by Heather Plett | Nov 14, 2011 | Beauty, change, Community, Creativity, fearless, journey, Joy, Leadership, Passion, personality, Spirituality, things I've learned
* I would rather teach people to think beautiful thoughts than to create grammatically correct sentences.
* I believe that beauty and justice are inextricably intertwined and I want to bring more of both into the world.
* I believe that the greatest inventions, discoveries, and solutions emerge when people start asking the right questions.
* I believe that you have to ask a lot of questions in order to get to the right ones.
* I am happy when I can help bold creativity blossom in those around me.
* A little part of me shrivels up inside when I find myself stifling creativity with too many rules and judgements.
* I am easily distracted by colourful markers and clean white paper.
* I believe that personal leadership is more important than positional leadership.
* I choose community over team, circle over hierarchy, and family over corporation.
* I believe that shared stories open doorways to transformation.
* I am less productive when I haven’t had time for deep contemplation and equally deep play. The two go hand in hand.
* I believe that our differences are important but that they should not divide us.
* I delight in making new connections with people whose ways of looking at the world intrigue me. I am open to letting them change me, if it’s for the best.
* I am committed to hosting and being part of more conversations and inquiries that follow spiral patterns (moving inward to deeper wisdom) rather than linear pathways.
* Deep and soulful listening is often the best gift I can give anyone, and so I strive to keep my mouth shut and my ears open more often.
* I believe in walking lightly on this earth, and hope to some day use fewer resources for my own personal gain.
* I want to be open-minded and open-hearted and to live with delight as my constant companion.
* I believe that vulnerability and truth-telling can serve as catalysts for deep relationships and profound change.
* I believe that in order to create one great work of art you have to be prepared to create at least 100 mediocre ones first.
* I believe that time spent in meditation, prayer, and body movement is never time wasted, and I hope to some day live like I believe it.
* I believe that God created each of us to do good work and that we cheat our Creator and our world when we let our self-doubt and fear keep us from doing it.
* I want to bring more colour and light into otherwise dreary spaces.
* I strive to be more courageous tomorrow than I was today.
* I believe in daily transformation, continuous learning, and growth that doesn’t end until the day I exhale my last breath.
* I am committed to doing my best work, which is at the intersection of creativity, leadership, community, and story-telling.
by Heather Plett | Nov 7, 2011 | Creativity
Sometimes I let myself get stuck in the wrong stories.
Stories like:
– I would accomplish more if I had a nice office with big windows letting in the natural light. And a nice art easel. And more space for bookshelves.
– It’s okay to want what I want… in fact, I’m probably ENTITLED to a bigger space with natural light. I can’t create without it. Why do I bother trying?
– If I had a beautiful healing room like my friend Diane, I could host story circles in my own space and wouldn’t have to be satisfied with a rather ugly room in the back of a church. In fact, I shouldn’t bother hosting any more circles until I have the right space.
– If this house weren’t falling apart, with peeling linoleum in the kitchen, broken chairs in the dining room, and ugly carpet in the living room, I’d feel more comfortable hosting people here and I could do more of my work in-person.
– If only… (and the list could stretch to 101 more items)
It’s not that it’s wrong to want those things. It’s just that it’s wrong to let myself get stuck in the limitations of wanting them too much. When I get stuck in them, I forget to be grateful for what I have. I forget that I too can be resourceful and make new things out of old, like the people I’ve seen in the poorest parts of the world, making shoes out of rubber tires, or spoons out of seashells. I forget to treat the gifts I’ve already received with reverence and respect.
I let my house get messier “because it’s not good enough to host people in, so why should I bother keeping it clean?”
I let my tiny storage-space-turned-studio become a dumping ground for clutter “because it’s too small, cramped, and windowless for me to create in, so why bother?”
Last week, I knew that it was time to loosen the grip those limiting stories were having on me. I spent Friday morning clearing the clutter out of my tiny windowless space that used to be a storage room in a dark corner of our basement. It’s a space I poured my creative resourcefulness into last year before I quit my job, putting cheap fabric and old paneling on the wall and free hand-me-down carpet on the floor.
