Category Archives: Inspiration

Big Results from Short Sharp Application of Focus

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Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

Most careers now are made up of a range of activities, with a range of attendant skills. Some tasks are fun, allow us to express ourselves, and are easy to focus on. Others are necessary but less interesting and less intrinsically motivating; transforming these can lead to breakthroughs in success.

The things we avoid are often what stand between us and where we want to go. I knew when I published my first book that consistent attention to digital marketing would create the life I dreamed of. There were all sorts of courses and books to tell me what I needed to do – but none of it inspired me, and I let it slide. Commitment of significant time to tasks I didn’t enjoy wasn’t part of the dream. 

Looking into my own history and that of the clients I’ve worked with over the years, this type of pairing is common: a vibrant vision out of reach on the other side of an unpalatable task. Once identified, it’s obvious we can do something about it. Focusing a different type of attention can yield unexpectedly simple solutions.

Step one is to allow yourself to powerfully experience the goal. You may have been downplaying its pull or distracting yourself from thinking about it. If it’s something you really want, then give a bit of time to exploring it, brainstorming, enjoying the imagined detail. This gives energy and momentum to the next steps.

Step two is to identify what’s in the way. A boring, repetitive task? Marketing activity that isn’t guaranteed to work? Thinking you need to make a living from something right away, when 80% of the enjoyment could come from doing it in your spare time? Having a conversation you would really rather not have? What is it, specifically, in your case?

Step three is to open your mind and look for an easier way. Be creative. What’s the outcome you need, and can someone else do it? Is there an app for it? Could you get 80% of the result with 20% of the effort, and is that 20% at a level you could manage? You can do this yourself, or you can engage the help of some lateral thinking friends. Or if you’d like a one-off coaching session as a rocket boost, I’d love to talk to you about it!

Explore every idea, crazy and sane, then pinpoint those that seem easiest and most fun, and try them. It’s an excellent equation, with big potential upside and little to lose.

And of course, if you can find a way to solve a problem for others, make their lives easier by taking away the mundane, that might just be the way to your own inspiring future.

Jennifer Manson is an author and coach. Find out about Jennifer’s manifestation, goal-setting and future creation coaching…

Taking Action

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Photo by Jamie Saw on Unsplash

When setting out on a new goal, and sometimes when you’re well on the way, it can happen that there’s a moment of suspension. The next step isn’t obvious, and it feels like you’re waiting for something to happen. I love these moments in general. The feeling of not knowing can be the forerunner of a flash of inspiration or a miracle of serendipity.

If the moment lingers, however, and gets a little stale, then taking a small step can get things moving again. Ask yourself, “What’s one thing I could do right now that would move me towards my goal?”

I like to keep a list of logical actions so that when I’m feeling less inspired I don’t have to come up with something. If it’s business, that might be writing an article, sending out a proposal, creating some marketing material, booking a networking event, finishing some work and sending it to the client, contacting someone I’ve worked with before, or going on LinkedIn and responding to others’ content. If it’s travel I might research some destinations or learn a few words of vocabulary in another language.

Whatever your goal is, pick an action that feels easy and enjoyable. Keep your eyes open for anything that holds a “should”. A goal is not just about the end point, although it can feel great to achieve it. Life is lived in the step you’re taking right now.

Jennifer Manson is an author and coach. Find out about Jennifer’s manifestation, goal-setting and future creation coaching…

Leaping into Your Future

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Woman leaping across gap in rocks
Photo by The Chaffins on Unsplash

Is there something you’ve been thinking you would love to do or achieve or have? Something that seems somewhat out of reach, or a stretch, or that you can’t quite see how you’d get there; but at the same time, you know that it might be possible, and you can imagine a possible future where this thing is real, is part of your everyday life.

It might be something you’ve had in mind for many years – perhaps even since you were a child. It might be something that came to you in a flash of inspiration, and then faded back as practicalities took over. It might be something you’ve seen someone else achieve, and it flicked a light on in you that has never quite been extinguished.

This is exactly why my clients come to me – to explore what the future could be if this thing were realised. Together we explore what that possible future would be. We go to that time and you describe what you see and feel, what is going on, where you live and who with, what you’re doing and how much you love it. You talk about how you become aware that this thing you wanted is now real. And we record all of this, so you can return there any time.

The idea is that once you’ve been there, it’s easier to get there, for real.

Find out more at www.theflowwriter.com.

