Talking #Color With #KENROcam At The Stationery Show 2014

Talking #Color With #KENROcam At The Stationery Show 2014.

Lovely interview on color and stationery with the lovely Leatrice Eiseman!

How to Wisely Navigate Expansion and Contraction

Every corny thing that’s said about living with nature – being in harmony with the earth, feeling the cycle of the seasons – happens to be true.
Susan Orlean

I just love how the Universe works.

While coaching a colleague in the art of reinventing herself, we started talking about the natural phasing the Universe uses everywhere – from outer space to flowering plants.

This phasing is like our breath. We have to take it in before we expel it, and, conversely, we have to expel it before we can take it in. Expansion, contraction; in, out; energy outward, energy inward.

It is a rule of the Universe: before anything can expand, it needs the phase of contraction to gather in the energy. Once gathered in, it can build up enough energy to expand.

Despite the gorgeousness of this cycle, frustration can accompany each phase. But there are also gifts that emerge from that frustration.

Contraction In the contracting phase we often feel that things are stuck, that we want things to move more quickly, that we aren’t getting things accomplished.

This is when we need to look at the gifts that contraction brings. It gives us time to rest; to research; to read for pleasure; to enjoy time with family and friends; to nurture ourselves with massages, good homemade foods and activities that make us happy.

Expansion In the expansion phase we often feel exhilarated and excited because things are moving quickly, the flow is working, the time moves fast and so do we.

Frustration might arise because we can’t keep up with ourselves, we don’t have time for family and friends, we have trouble finding the time to nurture ourselves and our souls.

This is when we look to the gifts that expansion brings. It brings us that exhilaration, excitement and encouragement that fuels our creativity. It expands our work, our reach, our mission. It allows us to meet new people, learn new things, be exposed to a wider range of experiences.

Both phases have their rewards and challenges. One is not better than another, rather each calls out to be celebrated as its own unique gift to us.

Your Invitation
I invite you to determine which phase you are in and turn the frustrations into gifts so that you can enjoy and relish each phase for the rewards it brings.

We may as well make friends with these phases because they happen over and over again.

Out on the Edge

Choosing to Walk a Path Close to the Edge

I got a phone call today from a colleague who over the years has become a friend as well. Her news stunned me. She is separating from her husband, leaving her industry and moving toward a more spiritually based business. I could sense her anxiety, her excitement, her fear, her joy. These are scary transitions and changes, yet she knows that to be true to herself, they are all necessary steps.

She called to ask if I would mentor her through this. She said she realized she was doing what I did years ago and she wants someone to help her negotiate the pitfalls, the surprises, the potholes, the challenges of what she is undertaking.

She was asking me to guide her through that desolate land I negotiated myself years ago.

Facing Resistance, Personal Complexity & Pain

I was stunned because, to tell the truth, when I went through this process of moving from one industry to another, of giving up my job and reinventing myself, of sorting out my personal life and making it more supportive of who I am, I just did it. I did not plan it, it just happened. One day I woke up and just couldn’t do that old life any more. So I started changing things.

It was so hard. I not only had to buck my family and clients and friends but I also had to learn what truly supported me. I had to search my own soul to find out who I truly am in my core. I had to figure out why I was here and how I was to bring that me to the world.

It was hard. But so worth it. So worth it that I have forgotten the pain and effort and fear. Rather like having a baby, I got so enchanted with my new life that the past faded away. I have gotten so involved in the present that the past doesn’t come into my thoughts very often, and when it does, it visits for a short time and leaves.

Honoring My Voice, My Truth

I am grateful to my friend and colleague for reaching out to me today. She has reminded me of the struggle I went through, of the victories I have attained, of the gifts I have been given by listening to my own voice, my own truth and following it even though others around me resisted my changing.

The Edge

An Invitation to Step Close to the Edge

If your life isn’t working, something is out of alignment. If we don’t shift, that situation gets worse. Those nudges we get are there for a purpose. They are there to get us to change, to move on, to rearrange out lives, to reinvent ourselves. It takes courage to do so, but it is, in the end, much more painful to stay stuck.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. ~Steve Jobs

Live. Live your own life. Listen to your truth, step into your own shoes — and walk your path close to the edge.

Human Color Forecaster Or Robot Stand-In? Who Would You Trust With Your Brand Identity?

Fabulous post from Leatrice Eiseman on color forecasting and logos!

Eiseman Color Blog

April 21, 2014

As a general rule, evolutionary alterations are less risky than revolutionary changes. However, with changing times and expectations in the marketplace, some risk-taking can be a real attention getter. It should be a calculated, thoughtful and intelligent change that can be backed up with a meaningful rationale. 

