Creative Life Midwife

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth

Listen to Me: You are Exactly What the World Needs Right Now

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One day more than six years ago I sat to write for five minutes on a Sunday morning. I wrote of this belief I had then which I still have now: my writing was created  stream of consciousness style.

I used a prompt based on something from Ralph Waldo Emerson which I translated to this:

You are exactly what the world needs right now: exactly as you are right now.

I wrote for five minutes and when I was done, I sought approval, I needed approval, I was hungry for it.

One difference between the me then and the me now is the me now no longer expects approval. I assume no one will approve or even notice I wrote. This does not mean I don’t want approval. In fact, I have been known to opt out of experiences if I don’t feel included. I’ll just pick up my metaphorical marbles and go home and find someone else who seems to appreciate me.

Both of these facts: the not expecting response and the retreating from experience when I have felt slighted, illustrate my floundering trust in the now much less in the future.

I wonder if that is true for you, too, which is why it bears repeating… and repeating… and repeating….You are exactly what the world needs right now: exactly as you are right now.

I have somehow left my optimism elsewhere and am instead freshly coated with a fresh dose of cynicism. It’s gotten worse this year than I ever thought it would. It seems like our whole society has caught the “snarky” malaise, the angry bickering competitive ugly-ness I have always veered away from and until now have never looked back.

This malaise is detrimental to my health.

Yet here I sit in my dark and quiet living room feeling pangs of hope again.

I love my six-years-ago self. She had so much hope, was so naive even though she had so much pain in her not-so-distant past. Enough of her still reigns in me that I feel another slight tug of optimism.

I won’t assume you will want to read, but it isn’t horrible: i’m not embarrassed about what I wrote. It might even invite a thought my current me wouldn’t think to ask anymore. Maybe it is time for me to intentionally step back into those shoes and slightly less frown-face assumptions. So 2017 readers, meet 2011 Julie.

Note: I wrote one version of this and then my computer ate it. Frustrated anyone? Early on a Sunday morning when my son is hovering like a hawk, waiting for me to take him to one of the city pools which doesn’t open for another ninety minutes when I would much rather be plunked on the porch with my laptop, writing my heart on the page?
So – using my prompt… “You are exactly what the world needs right now: exactly as you are right now.” the 5 minutes may begin…

I wrote this very sincerely and I believe it earnestly yet somehow in between all that rah-rah believe me when I say this thought and love coated eye contact with word-love I heard Billy Joel crooning away, “I love you just the way you are” and my college friends snickering, “So, Billy doesn’t want his woman to improve… would rather keep her in her place so no one else will be attracted to her ever-getting-better nature.”

Now these were the days when Christie Brinkley was either married to Billy Joel or at least involved with him, so I remember raising my eyebrows thinking, “Most men would love Christie Brinkley just the way she is, too… absolutely gorgeous and perfect physically.” but I digress yet stay right on course.

The challenge to women (and perhaps men as well) today is we don’t think “as we are” is just right.

Instead, we buy into the cultural, societal notion that we are never good enough. We are always ten pounds from love or this orthat degree away from that job and one or twenty friends short of popular and if we did this or took that course or prescribed to this wonder pill, all would begin to brighten when in reality – if we changed our perspective and our thinking we would realize we ARE exactly what someone needs right now.

Our stories, our experiences, our listening ear, our chocolate chip cookies or hands to help a friend declutter or hold a crying-almost-complete-stranger – you are exactly what someone in this world is waiting for at this precise moment.

Not the next job you.

Not the next house or apartment you.

Not the skinnier or bigger breasted or more educated you.

This exact here and now you.

You are exactly what the world needs right now: exactly as you are right now.

I am writing this while sitting on my sofa in my messy living room. I haven’t taken a shower yet and my hair needs to be touched up. Badly. Yet I sit and write for five minutes (and then this second five after the computer ate my words) because I firmly believe…

I am exactly what the world needs right now, exactly as I am, right now.

Say it now, with me...I am exactly what the world needs right now, exactly as I am, right now.

And the timer went off and I said, very excitedly in my 2011 version me….. There! Ta-Da!

Let me know, please… anything you are thinking after reading these words hot off the tips of my fingers with no editing allowed.

I think the 2011 version of me was onto something very, very good.

I am exactly what the world needs right now, exactly as I am, right now.

You are exactly what the world needs right now, exactly as you are, right now.

We are exactly what the world needs right now, exactly as we are, right now.

= = = = =

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.

 

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The Why it Happened or the Reason Isn’t What Matters, Responding Now is What Matters: Write What You Need to Say

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I realized something today, something somewhat simple – well, absolutely simple actually. I’m sort of embarrassed to even say it AND I realize in saying it there is power so here goes.