A Vast Space to Speak into

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Photo by Artem Sapegin on Unsplash

Have you ever had the experience of getting really engaged in a conversation, where you’re talking about something you love, something you’re excited about, maybe plans you’re making, and the person you’re speaking to gets excited too, and in that space, your ideas amplify and multiply, building and building, until you’re both walking on air? It’s one of the greatest experiences in life for me, so much so that I’ve spent many years exploring how it works, and how it doesn’t.

I first became consciously aware of it in a personal development course. It was an exercise in pairs, and the instruction was to pretend to not listen while the other person talked. I didn’t believe it would make much difference, and when my turn came, I started speaking about something that was important to me. Halfway through the sentence, my voice dried up. I couldn’t continue. I tried saying something else. Nothing. I went to talk about the weather, and that wouldn’t come, either. I couldn’t even talk about the weather when the audience was absent.

As a ghost writer, I noticed the opposite. If I really listened to my clients, what they said was better, more interesting, more insightful. I could notice when they’d got out of the zone and shift my listening so they came back. I could feed back a specific thing they had said so they would build on it, pick out the best parts, the most enlivened, and help them amplify that direction of thought. And when I thought back, I realised I’d been doing this my whole life. When I was five, I knew I could change they way my teacher taught by the way I paid attention. When I went to a lecture, I could alter the delivery by my level of engagement.

A journal can be great if you’re exploring something and the fascinated audience isn’t present – and it’s even more wonderful if you can find someone who knows how to listen and encourage.

With my friends, I listen in a particular way, hearing the things that excite them, giving positive responses, allowing them space to expand – and allowing them to do this for me in my turn. In coaching, this goes a step further, because the structure and intent is exactly this. This is why I love it so much, whether I’m the coach or the client – being in the space, mutually creating the space, where we contact and explore and nourish our dreams, amplifying them into something greater, and experiencing them in imagination so they can more easily form into achieved reality.

What could be better than that?

Jennifer Manson is an author and coach. Find out about Jennifer’s manifestation, goal-setting and future creation coaching…

Sense Reset Technique

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This technique is adapted from Feldenkreis teacher and certified trainer of Compassionate Communication, Valerie Wycoff, https://www.bodyvoicealive.nz.

Photo by Sam Schooler on Unsplash

This very simple exercise can produce out-of-scale results, and it takes particular attention to realise it as the source of improvements across the broad range of life. It gives access to optimism and creative thinking, and it’s worth taking time to notice and attribute this so that we continue with the practice. I recommend applying it on a frequent and irregular basis, which requires some ingenuity in setting up structures to remember to do so.

Let me set the context before describing what to do…

A common recommendation for stress or anxiety, or when we aren’t feeling good about a situation, is to focus on breathing, shifting the breath from the shallow and fast mode of fight or flight to the deeper, slower breathing of physiological calm. In my experience, when I tried this, I’d be frustrated. It was very difficult in such a state to maintain my focus for long enough to breathe a few slow breaths.

Valerie pointed out that eye movements are connected with breath in these very different physiological states. In the stress and fear response of fight, flight or freeze, breath is shallow and rapid and vision is narrowly focused. In the calm state, where we can think creatively and enjoy life, breathing is deeper and vision is broad. Because the two are linked, if we shift our breathing, vision also alters.

And here’s the trick: if we shift our vision, breathing changes too. Simply by moving our eyes around our range of vision, to the edges of our visual field, our whole physiology changes. Breathing deepens, heart rate slows, and we can access creative problem solving again. Anxiety fades and we’re more optimistic.

In the wild, when there was a real and physical threat, it made sense to focus our vision on whatever that was, and breathe fast so that we could take in information through our sense of smell. Now when threats are more often intangible or imagined, shallow breath induces anxiety and narrow vision blinds us to broader awareness of what is actually going on.

Of course, doing this once is not going to fix everything. Life happens, and a shift can take time. You can experiment with different forms of reminder, maybe setting up alerts on your phone, or making an intention of doing it any time you open a door, or hear a phone beep, or get up from a chair.

If I have a client who is managing anxiety or wanting to alter habitual thoughts, I might get their permission to send a reminder at random times during the day. Usually it’s just the eye roll emoji in a text message. And when I send that message, it reminds me to do it, too.

I also recommend tracking your level of positivity and calm over a few days or weeks. Both states – stress and calm – are familiar, so you might not notice that the balance has shifted. Taking stock of improvement can help you realise it’s worthwhile continuing.

