the
art of being female
september,
2005
Re-imagining, re-claiming & living the wonder of being female
Greetings!
This edition of The Art of Being Female is arriving a bit later in the month than usual. I was away in Keystone Colorado last week for a fantastic design conference on Experience Design, one of my passions and creative outlets, as well as my major in school and a future business enterprise. I know many of you look forward to receiving The Art of Being Female, so I apologize for making you wait...I believe this edition is worth the wait.
Experience Design is all about creating memorable and meaningful experiences, which are opportunities to learn more about who we are as we navigate the world around us. Experiences are also a way to just enjoy yourself through immersion into a designed fantasy world.
One of my teachers described experiences as opportunities for Self-revelation. This description is at the heart of the creative cycle of Self-discovery. When you take conscious action based on what you imagine and desire, you can then watch the effects of your choices on your own life experience and with each step learn more about who you are.
Creating the life you envision is an active process that requires imagination, desire, faith in your true Self and nature, and a steady stream of conscious action. You start by inquiring into what you truly desire. One way to do so is by Dialoguing with Desire, the play-with practice for September. Another way is to try the coaching experience. As your coach, I work with you to get to the core of what you truly desire for yourself and your life.
Be alive. Experience desire and desire experience.
With gratitude,
Julie
ps - please pass this on to any Wildly Creative Women (and Men) who might enjoy it by clicking on the link at the bottom of the page.
September's Issue:
ex·pe·ri·ence (noun)
"The feeling of emotions and sensations as opposed to thinking; involvement in what is happening rather than abstract reflection on an event."
E xperience is about being in the world: physically, sensually, and emotionally. As we explored last month, everything we do is in relationship, whether to our selves and the relationship we have within, or to others and the world around us. It is in this relationship with the world around us that we can choose to fully immerse ourselves in experience. Or, we can find full immersion frightening and retreat to our abstract thoughts and reflections about what it might be to experience the world.
To fully enjoy, appreciate, and reap the benefits of your experiences in life requires you to be in the present moment, using your body as the magnificent sensory organ it is. Full sensual awareness is the key to heightened experience, which allows for greater Self-revelation and an updated knowledge of Self.
So much of the time, what we really fear about being in experience is finding out what we will "feel". We are conditioned to believe feeling bad is a bad thing and feeling good is all that we should let in. But a full life experience is filled with the entire spectrum of human emotion: joy, happiness, pain, grief, sadness, surprise, melancholy, love, heartache, awe and too many others to list. To not feel the "bad" feelings, we have to turn ourselves off to the good feelings as well...in fact, what we do is become flat.
Human experience is the gift of being alive, experience not in abstract thought but in the sensual realm of the body, heart and soul. Because being in the present moment fully immersed in experience is vital to fully accessed and expressed creativity, waking the body and developing a full sensual awareness is the third tool in our creativity courses. It is also an integral part of the creative cycle of Self-discovery.
Begin to be aware of your own experiences and how much you are fully immersed in the feelings and emotions of life vs. a distant abstract place of reflection on the experience. If you find you are thinking about it more than immersing yourself in it, play with how you show up, and how much you are willing to feel and sense. Notice how you can change your own experiences just by changing the amount you are willing to engage in them. I would love to hear your experience stories!
"To build a mansion ... whether of mortar, gold, or friendships, think of imagination as your blue print, desire as your funding, faith as your builder, and action as proof these duckies are lined up." ~ The Universe* (www.tut.com)
D esire is the catalyst and fuel for creating visions. Desires are the province of the soul. Your desires reflect your soul's longing for deep human experience and unfettered Self-expression. When you activate your desire fire, you wake up to the feelings and sensations of life...true experience. This is the realm in which you can create anything you can imagine.
Desire is the fuel for your creative action, therefore you have to really want what it is you are creating. We have all had the experience where we are trying to create something that isn't a personal desire. It's hard to find the ooomph, the get-up-and-go to make it happen in a big enough way; but when it is YOUR desire, your own creative energy force gets kicked into high gear...you become unstoppable.
Along with a rich image of your intended creation and a steady stream of desire, you must have faith in your own nature as a creative being, a natural personal creativity that is with you in every moment of every day. Just as it is your nature to imagine and desire, it is your nature to create.
The four necessities of creation, imagination, desire, faith and action align beautifully with the four aspects of wild creativity: Imagination can be set free when the Intellect is free of the Voice of Judgment, which wants things to be a certain way, Desire is found in the emotions of the heart and soul, faith is found through your own personal creativity, and intuition, and action comes through a connection with your surrounding world, by way of your senses and instincts.
Be sure to practice the play-with of the month, Dialoguing with Desire. See what desires are in you for your life, both personally and professionally.
* if you haven't signed up for these wonderful daily thoughts from the Universe, you can do so at www.tut.com.
"Tomorrow belongs to women." - Helen Fisher, The First Sex
"Learn not to be careful." - Photographer Diane Arbus to her students
"You can't stand out ... unless ... your heart is in it." - Tom Peters
If you have never tried coaching, I would love to have you experience it. Simply give me a call and we can schedule a complimentary 30 mintue session. You would be surprised how much benefit you can get from one session.
I coach clients in the following areas:
- Creative professionals
- Corporate Female Exexcutives who are looking to re-awaken their Feminine side
- Anyone in recovery from addiction
- Women with body issues and/or eating disorders
- Those in grief or profound life transitions
- Women and men re-entering the dating world
- Retirees ready to discover and create a whole new life
What clients are saying:
"There
are many voices in our heads that pose as reality. Julie helps me spot the
posers, name them and sometimes even send them packing. Through warmth, understanding
and humor she has led me to a place where I am beginning to understand that
the voice of reality is not in my head but in my heart." ~ R. G.
