Archive for January, 2013
Friday, January 11th, 2013
I’ve just arrived back from the village of Kingston in Canterbury having spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon in the delightful home of Lizzie and John Hopthrow.
Lizzie has generously offered us the use of the land at their home at The Quiet View in the village of Kingston in Canterbury to run the first in our series of Writing with the Senses workshops this month on Saturday 26th January from 10am-4pm.
We hope you will join us on a day of writing where you’ll coax your writing back onto the page with a series of writing activities and exercises stimulated by the senses and nature.
Whatever your writing genre this workshop offer you time and space to write and generate writing that will inspire your writing and creativity in other areas.
You’ll also benefit from a 30-minute follow up coaching session with me along with the Writing with the Senses e-book.
My workshops are known for the intimacy that is quickly created in our groups, the creativity that is introduced with each activity and the depth that writers reach when writing in a true and authentic way. To put it mildly our workshops are always special which is why we’d love for you to join us. For more details check out the Resources page on our website.
We’ll be housed in the delightful Yurt surrounded by sheep, horses, a great skyline and of course Dusty the cat who took her first walk on the Yurt roof today and wouldn’t come down.
For those travelling from London there’s a fast train from London Victoria to Faversham and we can arrange pick-ups at a small charge.
In the meantime enjoy some of the photos from our visit today to prepare for the 26th.
For more details on Quiet View check out www.quietview.com
I look forward to seeing you.
Have a SUPER weekend and make sure you wrap up warm.
Jackee
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Saturday, January 5th, 2013
Welcome to the final free gift in our series of free Manifesto’s for the start of 2013. We’re really excited about our Nature Manifesto and love the cute design our designer Chi created for this Manifesto.
Sometimes people are really curious about why I have a Tree blog on my website? I follow up the question with a question, ‘Where would we humans be without trees and without nature?’ The answer is quite simply, ‘We would not be here, full stop.’
In my work as a coach, a coach trainer and a creative writing tutor an essential part of my work is helping individuals from all walks of life return to their true nature.
Some of the common challenges I work with in my coaching practice are individuals feeling depleted and lacking in energy and motivation, feeling uninspired, stuck and lacking ideas or feeling that they’re coasting along, embracing the status quo and not making much of a difference.
In fact I’ve felt all of the above and more many times in my career and have turned to nature to help lift me out of that sinking black hole.
Embracing nature more intentionally and wholeheartedly can be the cure for all of the above and much more. That’s why great thinkers like Sir Isaac Newton (gravity) and George de Mestral (velcro) discovered many of our greatest discovers whilst out and about in nature.
Nature is an amazing resource that restores and replenishes diminishing energy levels naturally and effortlessly. It’s a great environment to engage in more generative and creative thinking.
Our best ideas don’t come at our desks, in team meetings or in the boardrooms but out in nature where the mind is free to roam and freeassociate, think outside the box and find it’s own original solutions.
Even more nature refills the hole in your soul and lifts your sometimes failing spirits. Nature is a flourishing resource at our fingertips despite our ravaging of her resources she still has so much to give that we can naturally gain and benefit from.
Right now I’m sitting in bed on a Saturday morning and listening to the different distinguishing bird songs being played out along the South London skyline where I live. The birdsong is both enchanting and comforting, encouraging me to relax and soften into my own body and thinking in the moment. Such are the many jewels nature holds for us at no cost.
In 2013 discover ways in which you’ll get out and connect more with nature. Place our Nature Manifesto somewhere prominent to remind you of the values of reconnecting with nature and natures valuable contribution to your physical, mental and spiritual well being, your business and leadership and expanding the reach of your own inner nature.
If you’re inspired by any of the Manifesto’s in our series how about writing your own Manifesto for the year ahead and give your year that creative kick start it well deserves.
