What Experiences Make You Glad To Be Alive?

What creative experiences make you glad to be alive?Whether decorating Easter eggs with your family, playing piano and singing to entertain yourself, taking photos of spring flowers, planning a trip, visiting a museum or watching a play ~ the creative experiences that make you glad to be alive ~ those are what I call your Creative Oasis Moments.I get a lot of personal creative satisfaction by creating visuals and writing these posts to share with you, but there are lots of other creative experiences on my wish list that I want to try just for the pure joy of it.Guess what. Even with my years of experience as a certified Master Kaizen-Muse Creative Coach I still need to intentionally give myself permission to take the time for this. (Doing my best to practice what I preach!)Now that doesn't mean I'm creating masterpieces left and right by any means!See those Easter eggs above? Note the egg with delicate and intricate floral designs? That is not the egg I decorated. That would be the handiwork of my talented daughter. Mine would be the one on the left that looks a little like a kindergartner did it.But the important thing is I had fun doing it! It added joy to my weekend and lovely time spent with my daughter. What more could I ask for?I had a little more luck with the eggs we died using old silk ties. They look batiked, don't they?I share this with you with the full admission that I quite often find creative projects I want to try (such as decorating Easter eggs using old silk ties) and never actually get around to it.But, encouraged by the gentle accountability of my Big Magic Better-Than-A-Book-Club Coaching Group to set my intentions and give myself permission to spend more of my life enjoying personal Creative Oasis Moments (and practice being okay with the fact that every item on my never-ending to do list will not be completed beforehand!) I ended up spending a fun-filled hour with my daughter taking great pleasure in trying something new.To help you set intentions and give yourself permission to enjoy more of the creative experiences you crave this week I've created a permission slip for you. Click here to download, print and use in good health.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite passages so far from Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert:"You can live a long life, making and doing really cool things the entire time. You might earn a living with your pursuits or you might not, but you can recognize that this is not really the point. And at the end of your days, you can thank creativity for having blessed you with a charmed, interesting, passionate existence. Totally up to you." Until next time, all the best from my Creative Oasis to yours,Jill