I’ve been doing a lot of reading about attaining enhanced wellbeing – about what brings people a sense of fulfilment, meaning and peace. All at once my thoughts crystallized into this simple formula that cuts to the essence of how to increase your sense of lifelong wellbeing.

Despite its extreme brevity is not meant to be flippant. It is simple, obvious yet profound. Here it is.

1. The pursuit of wealth and fame for their own sake do not bring a sense of wellbeing to your life. In fact they can make it harder to attain. Do not make these goals your main, or only, focus.

2. Clearly identify the people and activities that you value in your life. Spend more time with the people and do more of these activities.

3. Clearly identify the people and activities that bring unhappiness, stress and anxiety to your life. Either – spend less time with the people and less time on these activities – or – find different ways of dealing with them.

Even small steps in the directions above will move you away from illbeing and towards wellbeing. Make it a gradual but constant process – it could well be the most important project of your life.

Find your own sense of wellbeing.

If you are reading this then I guess that like me, you’ve been having a bit of trouble getting your head around RSS. I can’t believe how tough it’s been for me to fully grasp this – until I saw the two brilliant Videojug videos below – after which it all seemed ludicrously clear. The only thing I couldn’t understand then was why I’d struggled with it previously.

I’ve read loads of explanations that only partially cleared my RSS brain-fog, so I’m not going to add another – apart from saying this:

• Email updates – if you wish to receive email updates from this blog, place your email address in the subscription box (top right) and clicking subscribe.
• If you want to keep up to date – but not by email, then RSS is a way to check your favourite blogs and websites without having to visit each individual site.

I find that a mixture of both options work for me. Some blog posts I like in my email, the rest in my RSS feed reader.

The Videos

The first video explains the concept of RSS – the second explains the practicalities. You are just a few minutes from understanding both.

VideoJug: RSS In Plain English

VideoJug: How To Use RSS Feeds

Now I’ve finally got The Creative Instict freebies online and sorted (with help) and also fixed a fair number of glitches on the site (with more help), I’m now ready for the next stage (cue trumpet fanfare) – promoting the site.

So far I’ve not promoted The Creative Instinct at all. As a result my readership numbers are still quite low. I find it best to think of The Creative Instinct as it is just now as something of a hidden gem. Well – I want to make it even more of a treasure – but definitely not hidden.

Your Help, Please

That’s why I’m asking for your help. Please pass on The Creative Instinct to everyone you know who might be entertained, inspired and helped by it. And especially tell those ‘people who know people’ – creative people who network or work with other creative people.

The Future Of The Creative Instinct

My vision is for a site that is founded on substantial free content and resources. I’d like to see The Creative Instinct become the authority on enhanced creative practice through up-to-date personal development knowledge. And I’d like creative people like you and me be able to gain from the site without having to spend a single penny/cent.

At the same time I do need to gain some return for the time and effort I’m putting in. So there will be some commercialisation in the future. My aim though is to always keep the free content and free products at the core of the Creative Instinct.

Please Subscribe

Finally, if you are reading this but haven’t subscribed to the blog, please do. The subscribe form is top right. You’ll get my posts as soon as they’re published, your email address is never passed on, and it’s really easy to unsubscribe (heaven forbid).

Please enjoy both of the new downloads – and please remember to let your creative friends and colleagues know about The Creative Instinct.

Cheers – Andrew Leigh

See also:
Stop Being Your Own Worst Critic – Download

I’ve just seen some superb photographs and a very interesting idea on John Hobson Photography blog.

John has just hit the final month of his twenties – in other words he’s thirty next month. The realisation has spurred him into a creative burst and so he’s aiming for a self portrait for each day of the next month.

It got me to thinking how we might all harness the power of self portraiture in our own particular mediums. So here’s the Creative Instinct Self Portrait Challenge – and naturally, this being The Creative Instinct, there is a personal development aspect to it.

The Creative Instinct Self Portrait Challenge

Okay – so 2 self portraits, using your own favoured medium. They could be self portraits in photos, paintings, music, dance, rap, architecture – whatever floats your own creative boat. And they can be literal self portraits or something that captures the essence of you in your chosen medium. So for instance, performance art, landscape painting or photography, music, haiku, choreography could all count as selfportraits of the essence of you.

Left at that this could provide an interesting creative path to explore. But I’d like to add another aspect based on a very powerful self image exercise I often use with my coaching clients, which I’ve modified for this challenge.

Images – and kind permission of John Hobson

Self Portrait Challenge 1 – Now

Self portrait 1 represent you as you perceive yourself now. It’s useful to also write a few accompanying words that plainly describe the perceived positive and negative qualities that you are portraying. Aim to be as objective and balanced as you can with both your description and your portrait.