I have spent far too much time looking at who I was “before” rather than being present with who I am right now – and how the who I am right now is far more valuable to the world right now than who I was then.

Ten years ago I had a domino effect of horrible, lifetime movie inspiring themes take place within a matter of months and they effectively shattered me. I was crushed, defeated and fell to my knees with my face hitting the ground in one of those slo-mo fight scene sort of ways.

I attempted to get up and didn’t. And repeat. And repeat. And probably repeated again in that I got distracted and then I got scared and then I got scared of the distraction and while I could still talk a good game and though I kept writing, I didn’t keep taking action that made my work profitable – certainly not at a sustainable level and not as it was ten years prior.

I felt hopelessly stuck.

I talked about it in therapy and got lost in more fear, more breakthroughs but still not forward progress toward sustainable work.

This year my life took another hit and if I didn’t make changes I couldn’t feed my kids kind of crisis I knew something had to give and I fell into yet deeper depression, this worse (if there is such a thing) than I did ten years ago.

Perhaps worst of all is I managed to slowly drip away all sheds of optimism I once carried, so I couldn’t look to light anymore because I couldn’t see light anymore.

About two months ago I called the mental health crisis hotline a couple times, just needing to have the comforting feeling that someone cared about me because I had found my way back into the space where I didn’t want to trouble people in my immediate circles with the depths of my depression and I doubted they cared or if they did care, I doubted they had the resources or the patience to deal with me.

Last Thursday my new therapist asked “What caused you the most pain in the last ten years?” or something like that and I was “struck dumb” as the saying goes in that I couldn’t speak.

It was like a noose was around my neck, pulling tighter and tighter and the pain from my throat became increasingly unbearable with the gravity of the question and my inability to point to one thing immediately just that the question hurt too much to respond to and I didn’t want to start talking because I might start crying and not be able to stop and I am just. so. tired. of. crying.

Odd thing is I’ve been slowly feeling better.

I can’t point to a why or an a-ha moment or a medicine or a new diet or exercise routine. I have been broadcasting daily, I have been communicating with people and leading #5for5BrainDump and I even have a schedule and some pay-to-play programs scheduled which people are interested in taking with me.

I’ve been writing for about ten minutes now. Haven’t edited but my timer went off and I kept going. I know it is best if I stop and come back so I think I will do that, after I re-read and come up with some “moral to this story.”

I’ll just wrap back around to where I started.

I realized today I need to stop looking back at that ten-years-ago story. It is a chapter, it isn’t the whole story. What I am doing now is finally getting up, finally shaking the mud off my face and realizing the mud has kept me safe to a certain extent.

I could talk about my cancer or other such chatter and I won’t, except for what I just said.

Now, and the actions I take in it, are what matters. Being charming, silly, passionate, pull-out-the-soapbox-whenever-the-right-mood-strikes-me JJS is what matters.

Some people will think this writing is self- indulgent and silly. I believe it is helpful to whomever has read to the end. It isn’t for me to judge, it is just for me to hit publish. Which I’m doing now.

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.

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.

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Writing Prompt: Today I am Choosing….

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Our writing prompt today offers a choice in perspectives. To get your subconscious mind started, consider and respond via comment your initial “gut/heart” response to “Today, I am choosing….. “

As you write for five minutes, allow the opposite or different its space if it enters into your writing. This is a part of “righting” your beliefs and experiences. For “righting” practice, try, “I once chose lack and what I discovered was…..” and as you complete each sentence add, “I now consciously choose abundance.”

Here is what I wrote during my time of 5 minutes of free flow writing we call #5for5BrainDump:

Today I am choosing abundance. I look out my window and I see the early morning slanted light, curling its finger at me, inviting me into a day of lush color and form. I once chose lack and what I discovered was black, white and grey scale. I discovered nit picking and rock throwing and finger poking. I now consciously choose abundance. I don’t choose airy-fairy outside reality abundance, I see abundance in the times of mishaps as well – there is something about the dappled shadow-light I especially love.

I grant myself permission to make mistakes when I choose abundance. In fact, it isn’t even a right or wrong thing when I choose abundance it is a “hmmm. Check this out” kind of thing. In fact, I often feel wobbly when I choose abundance because I am practicing the creation of new more empowering beliefs to build my life upon rather than the oft times destructive nature of lack. Lack architecture has building blocks of “don’t do,” and “can’t do” and “oh my gosh, you’re such an embarrassment.”

Abundance architecture is built upon beams of playful experimentation, hugs of compassion when setback appear, deep eye contact and laughter based in love, not lack’s chosen companion of humiliation.

Today I am choosing abundance. I am choosing to agree with divine favor. I am choosing to be open to what comes and discern as I lift my foot and put it down.

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.

