Year: 2010

Moving on from turning sixty, it’s time to simply continuing living fully and being in the world as I love to be. The week started with a trip to Toronto to attend the Your Workplace Conference on the theme of creating the Engaged Workplace. Here are my reflections:

Is it time to start painting outside the lines in your ‘paint by number’ routine? I ask myself this question whenever I feel myself succombing to some unwritten rule that seems to be forcasting my decisions or life choices. These rules, have been defined by the ‘shoulds, have to’s and must do’s’ I have acquired through the years. What about you, do you suffer from the same self-imposed limitations?

Recently, my husband Jim and I participated in the annual Your Workplace Conference. Held in Toronto, the conference theme this year was ‘creating an engaging workplaces’. With that theme in mind, we as exhibitors were asked to engage conference participants when they came to visit our booth. The first task for us, attract a creative idea which would do just that. We decided to engage the artist within each person, knowing that within every individual there lurks a creative soul. Unfortunately that creativity may have been laying dormant for a few years. Our challenge was to invite it out to play.

To create our engraging booth, we purchased a three by four foot canvas, and installed this on an easle at the corner of our venue. We placed boxes of high quality markers around the easle offering everyone the tools they required to be creative. Our invitation was to ‘Paint us a Masterpiece’, simply choose your colors and add to the canvas.

As conference attendees drifted by our booth we pulled them in, asking them to dip their hand into the box of colors, add an element of their choice to the painting and make their contribution. You can imagine the responses. We heard the usual litany of ‘I can’t draw. The artist in me died in Kindergarden. There isn’t a creative bone in my body!”

  The interesting thing we noticed, is that we did not ask people specifically to draw, only to add to the canvas. This could have been a line, a blob, a curly-cue, whatever. The choice was theirs to make.

So how does this experience relate to life and painting outside the paint-by number lines? With the same hesitance as our exhibitor booth visitors demonstrated, I noticed the extent to which we do not allow ourselves to fully engage in life, the hesitation to pick up a pen or brush and add new strokes to the canvas of  life. Notice how you are holding yourself back in ways you do not even recognize.

Each of us is an artist. Art comes in different forms, shapes and sizes; it might be a drawing, a simple line or a bold new color; it might appear as a painting, a novel, or a creation of some other form. Whatever it is, I encourage each of you to pick up a crayon, a marker or a paint brush and add something new to the canvas of your life.

As Gordon Mac Kenzie wrote in Orbiting the Giant Hairball,  begin wielding a wider brush – pure ox-bristle. Swoop it through the sensuous goo of Cadmium Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, or Ultramarine Blue (not nos. 4, 8, 13) to create the biggest, brightest, funniest, fiercest damn dragon that you can. Because that has more to do with what’s inside of you than some prescribed plagiarism of somebody else’s tour de force.

You have a masterpiece inside you, too, you know. One unlike any that has ever been created, or ever will be. And remember: If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted. No one else can paint it. Only you. 

Our conference visitors did, in the end, create a masterpiece filled with doodles and swirls, suns and rainbows, stick people and animals, whatever inspired them. The result was impressive (bids for the painting are now being accepted!). Now it’s your turn to stretch a little, step outside your ‘shoulds, have to’s and must do’s’. You might be surprized at what appears – there may even be a dragon lurking there.

The Final Masterpiece

Remember this is not about perfection, imperfection is better. It is what cracks you open. As a yoga instructor said to me recently, the poses don’t have to be perfect. Lack of perfection creates cracks and it is the cracks that allow the light to come in. Let the light in. Step up- start painting your masterpiece, stretch a little, crack your life open!

Until next time…

Betty

Just the other day, my friend and business colleague and I were on our way to WXN – Women’s Executive Network, in Ottawa. It was an ungodly hour as the breakfast meeting began at 7:15 and we live an hour out of Ottawa. Add time for parking and catching our breath, I was up at five and on the road 20 minutes later on my way to rendezvous with Doreen. I could continue to carp or switch gears and tell you how magical it is to be out on the road before most lights have even been turned on in the homes I passed and to witness the colour rising in the sky as I wound through the back roads of North Glengarry. And then there is the comradeship that Doreen and I share, both of us being entrepreneurs and both of us working full-time with our life partners. It was Doreen who I turned to for advice in the early days of Jim’s retirement as she and her husband Heinz had years of experience in the ‘work together’ arena.

Weeks ago we had decided to attend two networking events in one day, one at breakfast, and one late afternoon, allowing ample time in between for play – a spa date, lunch and conversation. Despite our best intentions, talk turned to work, sharing our excitement and occasional frustration with what we do. Both of us actively work with the Law of Attraction however, so we allow little air in the frustration balloon, choosing instead to fuel the fires of attraction.

Doreen introduced me to a book she is currently reading by Suzy Welch entitled 10-10-10: A Life Transforming Idea. I have yet to read this myself  however I gleaned an interesting idea from our conversation, related to day-to-day decision making and the impact our decisions have. 10-10-10 is a filter. Consider this, when making a decision, you ask yourself what effect will this decision have on your business or your life in the next 10 minutes, 10 days, 10 weeks or on a larger scale, 10 days, 10 months, 10 years. I have been steadily reflecting on this and it has helped  become aware of how often I make decisions because they feel urgent. I don’t necessarily pause to consider the long term consequences; I react. I am wondering what would happen to my decisions if I engaged the 10-10-10 filter.

 I am sure Suzy’s book is much richer than what I have suggested, I simply like the idea of considering this 10-10-10 philosophy and beginning to apply it to my daily decision-making, especially as it applies to business development. Business, as we all know, requires responses that will sustain and grow our business in both the short and long-term. Using 10-10-10 as an aid to decision-making could be a simple yet powerful strategy. So, thanks Doreen!

On another note, I wanted to comment on networking. One year ago, as I was beginning to re-build my business following a writing sabbatical, I decided, with the encouragement of my colleagues, to begin networking in earnest. I am proud to tell you that I am now the member of at least 6 networking groups. I also want to share that networking effectively is not what I thought it was a year ago. It is far more than exchanging business cards, follow-up, and searching for new business opportunities. It is, in my view, a way of connecting with others, seeing them, make a heart-felt connection with 2-3 unique people with each networking opportunity, building community, contributing, and more. I have learned that seeing networking through this lens is much more attractive than the card exchange and chasing people – an important learning on my part.

Life is one great lesson – I am eager to hear yours as well!

Until next time…

Betty