#5for5BrainDump – Page 3 – Creative Life Midwife

Purpose & Excellence and the Goal Everyone Really Wants

May 15, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

Five minutes of writing: fingers to keyboard, stream of consciousness style, on a busy morning with a pile of “to-be-dones” which will still be waiting when I finish writing. I need to offer my first fruits to personal transformation. If I insist upon shift – this is the express lane to a brighter, shinier – strike that out – more real… life. No apologies for typos and grammatical errors in the rest of this blog post.

Setting my timer and…. write, just write, dump the thoughts on the page.

I open a notebook from October 2016 and see this:

“When I am open to purposeful/excellent, I ….stray slightly. I think…. (and now today’s writing begins.)

Did you ever notice how a-ha’s are waiting around every turn of your day, just waiting for you to notice and bite you in the butt?

No? Yes? What on earth am I talking about?

Yesterday I had a fabulous/horrible/fun/avalanche of a day at Samuel’s school. It was actually really good fodder for self-realization but for many people it might have been just another thing to check off my to-do list.

Interesting awarenesses were everywhere though, even amidst Emma calling me fake (she was right) and another lady sounding befuddled with a smidge of anger (she had every right to be) and feeling like these other ladies don’t particularly like me (why would they? Have I ever showed myself to them fully?)

Note to self: you’re improving. Until recently you would have been in a world of hurt, “They don’t like me,” and “They don’t care what I’m doing, they don’t get me, why bother? It is always no one values what I do or what I think or what I like or…. I just want to help!”

When I am open to what is purposeful and how I might express excellence, I can step outside of my childish (not childlike ego-ic self and realize fully that we are all pretty much after the same thing: connection. And if I remember consistently this is what we are after, I am a lot more willing to be purposeful with a dash of excellence than when I am sullen and thinking no one wants to be on the same team I’m on….

The thing is in this case we are truly all on team human: with all our frailties, all our fabulousness, all our marbles, crayons and the latest video games – we are all in this together.

Timer says STOP WRITING and go about that “to-be-done” stuff now.

It is Tantalizing Tuesday – time to go live the mystery!

= – = – = – =

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via #5for5BrainDump, livestream broadcasts, creativity playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session or to request she speak at your next event, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Today, I am choosing peace. What will you choose?

May 11, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

Today I choose to be at peace.

I have had too much anxiety flowing through my blood lately. I cannot do that anymore. Today I choose to be at peace.

I am no longer willing to allow self-destructive thought patterns to get in the way of my serenity.

Today I choose to be at peace.

I remember visiting Canyon de Chelly with my children: a favorite place for spiritual reawakening and profound joy, a place I have not visited nearly enough.

Today, I choose to be at peace.

When I revisited photos from our visit, I don’t look very peaceful and I wonder what was happening in my heart at the time. Perhaps my love of travel and my children was overshadowing the fear that is sometimes a companion when I am traveling as the lone adult, being the responsible one, being the guide the Sherpa, the tour guide, the doctor, the negotiator the solid rock – that is a lot, agreeably so when it is looked at and examined.

And the trip, though rocky in moments, was a success – filled with primarily positive memories.
Today, I choose to be at peace.

I hear a train whistle in the distance, I feel my heart warm in my chest. Today, I choose to be at peace.

What do you choose to be today? Practice engaging with your choice by writing for 5 minutes, first, repeating your choice as I did here, and allowing your pen or pencil or fingers on the keyboard to create word flow for that tiny slice of time.

Miracles live there – in your 5 minutes of writing flow, the #5for5BrainDump.

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session or to request she speak at your next event, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Tell Your Stories: The World is Waiting…..

April 27, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

This was originally written as a #5for5BrainDump style piece of writing. As often happens when we allow free flow to have its way, some powerful words flooded through. I did not edit so please excuse grammatical and spelling errors. Around here we stand by “process is the new perfection.” (polishing comes, later).

I was feeling nervous and overwhelmed by the process of re-orientation after a whirlwind out-of-town trip. Writing centered me.

Timer set and…. the writing begins.

I could so easily get overwhelmed and I am not going to. I am staying present. I am writing. I am remembering. I am writing as I am remembering and staying present.

