Art Journal 20, Maya Angelou

Does your lizard brain get in the way? The lizard brain is that part of your brain which helps you survive, the part that influences your thoughts on how to preserve your sex, your strength and your place in the pack, so to speak.  It's ancient, and it's active.  Daily.  

Survival is pretty important, so I won't knock that scaly, old thing that leads us from "the edge" to safety, into the arms of "the norm".  BUT, and you had to know there would be a BUT, I will suggest that we be aware of why we are making the decisions to stay safe, to follow the expectations of society, and why we don't let ourselves teeter on the edge, even if that edge allows us to blossom into a great and wonderful being. 

K, enough talking in euphemisms. What I'm really talking about here is that scary thought of diving into what you know to be your true value, your gift and allowing that gift to be what drives you every day. 

Lots of people are doing it.  Loads of people are trying to shake off the icky old image that they wore while pursuing their former career, now that they are unemployed due to what my friends in Costa Rica called "The World Crisis" (oh my, how can one country have such an effect on the whole world???).  And in this shaking off, they are starting to recreate what it means to be an individual again.  Entrepreneurial ventures are taking off and succeeding left and right.  There is a near-audible, visible movement toward greater self-motivation and innovation.  

In this time of greater communication via the interweb, we have opportunity, literally at our fingertips, to access loads of information on how to be brave and take this giant step.  There is heaps upon heaps of advice offered because the people who are successful know that to entice business, one must offer some advice on how they do it.  Plus, there are some very generous, kind people out there, who's gift it is to help people.

So go.  Be bold.  Listen to the lizard brain when you are actually on a cliff edge, but nudge it aside when you're simply looking to do what you'd do best.  There's some great reading, in Seth Godin's blog here

and in Sandy Dempsey's The Dreaming Cafe, here and in the wonderful words of Maya Angelou, who's poetry I picked for my 3rd poetry page in my art journal. To see the 1st and 2nd poetry pages click: Shel Silvertein, and Edgar Allen Poe .