This is not something I can see a robot taking into consideration.

Earlier in April Esquire.com posted an article by Andrew Luecke called Welcome to the High Stakes World of Color And Branding. The following quote is from Andrew’s article, “A paper by researchers at the Institute of Textiles and Clothing at Hong Kong Polytechnic University found that due in part to the accelerated production schedule of fast fashion, color forecasting that “depends on the personal experience and judgment of the field of experts,…is often found underperforming,” while “artificial intelligence models, especially artificial neural network and fuzzy logic models‚… help…

View original post 396 more words

Childhood

 

As childhoods go, mine was not outstanding in any way.  Other than that, I’ve always had good angels:  Angels who kept me from doing things I shouldn’t have, and angels who protected me from harm.

I had the usual problems and just the right woundings to take me into adulthood to create the challenges I would need to deal with. I’ve had plenty of those: challenges that is.  But each one has brought me closer to becoming the person I wish to be.  So in a strange way, it’s all been good.  

The longer I live, the more amazed I am at how few years we spend in childhood, and how many years we spend getting over it.  We literally spend our entire adult lives getting over it!  Isn’t that sort of weird when you think about it?

Gives new meaning to the phrase:  “Get over it!”  doesn’t it.  Well, I imagine one day after I’m long gone I will get over it, but meanwhile, I’m still learning from those early years!

How a Seed Catalog Can Help Your Career

One of the things I have loved best about working with coach Deirdre Danahar these past few months has been her passion about helping people connect with their core essence and how that essence enhances their professional lives.

I know for myself, it wasn’t until I linked into my special gifts and the things that I do best that I was able to excel professionally (and oddly, personally as well).

In this spirit, I offer Deirdre’s second guest column.

How a Seed Catalog Can Help Your Career

 February. Steel-gray skies, frozen lakes, white-cold fingers and toes. And yet it’s a gardener’s favorite time of year: the seed catalogs begin to arrive with their flashy covers and pages and pages of divine possibility.

As you’re leafing through the pages, imagining the fruits, the scents and the colors in your own back yard, I’d like to encourage you to take time to consider your personal and professional “garden.”

Is it time to plant new “seeds” of professional development? Of personal growth?

The seeds in your personal “catalog” are your best-of-self traits, like kindness, Social Intelligence, appreciation of excellence and beauty, honesty (and others). All natural and organic, your best-of-self traits transcend your skills and competencies: they’re the foundational character strengths you were born with (versus skills you learned over time).

 Your Seeds Come in a Variety Pack

 Your “variety seed pack” is a unique-to-you mix of 24 best-of-self traits. (Research ((http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx)) shows that we all share the same 24 character traits and that each of us has our own mix of top, middle and lower traits.)

1. Top-level traits (hardy perennials) are the 3 to 5 traits you use so innately and effortlessly, you often take them for granted as personality traits, not the high-level character strengths they truly are.
2. Middle-level traits (perennials that need specific sun and soil conditions) are the strengths you can easily and reliably call upon when needed.
3. Lower-level traits (delicate perennials that bud only in precise situations) are those that you call on least often and that take the most effort for you to do so.

Using your best-of-self traits with intention and thoughtfulness is essential to cultivating a fulfilling career (and to living your best life). You learn faster. You feel energized, satisfied and most true to yourself when you use your best-of-self traits. You have greater confidence when you take on new projects, and you have more compassion for yourself as you learn new skills.

How to Cultivate Your Best-of-Self Traits

 When I work with clients to cultivate their best-of-self traits, we use a two-part approach: (1) identifying your best-of-self traits in concrete terms and (2) bringing them fully into your work and life.

I’d like to share a simple way for you to begin identifying your best-of-self traits.

Sort Your Seeds

Take a few minutes to write down your answers to the questions below.

• What do people consistently say you do well or compliment you about?

• What do you most value about yourself and the way you work? (Don’t be humble!)

• Which of your traits are sometimes too much, even for those who know you well?

Sow Your Seeds

 Now read through what you have written and highlight, circle or underline the words and phrases that feel most true to your heart. Cluster the words and phrases that seem alike. Those clusters reflect your best-of-self traits. Perhaps you see a knowledge cluster (perspective, curiosity, creativity) or a relationship cluster (generosity, compassion, kindness). Brainstorm 3 to 5 ways you can use each cluster more purposefully in your work (or personal life).