And now I am grateful for it again.
I finally did some creative work in this space again (see the mandala in my last post), and now my head is buzzing with new ideas.
Here’s my tiny space, with my creativity board in front of me and my art supplies and favourite books within easy reach.
On the ceiling by the light hang the butterflies that told me to write a book.
Here’s a corner of my creativity board, with elephants from Tanzania (oh how I loved seeing them in the wild!), a dried leaf from the centre of the labyrinth at Tranquil Spirit (my friend Diane’s healing space), and some of my creative meanderings.
One of my favourite trinkets, a gift from my sister that reminds me to continue to stare with wonder at the many possibilities that this big, wide world has to offer.
Another corner of my creativity board, with a photo of my sister and I backpacking around Europe many years ago.
My favourite view – lying on the floor looking up at the iridescent fabric hanging from the ceiling. This space – though it may not seem like much – is sacred space.
Here’s Maddy, who is delighted when I let her into my creative space so that we can do some co-creating (which we did lots of this weekend). She made a special magic wand for me. On its handle it says “be magical”. I’m going to wave it around the room whenever I need to make old stories disappear, or I need to make new things out of old things that no longer serve me.
One more view… the entrance to my tiny space, where I painted a tree of dreams (follow the link to see a video of me painting it) and Maddy painted a magical character out of her favourite book, Harry Potter.
by Heather Plett | Nov 5, 2011 | Uncategorized
Inspired by the occupy movement, I’ve been thinking a lot about the questions on the hearts of all of those people gathering in communities around the world.
What questions are their restless, dissatisfied hearts asking?
How do we ask the right questions that will help us change the world?
Can we pause long enough to truly hear the questions on other people’s hearts?
How do we encourage more people to sit in circles listening to the questions that need to be asked?
These thoughts and questions lead to some art play.
A mandala emerged.
“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
by Heather Plett | Nov 4, 2011 | Beauty
the cloth that covers the table at the centre of our story circle each week
A story has emerged for me lately that has helped me define myself. It is that of a woman carrying a basket and filling it with story threads as she wanders.
Last week I was on a conference call with a circle of women planning a women’s gathering for next summer. We’ve been wrestling with what to name our gathering, and someone mentioned the words “weaving wisdom”. We all liked it. I shared with them the fact that lately I have seen my role in life as “weaving story threads into a tapestry of wisdom”. Each of the women in the circle is also a weaver of some kind.
With weaving on my mind so much lately, it shouldn’t have come as any surprise that last night’s writing prompt was a spool of thread. I’d brought brown bags for each of the people in my creative writing circle and inside each brown bag was an ordinary item that the holder had to write about and possibly use as a metaphor for her/his life. I chose the last bag.
Here’s my story about the thread inside my brown bag…
The Weaver
For years she’d carried her basket, not sure what it was for or why she’d been gifted with it as a child.
Though she didn’t understand its meaning, she knew it was important. She knew she was meant to carry it.
As she went through life, she found herself attracted to colourful story threads everywhere she went. Each story thread that was offered her was lovingly tucked into her basket.
She was a wanderer, this woman. She could barely keep her feet from moving. Europe, California, Kenya, India, Nova Scotia, Ohio, Bangladesh… she went wherever the stories called her to go.
Everywhere she went, she added new threads to her basket. Stories of courageous young women in Ethiopia. Stories of devastated villages in Bangladesh. Stories of justice workers rescuing young girls from sexual slavery in India.
Her basket threatened to overflow with all the threads she carried, and yet it never got heavy. She loved those stories dearly and spent time with them every chance she could.
Still, though, she wondered… what was the purpose of all of this? What was the use of all of these threads? What was she meant to do with them?
She began to ask the wise people in her life. “What do you think I’m meant to do with my basket?”
“Hmmm….” those people would say. “It just looks like a tangled mess to me.” Or “You have to find the answer in your own heart.” Or “Have you talked to God about it?” Nobody could give her an easy answer.
