BREAKOUT! Your Pathway to Success
Mosaic: Finding Your Own Voice
Reflections: Textural Glass Art
Meditations: Messages From the Other Side
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Monday, March 8, 2010 at 21:23 Here's a great song to sing to help get you outside your shell. It's Diana Ross singing "I'm Coming Out" and it's so happy and contagious that you just got to dance along.
Here are the lyrics in case you want to sing along...
Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 20:51 Newsflash! If you want to order a copy of any of my books, now is your chance because the email just came in now from Blurb:
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Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 10:47 I've blogged and vlogged a fair bit about fear, but I wanted to go more into what Steve Rother calls the "seed fear".
"That’s a fear you planted in your psyche at the time of death in a parallel life. (Remember, all time is now.) After you stepped out of your physical body you decided that it would be better to 'not do THAT again'. You decided that in your next life—this life—you would not call attention to yourself. Maybe you decided to just be 'ordinary' and to stay silent." - Brit Hammer
While the above passage is excerpted from my bestselling business book for visual artists, BREAKOUT! Your Pathway to Success, I wanted to summarize what I wrote in the book about how to overcome the seed fear. The short and simple answer is to acknowledge yourself.
Acknowledge how brilliant you are. Radiate it and speak it.
List out your strengths, talents, and what you're most proud of.
List out your accomplishments and include them on your CV.
Acknowledge all who endorse and promote you and your work.
Build on previous accomplishments.
Continuously hold a high vision of yourself and of your brilliance.
Validate yourself constantly throughout the day, every day.
Believe in yourself.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 10:08 Just a heads-up that a 1-day Breakout & Find Your Own Voice workshop is being planned, to be held in either Rotterdam or in the Antwerp area sometime in the not-too-distant future. I'll conduct it in Dutch, but if any participants need me to speak English, it will be bi-lingual.
In the workshop you’ll be guided towards finding your own voice through personalized coaching and a series of individual and group exercises. You’ll share images of your work and practice communicating your thoughts about both your work and the work of others in the safety of a small group. The day will end with you understanding what your art is saying and how to express what you really mean.
If the above paragraph was not clear, I'll explain further. This is not a "make something" workshop; rather, it's a touchy-feely workshop with a lot of exercises, talking, introspection, and sharing. Students will be asked to send me in advance images of their work plus answers to a questionnaire to help me prepare for the workshop. The workshop will be completely customized to the group and group dynamics. The intention is that students will leave the 1-day workshop with an understanding of what their work says and will have concrete ideas what to further develop and how.
Know that finding and exploring your own voice is a journey that will continue well after the workshop. While I will do everything I can to help you, ultimately it's you who has to do the work. I've done it myself and understand firsthand some of the challenges offered by such a journey, so if you want further coaching after the workshop, that can also be arranged. I will also be happy to add a second day to the workshop, based on demand.
If you're interested to get the details of this 1-day workshop as soon as they're finalized (i.e. date, time, place, and cost), please contact me and let me know if your preference is Rotterdam or Antwerp. It's about an hour's drive between them, and both cities have airports, in case you'd like to fly in from other parts of Europe for the day. Of course, I highly recommend visiting Rotterdam anyway just because of our modern architecture!
Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 15:39 Works shown in this episode, in order of appearance (photographed by artist unless otherwise noted):
Colleen Cunningham (photos: Miranda Jansen)
Heather Hancock
Yulia Hanansen
Grace Blowers (photos: Nathan Flowers)
Pamela Goode (photos: Mark Fortenberry)
Jacqui Ridley (photos: Robert Medvedenko)
As shown in my bestselling book, "Breakout! Your Pathway to Success", a business book for visual artists.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 09:57 Several years ago I read an interview with an artist who was hailed by the media as an "overnight success" and was asked by one particular reporter how it felt. The artist replied, "Like 8 years of hard work."
Now, I actually believe overnight success is possible. Having said that, I feel the bigger question is, is it sustainable?
