Why do I search for the most creative solutions for the show?” “Why do I become aware of creative requirements as early as possible so I have enough time to search for them?” “Why do I notice all the possibilities around me?”

The next time a situation presents itself that triggers my old habits, instead of responding with a constricting answer, I think about my new afformations and begin to look for a solution that will enable us to be both creative and financially responsible at the same time. The reward for this response is different. We feel more expansive, sharing our part in the creative process together.

This is not a one-time fix. Every time this situation (or one like it) comes up, I have to remember to choose the more positive, supportive response. I have to remember to ask those questions or the old habits will surface by default. However, I am finding that each time I catch myself in older patterns and apply the new techniques, it gets easier. The newer perspective comes more rapidly and I can utilize it with the desired results more readily.

If you are experiencing this type of automatic reaction, you may want to learn more about afformations and the Power Habits system. I wholeheartedly recommend it. You can find out more about my book Rainbows Over Ruins, and the creative thought process at my website www. susansherayko.com – and there is an affiliate link to Noah’s work as well.

To Your Success,

Susan

Waiting to Inhale

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Easter weekend and I am enjoying a quiet weekend at home. It is as if I am waiting to inhale. Within the past couple weeks, I moved from what is called “production” to “distribution” status on my book, Rainbows Over Ruins. As I pressed the start button for the fax machine to send my final approval form to the publisher, my heart skipped a beat.

It has taken time to write and edit. Now, the dream will be a reality. My mind races with questions. Who will I tell about the book? How will I tell them about it? Why will it be of value to others? Thankfully, Balboa Press has a solid marketing staff who are there to help me through the process.

I also just returned from one of Noah St. John’s training sessions in Ohio. It was so much fun to meet with other coaches who are using power habits and afformations with clients. We each came home with an extra added feature – a diagnostic test we can use to evaluate what may be holding our clients back from achieving their ambitions.

Not only that, but on the flight home, I picked up a copy of April’s Spirit Magazine. I rarely read inflight magazines, but the cover story was so compelling. “Van Phillips asked three questions that changed the world. You can ask them too.”

What an incredible coincidence! I was returning from the Ohio training with the man who had introduced me to the power of Afformations, positive questions that can provide breakthrough transformations. They certainly have for me and I now incorporate them into my coaching and writing.

Now, SQuire Rushnell would not call this a coincidence at all. He would call it a God Wink, an unopened gift that has been placed right in front of us, tying the bow so to speak on a package, emphasizing an aspect of our experience. Even knowing about God Winks is a God Wink for Rushnell has appeared on our show a few times, but I have never met him.

Anyway, the article’s author, Warren Berger, is not just covering a news story on Van Phillips’ incredible accomplishments creating the new generation of prosthetic limbs. Nor is he writing about how to make “conversation interesting” as he put it. Berger is talking about “beautiful questions” that have the potential to cause change. After learning about Van Phillips, Berger asked himself “what if we kept asking why and what if?” Berger’s life direction changed. He now participates with the Right Question Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts to promote more curiosity in school and businesses.

Like Noah St. John, Berger talks about how the answer is in the question. I imagine he felt the same enthusiasm I felt when I first heard about Afformations. For me, it was seeing a connection between what Noah wrote and the Biblical statement: “Ask and it is given.” My mind whirled. What if questions are the answer? What if how we ask is important? What if the Why game was the most important game we could ever play with our children, even if it exhausted us?

Van Phillips is still asking questions. He wants to know why it is possible to provide these state-of-the-art prosthetics to land mine victims in war zones. Berger is suggesting that we ask beautiful questions of ourselves and participate through rightquestion.org and amorebeautifulquestion.com. He’s also written a book, “A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas.” St. John is educating others on the power of positive Why questions at noahstjohn.com. His new book, “The Power of Afformations” even includes a few words of my story in it.

To learn more about how I am incorporating these questions into guiding others on the creative process most effectively, keep watching this blog for news about when Rainbows Over Ruins is available and where you can obtain it.

As new activities ready to kick into gear, that momentary pause between breaths shifts and my mind begins to whirl around a new set of beautiful questions. Have a lovely holiday weekend and ask yourself some beautiful questions.

To Your Success,

Susan

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