I had the privilege of sitting next to Gail McMeekin at Bottom Line’s elegant Four Seasons networking dinner in June. Marjory Abrams, who acts as host 
for these events, brilliantly seated us together knowing that our interests were so aligned. Gail’s audience, like mine, is highly creative women. We instantly connected and have continued to correspond and support each others’ businesses since then.
So I’m honored to participate in Gail’s Blog Tour promoting her new book, The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women Journal.
Here’s an Excerpt from Her Journal…
Living in Abundance with Positive Priorities
Abundance is the experience of plenty, often called prosperity. For creative people, the opportunity to dance with the creative process is itself an experience of abundance. Abundance invites us to live the life we truly desire instead of settling for less. We are the choice-makers of
our own priorities. We do indeed design our own lives.
When I begin coaching a new client, I take them through a series of discovery exercises and conversations about what it is he or she truly desires. Determining our priorities gives us a roadmap for decision-making. Let me share an example with you. Sara contacted me a few weeks ago to help her change careers. She wanted to express her submerged creativity. She had read The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women and felt it was time to change her life. Sara’s personal Positive Priorities, which I define in the book as “life choices that express who we are and what we want for ourselves,” are:
Having time to explore her creative potential
Nurturing mutually beneficial relationships with others
Maintaining healthy habits that support her body, mind, and spirit
Keeping in touch with opportunities for learning about landscape architecture
At this point, Sara feels her creativity has been lost in a stressful job and a legacy of putting everyone else’s needs first—in a city she no longer loves. Her number one creativity saboteur is guilt about finally defining and claiming her own definition of abundance. By celebrating her Positive Priorities, Sara now has a yardstick by which to measure her life choices up to this point.
Many of the women I interviewed in The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women had transformed their lives to honor their Positive Priorities. Sixteen themes emerged again and again, and I share them with you here to help you capture your own Priorities:
- Time for creative exploration
- Fulfilling work
- Encouraging partners, friends, and community
- Personal growth experiences
- Good health
- Nurturing living spaces
- Learning opportunities
- Self-protection from negativity and toxic people
- Reflective time
- Spiritual practices and beliefs
- Independence
- Solitude as needed
- Inner centeredness
- Connection with nature and the arts
- Inspiring activities
- Balance
Gail is currently on a Blog Book Tour so if you want to read more you can find yesterday’s post here at A Room of Her Own and tomorrow you’ll be able to find Gail here. Share a comment on today’s post and you will be entered into a random drawing to win one of Gail’s books – 12 Secrets of Highly Successful Women, 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women or her new book, The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women Journal.
I love this post. It resonates deeply with who I am, a highly creative woman. I think that I’ve never thought to add the word ‘highly’ before ‘creative’, but it makes the world of difference in defining who I am at my core. It also explains why I was so unhappy when the full breadth of my creativity was unexpressed for the first fifty years of my life.
Since I became a coach about five years ago, I have begun to realize what I was missing, and what I’ll never be able to suppress again. I now understand possibility of living in abundance, and of creating the wonderful life I choose to live, filled with dynamic people, meaningful work, and choices that are in alignment with my true purpose.
The 16 points above are spot-on. The biggest change for me was number 8. Still sifting out the toxic, drawing in the supportive, creative, and loving…
@Sandy
Stephen Covey started it with his Habits for Highly Successful People. It does add that je ne sais quoi to who you are.
Wonderful blog, Jane, as so many of yours are! Thank you!
I am embarking on a new phase of my life as an artist… I’ve experienced wonderful successes and dreary lulls. What’s interesting is that I’ve noticed the “jubilation” of success is fleeting, but the self-doubt and fear of the lull seems to linger… like the smell of cooked cabbage the next day.
It is not always possible to avoid the Negative Nancys, but I’m training my brain not to absorb their opinions. And I’m trying to remember the successes when I begin to feel the self-doubt and fear.