Are You the Artist of Your Life?

Artist sees possibilities while they are working on their canvas. Do you create opportunities in all the situations that occur in your life?  The simple tasks, significant projects, or even those traumatic situations we all must handle in our lives?

“You are the artist of your life.  Don’t give the paintbrush to anyone else.”

Is Your Artist Hiding or Running Away?

“The future depends on what you do today.”  Mahatma Gandhi

How do you know if your artist is hiding or running away?  Take the next 14 days to track everything you do each day, including what you do at work and with others.  This tracking will help you find the distractions taking up the space on your life’s canvas.

For example, some significant distractions are TV, the internet, texting, and people.  None of them are necessarily bad, just how you are using them. Distractions limit your possibilities to create your satisfaction with the life you are creating.

The canvas is yours to decide what to include in your life.

Artist Infinite Possibilities

“When you’ve exhausted all possibilities, remember this:  You haven’t.”  Thomas Edison

Over the years, I’ve seen the two words “infinite possibilities,” and it’s exciting, yet how does one have infinite possibilities in their everyday life?

What are “infinite possibilities?”  Having no limits or boundaries in time or magnitude – numerous possibilities.  When I read this, my first thought was, of course, there are limits and boundaries in our lives.

Yet, if you believe that there are several solutions to any given problem, what would that change?  Suppose you step back and brainstorm around all the possibilities in a particular situation. Would you come up with different ways of seeing a problem, make other choices, and be open to change?

What Stops Our Infinite Possibilities?

We live our lives automatically, limiting possibilities, without being aware of doing so.

Your experiences shape your limited range of possibilities. Over time, you have created interpretations of your experiences, which impact the decisions you make in your life.  Those experiences can create beliefs that limit your ability to visualize alternative ways to do things, your relationships, and your choices around the best way to live your life.

Add New Possibilities into Your Life

“Your possibilities are unlimited, but it all begins with the deliberate choice to think differently.”  Chris Guillebeau

It can be overwhelming to think of infinite possibilities, yet what if there were other options in each situation – even when you can’t see them at the moment?   What if you decided there are opportunities to see your world differently, get out of your head, and open yourself to other possibilities?

Our first response is to go to the negative thinking path: “I don’t like my job, and I can’t stop working, so where is the possibility in that situation?”

Right now, you may not be able to quit the job, yet, you could step back and think of alternative employment, or maybe create a different attitude around your current work and find small pleasures throughout your day.  So instead of spending time hating your job, you can use that energy to think of ways to create a better job for you.  It takes time, yet the possibility is there to do something else.

We all have built into us a negative bias, which means we first go to the negative around what we can’t have or do. Our negative bias is there to protect us from potential harm, and we use it to keep safe. It’s necessary to protect ourselves from real danger, though not from false beliefs around what is unsafe.   False beliefs limit our possibilities.

When you reframe a negative response and reverse it to see a positive possibility, you allow a potential new choice to take hold in your life and create a more satisfying life.

Remember, the negative bias is there, and you get to choose to follow it or create another solution in your life.

How do you help yourself add more choices into your life?

• Step back — write out all the limitations you are feeling in your life. Don’t hold back; list everything that feels not right, limiting and stressful.  Use brainstorming to capture your limiting thoughts around each.  Recognize all the blocks that stop you from going after what you want, creating new possibilities in your life, and choosing to live differently. Brainstorming is thinking about all the options you could implement to change any area that frustrates you.  It doesn’t mean you do all of them; instead, it opens possibilities that you could implement to solve your issue.
• Challenge — your immediate limiting belief of what possibilities you have at any time. Reframe all those limiting thoughts by thinking of alternative options for the same situation or feelings.  For example, I never liked public speaking and worked hard not to stand in front of any room during my career.  However, I enjoyed a position, and one of the requirements was to do training – stand in front of the room to present to others.  I carried that limited belief that I couldn’t be in front of others for many years, and guess what – I did it.   I could say I wish I had done it sooner, yet that would negate that I did it.
• Open to support – I’ve been a member of a women’s group for many years, and they have challenged and added so many more possibilities than I could have thought on my own. No negative thinkers are allowed. Make sure you choose the right support for you. Someone who wants you to be happier, succeed in your life, and will be fully there for you to create more possibilities.
• Look around – what little things can you change now that help you use your “possibility muscles.”

• Get out of your comfort zone – choose one minor change that supports what you want to create in your life. It’s the beginning of feeling more comfortable with change as change creates possibilities.
• Be a beginner – most of us desire immediate results and don’t see the long-term in mind. If you are on the road to choose change, be comfortable with being a beginner.   Give yourself time to enjoy each step towards where you want to be.
• Find your artist – get out — explore nature go to museums, and you can see all the different possibilities of life all around you. Open your eyes and see how nature constructs so much variety that it seems there are no duplicates in life. Other artists, like yourself, use art to express themselves and use the same materials in different ways. You can use this new awareness to be the artist of your life.

Final Thoughts

Possibilities are all around you, and your next thought can either block or create another opportunity at any second.  As you think the thought, does it stop other possibilities?  Be proactive in becoming aware of your thoughts and asking whether the idea serves you.

When you are in a situation that doesn’t add value to your life, creates conflicts, or needs to solve an issue, make a list of at least ten different possibilities.  In actuality, there can be more than ten because there are infinite possibilities.

Women’s Group Topics

Possibilities is an excellent topic as you can use this topic over several meetings since it would cover the different parts of each person, such as work, finances, relationships, health, creativity, order, and so much more.  It could even be the main focus of a group.  However you do it, find time to support each other in creating a living canvas.

You can create Vision Boards with pictures of different possibilities each person would like to add or play within their lives.

Be well,
Pat
“To fully enjoy the ‘richness’ of our lives, we need to stop long enough to visit with ourselves.”
(Pat Brill)

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