Our
community is growing!
Please pass this newsletter on to any women or men you think might enjoy or
benefit from receiving it by clicking on the link
at the bottom of the page. Thank you!
Welcome to Your Dating World! comes to Long Island October 7th. We are so excited about our course and can't wait to meet the many wonderful women who will be part of this maiden pleasure voyage to authentic relationship. Based on many of the same personally empowering concepts from the famed Creativity course at Stanford, this course is the first of its kind!
Partnering with Tuesday's Children, an incredible group of people who have come together to serve the families directly affected by 9/11, and Stillpoint Consulting, Creative Wellspring's course allows women to design their own dating world, and provides tools on how to be in a place of conscious choice and action as they enter into and maneuver through a new phase in their lives.
Wildly Creative Women is proud to offer Welcome to Your Dating World! to you this Fall in Berkeley.This course will empower you to enter the dating world and world of relationship from a place of conscious choice and action. Armed with a clear intention and many tools to help you stay on a path of authentic love, Your Dating World will look nothing like you have imagined or any experience you have had in the past. The course will be taught by Julie Daley, CPCC and Julie Saltonstall, CPCC, both certified coaches and trained to teach Creativity in Business.
Course Calendar
October:
• Welcome to Your Dating World - 6 weeks
(evenings, beginning mid-October in Berkeley)contact Julie for details and to register
Course Listing
All courses, both corporate and open-enrollment, are based on Creativity in Business, a course taught at Stanford Graduate School of Business for 25 years. Please contact Julie, if you are interested in having me design and teach a course for your company. Courses for both women and men are offered through Wildly Creative Women's parent company, Creative Wellspring.
Corporate Offerings:
• Introduction to Wildly Creative Women - 1 day
• Wildly Creative Women in Business - 10 weeks
• Creativity in Business - 10 weeks
Open Enrollment:
•Wildly Creative Women mini-workshop- 2 hours
•Introduction to Wildly Creative Women - 1 day
• Wildly Creative Women in Business- 10 weeks
• Welcome to Your Dating World - 6 weeks
Each month a new play-with is offered as an addition to your practice of the art of being female.
Playing-with your experience is the basis of the "creative cycle of self-discovery" used in Wildly Creative Women's coaching and courses.
Play-with for September: Dialoguing with Desire
This practice play-with is about developing your awareness with the physical world around you. Be curious as you do this play-with. Notice how your experience changes as you heighten your senses.
Dialoguing With Desire
Sometimes it's hard to hear your own voice of desire. For many of us, asking what we desire goes against so much of how we learned to be in the world. Reflecting on what you desire may feel selfish and self-centered, but this just isn't true. It is only by getting very clear about your deepest desires and passions that you can find what gives your life meaning. Here are a few practice tips for dialoguing with desire:
1. Have a dialogue with your voice of desire.
Take your journal or notebook and sit in a comfortable chair across from another chair or sofa. Ask your Voice of Desire (VOD) to sit down across from you and join you in a dialogue. Ask your VOD to speak to you. Listen to what it has to say and write down what you hear. Think of what kind of relationship you have with your VOD. Do you trust it? Do you give it room to speak? Do you feel uncomfortable or guilty in indulging it? Now ask your VOD questions and write down its responses. Just ask whatever seems to come.
Notice if your Voice of Judgment (VOJ) tries to interrupt this dialogue with all sorts of judging statements. Simply hear it, acknowledge it and continue. If your VOJ continues, go to a new journal page and write down the things it is saying to you. These are the old beliefs that get in the way of you hearing what it is you really want for your life, relationships and work.
Finish up by journaling any insights you might have gained from the exercise.
2. Find a good friend, someone you feel very comfortable with, and take 30 mintues to do the following exercise.
Pick one person to ask and one to answer. For 10 minutes without stopping, ask your partner, "What do you desire?" Allow your partner to answer and write down the response. Ask again, "What do you desire?" Write down the response. Continue for 10 minutes without any extra conversation, explanation, responding, etc. Simply ask the question, listen to your partner's response and write it down. If your partner has difficulty thinking of things, just stick with them and continue to wait for a response without speaking.
Now, switch roles. Allow your partner to ask you and allow yourself to begin to let the Voice of Desire be heard. Your partner will record your responses. Continue for the full 10 minutes.
When you are done, take some time to talk about what you noticed about your VOD and your partner's VOD.
3. Keep a pack of 3x5 cards with you at all times and write down everything your Voice of Desire says to you. If you have already done exercises #1 or #2, you might find you are hearing your VOD more clearly. Do this for one full week. Notice any patterns that emerge. Notice what allows your VOD to be heard more clearly or less clearly.
Now that you know more of what you desire, how can you bring these things into your life? Allow yourself to have what you desire. Plan ways to bring these desires into your life. Share your desires with the people in your life, especially those who are directly involved. Notice how it feels to ask for and receive what you really desire.
I would love to hear from you about how your practice went. Remember, the point is to play-with your experience.
About
Julie:
Julie
Daley holds a design degree from Stanford University.
A Certified Professional Coach, Julie teaches Creativity in Business, the
famous Stanford Business course in many varieties.
"Julie is remarkable in her ability to uncover the inner layers
of creative forces."
~Nancy Mongan
Check
us out at:wildlycreativewomen.com
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