A Muse's Daydream: Creative Journeys to the Present Moment jill badonsky

The Muse's Daydream is back. I've been spending time working on a card of decks... no wait, a deck of cards. I explain about them, read two of them, and invite you to buy a deck in case you want creativity to be easier for you. Also a Zoom workshop is included as part of the purchase.

You can buy a deck here.

Upcoming trainings:
The Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaching Training : June- October

The Muse Facilitator Training June- August
Support the show
Upcoming art and creativity programs www.themuseisin.com

This episode is a momentary departure from the usual frivolity for reverie of the inspiration, relaxation, and the possibility of creativity.
Script and Poster of the poem is available to purchase at this link.
"Don't let the future hold your happiness hostage."  ~Sam Harris

Workshop: Blessing of the New Year
Join me in a complimentary workshop called Blessing of the New Year, on December 27th, 12pm pacific time/ 3pm eastern. 
 Welcome 2024 by creating a simple blessing with inspiration from poet, David Whyte and your own intuition. For writers and non-writers alike. Included in this workshop is a new year guided meditation to spark a creative relationship with yourself to last throughout the year.
 I'll also talk about one of my biggest concern and frequently seen challenges... not enjoying what you're doing or feeling enough.
 There’s a lot of areas where I could use improve: organization, a balanced social life, politeness to name a few.   But the moment is mine to believe it’s perfect as is AND I can make small improvements without needing to be perfect. 
 Despite irritability, bad hair, and a non-linear journey to get here, my current existence is crackerjack. I’ll share the five practices to which I credit this most wonderful phenomenon.  Register here
Other:
Let's Talk About Creativity
Saturday, January 13 9:30 am pac,10:30mtn, 11:30 cen 12pm eastern  
The Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaching Training was recognized by Life Coaching Magazine as the best creativity coaching available. Now the tools and approaches that won it that honor are shared monthly, starting in January in a Zoom Session called Let's Talk About Creativity. We will talk about ways to get through procrastination and talk about what we love about what we do. Free to members of The Underground. 
 Wild Abandon Writing Workshop on Zoom
4 weeks starting January 10 3-4:30 pacific time
You know all those prompts in my books? We will be doing some of those and other wacky prompts. We start with raw materials in the form or words and phrases and collage them together
Writing workshop info here
 Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaching Training:
17-week training on Zoom beginning Monday, January 21
Whether you want to help others or understand the power of your own creativity when mindfulness, compassion, intuition, and small steps is in the mix, come find out why this training was recognized by Life Coaching Magazine as the best creativity coaching training. Filling fast. More info here. 
 
Art and Creativity Walk in Italy - I'm so excited about this.. We will be using mindfulness and creativity through art, smart photography, and writing to add to the enchantment and appreciation of the Italian Riviera. October 2024
Hope you can join me... it's half full .
Support the show
Upcoming art and creativity programs www.themuseisin.com

I’ve spent a career teaching how self-judgment works against us in the creative process. 
 
I’ve spent a lifetime dealing with my own harsh self-judgment, so I have the requisite compassion to understand its costs.
 
Once we’ve made it to a place of near completion, there is time is to be discerning, but the process requires license to start out crappy, make mistakes, and tolerate not being able to bring into reality the exact thing we envisioned. We need that freedom for  the enjoyment that leads to the best end products. 
 
The inner critic comes with being human, but it is vital to our success and enjoyment as creative people to persist in spite of it.  In this regard, the creative process is an opportunity to create a better, more resilient self as we learn to be there for ourselves with compassion.
 
Listening to Amanda Knox in her series called Resilience on Sam Harris’s podcast, Waking Up, is the first time I heard the following logic reached as she contemplated the self-judgment she was feeling while being incarcerated four years for a murder she did not commit:
 
 “Berating yourself for being stupid does not make you smarter.” 
 


 
Along the same lines, berating yourself for:
 not feeling good enough at your passion not being the same as other artists or writers you see on social mediaprocrastinationresistancehesitanceanything else you're struggling with ... does not improve the quality of your work or to get you to show up for creative pursuits.. 
 
It’s what we naturally do because that’s how evolution wired us, but it’s why we need to be ready to shift our thinking when we notice we are ineffectively judging ourselves again.  
 Van Gogh had such a strategy.  Here’s the script to my 2021 episode of A Muse’s Moment to go along as you listen to the narration and music.
“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” Vincent Van Gogh said that. In less than 10 years, he painted almost 900 paintings – the voice that told him he couldn’t paint… didn’t have a chance.
 Now picture yourself fueled by this sentiment.  
 Think this: There’s something I want to do but I’m not feeling that good at it, or, I feel others are better than I am, or that it’s not something I can ever do, or I’m too old, I don’t know where to start .. but by all means I’m going to do it …. paint, write, dance, speak, build my business,  and head toward that creative north star that is calling my name anyway. 
 I don’t need to be perfect, but I do need to find enjoyment along the way … with patience and curiosity.. because the more I allow for the process to be enjoyable, the more I will, by all means doggedly stay with the process until the doubting voices pull up a chair beside me and start giving me ideas instead of discouragement. Or maybe they could write a critique for tuna casserole.
If you hear a voice within you say you cannot be creative in any way say: Thanks for sharing…I’m doing it anyway. 
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The Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaching Training was recognized by Life Coaching Magazine as the best creativity coaching available. Now the tools and approaches that won it that honor are shared monthly, starting in January in a Zoom Session called Let's Talk About Creativity. Free to members of The Underground
Support the show
Upcoming art and creativity programs www.themuseisin.com

Sometimes a little humor and perspective around the holidays is called for.  I know it was for me. This episode gives a number of tongue-in -cheek and whipped-cream-in-mouth ways to deal with a dysfunctional family at the holidays... or really, anytime.

