Empowering you to lead a joyful and creative life

Imagine if joy was your job.  What if it was your responsibility to find happiness in your business and personal life wherever you could?

“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.” Robert Louis Stevenson

What kind of difference would that make for you and the people around you?

There may be times when you feel like there is nothing joyful about your life let alone your job.  But don’t you owe it to yourself and the people around you to pay attention to what brightens your day, what puts a spring in your step?

How could you make things more enjoyable?  What if you made a game of taking routine tasks and added a twist to make them more pleasing?

Even if you can’t be the head Joymaster in your work, you can find dozens of ways to make life more fun at home and work.  And if you are lucky enough to have an entrepreneurial spirit, you can make choices to define your own job and put a priority on joy.

Your ongoing responsibility as Joymaster of your life is to be aware of everything that you are grateful for, everything that puts a smile on your face, and everything that makes your heart skip a beat (in a good way).

I love hearing stories about janitors, school bus drivers, and others who show genuine delight in what they are doing and their enthusiasm becomes contagious.  They remind us that how we do something really does make a difference.

If you choose joy as your job, what might you do differently?

Is it luck, persistence, courage, or awareness that turns some people’s creative failures into success?

Perhaps it’s all of those things along with a willingness to be open to the process and learn along the way.

Have you ever had a project that didn’t go well and you ended up feeling that it was just a waste of time and energy because the outcome wasn’t what you wanted?

Wouldn’t it be more freeing to think about doing something without concern that it will be good enough or even successful in someone else’s terms? Wouldn’t it be more fun to just try and see what happens?

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill

One story that I love comes from Oriah Mountain Dreamer in her book, What We Ache For. Half a class was told to make as many clay pots as possible and would be graded on the quantity they produced. The other half was told to make just one excellent pot and they would be graded on quality.

The half that made as many as they could, without concern about how good they were, ended up with better quality than the other half of the class that tried hard to make just one excellent pot.

They had better results because they allowed themselves to continue making pots, regardless of the outcome. They were free to experience the process without pressure and expectation. Through repetition, trial and error, and without concern for failures, they could learn from their mistakes and continue.

That is a powerful lesson in how striving for perfectionism or excellence can often be much more difficult to achieve, creating more pressure and stress than to allow yourself the chance to practice, to make mistakes, and to fail.

The more fun it is to practice, the more you will do it, and the better your outcome.

This is a concept that I am trying to keep in mind as I build my websites and blog, adding articles and resources, to offer encouragement and hope for people to use their creativity and most importantly to create a life they love. My friend, Paula, gave me the gift of calling it my online playground which helped me shift my preconceived notions of what it “should” be to something I could experiment with, changing, adding, and playing as I go to see what happens.

This simple change in thinking allows me to be more relaxed and have fun with the process.

I also notice the more playful I am when I am creating jewelry, the better I like the results.

How could you let yourself practice and open yourself up to unexpected outcomes so that all your creative failures become stepping stones of possibility?

BHG-Black-Cat-Candle-Holders by Johanna Parker Design

Using your creativity just for fun is a nice way to take a well deserved break.

Halloween is just around the corner.   Here are some fun projects and ideas to get you in the mood.

Folk artist Johanna Parker has a couple of projects in the current 2009 Holiday Crafts Magazine by Better Homes and Gardens.  Her Halloween project is a very cute papier mache black cat candle holder.

You should be able to find this magazine in your favorite bookstore or newstand.  It also has several other fun holiday and Christmas project ideas and instructions.  Here is what the cover looks like:

Also from Better Homes and Gardens, check out BHG.com for some fun ideas for decorating pumpkins, including folk art designs and easy no carving designs, decorating outdoors, costumes, and recipes for Halloween parties.

Halloween is a great time to use your imagination and creativity.  What will you do just for the fun of it?

Check this out for more ideas on using your Creativity Just For Fun.