And so she continued to wander and gather more stories. But her heart became heavy, for she knew that all of this was meant for something.
Then one day, there came a distant whisper. “Have you tried weaving those threads together and making meaning out of them?”
Hmmm… really? Was she meant to be a weaver? But these were just tiny snippets – how could she make anything meaningful out of loose threads? And… what if she didn’t have the skill to weave them properly, or even to know which colours to line up together? What if she messed up and damaged the threads that had been entrusted to her?
She picked up a few threads and played with them wistfully. Could she trust the wisdom in her hands to make something out of this tangled heap?
Soon she realized, though, that without much effort at all, she’d lined up those first few threads in a way that made the colours dance. Yes. That looked right. The stories took on new meaning and beauty when she placed them together. She added a few more… and then more. Someone slipped a new thread into her hand. Ooooohh…. that one looked so lovely with the others!
Before she knew it, she was weaving. The threads were slowly being shaped into a beautiful tapestry in her hands.
She worked for hours, lovingly caressing each thread as she added it to her work of art. When she finally looked up from her work, she saw that she was being watched by eager eyes. Several of the people standing nearby were reaching out to her. In their hands were new threads.
“It looks so beautiful,” said the people watching her. “Will you teach us how to weave?”
This shocked her. “You want ME to teach you how to weave? But… I’m just playing with threads…I’m not sure I know what I’m doing!”
“Oh but you do!” they said. “You need to trust the gift in your hands. The world is desperately in need of more tapestries.”
And so she gathered her willing new friends into a circle. Reverently, and in awe of what she had begun, she lit a candle and rang a bell. “Start by telling us a story,” she said, and slowly and tenderly the people in the circle began pulling threads from pockets near their hearts. The threads were beautiful and each one was different from the last. Some were sparkly and bright, others were rough and well-worn. All were rich in colour and texture.
Before the end of the evening, a new tapestry had begun to form. “We’ll come back next week and work on it some more,” said the friends, excitement in their voices.
And so they did, and each week the woman marvelled at what she had helped to shape.
by Heather Plett | Oct 29, 2011 | Uncategorized
It never fails – sign up to teach or speak on some subject related to self-discovery or personal development, and BAM some person or circumstance shows up in your life to challenge you and remind you that you still have much to learn on the subject. It keeps a teacher humble – and humility’s a good thing.
I was teaching on 4 different topics this week (business writing, effective listening, creative writing for self-discovery, and emotional & social intelligence). Needless to say, I got lots of lessons. (It’s a bit of a relief that Monday’s session on community-building got canceled – I need a break from the lessons!)
The biggest lesson came on Monday, just before launching into 4 crazy-full days of teaching. It was a lesson I needed to learn not only about emotional intelligence but about my identity as a teacher.
In the middle of madly prepping for my classes (after traveling for a week and not getting much advance work done), I received the evaluations students had submitted after the business writing class I’d taught throughout the summer. The evaluations were worse than any I’d ever received before. Several students were not happy. One student didn’t think he/she learned anything new, at least one felt my marking system left something to be desired, some were annoyed that they were forced to take a writing course as part of the HR certificate, and one didn’t like my teaching style.
In the mix were some glowingly positive ones, but of course, the insecure part of my mind focused solely on the negative. And that’s when the gremlins began to dance in my head, taunting me with put-downs.
“You’re too wishy-washy with your marking system. You try too hard to be liked. You’re not really teaching them what they need to learn for the program they’re in. Someone else would do a better job. You’re failing… no, scratch that… you ARE a failure. Just WHY are you teaching? You’re not cut out for this.” And then there were the more friendly gremlins who weren’t putting me down, but were SURE I was in the wrong place. “You shouldn’t be teaching business writing. Your heart is in creative writing and you’re bringing too much of that into a business writing class. Why waste your time encouraging innovative thinking when most of your students just want to be handed a formula for getting top marks without really internalizing any of the learning?”
