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Daily Creativity Prompts deliver a perspective-shifting zap to your creative process.
See Grace Kerina’s Creativity Prompts Compendium for more tools to spark your genius.
Related reading: Creativity Prompt |94 ~ Highly Sensitive Havens
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Daily Creativity Prompts deliver a perspective-shifting zap to your creative process.
See Grace Kerina’s Creativity Prompts Compendium for more tools to spark your genius.
Related reading: Creativity Prompt | 90 ~ Interview | Nan
Founder and President of Echo Memoirs
After Sam felt the loss of not having recorded her grandmother’s life story, she became curious about the life stories of the people around her. In 2001, her fascination became a business. Since then, the capable Echo Memoirs team has ushered more than 200 stunningly beautiful hard-cover memoirs through the process of creation for their clients. They have a cry rate of 100% upon delivery of their books.
In 2005, Samantha was named one of the Top 40 under 40, an award given out by Business in Vancouver magazine to British Columbia’s top business achievers under the age of 40.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In what way are you most successfully sensitive?
I have always felt like a conduit for people’s energy. If the energy around me is positive, I am boosted by it; if it is negative, I am weighed down by it. Since I have the good fortune as a business owner of being able to select the people that I want around me at work, I have made a conscious effort to pick positive people. The result for me is that when I come to work, I am inspired and motivated by my colleagues. And my business is impacted in a very real way — our clients love working with our team so they refer new clients. I have never paid for a lick of advertising and my business doubled its revenues five years in a row. In my personal life, the formula is easy: attract positive people, add me, blend thoroughly, enjoy.
What or who has inspired you to embrace your sensitivity?
Perhaps it’s having been an only child, but my pattern has always been to remove myself from situations in order to reflect upon them. Simply put, I need to be alone to really think. Or more specifically, I need to be away from familiar places and people. In my early twenties, I travelled a lot: Europe, India, Central America. I drove 45 minutes to Chilliwack once and camped in an RV park for the weekend in the back of my mom’s Toyota hatchback – all to get some much-needed perspective. This string of solo wandering fortified me with the strength to let old, unhealthy relationships fade away and recruit juicy, positive people into my life. Somehow, being away from it all clarified what and who in my life was sinking me and what and who I needed around me to let me float.
What are your eternal fascinations?
What it means to be truly hungry for honesty, in myself and others. Living life between the highlights. The enormous capacity for miscommunication. Where creativity comes from.
What quest currently captivates you?
I read recently about a writer who was asked if he meditates. He answered: “I have a profound relationship with meditation; I think about doing it all the time.” I can relate to this. I am captivated by the adventure of going inward and yet I find myself deftly avoiding it at every turn. I just turned 34 and am determined this year to dig down there and dance, once and for all.
What is your favourite kind of help to give?
The spontaneous kind that activates my brain to think big.
Photo from the Echo Memoirs website.
Related reading: Interview | Paulina Bustamante, Sensitivity, Curiosity, and Leadership
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Daily Creativity Prompts deliver a perspective-shifting zap to your creative process.
See Grace Kerina’s Creativity Prompts Compendium for more tools to spark your genius.
Related reading: Creativity Prompt | 101 ~ Effectiveness vs. Efficiency
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Daily Creativity Prompts deliver a perspective-shifting zap to your creative process.
See Grace Kerina’s Creativity Prompts Compendium for more tools to spark your genius.
Related reading: Creativity Prompt | 66 ~ A Forgiving Tale
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Daily Creativity Prompts deliver a perspective-shifting zap to your creative process.
See Grace Kerina’s Creativity Prompts Compendium for more tools to spark your genius.
Related reading: Creativity Prompt | 35 ~ Pep Talk | Reach Out
The Vortex of Anxiety can be indiscriminate, sucking in whatever’s nearby, quickly growing stronger and suckier. Don’t let this happen to you. When the dirty sink, the unsent birthday cards, and the way you’ve never really been properly loved fall into the vortex of the job interview that bombed, your mantra is simply, “Oh, never mind.”
Never mind everything that sucks.
You’re a good person – deep down, where it counts. Your good karma is stacked up higher than anything Dr. Seuss has ever envisioned. In order to focus on the source of the current anxiety (that job interview) so you can process it and move beyond it, studiously ignore whatever else tries to elbow into the mix.
Tunnel vision saves lives. Leave the socks on the floor. Just walk away.
If the original anxiety won’t give up its hold, even when you forsake all other anxieties and give it your full attention, you must strong-arm it, too, with the “Oh, never mind” treatment. In such a case, take “Oh, never mind,” to the limit and employ a distraction intense enough to blot everything out. Take charge of your own attention.
When you can’t be bothered, don’t be.
{ PEP TALKS deliver a bracing blast of Grace }
Flickr photo: Hell’s Pit, by fdecomite.