 Tend Your Seeds

 This week, commit to taking on one of the ideas from your brainstorm session. Don’t worry about creating a plan or a schedule, just start by taking one step. By the way, feeling awkward or messy is a normal part of the process. It means you’re stretching, growing. And it doesn’t matter if your step is small or big, a quick sure stride or a tiptoe. What matters is that you take the step.

I’d love for you to email me to let me know about the seeds you planted and what’s sprouting for you.

Deirdre Danahar is a business, leadership and life coach for entrepreneurs and creative professionals (www.inmotioncc.com). She’s a transplanted New Englander living in Jackson, Mississippi, with her husband and alarmingly large cat.
http://www.inmotioncc.com

newsletter & free workbook http://tinyurl.com/inmotionnewsletter

deirdre@inmotioncc.com

@deirdredanahar https://twitter.com/DeirdreDanahar

601-362-8288

***

Thank you Deirdre for again sharing your wisdom and passion with us!

You can get more of Deirdre’s goodness in her free workbook, 7 Rules for Making a Life, Not Just a Living, when you subscribe to her newsletter: http://tinyurl.com/inmotionnewsletter

What’s Even Better Than Work-Life Balance?

Part of welcoming in 2014 is having business, leadership and life coach Deirdre Danahar share her wisdom and guidance with us to get us started of on the right foot!  Thank you so much, Deirdre, for being my guest! Deirdre will also be my guest on Life Potentials radio show (Within Radio Channel, Blog Talk Radio), on February 27 at 8pm EST.  (Link will go live on Feb. 27) We both hope you will join us there to hear more of Deirdre’s great guidance.  Check in again in early February when Deirdre will do another posting here as well!

If your New Year’s resolutions included a promise to yourself to create work-life balance, I’d like you to reconsider. Here’s why: Balance means giving equal time and energy to the different areas of your life. And doing that requires constant evaluation, deliberation and calculation.

It’s hard.

It can feel heavy.

 Here’s what I want you to know:

You can do better than work-life balance. You can create stability and priorities without living within an equation. 
You can have work-life flow. 

Work-life flow is almost the antithesis of work-life balance. Flow does not involve doing arithmetic, or working fewer hours in order to have more time for your family, friends, hobbies and vacations. Work-life flow is deeply rooted in what matters most to you – and what matters most to you is deeply rooted in who you are at your core.

You know that feeling you have when your mind is quiet and you have a deep sense of wellbeing? That’s when you are connected to your core, that’s when you’re in work-life flow. You’re making time for what’s important to you, personally and professionally – without apologies, guilt or anxiety. You feel calmer, more focused and accomplished. Your attention and energy move more easily between work and home. Your life and work are more fulfilling and enjoyable.

So how do you get there?

In my coaching practice, one of the most rewarding and enriching exercises for my clients is identifying and honoring their deeply rooted wants. Below is an exercise that can help you take the first steps to work-life flow.

Honor Your Deeply Rooted Wants

Honoring your deeply rooted wants helps you get in sync with your core, your truest self.

Your deeply rooted wants are intimately connected to the people, places, activities and tenets that bring you joy, restore your hope and fill your reserves (e.g., spending time with your family, leading by example, hiking in the mountains, tackling a project that stretches you).

You may discover that your deeply rooted wants and your loved ones’ deepest desires aren’t the same and that honoring your wants by purposefully integrating them into how you spend your time and energy may initially make you feel a bit selfish. And that’s okay.

Your roots are there to nourish you – not someone else. Let go of feeling guilty by knowing that honoring your wants allows you to give more freely and fully to others.

Identify Your Deeply Rooted Wants

• Brainstorm 7 to 10 roles you could play that would support what you most deeply want for yourself. (Example: Be an unwavering champion. My own best marketer. Enthusiastic amateur guitarist.)
• Now consider 3 to 5 of those roles that resonate in your heart: What would you gain by taking them on?
• What familiar roles do you need to let go of in order to support what you most deeply want for yourself? (Example: Being the fix-it person for everyone. The solitary leader who doesn’t need others.)
• What would you gain by letting go of those roles?

Cultivate Your Roots

Each day this week, use one of your roles as a guiding star for honoring your deeply rooted wants. For example, on Monday, if you select “Be my own best marketer,” check in with yourself throughout the day: If you were your best marketer, how would you act? What would you think? What you would say?

Let Me Know How You Grow

If you have a quick two minutes I’d love for you to email me to let me know what you discovered and experienced.