Only minutes into the gremlin dance (thankfully), the teacher part of my brain said, “Hey – wait a minute! Aren’t you teaching a class in emotional intelligence later this week? And aren’t you planning to tell people that they can choose the way they interpret and internalize situations and stories and can actually shift the pathways their brains take after something negative happens to them? And what about that story of Jill Bolte Taylor that you intend to share, about how she learned (after a stroke) that her brain was capable of over-riding the negative stories her left brain makes up when there are gaps in the data?”
Gulp. It’s true. I have a choice. I am not a victim of these negative stories playing in my brain.
And so I did what I planned to teach my students – asked a series of questions about what had just happened to reveal whatever truth I needed to take from it.
What are a few different ways I can interpret this story? 1. I’m a failure at teaching in general. 2. I didn’t do as well as I could have in this particular class. 3. I wasn’t an ideal match for some of the students in the class. 4. These students have emerged from an education system in which they are taught to think mostly with their logical left brains and search for formulas and empirical facts and I pushed them out of that comfort zone into a more ambiguous, creative, right-brained way of thinking and working. 5. There is already some negative energy at play in this group that has nothing to do with me and they are, unfortunately, feeding off each other and making it worse. (A version of the story that was corroborated by an email from the administrator.) 6. There is too much pressure (internally and externally) on these students to get high grades and so they’re taking that out on the teacher. 7. The fact that a few students engaged well with the learning and emerged stronger writers with greater interest in writing than they’d had before was enough. I don’t have to reach every student. 8. These students (all of them – whether they responded positively or negatively) were put into my life to help me learn some important things about who I am and how I teach and if I let them be my teachers, I will be wiser for it.
How do these various interpretations make me feel? 1. Disappointed in myself. 2. Sad that I wasn’t able to connect with more students. 3. Sorry for the students who would rather learn by rote than open their minds to innovation. 4. Frustrated with an education system that seems to be failing its students. 5. Angry at some of the students. 6. Happy for the small group of students who really shone under my tutelage. 7. Grateful for the role they all played as my teachers. 8. Determined to continue to grow as a teacher.
What options do I have about how I will respond to these interpretations? 1. Take the negative stuff personally and quit teaching. 2. Quit teaching this particular class. 3. Look for more opportunities to teach creative writing rather than business writing so I can connect with the kinds of students who value what I have to offer. 4. Adjust the way I’m teaching so that it fits better into left-brain thinking patterns. 5. Not change a thing and hope that future students “get” me better. 6. Learn a few lessons from this and adjust a few things I do (like how I communicate what elements they’re losing marks on). 7. Take pride in the fact that I connected so well with some of the students and had a genuine impact.
Huh. Go figure! Suddenly the negative story had much less power over me.
“Take THAT gremlins! You can slink back into your corners now!”
Trying my best to be emotionally intelligent, I internalized those things that felt like important learnings, I whispered a prayer of gratitude for the way the students had served as my teachers, and I went back to preparing for the sessions I would teach this week.
The very next day I started a brand new session of the same business writing class with a new group of students. Yes, I was a little nervous going in (the gremlins still managed to whisper from their corners), but I knew that I could do this with confidence. If I put everything I could into it, made adjustments where they were necessary, trusted my intuitive sense of what the students need, and had enough confidence to teach the way I believe students need to be taught rather than the way the system seems to demand, I could succeed (even if I still get a few negative evaluations at the end of the session).
A few days later, just to make extra value out of the learning, I shared this story with the students of my emotional & social intelligence workshop. Because I believe a teacher is best when she demonstrates that she too is still a learner along the path. And I watched with delight as nearly every student had at least one a-ha moments about the choices they make every day.
At the end of the day yesterday, two students approached me, trying to figure out how they could sign up for future classes I’m teaching, including the business writing class (that I have a third session of starting in a few weeks). Because they “like how I teach”.
That’s good enough for me!
I once heard this Hasidic tale: “We need a coat with two pockets. In one pocket there is dust, and in the other pocket there is gold. We need a coat with two pockets to remind us who we are.” Knowing, teaching, and learning under the grace of great things will come from teachers who own such a coat and who wear it to class every day. – Parker Palmer
