The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women. Gail McMeekin
rel="nofollow" href="#u0955d754-57a8-5d2d-ba77-9b992b8677ef">First Gateway / Engaging Your Creativity
SECRET 1 Acknowledging Your Creative Self
SECRET 2 Honoring Your Inspirations
SECRET 3 Following Your Fascinations
SECRET 4 Surrendering to Creative Cycles
Second Gateway / Mastering Your Challenges as a Creative Woman
SECRET 5 Committing to Self-Focus
SECRET 7 Consulting with Guides
SECRET 8 Selecting Empowering Partnerships and Alliances
SECRET 9 Transcending Rejections and Roadblocks
Third Gateway / Actualizing Creative Results: The Power of Positive Priorities
SECRET 10 Living in Abundance with Positive Priorities
SECRET 11 Subtracting Serenity Stealers
SECRET 12 Planning to Achieve Your Goals
Note to Readers
This book is designed to teach you the secrets of highly creative women. It is a guidebook meant to be read and reread over time, as you and your creative challenges change and blossom. My hope is that the wisdom of the women interviewed and the lessons you learn from the myriad of practices called Challenges will encourage you to soar to new creative heights and joy. This book can be your companion, accompanying you on your passage and providing you with the keys to your creative expansion.
There are three major Gateways through which you are invited to enter on this journey: Engaging Your Creativity; Mastering Your Challenges as a Creative Woman; and Actualizing Creative Results: The Power of Positive Priorities. Within each Gateway, there are a series of Secrets—essentials for a successful transition to the next Gateway. Within each Secret, there are specific Keys that unlock its mystery and spur your mastery. By the end of the book, you will have compelling goals and a plan of action steps to guide you on your chosen path. Remember, whenever the saboteur of self-doubt stalks you or you feel alone, rely on this book, infused with the many spirits of your creative sisters, to coach you onward.
I recommend that you buy yourself a notebook—a fabulous notebook, a gorgeous notebook—that you can use to record your answers to all of the Challenges in this book. There are twelve Secrets, one for each week or each month of the year. You set your own pace. Find other creative women with whom you can share your discoveries and struggles. Encourage each other, inspire each other, and challenge each other to bring all your visions into reality. Let's stop sparring about our differences, and celebrate our creative gifts as women. Creativity thrives on uniqueness. This book and your encounters with other women hold the spirit of a “sacred space” in which each of us can unleash our greatness.
First Gateway
Engaging Your Creativity
There cannot be too many glorious women.
—MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, SPIRITUAL LEADER AND WRITER
SECRET 1
Acknowledging Your Creative Self
Your creative self is alive and waiting for your invitation to evolve! Dare to embrace your creative self and manifest your dreams. Recognizing your creativity leads you into a life of self-expression, fulfillment, and contribution.
Responding to Creative Callings
Experimenting with New Processes
Seeking Success Stories
Learning the Secrets
Your creativity is waiting for you like a dancing partner.
—BARBARA SHER,
WRITER AND CAREER CONSULTANT
Yes, you are a creative woman. Creativity is not just for “talented geniuses.” Creativity is a tool we can all access and utilize. It doesn't matter if you've never picked up a pen or can't draw a straight line or flunked out of music class, you have a creative self waiting to be awakened or amplified. Webster's definition for the word create is “to cause to come into existence; bring into being; make; originate.” Creative women are innovators—they manifest the new.
They dare to believe in their insights, to intuit the next step, and to take risks, even if it means getting lost or being wrong. You too can participate in creative expression and share your personal talents. You are an original; therefore, your inspirations are original as well.
As a career and creativity coach, as well as a licensed psychotherapist, human resources consultant, and trainer for the past twenty-five years, I have helped thousands of women discover and access their creative potential; achieve their personal, professional, and creative goals; and reduce the stress in their lives. It was my own personal journey, however, that deepened my fascination with the creative process and was the catalyst for my own creative awakening. That journey, which gave birth to this book, began quite unexpectedly.
We need to remember that we are all created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.
—MAYA ANGELOU, POET AND WRITER
When I was thirty-five and in the midst of a successful career, I was suddenly overcome by chronic fatigue syndrome. I was exhausted and plagued by a number of terrifying physical symptoms. I had all kinds of x-rays and diagnostic tests, including an MRI to rule out multiple sclerosis when I began to have trouble walking, but they all tested negative. I saw doctor after doctor, searching for answers, but because of the negative test results they all minimized my symptoms and wrote me off as possibly depressed. As a trained psychotherapist, I knew the symptoms of depression and would have gladly taken Prozac if that made sense, but I was running a temperature, experiencing numbness in the left side of my body, overreacting to medications, having heart attack symptoms, and feeling too tired to perform the tasks of daily living. I was not depressed, just tired. I got up every day wanting to chase my goals, not escape from them. To me, life had always been a seductive, stunningly gorgeous, and appetizing buffet table—but suddenly I couldn't stand in line long enough to have fun sampling. I decided to take matters into my own hands and in the course of doing research, I found a book on chronic fatigue syndrome and diagnosed myself.