One study found that people who were directed to doodle while carrying out a boring listening task remembered 29 percent more information than people who did not doodle, likely because the latter group had let their attention slip away entirely.*
Annie Murphy Paul

The point isn’t to listen to boring stuff –
Though everything becomes more accessible
with doodling –
The point is, doodling allows us to be
more present and open.

*Annie Murphy Paul’s The Extended Mind.

Julia Cameron’s morning pages help unlock something inside. Not the use or a magical mystical power, but simply the truth of your chosen identity. If you do something creative each day, you’re now a creative person. Not a blocked person, a striving person, not an untalented person. A creative person.*
Seth Godin

It may be the help provided to
the person on the helpline, or
the solution to the
rewiring conundrum, or
the support imagined
for a co-worker, or
the form of words that will most
engage the listener, or
the elegant solution to the
insurmountable problem, or …
Or …
However you are creative –
And you are –
Journaling will likely
make it bigger and
take it further.

*Seth Godin’s The Practice.

When you get past making labels for things, it is possible to combine and transform elements in to new things. Look at things until their import, identity, name, use, and description have dissolved.*
Corita Kent

Yes, we can copy the
externalities of something,
And that may be useful for
a moment,
Or,
We can copy
the parts, elements, layers,
Depths and mysteries of what makes this
this,
And that is quite another thing,
Full of iteration and innovation.

*Corita Kent and Jan Steward’s Learning By Heart.

Open sails
And stretch my spine
The night’s gone
The day’s mine*
Lemn Sissay

*Lemn Sissay’s let the light pour in.

Wonder, the mental state of openness, questioning, curiosity, and embracing mystery, arises out of experiences of awe … .*
Dacher Keltner

It’s about discovering with all that we are intended to be, with awe and wonder.**
Sunil Raheja

Here are three movements
from Mr Keltner for continuing empowerment
awe in us.

Represent –
Mark the moment:
Perhaps write it down or mark the spot.

Symbolise –
Share it with others:
Incorporated into your work or as a short story.

Ritualise –
Bring this awe into your practice,
Allow it to shape you and be shaped by you.

*Dacher Keltner’s Awe;
**Sunil Raheja’s Dancing With Wisdom.

My name is Why
It’s all I’ve got
This is my life
In one shot*
Lemn Sissay

All you are is what you have and what you give.**
“Shevek”

Awesome doesn’t have to be big,
As well as causing us to
experience our ego as smaller
and our soul as larger,
Awe is awe when it
leads us to
curiosity and
wonder and
questioning.

*Lemn Sissay’s let the light pour in;
**A character from Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, from Maria Popova’s The Marginalian: Ursula K. Le Guin on Suffering and Getting To the Other Side of Pain.

I saw there was no self; that selfishness was all folly, and the result of circumstance; that it was only because I thought self real that I suffered; that I had only to live in the idea of the all; and all was mine.*
Margaret Fuller

Being put in our place by something bigger than ourselves is not a humiliation; it should be accepted as a relief from our insanely hopeful ambitions for our lives.**
Alain de Botton

The ego serves a purpose, and
then it is a hindrance;
We move from dependence to
independence, but are then
prevented
from moving to interdependence where
“all is mine”:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.^

It isn’t a once and for all experience –
We humans know how to lose a good thing – but
the power to find it again each day is
within each of us.

*Dacher Keltner’s Awe;
**Alain de Botton’s Religion For Atheists;
^Walt Whitman, from Dacher Keltner’s Awe.

Psychologists recommend keeping two things in mind as we try [affect labelling] out. The first is to be as prolific as possible … . The second is to be as granular: that is, to choose words that are precise and specific as possible when describing what we feel.*
Annie Murphy Paul

I’ve come to believe in the power of writing down your vision. I don’t believe writing down a vision creates any sort of magic in the universe, but I do believe it sets a general compass for your subconscious.**
Donald Miller

Journaling is a great way for
keeping on course,
For being affective rather than
waiting to be effected,
Making progress even in still waters,
Capturing the Musts that come from within
before playfully practising them:
At some point
the big reasons run out and then
all you’re left with are your
quiet decisions. …
Big reasons run out.
The power of your decisions
does not.^

*Annie Murphy Paul’s The Extended Mind;
**Donald Miller’s Hero On a Mission;
^Gabe Anderson’s blog: Freddie and You.

The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left an adequate account of it. The streets of London have their map; but our passions are uncharted.*
Virginia Wolff

One of the most important parts of growing up is to see ourselves as we really are instead of assuming we are what our parents and teachers told us we were.
Corita Kent

When people share with me the things
they love to imagine and do,
I have experienced at times a
sense of awe;
It reminds me to mention how you
may find the awesome inside of you
as well as outside.

We will likely wonder where that has
come from, but
when the realisation causes us
to grow in the
goodness of our being and ways,
We can be sure that we have encountered
the awesome:
Awe is the feeling
we have when we encounter the
monumental or immeasurable.
We experience a sudden
shrinking of the self,
yet a rapid expansion of
the soul.^

As Richard Rohr reminded us
a few days ago,
The soul is bigger than us,
Being our connection to every one
and every thing, as
David Whyte alerts us:
If we had very little in
the way of attention for the world,
then we actually had little in the way of
real existence.^^

Let us not be surprised, then, that
in finding the awesome within, we are
propelled outwards into an
astonishing day:
When we shift our mindset and
open ourselves to the awe of
daily life, we may
find opportunities to be
wowed
are all around us.*^

*Dacher Keltner’s Awe;
**Corita Kent and Jan Steward’s Learning By Heart;
^Nick Caves’s The Red Hand Files #157;
^^David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea;
*^Jonah Paquette’s The Wise Brain Bulletin: Mind Bending Awe.

Clichés grow in the barren mind of the lazy writer. … Create a story that only you could write.*
Robert McKee

Awe is a feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.**
Dacher Keltner

Presence
Vastness
Transcendence

This world is exactly the place you need to
leave the cliché behind and
begin the story
you are capable of.

If I can help with some
dream whispering,
Let me know.

*Robert McKee‘s newsletter: Why Story Needs Your Unique Vision;
**Dacher Keltner’s Awe.