A child lives in a world of stories and metaphors long before he or she learns literality. So the language of our heart and the language of our soul is metaphorical not literal.*
Robert Dilts

Rather than facing our fears, and rather than facing the truth, we avoid them.
Rather than creating the life we want, we build the life that allows our problems to exist unresolved.
Rather than becoming the person we want to become, we stay the person we are.
Rather than adapting our personality to match our goals, we adapt our goals to match our current and limited personality.**
Ben Hardy

We misunderstand imagination if we believe it helps us turn from reality.
Reality is only waiting for imagination to come and play
some new reality into being.

*From Stephen Gilligan and Robert Dilts’ The Hero’s Journey;
**From Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent.

What we call the personality is often a jumble of genuine traits and adopted coping styles that do not reflect our true self at all but the loss of it.*
Gabor Mati

In what condition is my relationship to the instinctual Self? When was the last time I ran free? How do I make life come alive again?**
Clarissa Pinkola Estés

You and I
are more than we appear to be.

You and I
are covered over,
Layers of rush and busy,
Of outwith and objet.

You and I
are being called to the wild places
of solitude and curiosity,
Of within and gift.

*Gabor Mati, from Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
**From Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run With the Wolves.

Take an ordinary thing and elevate it.*

If you’re unwilling to interact with uncertainty, then you’ve greatly limited who you are and what you’ve become. You’ve limited your ability to make choices, because all choices involve uncertainty and risk.**
Ben Hardy

There’ll come a time when it’s necessary to move on,
When the risk of remaining within your familiar
is greater than that of moving into the unknown.

I am speaking to myself first of all.

*From gapingvoid’s blog: How to be extraordinary;
**From Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent.

“Good story” means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task.*
Robert McKee

Do we also recognise that we already have within us everything we need for our own becoming?**

The unique life does not come to us
whether we are rich or poor.
Each must explore towards its discovery:

writers of unique characters underpin their creativity with research^.

Journeying both outwards and inwards,
Paying attention, asking questions,
Gathering riches, trading wonders,
imagining, curating,
Offering a gift to someone, somewhere.

Our deep joy meeting someone’s great need.

*From Robert McKee‘s newsletter: Why a Love of Good Stories Is Not Enough;
**From Mary Ruth Broz and Barbara Flynn’s Midwives of an Unnamed Future;
^From Robert McKee‘s newsletter: The Secret of One of a Kind Characters.

Strategic ignorance is not being close-minded. … Selective ignorance is not avoidance of learning. … It’s knowing what to avoid.*
Ben Hardy

Generally my feeling is towards less: less shopping, less eating, less drinking, less wasting, less playing by the rules and recipes. All of that I want in favour of more thinking on the feet, more improvising, more surprises, more laughs.**
Brian Eno

Choose your way well,
Be unmovable,
Pulled neither to the left or to the right.

There will be many things that are less
but are dressed as more,
Promising but disappointing.

Being a writer is a act of self-authorisation.
No matter who you are.
Only you can authorise yourself.
You do that by writing well, by constant discovery.^

More vitally,
This is true for being human.
We choose our way
And we live well:
Imaginatively, creatively.

Sometimes we lose our way
And we live badly.
Then it is time to be kind and to forgive.
To begin again,
Even to be born again,
And, having discovered more,
Carry kindness and forgiveness with us.

*From Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
**From Brian Eno’s A Year With Swollen Appendices;
^From Verlyn Klinkeborg’s Several short sentences about writing.

There are many difficult riches trapped in the shadow side. Jung said the shadow held 90 per cent gold.*
John O’Donohue

With vision above and reality at the base, creativity resides between the two.**
Kelvy Bird

I found myself exploring two themes this morning.

One: the need to do the creative bit in the middle, between reality and imagination.

Two: the need to get on with people by engaging the “gratitude tense“:

Don’t fight with people, study them.^

I wondered whether these themes might come together in some way?

Perhaps we imagine a different reality but we have to somehow give it form.

Unexpected others may be the best way into this creativity.

May we listen gratefully for as long as we are able.

*From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
**From Kelly Bird’s Generative Scribing;
^A slightly altered phrase from Austin Kleon’s advice for Thanksgiving “Don’t fight with your family., study them: A gratitude zine.

What if you had a whole day for whatever is your passion and joy?

Mine?

Firstly reading, journaling, writing.

Later, doodling, drawing.

Then dessert, conversation.

Yours?

Lisa Germany wanted to put on a photography exhibition. The result was “In My Backyard.”

The work of ten local photographers of Nuuk, Greenland, the only limitation was an extension of the backyard to 300 metres from their homes, vertically as well as horizontally.*

What if you were to engage in something similar?

What would you want me to see from your “backyard.”

Never one to miss a metaphor when it offers itself: what about the things from your life that you have come to appreciate over the years, though perhaps hadn’t at first?

How would you represent these?

A story, a picture, a doodle, a sculpture, a planting?

Ben Hardy offers five steps for making the shift from something missing in our lives – a gap – to something important – a gain:

1. Shift past meanings from Gap to Gain
2. Think of 1-3 Negative Pat Experiences
3. List all the benefits of these
4. Have a conversation between pas and future self
5. Change the past self’s identity narrative.*
   

*The project also encouraged Nuuk locals to participate with their own pictures.
**From Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent.

My past is working for me, not
Against me,
Not to me.
My constant companion,
I welcome some of what it shares
and regret others,
And yet it is
my teacher, guide, encourager
To live today well,
And where I don’t,
It will be there for me tomorrow,
My helper and loyal friend.

I know I am not the person I need to be,
Nor the person I could be –
there is still possibility, thankfully;
If I am willing to learn,
If I humble myself
before my teachers,
Today,
And again, tomorrow.