Creative Living with Jamie: Cairene MacDonald

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This week’s podcast is 20:24

Cairene MacDonald at Jamie Ridler StudiosThis Week on Creative Living with Jamie:

Cairene MacDonald of Third Hand Works, business readiness coach and administrative guide

Cairene MacDonald is a business readiness coach and administrative guide. Through classes and one-on-one coaching, she helps independent creative professionals learn how to improve the administration of their businesses, emphasizing right-brain strategies so clients can succeed and still be themselves. Which is just a fancy-pants way of saying she helps people stop hatin’ on their admin grunt work.

Cairene has been helping arty-types get organized one way or another for more than twenty years, supporting designers and architects, art coaches and gallery owners, writers and teachers, among others. The insights gained from these relationships, along with her own experiences as an artist, are the basis of her current work. She knows first-hand the challenges of trying to streamline one’s muse.

Cairene lives in Portland, Oregon. When she’s not preaching her message of administrative reconciliation to the creative masses, she’s probably hanging out with her husband and her dog. Or making something.

Discover More About Today’s Guest…

Website: Third Hand Works
Blog: How Third Hand Works Gets in Gear
Twitter: @thirdhandworks

Connect to Creative Living with Jamie…

  • Subscribe: You can subscribe to Creative Living with Jamie here and also on iTunes (Note: this link will ask to access your iTunes and then take you to the podcast. You can also simply open iTunes and search for “Creative Living with Jamie)
  • Email: You can email your feedback, questions and suggestions to Jamie.
  • Share: Spread the Magic! If you loved this show, please share it with other creative hearts!

Creative Living with Jamie: Susannah Conway

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This week’s podcast is 18:50

SusannahThis week’s on Creative Living with Jamie:
Susannah Conway, writer, photographer and e-course creator

From Susannah Conway…

I’m a photographer, writer and creator of the Unravelling e-courses, and I live in Bath in south-west England. I studied photography in the early 90s and then went on to become a fashion editor on a national newspaper. I lost my partner in 2005 and it was this sudden bereavement that turned my life inside-out. I left London and moved to the south coast, and from there i stepped onto a painful yet ultimately healing path; while working through my grief in therapy I discovered blogging and met some incredible people online. A trip to the States to meet up with blog friends inspired me to take up photography again and, really, that was when life started blossoming once more. After setting up my own photography business I began teaching self-awareness workshops locally that used the camera as a way to see ourselves, drawing on everything I’d learned on my grief journey. I now lead these Unravelling classes on-line; it’s such an incredible honour to be able to share this with others.

Discover More About Today’s Guest…

Website: susannahconway.com
Twitter: @susannahconway
Facebook: @susannahconway
Pinterest:@susannahconway
Instagram: @susannahconway
Books:This I Know and Instant Love

Plus… Susannah’s interview is featured on Creative Living with Jamie Podcast Collection: Season One

About the e-courses…

The Unravelling e-courses are designed to help you heal the way you see your self and your world, using photography and journalling to access hidden thoughts and dreams, encouraging personal realisations and ultimately acceptance. Susannah is your guide through this process, sharing her insights and wisdom gleaned from a four-year voyage through grief and healing.
The original Unravelling: Ways of Seeing My Self e-course takes you on a photo safari into your own life to reconnect with who you are, where you’ve been and where you want to go next. And now, launching in autumn 2009, Unravelling Further: Exploring the Senses will deepen this new-found connection to self, exploring the joys of sensual living as you reawaken your senses one by one.
The next Unravelling WOSMS class starts on September 28th 2009.

Show Notes

Subscribe to Creative Living with Jamie…

  • You can subscribe to Creative Living with Jamie here and also on iTunes (Note: this link will ask to access your iTunes and then take you to the podcast. You can also simply open iTunes and search for “Creative Living with Jamie)

Connect to Creative Living with Jamie…

  • You can email your feedback, questions and suggestions to Jamie.
  • Spread the Magic! If you loved this show, please share it with other creative hearts!

Introducing Creative Living with Jamie

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Welcome to the very first episode of my podcast, Creative Living with Jamie. This week I share with you what you can expect from the program as well as my take on creative living. I hope you enjoy the show!

Subscribe to Creative Living with Jamie…

  • You can subscribe to Creative Living with Jamie here and also on iTunes here (Note: this link will ask to access your iTunes and then take you to the podcast. You can also simply open iTunes and search for “Creative Living with Jamie)

Connect to Creative Living with Jamie…

  • You can email your feedback, questions and suggestions to Jamie.

