Creative

Stop Screwing Up Your Life

May 15, 2024 By Shauna

Today we are back on the idea that when we are willing, we can change up the Rhythm Of Our Lives. We have talked about looking at yourself and deciding something has to change. Well, for the next few podcasts we are going to talk about the pieces of our psyche, our thinking and our habits that stop us from doing that. Today is a big one. It’s what I talk about in my book as the rebellious child/free child. When that side of us is healthy it is incredibly creative. It’s the side of our personality that thinks outside the box, rocks the boat for change. It’s the artist, it’s the creator. It’s the side of us that loves to play and have fun! We so need this side of us. It’s also called the creative child. But there is a challenge, when it goes overboard it’s the side of us that can totally screw up our lives.

SHOWNOTES:

Hello and welcome, I’m Shauna Hoffman. Today we are back on the idea that when we are willing, we can change up the Rhythm Of Our Lives. We have talked about looking at yourself and deciding something has to change. Well, for the next few podcasts we are going to talk about the pieces of our psyche, our thinking and our habits that stop us from doing that. Today is a big one. It’s what I talk about in my book as the rebellious child/free child. When that side of us is healthy it is incredibly creative. It’s the side of our personality that thinks outside the box, rocks the boat for change. It’s the artist, it’s the creator. It’s the side of us that loves to play and have fun! We so need this side of us. It’s also called the creative child. But there is a challenge, when it goes overboard it’s the side of us that can totally screw up our lives. I mean really. It’s the side of us that goes overboard.

Rebellious spirits lives a life of action with no fear of consequences.

As you can imagine as an artist or anyone who’s trying to create something, you have to think outside the box. You can’t put boundaries on your thinking, creations or your dreams. A matter of fact, for those of us who don’t live in that state, the word can’t or the fear of what others think is what stops us from being creative. Creativity is thinking outside of the known to create the unknown. It’s an exciting, exhilarating and adventurous endeavor.

It’s taking actions with no fear of consequences!

It’s also the side of us that makes us fun-loving, carefree. Think of some of the creative people you know and reflect on how much fun they are to be around! The rebellious/free child taps into a side of the human spirit that almost screams exciting energy. And they don’t care about what other people think. Rebellious child, creative child, free child.

Another wonderful side of rebellious/free creative spirits is the ability to be spontaneous and not stick to expected behaviors, routines or the ideas of others. It’s truly living expect the unexpected! My last podcast episode. If it’s raining outside, they come up with something else to do. They see unplanned opportunities as a way to go beyond obstacles. They throw out all the rules and create new experiences! And there again is the word… create.

Now here is how rebellious/free child spirits screw up their lives. It’s when the wild side of them goes overboard! I always say this is very much the teenager times in our lives. That’s why we call teenagers rebellious. Because they’re trying to break out of the norm and figure out who they are, and create their own rules for life. This state is what we call the Me state. What do I want to do? Where do I wanna go? So when the rebellious child state goes overboard it’s all about “what I want for myself” with little or no thought about the other person.

So how does it screw up your life? When you live your life with very few boundaries and in the Me state, it becomes way too easy to overindulge in just about anything. Drink too much. Hang out with your fun friends and do drugs. It’s the state where people have affairs, because again its action with no fear of the consequences. They’re not looking at the consequences of drinking too much on their health, on their life, on their marriage, on their parenting, on how it’s affecting their job. If they’re having affairs it’s because they’re looking for that fun, that high that they think they are not getting in their marriage. And they’re not looking at the consequences of how it’s gonna hurt someone else or destroy their relationship.They slip into the me state and escape.

We see this with so many of the most brilliant artists, musicians actors, writers, producers directors. They are extremely creative, and this side of them has helped get them to where they are in life. But it’s the negative side of the rebellious child that takes many of them down.

There is a huge danger in your life if you are nurturing an unhealthy rebellious child spirit. Combine this with another side of this state, wild spontaneity and chances are they jump into total denial. They have to deny the possibility that there is a negative outcome to what they’re doing. They deny that it’s harmful or hurtful and they let go of all of their boundaries… and boundaries are what keeps you safe.