You need not look far to find plenty of "one hit wonders" in the world. Countless musicians and actors who made it big with one song or movie, only to fade away or self-destruct just as quickly as they rose to stardom. Yet the media still loves to hype overnight success, don't they? As if we should all want to become a big star overnight. The media loves to perpetuate the idea because it's so easy to buy into immediate gratification, the same way Western culture bought into the idea of convenience and fast food. Hey, come to think of it, even fast food wasn't an overnight success; it started in the 1950s and only caught hold some 20 years later! I digress.
The media hypes overnight success because, let's face it, it's dramatic to watch someone rise and fall in a short span of time. And drama gets the eyeballs, and since the media's business model is based on advertising... Well, it doesn't take a genius to figure it all out. The art world is not much different...
Saturday, February 13, 2010 at 15:28 It's a good question and one you should think about seriously: what is success to you? Does it have to do with status, money, title, power, or people? Or something else?
For me, one of the most important aspects of success has to do with the people I touch and what they do after I "touch" them. In the fairy tale world that is my mind, I like to imagine myself as being the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella or as Glinda the Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz. The Fairy Godmother waves a magic wand and creates a wonderful life for Cinderella; Glinda the Good gives Dorothy the magic ruby red slippers. But here's the secret: both appear to give a piece of magic that somehow helps the others to transform themselves, yet both Cinderella and Dorothy had the magic inside them all along. All Glinda the Good and the Fairy Godmother did was to bring it out of them, to help them discover it!
That's what I do, too. It's part of my life's purpose, and I've been doing it since my teens. It's what I'm most proud of--how far my students (proteges) have gone, and I'm very proud to say many of them have surpassed me in whatever area in which I trained them. Or in the case of art, many of the artists whom I've promoted in my books have gone on to greater things. And THAT is the whole point of why I go to such lengths to create the books on the level I do. Sure, I could be jealous of their success, but I'm not because (a) I know my own personal power and (b) their success is my success, too. I enjoy being the springboard to greater things for others. After all, I've certainly benefitted from others being my springboard, so why not pass it on?
I measure my success partly by how successful those whom I've helped become...
Monday, February 8, 2010 at 12:26 GET THE PRINTED BOOK HERE.
GET THE EBOOK HERE.
Works shown in this episode, in order of appearance (photographed by artist unless otherwise noted):
Jacqui Ridley (photos: Robert Medvedenko)
Aida Valencia
Yulia Hanansen
Brit Hammer-Dijcks (photos: Armand Dijcks)
Colleen Cunningham (photos: Miranda Jansen)
Heather Hancock
Susan Crocenzi
Laura Pattison
Grace Blowers (photo: Nathan Flowers)
Wayne Taylor
Gladys Dion
Antoaneta Stoimenova
Kim Wozniak (photo: Melanie Wishart)
Marian Shapiro (photos: Jill Lacina)
Pamela Goode (photos: Mark Fortenberry)
Music in this episode:
"The Colour of My Dreams" by Makrolon featuring B G The Prince of Rap from Mevio.com
Saturday, February 6, 2010 at 11:44 Lately I've been thinking about the past 10 years since my spiritual awakening and how the dots all connected to the point in my life where I am now. Granted I wrote about my path extensively in Breakout, but I'd like to share some extra insights here.
An awakening is having total clarity about your life and literally everything around you. You expand out of your physical self and ego and become one with All That Is (God, the Divine, Source). Speaking from my own experience, it's so much more than an out of body experience (OBE)! It's a time when you see how everything and everyone is connected; it's like having your own crystal ball in which you can see all possibilities and how they might all play out for the entire universe (and beyond).
Awakening brings with it a sense of euphoria...and a sense of knowing. Not an arrogant knowing, but a deep understanding of everything that is, was, and can be. It's a knowing that goes to the core of your being, and you radiate the most brilliant light. The only way to describe this light is to think of the light someone falling in love radiates...but imagine it 10x stronger!