Archives for September 2017

The Surprising Success Question Most Entrepreneurs Forget To Ask

September 11, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

I shouldn’t have been surprised by the report neuroscientists gave to researchers at the Business Insider. This report illustrates the most important question entrepreneurs should ask themselves when they are feeling defeated or “less than” in relationship to their businesses but I was surprised.

Are you ready?

The next time you are feeling lousy about your business, defeated about sales or frustration with the results of your latest social media campaign ask yourself “What am I grateful for?”

It is easy to pop into “I am grateful for the air conditioning.” Well, that’s what I said as I look out the ever present sunshiney day outside which I know has a heat of 110 degrees.

But what I am grateful for right now is discovering this study.

I am grateful to know I have flipped the switch and may use it and stop hitting myself over the head with my frailties and failings of the recent past and remember the successes of the not-so-recent past, back when spirituality and my personal workspace were indelibly combined – and somehow I had forgotten.

Somehow, I had forgotten.

And I am grateful I remembered to stop punishing myself. I am grateful I have memories of successes I facilitated or stood beside. I am grateful for the smiles of satisfied workshop participants and I am grateful for those who published my work early on. I am grateful for those who read and found value in my first book. I am grateful I talked about my first book again recently, something I literally can’t remember doing it has been so long. I am grateful I remembered.

I am grateful I labeled it and grateful I may now share this gratitude with you and invite you into your own gratitude spree so we may collectively shift into gratitude.

What are you grateful for with your business, your cause, your vision for the world?

I am grateful I took five minutes to begin exploring this and am grateful to know my subconscious mind will continue to open the door to more as I go about living my life today.

This is just the beginning. Just the beginning of more adventures I look forward to taking with you.

Now, take five minutes to explore gratitude in relationship to your work.

Remember to report back here, on this blog post – to let me know how things are progressing for you. The world is waiting for your words and your life work – to make a difference now.

Let’s create a gratitude spree – like a shopping spree only better because it is for all of us and we’re investing time and positive energy to create abundance for all. Deep breaths of joy. I feel better already.

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, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Writing Prompt inspired by Jack Kerouac: Your Memories + Awe = #5for5BrainDump Magic

September 7, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Jack Kerouac said, “Write in recollection and amazement of yourself.” This is a territory ripe for self reflection.

Let’s do this.

First, make a list of 5 times in your life when your actions surprised you.

Scan your list to consider and ultimately choose the one time that is the most appealing for you to write about today. Set your timer for five minutes and write, starting with the prompt, “I remember….”

Note: if that first attempt falls flat and your words don’t flow, try a different memory.

Oftentimes there is something in the way of writing from the first memory and the simple act of completing your writing from another memory will ignite writing flow for both.

Bonus: Share your writing experience with at least one other person today.

NOTE: if you would like to participate in a Writing Community, I would love to invite you to be a part of the Word-Love Writing Community I facilitate on Facebook.

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, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Empowered List Making: How the #5for5BrainDump Process Will Ignite Your Entrepreneurial Success

September 7, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

I can close my eyes and be right back there in the moment: Mark Victor Hansen onstage at the Bakersfield Convention Center telling an audience filled with women including me, then a county bureaucrat, the importance of creating a life goals list. A 101 life goals list. He suggested we buddy up with a co-worker to share our lists and then work/play/or allow our subconscious minds to craft methods to bring these goals into fruition.

I went home that night and wrote my 101 goals. I didn’t do it all at once, I made my initial goals quickly without much thought and then I walked away and continued to come back and pop more items onto the list throughout the evening, but I was so excited to share my list with my secretary I was bursting at my ever-passionate, oh-so-not-typical-bureaucrat self.

My secretary apparently hadn’t given it another thought. She said her 101 Goals were to get up every day and go to work and go home. For 101 days.

I wonder how quickly my face fell, how quickly the pallor of resignation fell across my forehead, my shoulders.

