CREATIVITY AND OTHER LIFE QUALITIES: Honoring Your Abilities and Gifts at Work and Play (with 9 Questions for You)

Monday

Honoring Your Abilities and Gifts at Work and Play (with 9 Questions for You)

So much of my father’s creativity went into cooking on the weekends and into creating and problem solving at the lumber mill the rest of the week. Though a talented artist, cooking and carpentry became practical ways to channel his creativity while attending to our basic needs. But there were great reservoirs of his artfulness that went untapped and unused for lack of time, mostly.

As uniquely creative individuals, in order to live fully and healthfully, whatever our gifts or talents and which ever ways we choose to contribute to the world around us, it’s important to honor our abilities by exploring activities we enjoy doing or by nurturing our talents. At home, in the studio, and/or on the job, no less than at an art museum, seminar or spiritual retreat, there are many ways to do this while taking care of business and getting the job done. I’ve developed some practical methods through the years.

Here are a few questions to help you sort through some of this. These are simple but powerful questions for nurturing your gifts where you are, and for making subtle or dramatic changes that will increase the creative quality of your life.

What are you good at?
What do you like to do? (1 and 2 aren’t necessarily the same things)
What kinds of situations or environments bring out the best in your skills? Which bring out the best of your personality?
If you could design your dream job, what would it include? List ten aspects of it.
What are three aspects of the dream job you could incorporate into your current work or living situation(s)? Tell how. Then choose three more… What are three aspects of the dream job you could incorporate into an avocation to do in your time away from work?
How have the difficulties or challenges in your life contributed to your creativity, whether through problem-solving or research that did or might take you in new or different directions?
What are some things you can learn or notice about yourself or your gifts by focusing on the joyous or even humorous aspects of your life?
What are ten places, skills, or topics you’d like to explore, that you’ve never had time for?
What are five activities you like to do, that you haven’t done in a long time or that you would like to try again?

Trip from Seward to Homer, overlooking flats
beyond trees submerged in Great Earthquake of 1964, Copyright 2010 D.M.Solis

I’m curious about what you may discover or rediscover while answering a few or all of these questions…and about next steps you might explor for honoring your abilities and gifts. Good luck and happy innovating. With great love,

Diane

*An AVOCATION is 1. something a person does in addition to a principal occupation, especially for pleasure; hobby: Our doctor's avocation is painting; 2. a person's regular occupation, calling, or vocation (from Dictionary.com)

Diane Solis

The poetry of Diane Solis has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, excerpted in Expressive Writing: Classroom and Community, and has been published or is forthcoming in literary journals and magazines, including, America, Big Muddy, The Healing Muse, Hobo Camp Review, The Lost Country, Psychological Perspectives, Sinister Wisdom, Slink Chunk Press and elsewhere. Her chapbook ART SPIRITS, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. A science writer and technical editor by trade, Solis practices contemplative and Zen forms of meditation and travels to remote places to photograph and write about the "wild" she encounters there. She resides on the Central Pacific Coast with her partner.

www.dmsolis.blogspot.com

The Latest Quotes for Contemplation:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. --Annie Dillard

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, age after age, forever. ~ Tagore

I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world.... ~ Frank O'Hara

Of all fires love is the only inexhaustible one. ~Pablo Neruda

Prophets are so dangerous because they cry in season and out of season, politely and impolitely, loud and long. ~Joan Chittister

When I say be creative, I don't mean you should all go and become great painters and great poets. I simply mean let your life be a painting, let your life be a poem. ~ Osho

There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But, who wants easier? ~ Mary Oliver

Without warning, as a whirlwind swoops on an oak, Love shakes my heart. ~ Sappho

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
T.S. Eliot, from "Little Gidding"

Love many things, for therein lies your true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well... ~ Vincent van Gogh

I have found that to love and be loved is the most empowering and exhilarating of all human emotions. ~ Jane Goodall

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone--we find it with another. ~Thomas Merton

I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for our victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.
~John F. Kennedy

I cannot write convincingly about anything that I am not passionate about. ~Darrell Bourque, Poet Laureate of Louisiana

In the lover's heart is a lute which plays the melody of longing. ~Rumi

But perhaps the most important thing about my father was that he taught us the simplest things -- Navajo things -- like how to just sit and be quiet, to blend in and watch, or to move so silently we'd become a part of the forest. My father taught us how to live the concepts of our culture, especially the importance of communicating with the natural world. ~Lori Arviso Alvord, M.D.