*An important note here for anyone who is currently in a bad place and can only see negatives about themselves – don’t do this self portrait. Focusing and thinking solely about your perceived flaws only makes you feel worse, so please focus on self portrait 2 instead.

Self Portrait Challenge 2 – Aspirational

The second self portrait should reflect the person you want to become. It should be aspirational and motivating. Again, add a few words that describe this aspirational you.

The great thing about this challenge is that even if you are doing really well it helps you pinpoint ways you can do even better.

So get thinking about how you can do the Creative Instinct Portrait Challenge. It’s a perfect topic for the coming crossover time between old and new year.

Prize!

I don’t know how many people will complete this challenge – or even if anyone will. I know The Creative Instinct is picking up audience now – but I’m not beginning my active promotion of the site until January (watch out for the free download coming very soon).

I’d love to see some outcomes from this, which I’ll post on the site if I can. I’ll keep the challenge going to the end of February 2008 and will offer 5 copies of my forthcoming ebook, Beating Your Bad Inner Critic to the first 5 meaningful responses.

And if you decide to go for it, please write a comment to encourage others to do the same.

Season’s Greetings/Happy Christmas

Not sure if this is my final posting before Christmas. Just in case it is, I’d like to wish everyone a joyous and loving festive season – and a very happy Christmas to everyone who celebrates it.

Here’s a sad story that’s stuck in my mind for many years. It’s about a never ending quest – a delusion that guaranteed frustration and failure.

It happened many years back at my first ever writing class, at the excellent WEA in Chesterfield. For those of you who’ve never heard of Chesterfield, it’s a little town in Derbyshire, England, celebrated for its one very outstanding imperfection – the crooked spire on its main church.

It was almost in the shadow of the spire that I met Peter and found out about his grand obsession – his soon to be perfect short story. I don’t know what the story was about, because being a proud perfectionist, Peter definitely wasn’t in the habit of handing out rough and ready drafts of his masterpiece to novices like me. Not that this was in any way rough and ready.

Peter, you see, knew all about writing. He’d studied it assiduously. He knew about things that at the time I’d never heard of: the perfect narrative crisis point, viewpoint, denouement – and things I’d heard of but didn’t understand – like where to put commas and full stops (it’s fair to say that I was quite a late learner). I was deeply impressed. I had so much to learn.

And then he explained to me his own approach to writing in a way that made it sound almost holy in its importance. He had this brilliant short story, and only when he’d crafted it to perfection would he move on to his next work.

How long, I asked, had he been crafting this short story? Over a year, he told me. A year? For a short story? That was really something. And when did he expect to complete it? Ah…well. There was so much more he needed to do – so many techniques he’d yet to master and apply before he could feel satisfied with the quality of his writing.

Did Peter ever complete his short story? Who knows? He was still on it two years later when I left the class. Maybe he’s still working on it.

This is an extreme story, I know, but perfectly true. You had to admire Peter’s devotion, but even way back in that very first class I knew there was something wrong here. I just didn’t realise how wrong. Because the more you examine the idea of perfectionism the less there is to like about it.

Here are just a few of the negative impacts the perfectionist mindset can have on your creative self.

1. It slows down or stops tangible creative output
2. It gives you an excuse for not producing
3. Because perfection is an illusion – it sets you up for failure
4. It limits your ability to gain skills and experiences
5. It reduces your willingness to take risks and make mistakes
6. It leads to low self-esteem and a lack of belief about your own artistic worth

And that’s just looking at your creative self. Perfectionism rarely stops there and can severely mess up every aspect of your life.

What’s the alternative? Excellence

Excellence is worth striving for. Excellence is inspiring. Excellence leads to prolific output and very positive feelings about yourself. It allows you to judge how well you’ve done from the perspective of where you are now. So you can produce excellence at your own current level of ability, feel justly satisfied with your current achievement and inspired to improve even more. Perfection never allows that.

How to escape the perfectionist straight-jacket

1. Change your attitude to it, or at least begin to change it. Recognise the perfectionist stance as an impediment to your happiness, self esteem and success.
2. Stop yourself in your tracks whenever you hear yourself saying or thinking that you are a perfectionist. Replace the thought with a positive statement about producing work of excellence.
3. Dare to make mistakes. Dare to be wrong.
4. Recognise that in the entire population of the planet, you are the only person who expects you to be perfect.
5. Re-assess past achievements in terms of excellence and learning rather than failed perfection.
6. Accept compliments gracefully. Perfectionists will often deflect compliments with answers like – it was nothing – or – I was lucky. Instead, smile and thank the person for their kindness.

In a perfect world every one of us would be perfect. But in this world nobody’s perfec.

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