Ironic in retrospect: several months later I went on a stress leave after two of my clients threatened my life in two months. In the interim I discovered life coaching and the rest became history including reaching many of those 101 Goals.

My secretary left the county a decade after I did also due to a workman’s comp claim. She met all of her 101 Goals – and went on to create a life of… well. I am not going to judge her life. I am sure it was predictable and filled with love. She was and is a fabulous person.

(Applause says 5 minutes are up!)

Lists are gold for entrepreneurs and creatives and humans in general for many reasons, especially when made stream of consciousness style as we do via #5for5BrainDump and we allow the beauty of what is buried in our subconscious mind to come out of hiding. It is as scientist and best-selling author of Brain Briefs Art Markham said in relationship to listmaking: “It helps you clean out the weeds you couldn’t see.”

When you write LONG lists, the subconscious and the ridiculous partner up because of the sheer volume of the list. It makes it magical and it makes it a practice in making what might seem like drudgery fun.

Here’s the deal: start with a 5 Minute Brain Dump and start your numbered list. Then go about your life and add to your list as ideas pop – which they will because you have ignited your subconscious mind, called it into duty. It WANTS to give you more of what you’ve asked for everytime.

After a couple hours set your timer for another 5 minute writing session. Repeat as necessary. Delight in the results.

Tell us in the comments one to three of your goals from either your first five minutes session or beyond. Would love to hear what this generates AND support your process.

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

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

It starts with intention: What Will You Make Today? What Will You Create This Week?

September 3, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

I was born the little kid who sees the huge pile of animal poo and is excited because… well, there must be a pony around somewhere, right?

If Maya Angelou didn’t say this quote, I probably would have. “This is a wonderful day. I have never seen this one before.”

I laughed when I read it because it is the sort of thing I have said that I would be teased for and when I was a kid the relentless teasing was horrendous, unrelenting and no one seemed to care enough about me to intervene.
I was taught to take it, to ignore it – and there is value in that AND there is value in a child seeing she is worthy of another’s effort in making her feel safe and valued and loved.

I don’t think the lesson was meant to be one of devaluation though. After all, I came out of it all with a perpetual smile on my face proclaiming the good news of women like Maya Angelou.

I must be onto something because my fingers stopped typing. This is what usually happens when I am on the edge of something uncomfortable. I stop because uncomfortable tends to equal (in my mind anyway) “Not good! Danger! Stay out!”

Today a woman who had slept next to an abandoned building asked to use my phone. I held it in my hand and dialed the number, put it on speaker, and together we called her sister. I wasn’t comfortable in handing her my phone to use.

The three-years-ago Julie would have just given her phone over without thinking.

This Julie says “Protect and be generous. They’re not separate.”

On this one and only day and this one and only week we each have a choice to be afraid and run away from situations that make us uncomfortable or we may take action that is both responsible and generous and we may take action that is reckless and we may prove to ourselves how right we were with saying discomfort equals disaster without taking responsibility for our contribution to that negative outcome.

At first glance, I was judging the now-me who didn’t just hand over her phone to the woman who had slept next to an abandoned building. At repeated glance, I see the generosity toward myself and to the lady with whom I shared my phone.

(My timer went off for my 5 minute brain dump exercise. We’ll continue a bit because I have a prompt for you)

Now it’s your turn to write for five minutes. Below this paragraph I have a prompt and I’ve also included some extra nudges to use if you get stopped while in the process of writing, like I did temporarily. If I hadn’t been stumped, I wouldn’t have created that new awareness proving once again if we continue what we start we will be rewarded always.

This brand new day (and week) is yours to invest, to create, to leave your distinctive mark. What will you make today? This week?

Bonus Prompts:

I remember…

My heart reminds me I have said #moreofthatplease: now it is time to stop talking and start acting in relationship to what I have declared. Right now, I declare….

This week I would love….

At the end of the week, it would delight me to look back and see…..