Here is another dangerous side of when the rebellious/free child goes overboard. There’s very little guilt involved. So the rebellious child spirit can create a scenario that makes it OK for what they’re doing and they have no guilt of how it’s affecting anyone else. Guilt would mean they would have to change something. And when a rebellious child spirit goes overboard that’s the last thing they want to do. Change.

Now let’s talk about the free spirited side of rebellious Child/free child. It’s when the free spirited person becomes two free spirited. It sounds harmless, right? We love free spirited people. I love to see someone who dresses just the way they want to dress without caring what others think. It’s OK to be different. All of that is the healthy side of a free spirited rebellious child spirit. But when the free spirit goes overboard, they lose perspective on what is safe for them and around them. Like a woman who skips the beach alone, not even noticing that a man is following her. Or someone who puts their child in danger because they wanna break all the rules. This is when free spirited becomes reckless and logic goes out the window in favor of the adventure or rule breaking thinking of the rebellious/ free child state.

There’s a beautiful side of this kind of spirit and that is that they speak up for themselves. That’s what we practice as teenagers that gets us into trouble. But when it becomes overboard, then there is a chance that they become over emotional. That free spirited person who is so overboard that they want everyone to hear their voice! You’ve been around those kind of people where drama is the name of their game.

Emotional, rebellious, free spirited people, creative people, are more in touch with their emotional side. When it goes overboard it’s when the emotion gains control of them over the logic of a situation. Their emotion turns from you or us or the situation to me, me me.

So how do you know if this is you? The first question to ask yourself is is there a side of you that goes overboard that is affecting your life? Are you drinking too much? Are you doing too many drugs? Are you blowing off work? Are you having an affair outside of your relationship? Are you doing other dangerous things like driving too fast or over eating or eating tons of junk food. Here is a big one! Spending money with no fear of the consequences of overspending! Do your emotions get out of control?

Take a look at yourself honestly, with no denial, and ask yourself where is your rebellious free child going overboard? And then ask yourself how is it screwing up your life?

I always say that the first way to change is to make the subconscious conscious. Once you do that you can look at what you need to change in order to change the rhythm of your life. A bigger piece of this is to ask yourself, is there a creative side of you that you are not tapping into? Is there a fun loving spirit in you that is desperately needing attention? Are you working so hard that you’re rebelling in other ways? Are you an artist or a musician or a writer who has let that side of you go in in order to live a less creative life? Are you so rigid in so many other things in your life that the only way you can break free is going overboard with something unhealthy?

We all desperately need this side of us. But we need it healthy. Without a creative outlet, fun, spontaneity, playfulness, our subconscious is going to find quick and easy ways to experience it. And I can almost guarantee you that one way or another you will pay with the consequences that you’re not looking at.

So if you wanna stop screwing up your life, you actually have to look at your life. No more denial. No more closing off your adult thinking in order to get away with old behaviors. Get in touch with the wonderful and healthy and fun side of creative child. And if you don’t have a creative child, find it.

It might be something more subtle than you know. It might be creating a beautiful garden. It might be changing all of the colors in your home. It might be writing your memoirs or starting a screenplay or, getting out and doing more fun things with your life! Trying something new, going someplace new, and if you need to start very very small, then do so. And most importantly, if you need to look deeply at behavior that you know is screwing up your life, then put on your he, she, or they pants and do so.

In order to change the rhythm of our lives to find happiness and passion then we have to become self-aware and look at the things that are holding us back. Not with judgment, but with hope. Hope that you love yourself enough to make the changes to start you back on a path to your wonderful life.

Here is a perfect quote by Nayyirah Waheed,

There is no healthier drug than creativity!

Albert Einstein said,

Creativity is intelligence having fun!

This season of the podcast is about changing up the rhythms of our lives. But we have to look at what is stopping the music in our souls. So if you can take just a little time to look deep within… I believe you will find the answer. Remember no judgement, just hope.

Oh beautiful listeners, please take care of yourselves this week. Drink lots of water, get lots of rest and have lots of fun! Surround yourself with loving beings and most importantly, love yourself!

Thank you for letting me into your lives this week and I look forward to popping back in again next time.

52 Imagination, Inspiration, Motivation! Bringing Your Dreams to Life!

January 30, 2021 By Shauna

WHAT THIS EPISODE IS ABOUT…

Hello and welcome, I’m Shauna Hoffman.