Deirdre Danahar is a business, leadership and life coach for entrepreneurs and creative professionals (www.inmotioncc.com). She’s a transplanted New Englander living in Jackson, Mississippi, with her husband and alarmingly large cat.

 

2014 Color of the Year

 

Each December Pantone announces the color of the year.  We’ve had Tangerine Tango, Emerald, Honeysuckle, Turquoise, and Yellow in recent years and this year, 2014, the color of the year is:

Radiant Orchid 

 Pantone’s Color of the Year is based on a plethora of criteria, from social events to movies to the art scene to world events and fashion.

Radiant Orchid is a gorgeous color that speaks to many aspects of our lives because it is a complex color made up of many: fuchsia, pink and purple. And each of those is made up of many.

In my book Simply Color I talk about primary, secondary and tertiary colors. The three colors used for the creation of Radiant Orchid are tertiary colors, the combination of a primary with a secondary color.

Fuchsia Fuchsia, which in my book is called Magenta, is created using the primary color of red with the secondary color of purple.  Fuchsia is about seeing the beauty in the details of life, in every facet of life, in every part of nature and connecting with the Divine spark of life in every living thing.

Pink Pink is about the feminine side of life, the motherly aspect of unconditional love and the connection of everyone into the concept of the oneness of life. It is made from adding white to the primary color red. White reflects all the colors, so is highly complex.

Purple Purple represents the spiritual aspect of life, healing, transformation and even transmutation. It is created from two primaries: red and blue, together creating a secondary color.

Radiant Orchid speaks to healing, unconditional and Divine love, and transformation.

It is the perfect color to carry us forward in our quest to create a new way of being on this planet – one based in love and the concept that we are all one. Healing, it moves us from the old to embracing a new way of being: our transition from the patriarchy to a society that beautifully and lovingly blends feminine and masculine energies. It represents, and carries us into, transformation, to a world that is different from the one we now have.

Welcome, Radiant Orchid! We welcome your loving, transforming, healing energy to the world!

To find out more about Radiant Orchid, visit the Pantone website.

New Years Wish for You!

 

What do you hold in your mind?     

 

“Your concept in the mind that things should be a certain way causes pain in the mind. The cause of distress is set concepts in the mind. The art of living is to gain this simple ability in life – just a skill: the ability to free your mind of the past, to free your mind of future fears, and to be able to play with every situation that is in front of you.” ~Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

 

Sri Sri is saying is that whatever you hold in your mind controls your experience of life.

My wish for you this year is to rid your mind of the chatter that keeps you from fulfilling your life’s potential.

Start the new year with a clean slate while remembering the core of who you are: a brilliant, soul-seeking expression and fulfillment of the highest order. You can do this.

Make a pact to live with joy in your heart. Release your fears, your doubts and your pain, and live within the belief that you are worth the effort and time it takes to create a life in full attainment of your potential.

Person of the Year

 

This has been quite a week with the passing of the amazing Nelson Mandela and the proclamation by Time Magazine that Pope Francis is Person of the Year.  One hero and role model has exited while another has stepped on stage.

Someone forwarded an article to me from the Denison Forum on Truth and Culture about Pope Francis’s selection and they said:
“You and I were not chosen for Person of Year, but we can emulate the one who was……Pope Francis tweeted three days ago, ‘If we see someone who needs help, do we stop?  There is so much suffering and poverty, and a great need for good Samaritans.’ we may never be Person of the Year, but we can all be good Samaritans.”

Wise words I wanted to share with you.  We also were not Mr. Mandela, but we can emulate him and his huge capacity for forgiveness.  Who in your life needs to be forgiven by you?  Include yourself if you are hard on yourself and make self judgements like I do.   There is no one on earth who is harder on me than myself.

I try to learn from the Masters among us of whom there are many. They are not perfect because they are human, but each one teaches me something: forgiveness, sharing, focus, living in the moment, lightening my spirit, finding joy, feeling love for myself as well as others, caring for others, understanding, how to listen, how to heal, and many more things.  For those who are false prophets, of which there are many, and those who think they are the be all and end all, of which there are many, take the focus off yourselves and look to the real heroes who do not have to puff themselves up with importance.  They humbly go about the job of living by BEING the examples of how to live a good and meaningful life.  If you have to tell everyone how great you are, you probably aren’t that great.  But if people are telling you about your attributes, you are probably doing a good job of living an exemplary life that inspires others.

This may be the last post of 2013. If it is, many thanks to you all for reading my posts. I don’t post often as there is so much input out there! But I hope that when I do post, you receive an uplifting, inspiring message.  Blessings of the Season to you and a very Happy New Year 2014!