Tip for helping others: if someone else is experiencing anxiety, or spinning on unhelpful storylines, you can get them to try this. If they’re not in a state to be able to hear you, you can help them temporarily by pointing out something outside their narrow focus: a bird or cloud, or something up in the corner of a room, so that their vision broadens, and see if that helps bring them optimism and calm.

Jennifer Manson is an author and coach. Find out about Jennifer’s manifestation, goal-setting and future creation coaching…

Wielding money as an artist wields paint

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National Currencies

Money is such a big topic, I’ve been looking around for a metaphor that can free us, shift our understanding so that we can relate more powerfully to this vital resource.

As I look around me, I see many people who believe that money limits or enables the things they do with their lives. My view is different. I see money as a symptom, rather than a cause.

If we are afraid to step out and do what we are called to do, money steps in to protect us, usually by its scarcity – we can’t do what we “want” to do, it seems, because we haven’t got the money.

If we step out boldly, confident in making those dreams happen, money falls into line, either working well, or proving not to be necessary.

Money is always a symptom, never a cause.

I’ve been playing with the metaphor of money as being like air – we certainly need air to be creative: a lack of it stunts our creativity rapidly. What if we thought of money as we think of air, something we trust so much that we cease to think about it, breathing it in as we need it, breathing it out as we’re done with it, ready to take the next breath when it comes, knowing it will be there?

This goes some way towards freeing us of the “money as a limiting resource” idea, but I feel it misses something, relegates money to being a one-dimensional thing, a “have or have not” commodity, when the possibilities are so much more exciting.

What if we thought about money as an artist thinks about paint, and wielded it just as consciously? What if we saw that money has infinite facets and nuances and aspects to it, as paint has endless variety of colour and shade and texture?

Think of how an artist selects paint, going to an art supply store – shrines of sacred creativity, hushed and full of awe and vibrant life – and looks through all the varieties on offer. It is a creative act in itself, perhaps testing samples on paper, between fingers, revelling in the colours and the gloss of the fresh wetness, the jewel-like shine of light and highlight reflecting back the point-sources from the light fittings in the store, or the natural light filtering in the windows.

Imagine how artists explore fellow-artists’ supplies, the excited discussions when a new variety is found, poring over palette and canvas and tube.

Artists care very much about this raw material, and are very conscious of the quality they bring into their creations.

Then once the paint is selected, look at how they wield it. Art is not just about the paint, but about the subtleties of where and how it is placed on the canvas, how the colours interact, how the shapes form into what we perceive as images.

Think of how the artist feels as they work, and how that feeling translates intangibly into the result; the work of art holds the energy of the artist and the moment of creation, translated through atoms and molecules and shapes and textures, and the miraculous play of light on it all. In inspired works of art, the artist connects with their deep self, and the deeper consciousness of the universe, and transfers that energy into their work.

What if we consciously transferred our creative energy into our lives as we spend?

My point is that life could be magnificently enhanced if we poured this level of conscious awareness and connectedness into how we draw money into our lives, and how we spend it, thinking of it as an artist thinks about their art, as a creative act, a means of creating our lives and our world. What are we doing to earn it, and how conscious are we as we do those things; where are we looking for it, who holds the supply we tap into; and how do we spend it, what sort of activity are we supporting with our life-giving supply?

What if we considered that money holds and carries energy, of the hands it has passed through, the things it has paid for, the creations or destructions it has enabled, the intentions of the people it has supported?

Another thing: an artist trusts the supply of paint. The foremost question in creating the work of art is not: “Do I have enough?” but “How am I going to use it to express myself, my heart, my joy, my sorrow, my deeply felt sense of the world?”

If we saw money as the artist sees paint, what would alter, how would the world change?

Jennifer Manson is an author and coach. Find out about Jennifer’s manifestation, goal-setting and future creation coaching…

Shaping the world

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Who we are, what we do, what we say shapes the world around us. Every pound or dollar we spend feeds someone and starves someone else, through our choices of where to spend, and what to buy. Are we supporting someone who loves their work and their place in the world, or encouraging someone to stay where they are when they would be better to move to something else?

The modern world is about infinite choice and immediate feedback. The cross-section of “likes” on a Facebook post tells us vast amounts about the landscape of our world and our place in it; what we “like” is a feedback loop that shapes what we see. The way we move through a crowded street impacts the way the people we brush against spend the rest of their day; fully, deeply connecting with our family and friends shapes the quality of their lives, and ours.

