Living Artfully

Living Artfully

Create the Life You Imagine

by Sandra Magsamen

from the flap: Living artfully is expressing who you are through the moments you create. Living Artfully reminds us to explore and experience life with more heart, meaning, purpose and joy. It asks us to imagine, to dream big, to believe in ourselves, to celebrate the people in our lives, make each day count, dance when the spirit moves us, laugh out loud, and let our voices be heard.

pg 2 She invited her parents, brothers, sisters, in-laws, nieces, and nephews to a restaurant for the big birthday dinner. Before anyone arrived, she placed a small papier-mache box with a cake painted on its lid at each seat around the table. Inside every box were twenty-five little slips of paper, each bearing a different question. Who would play you in the movie of your life? What is the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you? What is your greatest strength? If you could do one thing over in your life, what would it be? Whom would you most like to meet? What are the three words you'd want other people to use to describe you?

pg 4 ''The more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing truly more artistic than to love people.'' Vincent van Gogh

pg 51 ''To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.'' Joseph Chilton Pearce

pg 56 Pablo Casals, the great Spanish cellist, railed against left-brain schooling:

And what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the world there is no other child like you. In the millions of years that have passed there has never been another child like you....you have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel.

pg 57 It's no surprise that a UCLA study documented what we already assumed: on average, at age five we engage in creative tasks 98 times a day, laugh 113 times, and ask 65 questions. By age forty-four, the numbers fade to 2 creative tasks a day, 11 laughs, and 6 questions. I want you to decide to reverse the slide in these numbers in your daily life. And a good place to start is asking questions.

pg 77 ''Self-trust is the first secret of success'' Ralph Waldo Emerson

pg 78 ''Imagination is more important than knowledge'' Albert Einstein

pg 125 ''Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.'' Charles Mingus

pg 204 ''Do your little bit of good where you are. It is those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.'' Archbishop Desmond Tutu

pg 206 ''Three things in human life are important: one is to be kind, the second is to be kind, and the third is to be kind.'' Henry James

pg 214 The educational goals of the American Visionary Art Museum are a call for creative action that each of us can apply to our own lives:

1. Expand the definition of a worthwhile life.
2. Engender respect for and delight in the gifts of others.
3. Increase awareness of the wide variety of choices available for all, particularly students.
4. Encourage each individual to build upon his or her special knowledge and inner strengths.
5. Promote the use off innate intelligence, intuition, self-exploration, and creative self-reliance.
6. Confirm the greatest hunger for finding out just what each of us can do best, in our own voice, at any age.
7. Empower the individual to choose to do that thing really, really well.

pg 222

l        Act on the desire to connect, to belong, to love and be loved.

l        Come to your senses.

l        Expand the definition of creativity to include all aspects of living.

l        Cultivate and use your own language.

l        Create moments that matter.

l        See the beauty in everything.

l        Play.

l        Imagine the possibilities.

l        Live life passionately.