Creative Success Newsletter, Number 46--August 2004
Strategies for Creative Souls Series

*Welcome Subscribers

This free newsletter goes to subscribers only and is sent out in
the middle of the month. Please forward this newsletter in its
entirety to other like-minded friends and colleagues who might
enjoy it. We appreciate your support.

**Announcement

Click on http://www.creativesuccess.com and see our new colorful
site with four new Gateways of Services: Activate Your
Creativity, Discover Fulfilling Work, Restore Inner Balance, and
Grow Your Business. We are still adding material, but welcome
your comments and suggestions. We want this site to be a
significant resource for you!

***Our Apologies

I am glad to know that Bill Gates of Microsoft has created a
wonderful Foundation that does good deeds with his millions in
profits, as the Microsoft software certainly has most of us
stressed out too much of the time. We finally untangled (we hope)
the source of the strange symbol that has been appearing in our
newsletter in the past few issues. It is not a virus, but an odd
symbol that just appears which looks like ae, that neither Liz
nor I have been able to see in our copy. We are using some kind
of a Microsoft patch this time which hopefully fixes this problem
permanently. We take great pride in the quality of our work, so
this has been an important challenge to decipher.

****Strategy for Creative Souls #21: Confronting Limiting Myths

For the past four weeks, I have been amazed at how many of my
individual clients and the folks in my Out on a Limb Club
teleclass have been haunted and daunted by myths. These axioms
of "how life should be lived" have a range of origins-family,
friends, colleagues, social theory, outdated norms from the past,
old stereotypes about men and woman, internal demons, or the
projection of other people's fears. All of these myths and
distortions eclipse your ability to claim the life that you
uniquely are meant to live. Common myths seem to be:

1) Your perfect job or career path will hit you like an epiphany
at an early age (or else you are a lost soul)

2) You don't have the right to save your sanity and your health
by leaving a horrible job, marriage, partnership, or business

3) You need to underachieve or play "small" in your life, so that
your friends and family members (or their ghosts) will not be
depressed or threatened by your talent and your success

4) You have to do more than feels comfortable for you in order to
achieve your goals, as opposed to leveraging the power of being
and intention

5) It is not okay to not to know what your next step is (you need
to be in control and have it all together at all times)

6) You will never recover from getting fired or divorced or
rejected by anyone (even if you hate your situation)

7) You can never fail at anything, and if you do, hide it

8) Whatever the truth about your personal, creative workstyle is,
it can't be right, so you can't honor it

9) You have to do things perfectly the first time, which denies
that creativity is a process of experimentation and discovery

10) If you can't be absolutely brilliant or the best at something
early on, it's better to quit than to allow yourself to learn how
to do it-skill by skill

Pay attention to which of these myths are operating in your life
and undermining your personal power. If you can't be the great
artist you are meant to be because you are afraid of making
others feel insecure, reclaim your own destiny. If you are
miserable in any area of your life, chose a more positive
direction. If you are afraid to confront the early stages of
professional growth, tap into your beginner's mind and start
learning the basics. Develop your own list of guiding principles
that honor the human spirit, the imperfections of life, and the
challenges of fear and change. Free yourself from the
limitations in your mind and support yourself and other humans in
the quest for fulfillment. Please share with us your own limiting
myths by sending them to gail@creativesuccess.com and we will
post them in the next newsletter.

Exploding these myths and having the courage to craft your own
path, mandates support. Whatever personal challenges you may
face, you increase your likelihood of success if you admit you
need support to stay focused and brave. If you are ready for
coaching, check out our New Client Specials at
http://www.creativesuccess.com/services.html or join our Fall
three-session Out on a Limb Club Teleclass offered at a discount
price and benefit from group encouragement and brainstorming at
http://www.creativesuccess.com/specialprograms.html.

*****Creative Acts and Resources

While at the Ranch, I discovered a wonderful journal called "A
Light in the Mist: The Journal of Hope" published by Healing
Environments in San Francisco. This journal encourages full
self-expression and living. Their mission is to aid the current
movement toward holistic medicine by treating the whole patient
(mind, body, spirit) and encourage hospitals, hospices, and
individuals to nourish patients, families, and caregivers with
healing environments which offer sustenance to the soul. You can
read the current journal and learn more about the organization at
www.healingenvironments.org.

April 21 is Creativity and Innovation Day. We are planning a
special event for next spring to honor the occasion. In the
meantime, though, Marie-Chantale Turgeon created a website called
Creative Day, to honor stories of creativity in everyday life.
You can log on and read other people's stories and then add your
own. Her site is www.creativeday.unitedsituation.de.

Creatively yours,
Gail McMeekin
Career, Creativity, and Life Choices Coaching, Consulting, and
Writing
www.creativesuccess.com