My working world has been, till now, a world of books; but with the exploration of the last week, a new vista is opening. My work is all about message – my own and my clients’ – and getting that message out into the world. That isn’t changing. The medium, however, is more fluid than it was.

The timescales involved for getting a book written and out into the world, read and integrated and responded to make books a specialised endeavour. They make sense as part of a total package, a body of work with depth and breadth; for immediate impact, however, our choices are wide open: YouTube, blog, social media, conversation, live speaking, workshops, radio interviews, television. If your message is important, then let’s get it out as fast and as clear (and often, as brief) as we can.

I started doing my video writing blog because my publicist suggested blogging more regularly. It seemed to me that blogging daily would mean I did less of my “serious” writing, so I chose video instead. The first few were awful. Then I got a little better. Now, when I look into my handheld iPhone, wherever I happen to be, I sink into a place of connection, look into the lens and let go. I talk about what’s happening, in my work and my life. Life. For me, it’s about taking a snapshot and revealing life, truth, in a soundbite, short but real.

This isn’t stuff that would make it into a novel or a self-help book – not without being refined beyond recognition. It’s immediate, about struggling mid-process, or responding to something in the moment. And in the background, the message of my approach to life comes through – the essence of who I am. Regardless of what I say, that truth comes through.

We might be less guarded, less thoughtful, when we dash off a Facebook comment or a tweet than we would be writing a book. In fact that doesn’t matter. What matters is, do we care, are we loving, do our actions match our words?

In this immediate life, our thoughts are read by those around us; who we are is what shapes our world.

Jennifer Manson is an author and coach. Find out about Jennifer’s manifestation, goal-setting and future creation coaching…

Big Bang Restaurant Oxford

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Wrapped in the warmth of a beautiful welcome at The Oxfordshire Project yesterday, I met an inspiring group of people who, each in their own way, are changing the world. Ben Molyneux, founder of the project; Katie Read of Read Publicity, taking books and their authors out into the world; Susanne Austin and Ben Jackson in the field of eco construction; Placi Espejo, working to incubate new businesses; Paul Mabbutt, Managing Director of ethical business leader Jennings; Shaun Fagan at Black Dog New Media and many more.

Today, though, I’d like to talk about an unexpected stand-out of the morning, venue restaurant owner Max Mason. The event was held at The Big Bang Restaurant in Oxford’s Castle Quarter, and listening to Max talk about the events he is planning over the next months, bringing together all the restaurants in the quarter, was like watching an unexpected firework display. The list of events relating to Movember; his passion for the Castle Quarter Christmas – beautiful! Poetry in schedule form!

Talking to Max later in the day, he described his vision for the future of this area of Oxford – not just his own corner, but effervescing out into the surroundings and wider world.

It reminded me that whatever we are doing, wherever our heart and vision and purpose lead us, we can use that place as our platform from which to inspire, to energise and revitalise, to make the world and its people sing.

If you want to see passion in action, I recommend a meal at The Big Bang Restaurant in Oxford. Tell Max I sent you.

And if you’re in business in Oxfordshire or nearby, get in touch with Ben Molyneux, and catch his particular vision for changing (to begin with) this part of the world.

Jennifer Manson is an author and coach. Find out about Jennifer’s manifestation, goal-setting and future creation coaching…

Sustained extreme happiness

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Here’s another excerpt from Easy – Deconstructing the Art of Effortless Creation. It comes after all the stuff about making the practical aspects of life easy: projects, time, possessions, etc, and encapsulates my vision and hope for the deeper side of life…

First edit is complete. Thinking about publication early July.

Chapter 45 Sustained Extreme Happiness

There’s one more chapter I want to add before the end. It doesn’t quite come into the category of making life easy, but it is certainly important for making life worthwhile.

The last few months have been rough ones for me. That thing I alluded to about adding unnecessary complexity to my relationships and emotions has been playing out on a massive scale.

Now, I know that I create whatever I want in life; I choose how I feel, how I respond to the things that happen around me, the circumstances of my life. So for a long time I asked myself: why would I choose grief? Why would I choose pain when I could choose happiness and peace. I know they exist; I know I could create them. So why not?

But somehow, the idea of “happiness” just didn’t attract me. After the intensity of the everyday experience I was creating with my grief, how could mere happiness compare?

In common human experience, there are two experiences we associate with vivid happiness: new love and new babies. All other forms, as far as I could remember, tended to deliver a much milder form. Nothing special. Nothing wildly exciting. And that’s what I craved.