This is where I find the gold dust and the stories that are most important to be told find their way to the forefront and because I am taking a mere five minutes to write, the words find their way through my fingers onto the page and I grow in trust.

Right here, right now and you are witnessing it.

The world is waiting for your stories. Right now in Paducah, Poughkeepsie and Paris there are women sitting at their computers feeling slightly asleep and your exact story is the light they have been looking for even though neither of you know it.

Last week my new friend Belen said to me, “Whenever I talk to a person who is down I think, ‘I need to introduce this person to Julie. Julie would make this person feel better…. Because every time I am with you I feel better.”

This was like a symphony playing in my ears personally for me. Belen was just speaking from her heart and she gave me such a gift in reflecting back to me what my stories have created for her. Feeling better. Me, showing up, telling my stories via a writing workshop and paving the way for her to tell her stories first on the page and then… beyond – makes her feel better, makes her world better and echoes out… everywhere she goes because….

I took the time out to tell my story. I got vulnerable and offered myself via a writing workshop. Why? Because I knew someone out there was calling me. In that case, it was someone named Belen. Next, it may be someone named… YOU who is writing or speaking or livestreaming or blogging… for someone specific to you that you don’t even know yet.

The world is waiting for you. Take action. 5 minutes. That’s all it takes. 5 minutes + you = miracles.

And the timer goes off and I sign off….

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session or to request she speak at your next event, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

What Does Gratitude have to Do with It? #ThankfulThursday & Beyond

April 26, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

This morning I was playing with my art journal and gratitude. I gave myself a five minute chunk of time and Emma needed my attention to get to her Philosophy of Religion class. I held her impatience by incorporating her into my art journal page on this Thankful Thursday.

“What are you grateful for?” I asked her.

True to form, Emma was able to start lobbing out gratitudes. Friends, Family, TV shows and the like. “What TV shows?” I asked. “Lots,” she answered, and I interjected, “I’m grateful for Law and Order SVU and even though it wasn’t on last night, there is a trending GIF from last week’s episode. That makes me happy and grateful.”

A sanitary napkin popped out of my purse. “I’m grateful for pads,” I said, “That I have one if I need it.” She countered back with, “I’m grateful I don’t live in a third world country where I couldn’t go to school if I was on my period, I’m grateful I’m not homeless, think of what homeless women have to go through when they’re on their period!”

My kid is smart and liberal and still relentlessly optimistic not unlike her mother albeit she is a bit more cynical.
Gratitude, combined with love, is truly among the highest forces for good on the planet.

Share gratitude for people individually or corporately and watch them blush and shine and continue to be inspired to take action, positive action.

Gratitude doesn’t cost anything.

Gratitude feels good.

My five minutes of writing are up as my timer starts to ring.

What does Gratitude have to do with it?

You tell me. What are you grateful for? Share in the comments – and check out my Instagram Feed and story – which are both filled with Gratitude on Thankful Thursday and beyond.

*This blog post was written #5for5BrainDump style. 5 minutes of free writing – no editing, no forethought, no judgement and prompted only by the title.*

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session or to request she speak at your next event, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Once Upon a Time…. The Magical Writing Prompt + You

April 16, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

All writing, all books, all movies – start with a letters, words and most of the time a single sentence.

“Once upon a time” was perhaps the favorite sentence of my childhood. Having my mother’s undivided attention while she read aloud to me was perhaps one of the singular greatest joys of my childhood.

Perhaps that is why I became a storyteller?

Once upon a time reminds me of a spell, a musical note that says “Listen, you will enjoy this (and I do, over and over again.)
It is also invaluable for those of us who are aiming to rewrite, reframe and recraft our narrative.

That sounds so simple – and yet, I know it isn’t always so – which is why I suggest we start with the less significant moments in time, the everyday experiences and learn to get to know those fully with words prior to diving into the deep end of our emotional narrative.

Let’s try that today: take any scene from the movie of your life and replay it, starting with the words, “Once upon a time” and then let the words flow.

If you would feel better narrowing down your writing choices, look at the last week and make a list of the things that happened in your life and start there.

In your mind’s eye, project that moment in time on your mind’s movie screen and narrate back what is happening as if you are telling it to someone who can not see.

