How Much Joy Can You Stand?: A Creative Guide to Facing Your Fears and Making Your Dreams Come True - Hardcover

Buch 3 von 3: The Joy Series

Falter-Barns, Suzanne

 
9780345439161: How Much Joy Can You Stand?: A Creative Guide to Facing Your Fears and Making Your Dreams Come True
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0345439163 ISBN 13: 9780345439161
Verlag: Wellspring, 2000

Inhaltsangabe

Complemented by accounts of real people who dared to live more abundantly and joyfully, this guide contains tips to help one stay focused, confident, and motivated. One Spirit & QPB Dual Main.

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Aus dem Klappentext

If you're an entrepreneur holding tight to that big idea, a writer with writer's block, or anyone afraid to "go for it!" this is the book for you. In fresh, funny language amply laced with wisdom, How Much Joy Can You Stand? gives you a wealth of ways to break through those walls to creative expression--and provides the inspirational kick in the pants you've been waiting for.

Inside is all the reassurance and encouragement you need to get going and keep going. Stories, anecdotes, and the author's own hard-won wisdom tell the simple truth about creating your dream--it's not as hard as you think.

Discover how to ignite the fire in your belly and get your creative juices flowing; when to run from helpful advice; whether talent really matters; and how to stick with your work even in the face of couch-potato attacks and complete creative meltdown. Hands-on exercises follow each short, pungent chapter to put you back on track toward achieving your goals--and realizing your dreams!

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Why Leap off the Cliff in the First Place?

  Whether you realize it or not, you and you alone have something unique to create. None of the billions of other people who populate the earth has your particular talents, knowledge, experience, and dreams. This is your birthright--the gift you have been given. Whether it's creating the ultimate bagel, a thriving dry-cleaning business, a lifetime of exquisite tapestries, or a child, you are the only one who carries its blueprints. If you've ever listened to that small, still voice in the dark recesses of your soul, you know this is true. Somewhere in there, the longing to manifest this gift speaks to you on a regular basis; it's that embarrassing dream you keep coming back to, the one that usually feels so hopeless.

The purpose of this book is to explore the one thing necessary to move you toward that dream, your own creative process--the steps you must take to turn that dream into reality. Understanding the sometimes-fickle, sometimes-
euphoric nature of all this creating is key to making progress.

So why does there need to be an entire book about the creative process? Because if you don't know how creativity works, you may never realize any of your dreams, whether they are becoming a fine artist, playing pro ball, or managing a mutual fund. Your creative process informs every decision you make, from conceptualizing, problem solving, and networking to deciding which emotion to express. Creativity is not the lone province of artistic types with dirty fingernails living in picturesque garrets. Rather, the creative process is a lifeblood we all share--a fundamental human property with millions of applications. It is essential to accomplishing anything in life that's uniquely your own; it is the engine that drives your dreams.

Unfortunately, there is one small problem. Out there right now, circulating around the atmosphere, is a carload (an eighteen-wheeler load, really) of out-and-out lies about creativity. And if you're trying to pursue any kind of dream, you can't help but get run over by it once in a while. Hopefully, armed with enough information and clarity, you can dodge those madly careening trucks and see your way to the other side. I wrote this book in an attempt to prevent further roadkill.

I figure, all the lies surrounding this process have persisted because we're basically a doubting, disbelieving breed. We have to make up whatever thoughts we can to keep us from doing the work of our dreams, and so the myths persist. In nearly twenty years of my own creative work, many of them spent encouraging others to express themselves, I've seen more people cling to more lies that render them absolutely powerless than I ever thought possible. They believe these lies will keep them gloriously afloat, yet such lies are nothing more than leaky life rafts that will only hold them up for a while before giving out entirely. Furthermore, hanging out on a life raft is no substitute for swimming. Whether you admit it or not, that dream of yours isn't going away. Far from it. It will badger you relentlessly until you finally give in and listen.

