1. A Note from Shawn

Flexibility is for more than yoga

The Today ToDo List Challenge is still happening (it is still August, after all!) It’s such a reality check on the (often unrealistic) expectations we tend to heap on ourselves. I’d love to hear how it’s going for you on the blog or at the Discussions on the Natural Professional’s Facebook page.For those who like to hear about change before it happens, consider yourself notified… In the interests of making the newsletter accessible to folks wherever they are: busy-and-on-the-go, or ready-to-settle-in-for-a-simplifying-session-of-food-for-thought, change is around the corner.

Likely there will be a prominent Tip, and then excerpts and links to articles, columns and other tasty nuggets on the site. I’m still researching ideas–so if you’ve got ‘em, pass ‘em on!

Final thought to keep you up to date here at the Project Simplify World Headquarters. I’m kicking into high gear on the book project: The Natural Professional Handbook. I have the growing sense that I’m just the instrument of this body of work that wants to make a splash in the world. My job is to keep the fingers flying!

Here’s to your heart-felt endeavors, whatever they may be.
Enjoy and let it be easy.

XO

Shawn Tuttle
Chief Simplifier, Project Simplify

2. Upcoming/Current Events

August The Today List Challenge here at Project Simplify. Details at this blog post.
September Cultivate Your Flame, a 6-month course and study group. Postponed.

October 20 I’ll be speaking at the Gold Country Chapter of the Business and Professional Women’s meeting in Grass Valley, CA, 5:30 – 8 pm.

3. Our Featured Quote

“Onward, upward… and inward.”

— Kalia J. Rork

4. Lifestyles of the Natural & Professional

Skimming, aka Morning Pages

In a co-coaching call with good friend Kalia, I reported on the somewhat unexpected and excellent results arising from being recently hard-core dedicated to my daily skimming practice.

Her immediate response was, "I want that! …um, what is it?" (Apparently she hadn’t made it down to the Lifestyles section of the last newsletter =). I was glad she asked, though, because the practice deserves it’s own section.)

In a nutshell, skimming is one of Julia Cameron‘s two "Basic Tools" that she describes in The Artist’s Way. She calls them "morning pages".

Rules of the road

• 3 handwritten pages every morning (yes, every morning)
• don’t show them to anyone (also suggested to not read yourself)
• write about a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g (the good, the bad, the ugly, the geeky)
• allow a stream of consciousness (let your lefty-logic brain step aside)

From my experience

• The initial benefits from this practice are a clearing of the gunk and junk that distracts and bogs me down.
• Sometimes it leads me to the doorstep of a current project or solution to some thorny issue.
• The benefits after longer, regular practice are a fairly reliable path Home-ward (whatever you want to call it: to your core, essence, best self). Consider the ramifications here: this simple practice brings me Home, and since I do it each morning, this means that each day I start out calm and centered, not to mention with a light and gunk-free mind. This is H-U-G-E, people. Huge. How often do you start your interactions with world feeling like a million bucks?

Why "skimming" (and not "morning pages")?

The term "morning pages" harkens to the frequency of the activity. For me, the practice so evidently clears the scum from my chatter-brain that I prefer to refer to that benefit. Also, when my mind starts spinning, whatever time of day, I pull out the pen and paper and skim away the confusion.

For additional reading

• The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. The section in "The Basic Tools" (pp. 9-18) provides a detailed introduction to  morning pages.
• Skimming has been popping up on my blog since January 2009. A search on "skimming" brings up these posts.

6. The Not-So-Simple Life

by Lance Brown

Note to Self: Make Notes to Self

If you weren’t an entrepreneur already, and I met you sometime in the past 10-15 years or so, it’s pretty easy to guess how that conversation would have gone. Within about five minutes, I would try and find out what your passion is, and then, a minute or so later, I would formulate how you could turn that passion into something that you could put online, make a career out of, and spread to the various corners of the world.

Instantly in my head, I would see your new enterprise—YouCo, let’s call it—growing from a little upstart operation into a multi-billion-dollar worldwide chain of franchises, outlets, distributors…you get the idea. There’s almost nothing that you could say was your passion, where I wouldn’t turn around in a minute or two and be able to suggest to you ways that you could turn that passion into something actionable, tangible, and marketable.

I guess I have a bit of a gift for coming up with ideas. But it’s not all good, like the gifts I get from people (which can often be returned for cash). This gift is more like Gizmo, that little cutie from the Gremlins movies. You know, the one who spawned thousands of mutant brothers and sisters out of his back once he got a little water on him?

The water in my case would probably be the modern Internet, which allowed me to see every idea and possibility as something that could spread wildly across its target population, eventually reaching global (and then universe-wide) saturation. At first, it was just my ideas that I saw that way. That later gave way to the trend I mentioned above, where your idea was the seed I wanted to cultivate into a giant forest. And I still want to do that…if I can ever get control of my own mob of gremlins, who continue to spawn on a daily basis. …
Finish reading “Note to Self: Make Notes to Self””

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Lance Brown can be followed at http://twitter.com/FreelanceLance.

Thanks for reading!