Here’s what I wrote in a description of this prompt on Instagram:

Once upon a time there was a woman named Julie who enjoyed sitting in her recliner, writing for 5 short minutes at a time. Little did she know those five minutes a day would not only change her life, those five minutes a day would change many lives the world over.

(That made me laugh… a bit of levity always feels good.)

And now it is your turn:

All writing starts with words, a phrase and finally a sentence.

Take 5 minutes now and see where in your life you revisit first.

The image to the right could be a moment in time about going to the movies, being at the movies, it might be about being IN the movies. It might be about an academy awards party (that’s where we were) it might be about wining a prize (Emma’s hand is actually in the prize box.)

My writing might begin: “Once upon a time I tried, once again, to make sure Emma enjoyed herself at a time I wish I could have been some place else. Isn’t that an important part of motherhood?”

Or it might begin, “Once upon a time, I walked through the doors of a movie theater and had the experience of seeing myself projected on the screen, larger than life, and praying not so secretly I hoped no one made a fuss but hoping truly that people would make a fuss.”

To practice, start with last week or even this morning, like the section above when I was in my recliner writing. A week later, I am once again in my recliner writing.

Timer set for five minutes? Start writing, now.

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

What Will You Do to Make a Positive Impact in Your World?

April 12, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

I just started the same sentence several different ways because the first few attempts just didn’t feel good, didn’t feel right, didn’t feel like me – so here I will say it again, this time like this:

I feel a deep satisfaction from being constructive, making an impact, showing up and being a light in my corner of the world. If I can say something or do something or share something and a light goes on for someone my heart reaches out and sings –

Today I was doing a livestream broadcast and it seemed like when I made important points the light from the window – the sunrays, shone down on my heart. It was like Divinity was saying “Yes, listen!” This is important, you will feel happy when you cultivate this!”

Trying again.

What will you do to make a positive impact in your part of the world today?

I type those words and wait, hoping some lightning bolt will rise through the ends of my fingers on the keyboard. I look out my window and I think, “There is something here I know it!” and the leaves dance in response. The wind says “You are here, Julie. You are HERE!” and I think…

That’s it. I am here. I am writing. I am showing up at the page, I am sharing with you. I am present.

I think about Emma whose class got cancelled, Emma who is in her room, quiet, and I think she wanted to run an errand and when I am done with this 5 minute writing spree I will ask her when she wants to go – because my positive difference is oftentimes with my children.

I think of Samuel’s carefully crafted birthday wish list, complete with arguments and possible rebuttals covered and all started with “Please stick within your budget, Mom” and “Since it is my birthday and you’re only buying for one person, maybe you can spend a little more than for Christmas.”

I laugh, what a kid, and am so grateful he knows he can ask for things.

I never wanted to and still feel anxious about asking sometimes.

What will I do to make a positive impact?

I am sharing here with you. Perhaps these words will touch you in some way, some way I don’t even have an idea about right now, perhaps you will write and tell me later. I would like that.

Please, comment or send me a note to tell me, “What will you do to make a positive impact in your part of the world today?”
When you respond, I suggest you go more deeply into what you will do, with a specific, absolutely non-generic response. I want to know the goods – the excellence within the goods.

What will you do to make a positive impact in your world today?

As you are writing, repeat the prompt.

I wonder for a moment why the timer hasn’t gone off yet?

Because I neglected to set it – and I suppose you were best served by repetition.

Let’s get those pencils moving, those fingers on the keyboard dancing. Share with me. What will you do to make a positive impact in your part of the world today?”

Use this question as a writing prompt, a meditation or a reflection question. Please be in touch and let me know how this prompt served you.

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Take Time to Reflect: Mindful Action = Amplified Results

April 9, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

I alternated this morning between angry, sad and anxious.

Hardly a productive combination of ways of being: more like a recipe for turbulence and possible destructive action – which tends to create more emotional carnage and rarely anything with an ongoing positive flavor, at least not in my life.

So far this morning I have cried and fretted. I have cleaned and sulked. I have edited some images and now, finally, I am writing,

I managed to have small moments of reflection primarily because I know reflection will (eventually) yield results though sometimes – in the process – reflection feels pretty lousy.

I wrote a micro-poem in a moment of anger this morning. I like it but I probably won’t rush out to post it all over social media because then my reflection turns into someone else’s pain. I don’t want to cause pain. Ever.