Showing Up & Falling In Love with Ourselves

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Community Art

I’m sharing a breakthrough that arrived this morning, a breakthrough that’s been on its way for a while. I’m tender about it. It’s new and vulnerable. Though really it is at least as old as I am.

I’m getting clear on my mission. It involves these beliefs:

  • The arts belong to everybody
  • The arts help us know ourselves and each other
  • Falling in love with ourselves and each other is crucial to the survival and thrival of humanity and this planet

When watching this beautiful meditation, I was aware that as Virginia Fitton talks about the beauty of the world and our connectivity, there are no images of people. And I remembered when I asked the question over at Carrie and Danielle, “How do you fall in love with the world?” how mostly it never had anything to do with people, though sometimes children were involved. This breaks my heart.

I believe our lack of love for ourselves as humans is a bigger crisis than the economic one, a bigger crisis than the environmental one. More people are killed by each other every day than by environmental disasters. People are dying from neglect and lack of compassion. I am not saying we don’t make it hard to love one another. We surely do. So, how can we fall in love with one another? How do we fall in love with ourselves?

I think one of the answers is through art.

When I first studied Nia, I had no intention of teaching. I simply wanted to deepen my learning of the practice. One day, I volunteered to hand out flyers at a Nia demonstration. When the demo started, I walked amidst the women watching, and I could see the yearning. I literally saw women stop in their tracks, eyes glued to the stage. All these women wanted to dance. And in that moment I knew there had to be more teachers, and I could be one of them. So I started.

Years ago I read a novel where a young and inexperienced heroine was about to throw herself into a dangerous situation. Her friend said to her, “Why you? Why not get someone else? Someone stronger, more experienced?” And she replied, “Because I am the one who sees the need.”

And so, I may not be the strongest or the most experienced or the most talented (or I might be!), but I’ve got my share of each of those things and I see the need. I bring a toolkit full of love, creativity and courage, a heartfelt desire to make a difference and a belief that it can be done.

And just in case you need a little help falling in love with us, as people, perhaps something in here will touch your heart.

Raising My Standards

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Finding My Style

I’ve had an amazing opportunity to work with wardrobe consultant Safina Ruda. She offers a 3-part Signature Style package that includes an initial meeting where you bring an inspiration board (another use for dreamboards!) and talk about your tastes, your lifestyle and your loves, a wardrobe consultation, where she comes to your house and goes through your clothing with you and finally a shopping trip! This weekend was part 2 for me!

It was an amazing experience to try on everything I own to show Safina. How I felt about showing her was often the determining factor of whether something stayed or went. If I was kind of embarrassed and unsure – gone! If I wanted to walk in beaming – keep! One thing I noticed was how important it was to me to express what it was about a particular item that had drawn me. So even if the piece wasn’t that successful, we knew that in my wardrobe I wanted sparkle, tailoring, sass, that kind of thing.

This experience wasn’t about someone else telling me my style. It was about getting clarity. It was about reminding myself what I truly love and holding that as the standard. For example, I like to dress a little bit formal. I don’t feel at my best in yoga pants or comfy jeans. I also work from home, so it’s a bit silly to pull out pinstriped pants or a sparkly shirt, right? Not so, says Safina. “Every day is special.” “You love it, you feel great in it, so why not wear it?” And the moment she says that, I know that I believe that too. That I’ve always believed that. How did I forget?

Safina set me a great tool for remembering. I’m not generally a shoe person, but I’m wild about the 2 pairs I have in that picture. I just lit up when I showed Safina the vintage metallic kitten heels. So, she told me to use that as my standard. “If you don’t love it as much as those shoes, let it go.” The goal is to aim for that lit-up energy when I pull anything out of my closet and put it on. Imagine!

And so I cleared with enthusiastic abandon. 4 large garbage bags of clothing will be finding new homes. I’m sure I’ve bagged up at least half of my wardrobe. Now when I get up in the morning and look at my options, sure, there’s a lot less to choose from but I love what’s there. And if those limitations mean I put on a spangly top or a pretty dress to spend the day at home and coach my clients – awesome! I feel great.

Raising your standards can be a bit intimidating. Often our wardrobe and our lives are filled with the mediocre because we know we can have it. It’s achievable. How do we know we can find/get/achieve the amazing? We don’t know. But we can have a bit of trust in ourselves and the Universe and take the chance. We just might find something truly remarkable on the other side. I’m going to go for it! How about you?

How can you get rid of the mediocre to make room for the amazing?