Bonus Challenge: Comment here one sentence from your five minute writing so that I may support you in your process. You’ve got the chance to make this week more exceptional even than this initial intention. Let’s do it together.

Creative Life Midwife Julie Jordan Scott writes on the road,, when she sits in cafes or in train station. She writes, always.

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

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Prompt & Explore – Top 5 Ways to Spend a “Free” Saturday Afternoon

September 1, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Excuse me, loves, while I share something slightly different here today.

Instead of writing for five minutes, I challenged myself to share my first five responses to this question:

What do I love doing with my free time?

I love seeking out literary spots – historical, current, libraries, cemeteries, pubs, homes…
Here I am writing by the graveside of Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women – a highly successful book that hasn’t been out of print for more than 100 years.

you name it – I am there – in any city, neighborhood, state.

2. I love deep discussions with passionate people. I am expert at “ten minute relationships” that restore my faith in humankind.

3. I love collecting vintage items so I scour antique stores, estate sales, thrift stores – and I often repurpose… especially….

4. I love making art with books. Book pages are my most common medium of choice. Splendid times are spent with dyed paper, vintage illustrations….

5. Hiking, sunsets, sunrises, sky-gazing…. Laughing until I cry and crying until I laugh and so.much.more.

Writing Prompt for you – TOP 5 – What do you love (or would you love doing more of) with your “free” time? Yes, I know “free” time is relative.

One of my favorite conversation starter questions is this: “If you had a Saturday afternoon and nothing scheduled, how would you most happily spend your time?”

Set your timer for five minutes and WRITE! In this case, start with a list. As a bonus, consider this a starter list and do your best to get twenty of more ideas to play with to determine how your heart is truly calling you to spend more time.

Often we go with whatever pops first and that isn’t always the most authentic and true.

Another thought? Write for five minutes and then set your idea generation aside. As ideas pop in your head throughout the day (because they are bound to do so) either jot them down or intentionally set them aside for a later-in-the-day brain dump session.

Left – Writing at Walden Pond, like Thoreau. Middle – Adventuring at the Kern River – Right – Writing at the Pacific Ocean in Dana Point

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

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Decide to Make Progress: Tenacity and Abundant Love

September 1, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can change and control your life; the procedure, the process is its own reward.”

Amelia Earhart

I can’t remember how many times I’ve said to my children, “Here I go… faster than a speeding bullet!” and then I stay immobile. I think it started when I was pregnant with Samuel and felt enormous and weighted down with “oh my goodness how will I do this?” and somehow it has stuck all these years later.

For me it isn’t as much the decision to act, but combining the decision to act with the movement itself. I appreciate what Amelia says here and she is certainly a model for decision making and managing risk – but for me it goes one step further.

Fears are paper tigers, Amelia said. (Note – paper tigers are defined as “a person or thing that appears threatening but is ineffectual.”)

Maybe the gold lives in letting go of “oh my goodness how will I do this?” and settling instead into the forward movement, even when I don’t know how. Moving my pencil when I don’t know what it will point out in me, making the phone call when I don’t want to hear the voice on the other end, tying my shoes, stepping out the door and taking the first, second, third, forty second and beyond step.

“Decide” needs to carry an action with it. What popped into my head just now is the first syllable is picking up the foot and the second syllable is the locomotion, the movement, the forward in the direction that calls.

What if for the next few days (or hours even) I reward myself for the process rather than the result. My process here went like this:

I realized I hadn’t done my #5for5BrainDump session.
I wanted to keep my streak going of writing and publishing daily.
I rationalized, thinking how smug I was about writing my morning pages and getting started on a Top 10 list.
“But that isn’t publishing” my writing angel reminded me. “That isn’t brain dumping into blog post.”
I took all the necessaries to move from deciding into action into finished project.

My timer went off, so I am going to go to my website dashboard and prep a page as efficiently as possible. (I did it! less than ten minutes later, here you are loves! Offered with tenacity, a sprinkling of daring and buckets of love.)

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, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.