Reflect in short bites. If it feels lousy at first, let it feel lousy with one caveat: attempt to keep your lousy in your own realm.
Write, art or exercise out your reflections as a means of digesting whatever appears. Sometimes one, two or all three (and repeat) is necessary.
Add an element of forgiveness into your process. Like in #5for5BrainDump when we focus on gratitude at the end of our five minutes, focus on forgiveness of yourself and others when you are completing your reflective time. Punctuate with gratitude and intention as feels right.

Interesting to note: in simply writing these words (total time investment about 7 minutes) I feel better. I feel less cranky, less anxious, less fretful.

Week ahead: I am coming your way. We are going to be great together!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

A is for Ada: Literary Grannies from A to Z/2018 #atozchallenge

April 1, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife 4 Comments

Please welcome Ada Lovelace, the first purely STEM writer to grace the Literary Grannies canon.

Ironically she is the daughter of 19^th Century rockstar poet, Lord Byron, who she never met. She was entranced by the man whose portrait hung covered in her mother’s home, but her mother was so consumed with not wanting her daughter to be a fanciful poet, she hired tutors in mathematics in order to distract her daughter’s possibly poetic mind.

Ada instead created a fanciful flying machine, meticulously designed with her brilliant mathematical (and my best guess also lyrical mind).

Her mother worried needlessly about Ada, who teamed up with Charles Babbage who devised the plans for “The Analytical Machine” – a general purpose computer. Ada saw the applications for the Analytical machine could go much further than computation and she published the first algorithm and instructions for how to use it with more depth.

Ada is the first STEM writer to appear among Literary Grannies and the first since I stared CreativeLifeMidwife.com.

Her full name was Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace. She was born December 12, 1815 and died November 27, 1852

Writing Prompt: Think back to what your mother hoped for you when you were a child? How does that differ from who you are now (or how is it the same)? Write about it – take 5 minutes and write, free flow style.

Julie has participated in the A to Z Blog Challenge for several years and is thrilled to be back, once again with Literary Grannies. Follow here throughout April for blog posts featuring women of literary history along with a daily writing prompt that reflects each featured writer.

Julie Jordan Scott is the Creative Life Midwife: a writing coach who specializes in inspiring artistic rebirth for those who may have forgotten the pure joy of the creative process. She offers individual creativity coaching as well as creating individualized programs for businesses and groups in the form of workshops, webinars and more. Contact her at 661.444.2735 for immediate assistance with facilitation, speaking or experiencing an enriched life now.

Stream of Consciousness Sunday: So Be It, Yes, Amen!

March 18, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

Stream of Consciousness Sunday used to be a normal part of my Sunday Morning. Various bloggers I knew started them up and off our words ran, five minutes at a time, and was actually a sort of conduit or foreshadowing for #5for5BrainDump. This morning as I prepare to start another week long adventure in #5for5 I decided to clear my head with some freewriting.

Here is what came from it letting my words loose without any forethought or edting. Just writing. No wrongs, simply words on the page, writing.

“Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door. ”
Coco Chanel

I listen to fiddles and classic energetic celtic music.

Emma was frightened by the binaural beats music last night and I didn’t want to frighten her. I am writing in my corner, in my recliner, in a position I haven’t used for months. It feels good.

I sat to write about how to use my time most productively today.

I don’t want to waste it: time that is. Emma comes back and starts to do a contra dance, by herself, and I am glad she is happy, because when she isn’t happy I get plugged in and start feeling miserable, too. I thought of going to church but on this day – oddly enough – I want to stay home.

Katherine is preaching today, or more accurately did preach. She is seeking a position with a church 3,000 miles away from me. I wish I was closer. Her husband is most likely preaching in his church, separate from her and she is comfortable with this. I don’t know that I would be I so value the presence and applause from those closest to me.

(This is a weakness of mine – this chronic hunger for approval and something I have been working on in rewriting my narrative.)

Back to the question.

Time. Best use of. Not beating on walls thinking beating on a wall will make a door appear because it won’t unless it does. Like turning a wardrobe into a forest or a candlestick into a guy named Lumiere who lightens up the darkness.

Best use of time: focus on planning for the week and cleaning up messes still left from last week.