Then I stopped myself. I recognised a semantic pattern, a resignation to something just because it was common in the status quo. I was assuming that just because sustained extreme happiness was not common in the world, I could not create it. But of course I could.

So here I am, having formed the idea of sustained extreme happiness. People I tell about it respond sceptically at best. There’s the caution of someone confronted with mania, fearing the depression which traditionally follows.

But why shouldn’t I create this? We see prolonged grief all the time. I myself have lived it, brilliantly, for months on end. Why not flip the coin, live the other side. The intensity is possible, we all know that; it’s just the flavour that would be different.

Having seen the vision, I’m certain it’s possible. Having chosen it for myself, and, by contagion, for the people around me, I am sure it’s on its way. There are clear moments of it already, glimpses of how it looks in reality, how it feels, how it is.

I’m eager to see the form it takes longer term, the circumstances of life that form around the central emotional experience. Life is already pretty good here: close relationships, physical expression, beautiful environment, work I love, plenty of time and money, and vibrant good health.

What more is possible? Watch this space.

Jennifer Manson is an author and coach. Find out about Jennifer’s manifestation, goal-setting and future creation coaching…

Dream Project Challenge

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What if the thing you thought would take your whole life could be done in ten months, in half an hour a day? What would you do then?

Consider the possibility that everything is much, much, much easier than it seems. I have this theory that everything is easy. It’s just our way of looking at things that makes them seem as they seem.

I’ll get into the history and origins in a minute; first, here are the guidelines of the Challenge itself:

Dream Project Challenge Guidelines

1. Be a busy, successful person, with lots of great stuff happening in your life
2. Think of or recall a Dream Project, one you’ve had shelved for a long time, or never really thought you would be able to do, or perhaps never thought you would have time for
3. Commit half an hour a day to that project – think where you could find half an hour a day, if you really wanted to, if that meant this Dream Project could become reality
4. Do half an hour each day, each day thinking what is the best use of that half hour to move the project forward
5. At the end of the half hour, stop! Experience the magic of what can be achieved in a tiny amount of time, once you allow it

Then rinse and repeat. You can miss one day if you need to, but never two in a row – the magic is in reconnecting with the project daily, even if that’s just talking about it to a friend, a colleague or a stranger…

And then, would you do me a favour?

There are a couple of extra things I’d love you to do, once you get into the challenge itself: first, let me know what you’re up to – I’m collecting stories for a book, and I’d love to hear yours. Email me with your project, and update me with your progress. If you like I’ll add you to the Facebook group, so you can share what you are doing with others.

And second, issue the challenge yourself, personally, to the people you know who have bigger dreams, bigger capacity than they are currently living, people who could do more, love more, change the world faster than perhaps even they know is possible. They might already be doing huge, amazing things, and you know they would love the challenge to do more, in a different way. Send them to this page, and tell them to get going!

So how did it all start?

I was on the train back from the airport yesterday. My husband, daughter and I had spent a few days in Florence looking at art.

Paul was asking me about my New Universe, how it works, and I was describing the idea of projects in the new paradigm, not problem-based, but creating without historic constraints. In the New Universe, as I see it, we create whatever we can dream of, according to positive constraints we set ourselves.

So here’s what I said.

“You need to get people’s minds to shift, to see how things can be easy. If you put people in the same office, working the same hours, they’ll continue to work the same way – you can give them a new job title but nothing fundamental will change. You have to change something fundamental – like tell them they’ve only got half an hour a day to work on a project. Then they’ll do something different.”

“And you’ve tried this, you’ve tried it out on people?”

At this point I got grumpy. “I’ve done it myself, with my books. And I’ve suggested it to people. But no, I haven’t conducted any kind of systematic experiment.” I stared out the train window, feeling inadequate.

And then I thought, why not? Why not conduct a systematic experiment? There are plenty of people I could ask who would rise to the challenge. I’m looking for the examples that push the envelope – what’s possible, not what’s guaranteed. It’s easy, like everything – issue the challenge, let people be inspired by what they themselves can achieve.

So here I am, issuing the challenge. What could you achieve in half a hour a day? Why not try it, see for yourself, and then let the whole world know about it?

Let me know about your Dream Project by email, or message me via Facebook and if you’d like information on how to get personal support, see the Dream Projects page.

Jennifer Manson is an author and coach. Find out about Jennifer’s manifestation, goal-setting and future creation coaching…