The Unlikely Artist

Little acts of kindness are like little acts of magic. They lighten our moods, tone down our cynicism, reduce our pessimism, and make us feel less judgmental about others and ourselves. The tiniest things we do can make a huge difference to someone else. When we intentionally extend our goodwill to another person, they can feel it. We might be the only live person they interact with that day. Our...

We’re so consumed with just getting “it” done and moving on to the next thing that many of us have become completely disconnected from knowing what we like. We think that what we like isn’t important. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Knowing what you like can help you create a life that feels richer and gives you an overall greater sense of wellbeing. Iit can help you make the best dec...

Many of us think we’re not brave enough to make the changes we desire or want. Our overly dramatic, fear-based brains tell us we might possibly die if we do that. So we remain in jobs, relationships, geographies or lifestyles that no longer suit us. In this episode, I discuss four categories of mistakes we make in the way we think about the risks and benefits of change that keep us stuck where we...

A decision to live intentionally is a choice you can make at any time that will affect the quality and richness of your life. Too often we forget how much agency we have in our own lives. In our 20’s, 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, we can find ourselves feeling rigidly contained by decisions we made early on. We doggedly stick to what we decided years ago and fail to understand our ability to make new choic...

Contrast makes our lives feel more energetic, more vibrant, more alive. Knowing that can point us in some useful directions. I discuss four of them here. DISCOVER WHO YOU ARE If you’re not leading the life you want, you can build the mindset, emotional and intuitive skills to change that. I use my experience as a lawyer, business leader, artist and coach to help my clients discover who they are an...

I learned something so easy and profound last weekend when I attended a creativity retreat taught by Rob Bell and Elizabeth Gilbert at Omega Institute that I simply had to share it with you. Pretty much everyone I know has a relentless self critic inside their heads. We think self criticism is what helps us improve. Instead it leads, at its worst, to self-loathing and, at its best, to inaction. In...

This episode is about what we make rejection mean and how we can deal with it more usefully when it surfaces. Rejection can result from our misdiagnosis of an experience or situation. Or it can actually be real, in the sense that someone else doesn’t like something we’ve done or said or the work we’ve produced. In either case, rejection doesn’t feel good, especially when we make it mean something...

Last weekend, a gardening group in Prince Edward County where I live generously opened their homes and gardens for us to experience. I walked away from the tour with a different result than I’d expected – not so much a list of plants or ideas I might use in my own garden, but a beautiful reminder of the enormous diversity and uniqueness of human creative expression, interest, preference and focus,...

Today I share a healing practice I use when I’m stressed about what might happen in the future or about something that’s already happened. The focus of this practice is savouring. Savouring happens when you experience something with great enjoyment or delight and you’re fully into that sensory experience. In this episode, I discuss how to develop a habit of savouring to increase your overall sense...

You might have noticed that when you’re feeling angry, judgemental, hurt, resentful or annoyed, quite often another person is involved. You blame your feeling on something that person has said or done you don’t like, or on something they haven’t said or done you wish they would. In this episode, I share two techniques you can use when other people upset you, especially when your upset is sticking...

Today we talk about why taking action is so important. We need to take action to not be in a conversation of one. If we want to satisfy our yearning to have an impact, we need to invite at least one other person into that conversation. When we actually do something, it feels totally different than just thinking about doing it. It’s only through our actions we can develop our own way of going about...

You’ll find this episode useful if you’ve been feeling stuck or disappointed or like something’s not working out. In nature, there’s no such thing as a straight river. Rivers meander, find the easiest way forward, get wider and then narrower, change course, rush down steep areas, and become still and reflective in others. If we want to move forward in a way it doesn’t feel like we’re struggling al...

Today we consider why professional development might feel like a burden or a chore and how it can be transformed into something that feels nourishing and useful to you. I was motivated to create this episode when I read Dr. Jackie Eldridge’s post on Instagram (@drjackieeldridge) where she said: “Imagine if people thought about professional development as food for the mind and soul, instead of a ch...