I see a man jog by my house, he is slightly off focus, looking at something in my neighbors yard.

I had two dreams early this morning that are slightly distracting me but not.

My five minutes are up.

Lumiere, lighten my wall banging and ask my dreams to settle in behind my conscious thoughts so I can simultaneously collaborate with them while I get my tasks ticked off my list.

Amen and amen. So be it and yes.

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She created the process #5for5BrainDump that has birthed books, breakthroughs and many more livestream broadcasts. Participate in this process via livestream – to check the current schedule visit #5for5HQ

She is also a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Soften: A Word that Earths (And Opens the Heart to Transformation) #7MagicWords

March 17, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife 2 Comments

This word rose from my chest. I was compelled to find a quote because that is often a part of my process – perhaps it is the community builder I am, reaching into collaboration. I knew when the quote I first found was from Mary Oliver and it was about writers – that soften was indeed the word. And then my heart fluttered toward Flagstaff and the Frozen Labyrinth experience I had there several Christmases ago.

Enjoy – My Day 2 flow into the #7MagicWords challenge from Marisa Goudy :

“Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing – soften their roughest edges – to accommodate themselves toward a group response.”

Mary Oliver

What follows is free flow writing for 5 minutes… no corrections, no fixes, no forethought. It isn’t concerned with appearances… isn’t toughened up by the editorial eye. It is soft and getting softer as the insights open. I’m grateful you are here, reading.

= * = * =

I’m not sure if this was meant to be something… I don’t know if my family meant to have me believe. I don’t remember ever hearing this but…

I have believed for my whole life that it is wrong to be weird, that nerds or freaks or anyone “out there” was wrong and above all, I needed to avoid wrong or different.

This is sort of in direct opposition to the family member most revered and treasured (or so it felt) my brother John who had down’s syndrome – and ironically squared, as a child never spoke about his down’s syndrome.

Things would be talked about like institutionalizing him and people would stare when we came into a setting but none of that different-ness that so many others saw as wrong was ever spoken. The first time someone actually spoke to me about having a brother with down’s syndrome was when I was seventeen and a co-worker asked me what it was like having a brother “like that” and on a playground a child asked my daughter, “Why is your uncle such a freak?”

My daughter shrugged and kept playing. I smiled, thinking how great it was that she didn’t get upset.

I talked to her about it – to see how she translated what the other child said.

I am comfortable calling myself eccentric. I don’t like being called a freak, though. Freak connotes cast out. Eccentric softens the freak, even though “Fly your freak flag” is something people say –

I pull my hands from the keyboard and hold my chin and my face in them, trying to make some sense of the curvy direction these words are going, sort of labyrinthean like the image I chose to go with “a word that earths.”

With age, my skin feels more dough-like. Softer.

I do not need to be afraid of softening, being a freak, or getting older.

My writing is strange and wonderful in its Labyrinthean shape. Having a freak for a brother was a huge blessing in my life. He paved the way for me being a mommy to a child with autism and another child who has bi-polar disorder.

The primary difference between John’s different-ness and my children’s is we can see John’s. It was obvious. There wasn’t any hiding of it behind a “I’m just like every other person here” look.

John’s down syndrome softened his proclamation of different-ness. My babies and I look “normal” and surprise! We are not.

Rewriting the Narrative: We are much better than normal as was my brother. Strange, wonderful, freak, unconventional, eccentric, darling dear lovely soft… me.

Note to self: challenge of all challenges is to move this from words on the page into deeply rooted belief. PS We can do this!

I do not need to toughen up, another urge I was offered when I was young. I am choosing, electing, embracing etc my softness, my softening.

This is an exploration of self via free flowing personal narrative. I’m using the “5for5BrainDump” model which grants a person the gift of 5 minutes of timed writing to dump whatever comes onto the page without editing, forethought or judgment. What appears on the page and out of the rambling mind is remarkable.

These thoughts are posted unedited and will occasionally include an extra session or two to get to the depth the person feels necessary. Sometimes, the person (in many cases myself) backs away from the writing because… it is uncomfortable, she feels like something is about to crack open or she becomes bored and drifts away momentarily.

It is important to give license to stop and continue, stumble and continue, rant and scream and cry… and continue. This continuing is where the transformation happens.

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.