I thought today is a perfect day in all of our lives to believe in the possibilities and dreams in our hearts. We are going to talk about a lot of ations… imagination, creation, inspiration and motivation. and all it takes to believe in yourself to go after something you really want in life. It is the human spirit to create. We all have the ability to envision new things. From the time we were children we could make a train out of stick or snowman out of a snowball. Why? Why is it that as children we had the ability to think outside the box and create with no holds barred?

Because we had not been told yet that it’s not real. We had not been told yet that our thoughts should have boundaries and restrictions. When we were young we could claim what we would be when we grew up and all the adults would just smile and think isn’t that cute. She wants to be a fireman or teacher or President one day. No one gave us that negative list of why it can’t happen. Until one day they did.

As adults we have these weird “shoulds and rules and guidelines and history” of what we think is possible and what isn’t. And now when you dream of something you want to do outside the realm of what others can perceive of you, you get bombarded with all of the reasons why you can’t do it. And not just from other people. But from yourself! And that is what we are going to talk about today! Your dreams and how to let all those negative thoughts go and bring those dreams to life!

Years ago, I did my thesis paper on something called The Idealized System Design. It was based on a theory that you could create an ideal concept and then design it from beginning to end. But the word ideal is what made it so exciting. In an ideal system you have no boundaries that say no it cannot happen.

Think of that concept for a minute. You could create an ideal home…one that is ideal in your imagination. Not what you could afford, or someone else’s pre-built home, or stuck in a city when you want to live on a mountain top. You could create YOUR ideal home. So the concept of ideal meant it could be anything your mind could imagine!

Abert Einstein said, “Creativity is intelligence having fun.”

Ha I love that!

I love to use this theory with my clients, my business coaching clients, teens imagining their future, newly divorced women or men who are redesigning and reinventing their lives. Usually their mind set is open to anything. Or even ready for anything!

And then I love to use it to help people who have become sedentary in their lives or thinking and have some dream that they have abandoned or have decided is a just a dream that can never come to be. I want to play with the word imagination! As a child it was believed that our imagination was something like a Disney dream of fairies and dragons, princesses and castles. “Oh she has such a big imagination when she plays”. But the truth is anything that we want to achieve starts with imagination. IMAGINING something that we want in our lives.

So let’s think about what Imagination is. It’s the ability to create mental images of things not perceived through our senses. For instance it is a woodworker who can see a table in a piece of wood. Or an artist that can see the images they want to paint on a blank canvas. It’s the ability to create a new narrative out of something that we can’t see or have never heard before. A musician that creates a new song out of notes that are on a scale. It’s something that can construct new, hypothetical scenarios that don’t exist now but have every possibility of coming to fruition. What I love about imagination is it deletes the word CAN’T!

So imagination is the precursor to creativity. Once you start to imagine something new your next step is to create it. Now creativity goes hand in hand with imagination because as you create you want to continue to allow your imagination to think outside the box. Creativity is the ability to see something with no boundaries.

Now let’s take all of this and make it personal for you. If you could imagine anything different in your life what would it be? It can be anything as small as imagining your home with new colors, or imagining you walking a new puppy down the street, to anything as big as imagining yourself living in a different town or country or imagining a new job. It could be imagining your own creative outlet like writing or painting or singing or podcasting!

Now you have imagined it and you are on the way to creating it! The next “ation” I am going to talk about is inspiration. Inspiration is a force or influence that makes you want to create something!

Let’s think. You have decided to create a new decor for your living room. Your mind has begun to formulate all of these wonderful images and colors and feelings of what it will look like. You pick up a Interior design magazine and you see someone that has created their new space. You get so excited that it inspires you to take your IMAGINATION AND CREATION and bring it to life! You are now not only creating something in your mind, you are inspired to make it happen!

Now I am going to talk about the one ATION that seems to be the thing that stops people in their tracks. MOTIVATION! How many times have you had a wonderfully creative new idea that you have wanted to attempt. You have imagined it in your mind, talked about it to other people, maybe even written it as a goal in your life. But you have never done it? Your excuse, I haven’t found the motivation to start it. They say that motivation is the “process that causes you to take action. It activates behavior”. But here is my personal experience with my clients and what I coach anyone hoping for motivation. Some people can take their inspiration and creativity and it kick starts motivation. But, for many people I don’t believe it just shows up. That one day they wake up motivated.