We all criticize ourselves. We believe that if we judge ourselves harshly, that will spur us on to take the actions we need to take or protect us from disappointment. Our negative judgments don’t accomplish either result. At the end of this podcast, I present some actions you can use to defend yourself against unproductive self-judgments: Build an awareness of all the ways you judge yourself negat...

My art teacher, Ian Roberts, shared a thought with us this week that made the hair on my arms stand up. Because of the truth of it. He said, “The quality of attention produces the music.” In this episode I share my thoughts about how the quality of attention you bring to what you do can fundamentally alter your experience of it, draw out the meaning, create the connection, help you see the beauty,...

Our quest to feel more alive comes down to one thing. We desire to live life in a way that feels more “us”. In this episode I explore how to become more of who you really are by pretending in one of 3 specific ways. Explore pretending: to have a personal quality you wish you had, to be a celebrity or other person you admire, or to believe something you’re not all sure about. Pretend this way regul...

When we keep expanding our calendars to accommodate all the things we want to do or think we need to do, life can start to feel frantic and unmanageable. Worse, we often find that we still don’t have enough time to do the things we know could contribute to our wellbeing. In this episode I explore how to use subtraction as a tool to expand your life and do more of what you love. Learn how to erase...

There’s a moment when you realize you're seeing things in a way that feels brand new and exhilarating. It's like, “Ooh, I never saw it this way before. But now that I do see it this way, I feel completely differently about it.” The novelty of a new perspective is exciting because it creates possibility. It fuels us with energy. A fresh perspective helps us invent, find solutions and discover relat...

Join me for this mind-shifting conversation with my friend and peer coach, Sarah Hurrle. Sarah takes us on her journey from being a fundraiser for non-profit organizations, to refocusing on her own health as she navigated health challenges, to becoming a certified health coach, to her focus today on “healthy sales”. This episode is relevant whether you’re an entrepreneur, work for someone else, ar...

Legendary music producer, Rick Rubin, advises that in order to create at the highest level, your audience must come last. This is true (maybe even especially) if you care about how the audience experiences your work. Instead, he advises, allow your natural creativity to bubble up and out of you and into the world. Rick’s dictum applies with equal force to every aspect of what we do. That’s because...

Your life isn’t a left brain problem to solve. You can try to plan. You can say, “I’ll do A, add B, then I’ll add C, D, E and F, and I'm going to get G. But of you're like most of us, the chances of it happening that way are pretty much zero. We put so much emphasis on having our plans work out. We try to control our lives, and it’s so painful when what we’ve been expecting doesn’t materialize. Th...

This is a story about creativity, freedom, exploration and self-expression. These are what Alex discovered when her bout with breast cancer triggered in her a burning urge to create. It turned out to be an urge she couldn’t ignore. And so Alex began her journey of healing through art. When Alex walked into the beautiful, sunlit studio where she’d be taking an art course to refresh her painting ski...

We make false assumptions that limit the choices we believe are available to us, what we think we’re capable of accomplishing, how we show up, what we’re willing to try and what we need to be happy. Each one of these assumptions affects the outcomes we create for ourselves. In this episode, I present 5 categories of assumptions you might be unknowingly using to limit your life. DISCOVER WHO YOU AR...

People aren’t shy to offer us their advice. It sometimes feels like everyone has a point of view about what we should do. In this episode, we talk about how to distinguish between advice that serves you and advice that doesn’t. We consider why people advise us the way they do, the two flaws other people’s advice always contains, what makes some advice useful, and some tests you can use to decide w...

In this episode, we talk about compulsive liars and discover the thing we all have in common with them. Even though most of us don’t intentionally lie, we actively create our own reality through the choices we make about where to focus our attention. We’re all filters. There are 1000 things out there at any moment for us to notice, smell, see, touch. We can't and don't take it all in. We look for...