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Even If “The” Writing Prompt Isn’t Working, Keep Moving Your Pencil (Or Fingers on the Keyboard) Anyway

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Sometimes writing prompts get you nowhere. This is a reality those of us who write prompts oftentimes don’t want to confess. We think if people are stuck and our writing prompts haven’t moved them on, we’ve somehow failed them. We’ve failed at our life work.

As a writer of prompts, I feel very guilty when folks’ words stagnate from my suggestion. I open the word-love valve wider but still nothing happens.

Here’s the thing: I wrote a prompt and avoided it for three days.

When I finally wrote to it in a #5for5BrainDump the first go-around was good, but I knew I had to go deeper. I know I needed more time, more writing moments.

I tried to take on Jack Kerouac’s quote again… and wrote tangentially. I was supposed to be writing about being amazed by myself and here’s what came off the ends of my fingers, tapping on the keyboard in 5 minutes.

We were sitting in a circle together: about eight of us. I didn’t know any of them very well – it was a circle of women who knew each other by face if not by name. We had a common interest though not much else.

I’ll take responsibility for suggesting we all introduce ourselves but I wasn’t expecting each lady to leap into a snippet of her personal story.  The thing is, everyone was entranced.

I was nervous though because people were starting, generally, with their names and their employers their geography. They were sharing quantity of kids and ages of kids and I just for once did not want to bring my kids into the equation for once. I am at the end of their collective childhoods and part of the letting go is to stop using them as a mold for my identity.

I don’t have a normal employer or a normal geography.

We were sitting in a place owned by a specific political party, which I am not a part of.

I was squirming and uncomfortable in my seat because I felt 100% cast off and wrong and wondered for a moment if I could just escape somehow before I had to confess I was so different than everyone else and they might not want to have me around anymore if they knew the truth about me.

I don’t know how I started. I don’t know how I finished. I do know I talked for what I felt was too long and I apologized for rambling.

But no one chased me away. No one seemed to look down their noses at me. I did mention I didn’t really understand intersectionality even though I live it. I did mention I had a deep respect for Palestine and immediately worried I might offend any Jewish people in the room including a woman I hoped would be my friend.

After all was said and done and we were back in our homes, one of the women wrote in the facebook group her favorite part of our meeting that day was the sharing of stories.

Rambling. Over excited. Laughter. Connections. Memories.

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.

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Remember Yourself with Awe and Amazement: Let’s Write #5for5BrainDump Style Together

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It took me a few days to warm up to this prompt. Seriously, I wanted/didn’t want to write to it and when I finally got down to business with it…. I… well, I’ll let the #5for5BrainDump process tell the story.

Here is a less-than-60 second video of the prompt – some photos are mine and some are from the Lumen5.com very smart process…

And now, written in 5 minutes is my first crack at this prompt. These are, for the most part, stories that are familiar to me. What is more valuable to me is the work beneath these fairly obvious answers.

I want to honor myself and YOU by sharing here. I’m considering this the “Bonus” you’ll see in the prompt itself.

It has taken me three days to even attempt to write on this prompt, not because… well, I am tired of excuses.

When I set my timer just now, salt licked my eyes. Tears – unspent and afraid yet begging me to release them.

So I procrastinate further by drinking coffee and I wonder what I possibly have to be amazed about so I step out of my head and into my heart and will ask myself to begin a list without worrying about how many times I may or may not have been amazed at myself.

  1. I gave birth four times without pain medicine. One time, my first, in a car as it barreled down the freeway. My daughter didn’t survive that birth. She had probably died the day before.
  2. I climbed a 44 foot rock climbing wall at the conclusion of my life coaching training primarily to prove to my trainer that anything was possible. He had told me I couldn’t possibly have 16 life coaching clients so quickly. “But I do,” I told him. His disbelief has messed with my head off and on since but I will always have the victorious climb no one – including myself – thought I could do.
  3. I have couch surfed across the US.
  4. I quit my comfy cushy job and have lived comfortably and uncomfortably ever since.
  5. Somehow when I had melanoma I attracted a surgeon who would give me a heart shaped scar to wear on my face until I die. People have commented, “Only you would actually have a heart shaped scar… which fits you perfectly.”
  6. I returned to acting after a 30 year hiatus. Hi-jinx from that episode include running through Oildale without a shirt on embarrassing my children to no end. What amazed me is…. How focused I was on what the director wanted from me. I love when my acting is so director-actor-collaboration that everything else disappears. I love that. I want more of that. I had a taste of that last Summer when I made a film with Inclusion and a butterfly appeared on set. See #1.
  7. I have won every storytelling competition I’ve joined. I need to join more that I hope not to win so that I may continue to become better. Make that a goal – to be amazed at not winning.
  8.  (is yet to come)

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.

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

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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.

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.

 

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

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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.

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.

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