I read one time that motivation comes from action starting not starting action! In other words when you have an idea or creation that you want to manifest if you just START the process that INSPIRES MOTIVATION! It is the starting of something that becomes the energy that opens up your motivation to continue! It’s watching it come to fruition that keeps you inspired. OK let’s think about this in simple terms. No one is motivated to clean a room. But once you start to clean it all of a sudden the motivation continues! You get excited to see your progress and want more! So many people envision writing a book. They think about it and talk about it. But then they say to me I am just not motivated to start it. I say sit down and write a sentence. Any sentence. See if you become motivated to keep writing. I love the book The Artists Way for just this reason. It gets your mind kickstarted to create.

Now I want to go back to something that I said at the beginning. When children create it is because they have not been told that it CAN’T be real. The biggest reason why people don’t start to create the things that they want in life is because somewhere in their mind is the word can’t.

“You can’t do that, you know nothing about that. You can’t do that no one will like it or buy it. You can’t do that there are professionals that make a living at it. What makes you think you can do that. You can’t do that. It is too expensive, or too lofty, or too unrealistic.”

The minute the word can’t or shouldn’t come into your mind it creates a judgement and fear that stops all creativity and let’s be honest…it stops all dreams from coming true. And the funny thing is it’s not true! Remember the Idealized System Design! You design something with no boundaries, no rules, no saying NO!

Pablo Picasso said, “Everything you can imagine is real”.

He also said, “The chief enemy of creativity is GOOD SENSE.”

I want you to think about your life. I want you to play with the possibility that there is something that you are dreaming of that you want to create. Something that is sitting in your mind or soul or heart that you want to bring to life! It may be a garden in your backyard, or a children’s book you want to write or a podcast you want to create! Or a wall you want to paint! I would love you to think of the words…

Imagination
Creation
Inspiration
Motivation.

Then just start it… make any movement towards your dream and see if it motivates you to bring it to life! Take any action that you can to start it! Remember that every best selling writer was once NOT a writer! There was a day that Picasso didn’t paint. Or Mozart heard the songs in his head but never wrote them down. There was a STARTING point for every person who went after their dreams. The day that they said, I CAN.

I love this quote by Ursula Leguin – “The creative adult is the child who survived.”

I want to leave you with this one… by Bruce Garrabrandt

“Creativity doesn’t wait for the perfect moment. It fashions it’s own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.”

I hope for you wonderfully creative inspirational outbursts in your life! May you hear your child voice again and allow it to help your dreams come true. May you believe in all of your capabilities to create your very own ideal world!

Now go out there and be safe! Drink lots of water, eat nourishing foods, get lots of sleep and surround yourself with people who lift you up and believe in you and your dreams! Then just begin!

Thank you for letting me into your lives this week and I look forward to popping back in again…. next week.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CONTENT DISCUSSED…

• A Journey to Awareness Podcast: All Episodes
• Shauna’s website: https://www.workingonme.com

WHEN DOES IT AIR…
January 30, 2021

13 When it’s a Hard Day’s Night

April 11, 2020 By Shauna

WHAT THIS EPISODES ABOUT…

Hello, I’m Shauna Hoffman. And today I am going to talk about the fact that some days just suck. I mean totally suck. I am throwing out all of my great, self-help therapy terms today and just talking about reality. There are days that seem to be a perfect storm of everything that brings your heart and soul to a standstill. Whether you are single or in a relationship right now, it doesn’t matter. There are times that no one can lift you out of that dark space. And maybe for some it isn’t even that dark. Maybe it’s just that weird gray! Sometimes we know what is causing it and sometimes we have no clue. It is just there.

OK, a few facts we need to remember! We women do go through hormonal changes that attribute to this …sometimes. And so what! No! I am not taking away your gray, blue or black! I am just saying that sometimes we have no idea what is causing it and it could just could be hormones. After all, we are goddesses that rage… I mean have a range of emotions that are often triggered by our physical makeup of the day… or hour or minute! And so it is!

Listen in…
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