Click here to download our Nature Manifesto
Click here to download the Nature Manifesto Wallpaper for your desktop
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Saturday, January 5th, 2013
I’ve been a student of the writing process for over thirty years. In that time I’ve read hundreds of books and articles on the creative writing process, attended numerous writing and creativity workshops, facilitated writing workshops and retreats for writers and been coached by writers and authors around the world.
We’re living in a world where writing is one of the most powerful forms of communication and is not just left in the hands of the traditional writers and authors of past generations. Writing belongs to everybody and everybody is potentially a writer.
Whatever your business whether you’re working inside an organization or outside of an organization either as an artist or entrepreneur we all need to develop the skill of communicating through writing.
Every business, entrepreneur, artist, employees needs a platform and platforms are where we tell our stories whether through images or words in order to communicate the core and heart of our business.
There’s no leadership without engaging in writing. Therefore all leaders need to engage and embrace some form of a writing practice in 2013.
That’s why I created the Writing Manifesto for you. In one place I’ve distilled some of the nuggets I’ve learnt about the writing process as inspiration for embedding your own writing practice that will help catapult your platform in 2013.
These tips are universal and apply to you whether you write a blog, keep a journal, create business content for your website or contribute to a company newsletter.
Our Writing Manifesto contains 13 tips on the writing and creative process. You might choose to start off this month by working with just one or two of the tips and then move onto new tips over the coming months.
Wherever you begin I suggest that you have a notebook to capture ideas and thoughts. The world needs your creativity and ideas. No leader should be without some form of a notebook in 2013.
It’s available as a printable pdf or downloadable as wallpaper for your desktop.
Click here for the printable version
Click here for the wallpaper version
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Saturday, January 5th, 2013
Welcome to the first of our free gifts for the New Year. Our Creativity Manifesto is a collection of 8 tips, which remind you of the need to put creativity on the map in 2013 and invest regularly in your own creativity.
Right now the world belongs to the right-brained creative’s who are adaptable and flexible and many of you are sitting on an untapped resource by not unleashing your creativity in all areas of your life.
Whether you work in the corporate, world or work for yourself we all need the skill and ability to think outside the box. Creativity does not belong to the artist gurus of this world, it belongs firmly and squarely in the hands of the likes of you and me but we need to give ourselves permission to use it.
Our Manifesto contains simple guidelines and reminders as to how you can bring your own creative life force alive in your day-to-day actions and routines. Bill Moyers captures this when he wrote, “Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.”
Putting this Manifesto together and the other two in the series (Writing & Nature) is an example of my own creativity at work.
I noticed the feelings and sensations created when distilling my experiences and knowledge about creativity into these tips.
I felt excited in the moment, enjoying the process of handing over the list to our designer who put her own magical creativity to work to come up with the design for each of the Manifesto’s in our series.
I wanted a different way to share my thinking around creativity and engaging in my own creativity helped me to define that.
I’ve launched the Creativity Manifesto on the Coaching blog because I believe that creativity and expressing ourselves creatively is an essential part of our personal and professional development and can often be overlooked in pursuit of higher, perceived, loftier goals.
I believe that by developing your own creative intelligence just like any other business skill will take you further than you could imagine in the coming months ahead.
Creating our series of Manifestos (we have two more on offer Writing & Nature) in the gaps and the spaces in between the mundane tasks in my day left me feeling satisfied and fulfilled. Making the space to play with my creativity in this way generated ripple effects in other areas of my work life in very positive ways.
Often what’s lacking from your life and work is that creative life force or creative edge. In 2013 without creativity on tap you won’t get far without it.
You can download your printable Creativity Manifesto here
or click here to download the Creativity Manifesto Wallpaper for your desktop.
You’ll find the Writing Manifesto on the Writing blog and the Nature Manifesto on the Trees blog
Welcome to your creative world.
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I’ve just arrived back from the village of Kingston in Canterbury having spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon in the delightful home of Lizzie and John Hopthrow.
We’ll be housed in the delightful Yurt surrounded by sheep, horses, a great skyline and of course Dusty the cat who took her first walk on the Yurt roof today and wouldn’t come down.
