Guiding Star Check In: 5 Quick Ways to Accomplish YOUR Goals

If you haven't taken a look at your Guiding Star goals recently, swallow your "oh gees, I haven't thought about those since February" and pull them out. I've got some quick tips.

We're looking at how to finish goals today, not how to set them.

Whose masterpiece is this? A bunch of college students.
This is the backstage floor of the Leedy Theatre at Lebanon Valley College.
Beauty everywhere. We just have to keep looking.

1. Change - Got some goals that overwhelm you or just aren't as interesting as they were when you created your plan? Permission granted to change or even delete those goals. Do check in with your Buddy before you do this to make sure you aren't giving up or avoiding a goal that has meaning in your life.

2. One Step - Most of us get hung up looking at the big picture. We forget that success is a series of small actions. Try this approach - look for one step towards the goal you can take this week. Then take that one step and see where you are led.

3. Ask for Help - This one is always tough for me. I like to think of myself as completely competent and independent. But look. We all could use a little help. Reach out to your Buddy (or to me) if you're feeling stuck. Sometimes my Buddy and I text each other for a week about one step in one goal. Sometimes that's all I need.

4. Challenge - I've never tried this. You do it and let me know how it works. Set up this challenge: If I don't finish this part of a specific goal by July 31, I will donate $20 to a cause I do not believe in.

5. Celebrate - When I finish this goal, I will celebrate by....find some activity you enjoy that feels celebratory. For me it would be going on a walk in a new place or sitting with a glass of wine. Sometimes, sharing the completion with a friend (or, you guessed it, my Buddy) is enough. NOTE: if your goal is diet-related, make the celebration non-food-based.

I'd truly love to hear where you're at with your Guiding Star goals. Comment here on Creatavita or wherever you see this post on social media. Talk to me!

This path.
Follow this path.

Photo Friday Number 16

What a joy it is to feel the soft, springy earth under my feet once more,     
to follow grassy roads that lead to ferny brooks    
where I can bathe my fingers in a cataract of rippling notes,     
or to clamber over a stone wall into green fields that     
tumble and roll and climb in riotous gladness!  

Helen Keller

Photo: Park At Governor Dick, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania

Ripped From The Archives: Ten Minutes

Originally posted on July 2, 2012. 

If you are like me, life is too short. When you look in your dictionary, you cannot find the word bored, as in “I'm bored”. You can find the words distracts, as in “Everything I should be doing distracts me from the things I want to be doing” or frustrated as in “I am so frustrated that I can't find enough time for my – you fill in the word -”. I fill the blank in with a variety of words, including music, relationships, writing, and especially, self.

Too many projects and not enough time to get to them, or so it seems. This is a common theme. Never fear, Creatavita is here to help.

First of all, the time has come for some good ol' attitude adjustment. This is particularly true if you have ever seriously studied an art form in your life. You learned early on in your study, that an hour a day was required to progress. Anything less was, at least for some of us, total and absolute failure. That's why we would meet each other in the hallways of our college music departments at ridiculous hours of the day, say 6:00 am or 10:30 pm, or my personal favorite time, 7:00 pm on a Friday night. I'd go to happy hour with my friends at 3:00, eat the free food (okay, I'd have a drink or two. But remember, the legal drinking age was 18 back then) and then I would, honest to God, go back to the practice rooms.

That worked in college and graduate school. But guess what. We're all grown up now, with our fancy-pants lives and the rent is due tomorrow. Gone is the luxury of hours on end spent daily communing with your favorite composer, painter or author. In order to get some artistic joy back into our lives, we're going to have to rework this outdated model.

Secondly, I hereby give you permission to lower the bar. Oh boy, I bet you weren't expecting that one. I stand by my original statement, Your Honor, lower the bar. Try this little exercise. Say to yourself, “Self, I bet you I could find 30 minutes a day to work on my novel.” If Self tightens your gut and your heart starts to race, then you have the bar too high. Lower that number until you find the number of minutes to which Self's response is: “Are you crazy? Of course I can find [X] minutes in a day to work on my children's book!”.

To give you courage, let me tell you that I am currently at 10 minutes a day. There have been times in my life when I've been at 20 and times when I've been as low as 5. By the way, the end of the road is 5 minutes. Any number lower than 5 minutes is not trying. We might have lowered the bar, but we are still trying.

Thirdly, use tools. Like a timer. Yes, you heard me, a timer. Here's the link to one online.

Use it. Some days your minutes will fly by and you'll be astonished when the timer goes off. Some days you will swear the timer is broken. Use it.

Now I know some of you are out there thinking this will never work. Gathering your materials to work for a small amount of time is pointless. You know what, if you write one good sentence, if you play one good phrase, if you sketch one tiny corner, you will have succeeded. And don't forget that being creative is a habit. Maybe today's work will be awful, but that means you'll be one day closer to the great work.

Finally, give yourself a chance. Rome wasn't built in a day and neither will this new habit. You will have to tussle with yourself, as the Musts and Shoulds rear their ugly heads. This tussle could be epic, lasting as long as one month. Stick with it. I'm pretty certain there's a day in your future when you will surprise yourself with how easily you were able to find the time for your favorite creative pursuit.

By the way, you can also use this approach for problem-solving. Let's say you are stymied by a work project or you need to finally choose a dissertation topic. How about focusing on the, ahem, situation, for a chosen amount of time daily and then forgetting about it? I know, I know, difficult to forget about it. Oftentimes, the solution appears when we're not thinking about the conundrum. Deal with the situation for, let's say, 15 minutes a day and then drop it like an old flame for the rest of the day.

Gotta go. Time for bed.

June is Creatavita's Birthday month. We are 6 years old. Please consider signing up to receive Creatavita in your inbox. You'll make us smile and you'll give yourself a moment of creativity.

My Favorite Things: Line Learner

There are so many products, so many tools available now for every task. Do they work? That's the first question I ask.

I've got one that not only works, it has transformed the way I perform a very important task.

It's a simple app living on my phone.
It is inexpensive - $4.00. You read that correctly.
It has saved me hours of time.
It has lowered my anxiety level.

It's Line Learner.

I've been using Line Learner for the past 2 years. Initially, I had some trouble figuring out the app, and I still find parts of it clunky. That could be because I frequently don't use the script recording feature, therefore I forget how it works. Also, based on the reviews I read on Google Play, there's currently a bug when trying to use the app with Bluetooth as well. Still, but I'm happy to overlook those issues because my work is definitely more thorough and efficient when using the app (as opposed to before I was using the app).

Once you've recorded the lines (which takes time, but I find it is another way of learning), the app has plenty of options - play your lines; play the other character's line and mute yours; leave a gap, then play your line, leave another gap (so you can say your line), etc. I haven't explored all of the possibilities because I've found the ones that work for me.

I find it easy to stop and start so I can target specific sections of a script.

If you have lines to learn, I think you'd be silly not to try it.

Line Learner for Android

Line Learner for Apple

Pros:
Simple tool for an important work task.
Made learning lines SO much easier.
Cheap. Best $4.00 I have spent. E.V.E.R.

Cons:
Learning curve is steeper than I think is necessary.
Current bug when used with Bluetooth.

Have a favorite thing that makes life easier? Tell me about it here. If I use it in a future post, I'll send you a present.

Some men play golf. Mine digs up the yard.
New patio coming soon!

Photo Friday Number 15

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Photo: Dicentra cucullaria (also known as Dutchman's Breeches), Mt. Cuba Center, Hockessin, Delaware