CREATIVITY + INNOVATION Page 19 of 50

Shared Story: Renee Scheer

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After working in the land of corporate America for over 25 years, Renee Scheer knew something had to change. Her passion for creativity and desire to help people realize their dreams had come full force and she decided to risk it all to fly solo. Last year Renee found the courage to wave goodbye to the office cubicle that was slowly suffocating her, and swap her high heels and smart suits for the barefoot boho lifestyle she’d always dreamed of.

Now, as an artist, guide and facilitator of authenticity, Renee uses her own personal and  business life experiences to help others find what they need to live passionately and joyfully. Renee is a certified life and spiritual coach and she has received several accolades for inclusiveness, leadership and creativity. Today she shares the truth about her journey towards doing what she loves…

Renee Scheer

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Why mindfulness techniques can bring you success in a wired world

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This is a guest post by one of the UK’s leading experts in digital distraction and digital detox and author of The Distraction Trap: How to Focus in a Digital World, Frances Booth. Find out more about Frances here.

We can apply mindfulness techniques to our digital lives in a number of ways to help us boost our productivity.

By pressing pause, increasing our awareness of our digital behaviour, and taking small daily steps, we can move towards increased balance in a wired world. This can boost our productivity and reduce stress.

I was speaking about this recently at an event in Tech City, London, and the discussion sparked much debate. How can we use digital mindfulness to increase our productivity and wellbeing?

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The art of getting started…

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Whether it’s perfectionism, procrastination, or plain old fear that’s holding you back, there’s help and inspiration at hand!

Are you struggling to make your creative dreams happen? Do you have a great idea but don’t know where to start? Or do you have so many ideas that you end up doing nothing? Illustrator and self-professed procrastinator Lee Crutchley admits that he knows the ‘first blank page’ all too well. He says: “Turning ideas into real things is NOT the easy part. It takes work, and delaying the work does one thing – it delays the work.” In his book, The Art of Getting Started, Lee shares some of the fun tasks, challenges and prompts he uses to kickstart his left-brain and get his creative juices flowing. Be prepared to write, draw, cook, explore, and be impulsive as you immerse yourself in creativity in its purest form and take the first step towards becoming unstuck.

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A changing future

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Louise Armstrong

This is a guest post by Louise Armstrong. Read more about Louise here.

With an eye to the future the only thing we can be sure of is change. We are living in a world of flux and often, without us even realising, this alters the way we lead our lives.

I’m excited about the opportunities that lie ahead, but at times it feels like everything I once knew and expected, and the assumptions I had about how my life would play out, are gradually being erased.

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Learning for life – how the world is changing and what it means for you

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Lately I have been reading a fascinating book called ‘Open’ by David Price OBE (interviewed recently on the DWYL blog here). It’s all about ‘how we will live, work and learn in the future’ and looks at how the world is changing faster than governments and big corporations are prepared for or want to believe. It shows how the middle man is being removed from so many traditional equations, and how people power has come alive since the advent of Twitter and other platforms which allow instant global communication, often for free so accessible to nearly everyone.

Some of it is scary – just contemplating the rate of change of technology in the past few years and what that means for our children literally makes your mind boggle – but most of it is inspiring and full of hope. ‘Open’ tells the story of a future which is anybody’s and everybody’s; a future where we openly share our gifts, knowledge and expertise for the greater good, and receive so much more in return. It demonstrates how this is already happening with so many huge educational institutes like the Open University, many Ivy League colleges and huge online learning sites such as Coursera, but also how we have just scratched the surface of where things are going in the future.

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Why teaching (and art) are actually about sharing what YOU need to hear

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Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing the lovely Jessica Swift for one of our upcoming design courses, and among the many fascinating things she talked about, one thing really stuck with me. I asked her where her paintings and designs – particularly those that feature words – come from, and she said “Actually, they tend to reflect things that I need to hear at that time. And because they come from a very true place, they seem to connect strongly with other people who also need to hear those things.”

This made me think a lot about the things we share, do, guide and teach here at Do What You Love. Our upcoming flagship course ‘Do What You Love’ is based on many years of pushing boundaries, taking risks, challenging norms and creating a mindset of possibility, combined with making conscious choices and taking action. That really comes from a place of experience, having made lots of mistakes and unexpected turns along the way. But even with something which is at the very heart of who I am, what I believe and how I live my life, every single time we run the course, something in it reminds me of something I need to hear at that very moment.

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An interview with guest blogger Lara Tabatznik

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Today we’re excited to bring you a Q&A with one of Do What You Love’s new guest bloggers, Lara Tabatznik. Lara is the Founder of 42 Acres, a modern rustic retreat centre, set deep in the hills of Somerset, England. 42 Acres opens in April this year and Lara will curate retreats which focus on healing and transformation. Her unique approach to self-development combines inner and outer work and she hopes it will become a model for social change. 

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Do What You Love Interview – Oliver Burkeman

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Author and journalist Oliver Burkeman wants us all to be happier. Or at least less unhappy. Or perhaps just happy-ish if that’s more realistic. Each week in the column he writes for The Guardian, This Column Will Change Your Life, Oliver explores ideas around social psychology, self-help culture, productivity and the science of happiness. 

For his latest book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, he spoke with psychologists, Buddhists, New Age Dreamers, hard-headed business consultants and other experts to figure out what does work when it comes to being happy. He discovered that what they all have in common is a hunch about human psychology: that in our personal lives and the world at large, it’s our constant efforts to eliminate the negative – that cause us to feel anxious, insecure and unhappy. And that there is an alternative “negative path” to happiness and success that involves embracing the things we spend our lives trying to avoid.

So, with a fresh new year ahead of us, and our minds open to new ways of thinking, we caught up with Oliver to see what advice he could offer to help us be happier in 2015.

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The power and danger of labels

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Happy New Year! 2015 has dawned crisp and clear, with possibility of adventure and an outlook of hope. We wish you much happiness this year and challenge you to make it your best year yet!

This week we wrapped up our Winter Writing Workshop with the question ‘How does it feel to call yourself a writer?’ Sometimes giving yourself a label – even if it doesn’t quite fit yet – can be a really powerful way of helping you believe in yourself, whether that means calling yourself a writer, an artist, an athlete or whatever.

Passion labels can be motivating and confidence-inspiring. But career labels can be dangerous. Here’s why.

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New Year, Richer You. Begin today.

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A lot of people tell us that they want to do what they love, but they can’t because of a lack of money. But when we dig down into it, money is rarely the problem. The issue is usually (1) a perception of how much it takes (too much) or how much they have (not enough), or (2) a fear of not knowing their financial reality if they take a leap from something they know, to something new.

The fact is, security as we know it has all but evaporated in the past few years. Jobs for life don’t exist any more. People are being made redundant left, right and centre from ‘professional careers’. Pension pots are shrinking, and the future is more uncertain than ever.

What if it was actually more secure to do your own thing? To take control of your time, of the way you earn money, of the people you spend time with, in where you live, and how you work?

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