Have a beautiful holiday season.
Subscribe to A Muse's Daydream wherever you get your podcasts

A new Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaching Training is coming up in January 2024. For those who want to understand more about how to unfold the creative process for others and/or yourself, through science, intuition, mindfulness and not taking yourself so seriously. More here.

I loiter here.
Support the show
Upcoming art and creativity programs www.themuseisin.com

Sometimes the undesirable and embarrassing parts of who we are make the best stories. 
Writing does that... it uses creativity to lift us out of self-judgment about our personal weaknesses and into comedy, healing or just an awareness of our common humanity. , 
I've brought one of those stories I'm particularly startled by, to sound effects, music, and uncut candor on this episode.


Unearth creativity's resilience, joy, and mindfulness in your life by joining my new group, called Talking About Creativity ... If you're a podcast listener you get a special rate, so contact me..
Or join a group one that's been around for a long time that's accepting new members at the old price that will be increasing in January: The Underground Highway to Creative Results which includes Talking About Creativity

If creativity is a value of yours, you know  it can make every part of your existence better.  Conversely, when you don't get to it, you feel a kind of spiritual constipation and free-floating crankiness .  There's no doubt getting into a creative flow can be elusive, frustrating, or seemingly impossible. 
I've been there with the distractions, perfectionism, doubt, overwhelm, and resistance but I've also discovered ways to make it more of a priority in my life . It grounds me in my gifts and my relationship with myself makes living a whole lot more enjoyable.  And I've taught these "ways" to people for the last 20 years.

It helps to have a place to show up so the effort is made easier and the inspiration is designed. Talking About Creativity and The Underground Highway to Creative Results are two such places.
 More with Jill Badonsky here

 
Support the show
Upcoming art and creativity programs www.themuseisin.com

If you've ever tried to record a podcast without the proper sound proofing it can be challenging. 
This episodes illustrated the frustrations I encounter with interruptions and how they can be good practice for resilience. 
The secret to happiness is also revealed.
 
Script
Making a podcast is challenging in many ways but can be a particularly frustrating when you don’t have the proper sound studio set up, meaning a separate room lined in egg grates, foam squares, marshmallow peeps, or whatever soundproof material you can get your hands on. You may be at the mercy of all the noises in your immediate vicinity and sometimes ones coming from your own body.
 Just when you think you are in your finest podcast moment, recording the most profound, ,  brilliant, hopefully helpful narrative in your life -- your cat plays with a bell toy, the leaf blower next door roars for 15 minutes, and i when it finishes, the leaf blower on the other side goes off, airplanes fly by, sirens sound off, dogs bark, dump trucks thunder down the street… things fall from the sky, satellites come weirdly close to the earth, the French national anthem is serenaded by random strangers, unidentifiable sounds come out of the wall sockets, someone throws a rock through your window, your souffle' explodes, your stomach growls, and your neighbor sticks his head in the window and says Hello (voicy)
 You may ask, Why not use a more soundproof studio? Or you may say loudly… GET A SOUNDPROOF STUDIO. It would save a lot of time, aggravation and trouble. My answer? Putting things off until conditions are just right is not the way I roll.   I like to do with what I got..My motto? ready-fire-aim! otherwise hesitation, researching, ordering, planning, constructing, testing, adjusting, decorating, the sound studio could steal the momentum. Plus it’s expensive and the cats are in possession of the spare bedroom.  So yes, I end up spending time pausing, editing, cursing, and rerecording because of the unexpected sounds … but in a way, it’s lesson in patience, practice to endure, to make the best of the situation as is, to   there’s a certain satisfaction in overcoming obstacles as insignificant as noises on a podcast because we all know life is filled with complications – and practice with the small ones can make us more effective with the bigger ones
So I suffer through having the sounds that end up on the reel but when the final recording comes out,  it’s as if they were never there, there’s just a merry sound track playing in the background and a friendly narration with no evidence of the insanity, , profanity, throwing of things has been cut out. No one listening to the final production knows the troubles I’ve known. It’s therapeutic to be able to manipulate reality like that. Therapeutic and satisfying – then I think of the things I might edit out of my life. Things I shouldn’t have bought, or said, clutter, cat hair, bad decisions, people who turn on you, sadness, irritability, chin hairs … but I don’t want to edit those things out except the chin hairs. What would I write about?  These are the grit of life, fodder for creative expression, metal waiting to alchemized to gold. They make the splendid moments splendider, the marvelous, marvelouser, the people who are on your side more treasured.   
For ways to triumph over distractions to your creativity, subscribe to my newsletter. 
Other places you can find me.
Come to Italy with me October 2024
 
 
Support the show
Upcoming art and creativity programs www.themuseisin.com