Chances are, your dream has persisted doggedly and continues to chatter at you regardless of how often you shove it aside. Look at how it reappears at odd, restless times like the middle of the night or those first crystal-clear moments of the day--whenever you're unusually lucid and your mind is free of clutter. Its voice carries on year after year, decade after decade, growing fainter at some times and stronger at others, but still refusing to die altogether.
It is almost as if we cannot bear these precious, private visions. The very presence of a dream is incredibly threatening, for to take action and actually follow it requires a freedom we think we do not have--not here, not now, not in this secure, comfort-lined world we've constructed to be as seamless and mindless as possible. Pursuing the dream would mean too much hard work, too many demanding hours, less security, less TV! Worst of all, it would mean exposure and even more mortifying ...potential humiliation.

Yet think of how devastating it would be to come to the end of your life and realize you've missed your chance. If you settled for mediocrity and die with most of your potential unrealized, you would have blown it big time, once and for all. That really is the end of the road; there will be no going back.

This withering scenario should never happen at all, for the pursuit of a dream is actually a simple, straightforward affair. Pursuing dreams requires bravery, discipline, patience, and ingenuity, yet these are qualities every one of us possesses--if we're willing to do the hard work dreams demand. If we're willing to honor our creative process instead of fighting it. Pursuing your dreams simply means flexing the muscle of your creativity, slowly at first, but then with more vigor and confidence as you feed it the food of your own passionate conviction and it becomes stronger and stronger.

Creativity is that magic seed many of us assume we were born without. Yet it is lying latent, waiting in every single one of us. This book is about tending that seed, so that it flourishes as effortlessly and as naturally as God, Brahma, the Universe, or whoever originally intended.

Contrary to popular belief, creativity is not a temperamental, whimsical, all-too-fragile breeze that may or may not blow in our direction. This book is intended to smash that myth as well. The fact is, your creative instincts are a lot like your underwear: they're right there in the drawer waiting for you to climb into them every day, durable and dependable, and they don't play favorites. Your instincts are on call whenever you need them, as long as you remember to reach for them. That's really all you need to know.

Well, okay, you say. But why bother with all this dream-pursuing, creative hoo-ha in the first place?

Simply because of the joy.

If you can manage to leap off the cliff and trust yourself to fly, you will experience a fine, effortless joy like nothing else. You will experience a larger connectedness with the Universe and, possibly for the first time, see your place in it and your own unique value to it. You will be doing what you were always, originally intended to do. This is the secret of the whole process. Once you've truly tasted that fantastic fruit of joy, there is literally nothing, not even years of flat-out rejection and failure, that can keep you from its magic. The process of creating the dream becomes too pleasurable to resist.

It may take a while to wade through all your resistance, fears, misperceptions, and basic disbelief in yourself. It may take far longer than you think it should. But if you can just keep going through the process, and trust yourself in a basic way not attempted before, the joy will be yours. Your vision and creative instincts will become stronger, clearer, and more vital each time you connect with them. Your commitment will strengthen, and as it does, the world will cooperate in ways you never would have expected. Little signposts will appear along the way, offering support and encouragement. People will show up, bringing challenges, ideas, or information. Your dream will begin to materialize, the result of nothing more than finally listening to the still, small voice within and acting accordingly.

It is out of my love for this perfectly simple arrangement that I wrote this book. It is also out of my love for you. The joy is available to all of us, right this minute, here and now, forever and ever.

All you have to ask yourself is this: How much joy can you stand?



Try This ...

When the raw stuff of dreams begins to collect, you might want to store it all somewhere. Sprinkle a handful of blank notebooks throughout...

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Verlag
Wellspring
Erscheinungsdatum
2000
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345439163
ISBN 13 
9780345439161
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
192
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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ISBN 10:  0991124820 ISBN 13:  9780991124824
Verlag: Love & Happiness Publishing, 2014
Softcover