Related reading: Pep Talk | Keel Over, Avoid the Rush – Finish Last
My husband and I are both … hmm … how shall I put this? Let’s go with finely tuned and move on.
We’re also products of different cultures. (I’ve often thought of charging admission to some of our entertaining conversations: the optimistic, anything-is-possible American (me) exchanging views with the pessimistic Cold-War-era German from West Berlin.)
To cut through all of our (various, hilarious, absurd, genuine) objections to any proposed plan for having fun together, we’ve invented our own version of the blind date.
Here’s an example of how it works:
Our rules are:
We’ve both been wowed and charmed as the “blind” person in the equation, escorted to experiences we’d never have chosen – or even agreed to – had we known in advance what they’d be. And we’ve both had the gleeful pleasure of the visionary escort, crafting experiences that delight us both.
Like traditional blind dates, our version opens up possibilities. Unlike the traditional version – thankfully – we know we’ll be spending time with someone we already love.
This version of blind dating works with all kinds of relationships, not only romantic ones. Evolve it for your own best use. And report back here, would you? I’d love to know how things go.
Flickr photo: Blind Light, by Anthony Gormley, on ricoeurian‘s Flickr page as within the fog…
Related reading: Funny Practice, How to Mingle at a Party | Tips for the Timid
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Daily Creativity Prompts deliver a perspective-shifting zap to your creative process.
See Grace Kerina’s Creativity Prompts Compendium for more tools to spark your genius.
Related reading: Creativity Prompt | 25 ~ Living with Questions
Welcome to the newly updated look of Highly Sensitive Power.
The home page is now a static page rather than the blog. I wanted to give the other parts of the website which are continually growing more opportunities to be found. The Blog remains as it was, but now requires a click from the home page to get there. Some page names changed slightly. For instance, About the Site has been shortened to About.
The information on what was the Resources page has now been split up into the various compendiums, organized by topic. This way, the resources can continue piling up and will be easier to find and browse through as they accumulate. See the Compendiums page for the expanded listings (and Website-Creation was updated).
Grace’s Books has morphed into Goods to prepare for including more than books. The Creativity Prompt Cards and Mini-Manuals mentioned on the home page are included a little prematurely to make the visual symetry of the home page work out. They’re in the process of being created.
If you run across anything funky that needs to be fixed, please don’t hesitate to let me know by sending an email to grace@gracekerina.com.
Thanks to all of you who continue to enrich my life, make me cry (in the best of ways), provide me with inspiration, and support Highly Sensitive Power. Not only couldn’t I do it without you – I wouldn’t want to.
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Daily Creativity Prompts deliver a perspective-shifting zap to your creative process.
See Grace Kerina’s Creativity Prompts Compendium for more tools to spark your genius.
Related reading: Creativity Prompt | 74 ~ Pep Talk | Keep the Faith
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Daily Creativity Prompts deliver a perspective-shifting zap to your creative process.
See Grace Kerina’s Creativity Prompts Compendium for more tools to spark your genius.
Related reading: Creativity Prompt | 43 ~ Giving Up Housework
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Daily Creativity Prompts deliver a perspective-shifting zap to your creative process.
See Grace Kerina’s Creativity Prompts Compendium for more tools to spark your genius.
Related reading: Creativity Prompt | 24 ~ The Perpetual Support List
Oh, maps … oops. Sorry, I had to stop and wipe the drool off my keyboard. If you want to hypnotize me or calm me down, just shove a map in front of my face. My eyes will glaze, I’ll acquire a foolish grin, and my hand will reach involuntarily toward the map.
And if the map is imaginary, I’ll be lost. I’ll gladly roam the unfamiliar world, curious to discover not only another land but another mind.
These are (so far) my favourite sources for imaginary map adventures:
Strange Maps ~ I heartily thank the apparently anonymous creator of this website for regularly making me giggle, gape, and ogle. The author wrote this in the site’s long-ago first post: “I like maps. I like weird maps, the kind you won’t find in a regular atlas. Maps of countries that never existed – or never will exist. … here are the weirdest maps I found on the internet.”
Holly Lisle’s article “How I Drew a Map and Sold Three Books and a World” ~ Holly Lisle is one of my favourite online sources of writing encouragement and resources. Make sure to click on the little pictures in the article to see larger versions of her map creation.
You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination
The Dictionary of Imaginary Places
Slightly off-topic bonuses:
The Agile Rabbit Book of Historical And Curious Maps
The World of Donald Evans
Flickr photo: Early Morning Balloon Trip, by bestfor.
Related reading: Being Home, Pep Talk | Grope
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Daily Creativity Prompts deliver a perspective-shifting zap to your creative process.
See Grace Kerina’s Creativity Prompts Compendium for more tools to spark your genius.
Related reading: Creativity Prompt | 85 ~ Pep Talk | Lead
