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Cut the muppet strings in your life

I love stumbling upon other people who put into words what you’ve been trying to say for a while. Yesterday, I stumbled upon Beci Culley, a local Brisbane artist and quickly fell in love with her artwork.

I first came across this great piece on Beci thanks to Girl With A Satchel. It prompted me to check out Beci‘s website too and I’m glad I did, because it is filled with beautiful illustrations and whimsy watercolours. But, it was her comments on life which she used as inspiration for this illustration which I was inspired by more:

“When did we begin to rely on other people rather than our own discernment to figure out the truths in circumstances?

“To be misguided by other people’s voices becomes a life of many wandering roads, continually trying to get back on the right one.

“…people who live their lives like this are continually tied to other people’s misconceptions (hence the string) with their feet clearly off the ground. Let’s start to believe in ourselves and begin to trust that still small voice in the belly of our souls.”

Well said Beci!

Image via Beci.com.au

Acceptance of what you cannot avoid

Life will inevitably throw you things you would rather avoid. This can range from the relatively minor (an untimely pimple, for example) through to the major (life threatening illness or the loss of someone close to you). Often, attention and effort is placed on avoiding these situations and the pain and suffering they cause. There a hundreds of thousands of products promising to alleviate your pain and suffering, however, they provide temporary relief at best. Learning to accept what you are trying to avoid is free and may end up bringing you greater peace in the long run.

Complete avoidance of pain and suffering is to go against human existence, but how you handle that pain and suffering speaks straight to the heart of your personal growth. Everything in life is temporary and accepting this truth can ease the challenges you face.

Of course, the flipside of this is that the joy, happiness and excitement you experience are also temporary. Striving to find constant happiness is also an illusion which can fuel your pain and suffering. Accepting that it too is temporary can help ease the challenge to create a permanently happy life. It is with that pain and suffering that the greatest joy, happiness and excitement can often grow out of – both of which will eventually pass.

Where might you be gripping on to something in your life, hoping it is permanent? Is it causing you more pain than is necessary?

This post has also been featured on Miranda Kerr’s Kora Organics.

Grateful in April – a month of gratitude in review

If you follow The Little Sage on Twitter or Facebook, you no doubt saw my daily posts for the Grateful in April campaign.

A client first introduced me to the campaign last year, just before the end of April. This year, I vowed to get on board before the end of the month! Let it be known, I’m not affiliated with the campaign in any way – I just simply believed in the concept.

The concept: Grateful in April is a global campaign to get people focused on feeling good about what they’ve already got in their lives. It’s amazing what can occur when you find ways to be grateful for what you have.

My personal challenge: To post what I was grateful for each day on Facebook and Twitter. With each post I also encouraged fans and followers to join in with what they were grateful for.

My experience: Naturally, focusing on the positives helped breed positivity and I was inspired by the feedback and participation of those online friends. Offline, I also had people commenting on what I’d posted that day or simply ask about the campaign.

A couple of highlights for me from the project…

By day two, my sister joined in and posted her own gratitude posts on Twitter.
One of my Facebook followers reminded me about a gratitude journal I kept about 10 years ago. I dug it up and reread it. At the time, it helped me through a very difficult period and it was lovely to revisit the positives of that time.
Committing to posting a gratitude each day helped me to think about the positives, even when I was having an off moment. I found I was starting to jot things down as I became grateful for them and so many of these weren’t posted publicly.

It really didn’t take too much out of my day to think about something I was grateful for. April was a very positive month for me with lots of good news and developments with some projects I’ve been working on, the arrival of babies and announcement of pregnancies for my family and friends. It was also a pretty challenging month in other ways, but to be focused on the positives helped keep it all in perspective.

The real aim of the campaign is to help move people more permanently into a place of gratitude and I hope to rekindle the spark of my gratitude journal.

What are you grateful for?

Image via thecarolinejohansson.com

Inspired by… artist Laura Horrocks aka Evelyn Luc

Who are you? Laura Horrocks aka Evelyn Luc, 24, Brisbane, Artist

Describe yourself in five words? dreamer, romantic, creative, blogger, scientist

What is your passion/What do you do? I am a visual artist which includes painting, drawing, sculpture and installation work. I studied at the Queensland College of Art focusing on a major in painting and art theory. I am also a graduate of a Bachelor of Science where I studied anatomy, neuroanatomy, psychology, biology, pharmacy, bio-chemistry and philosophy. Within my art career I get to research and reflect on all of these areas and more.

When did you develop/choose to follow your passion? My earliest memory of making art was drawing on a blackboard my parents bought for Christmas when I was around 5. From age 7 I was already giving away sketches to members of my family as gifts. I think when I actually commited myself to pursing art as a career would have to be 2011. I had dropped out of art school a couple of years early disheartened by the 2008 economic crisis and disillusioned after seeing firsthand some of the greatest art in the world in Europe. At the time I resigned myself to trying another path in life. Come 2011 I realised that art as a career choice was inevitable for me and not making art was in reality much worse than making art even if I was never as great as the many artists before me. I stopped worrying about how I would be relevant and what people would think and just embraced it. I realised making art wasn’t just what I enjoyed but it was a big part of who I was and how I looked at the world.

What inspires you? Everything! from other art, to music to books, to fashion, to design, to nature, to philosophy, to science. The world is overflowing with possibilities and ideas and potential. I started an inspiration blog at http ://laurahorrocksart .blogspot .com .au / to share all of the wonderful things that inspire my work. There are some days that I don’t feel like making something, but once I get started I stop thinking and go to this other place and all of a sudden many hours have passed and I think to myself ‘I love this so much’. Most times when I get an idea it’s like electricity, I will see the work as it would look finished in my mind and what follows that is the urge to start working on it.

Best advice I recieved on following my passion? Living your life to make sure everyone else is happy will never in fact ensure the everyone else is indeed happy. There will always be someone who you’ve disappointed or let down or generally disagreed with. You might as well do something that makes you happy than not, otherwise you’re not happy and neither are the people around you. And always listen to your heart, your head will tear you to pieces but your heart knows the way.

Where can people find you? You can find my work at http ://evelynluc .wordpress .com /

Cut the muppet strings in your life

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Acceptance of what you cannot avoid

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Grateful in April – a month of gratitude in review

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Inspired by… artist Laura Horrocks aka Evelyn Luc

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