by Cherie Ray | Aug 8, 2022 | Inspiration
Living INSPIRED! If you’re in my circle of newsletter connections, you know I’m all about living an inspired and free life.
This week I had the opportunity to work with a client who is a professional performer. They came to see me because they had lost their mojo. They wanted to live in inspiration and create new material from a full tank. None of that was happening.
As we explored more, inside them existed a full tank of grief, heart break, and loss. There was no available space for inspiration to move in.
Fast forward to this Sunday’s CBS Sunday Morning show. In this week’s show they interviewed Jon Baptiste and his wife, Suleika Jaouad. In this interview, Jon and Suleika articulate many points they came up in my client’s session earlier this week.
● Find your way
● To express the unendurable
● Triumph over adversity
● Turn on the Light
● Focus on the Light
In my opinion creativity is life and creative expression is the verb of creativity, creating. Both are essential to living an inspired life.
● Everyone needs to exercise and experience free creative expression
● Allowing this movement of energy, which needs an outlet, a vehicle to carry the expression. Creative expression allows it to move through, not settle in and make camp!
● To express beyond the mind’s definition of what needs to be expressed, free of interpretation.
● The healing/gifts are in the act of creating, not in the production of a product.
This doesn’t occur by painting well; it occurs by painting (or whatever you are drawn to do).
If you’re a living human being, you have been presented with many uninvited pains. What are you going to do with yours? Let them silently kill the spark in your life? I surely hope not. I invite you to “find your way” to make creative expression a conscious part of your life. If you need support, contact me. I’ll be your tour guide to living fully expressed and free.
Sending smiles,
Cherie Ray
by Cherie Ray | Mar 15, 2022 | Inspiration, Thought
Who doesn’t need a good news story these days? Here’s one for you. Kids creating and being fearless or creating in spite of fear.
For many years, I have volunteered at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo (rodeohouston.com) serving on their Horticulture committee. I love working on this committee because I get to work closely with the kiddos as they compete for scholarship monies.
Participants register for both individual and partner events from floral design to landscape design and planting. Each competition has strict rules and guidelines that must be adhered to in order to be judged.
The competitions I enjoy the most are the floral design events. Why? Because each scholar is given the exact same materials to create with. While every scholar gets the same materials, no creation looks the same. I find this fascinating. Each creation is unique. Just like every human on the planet!
The scholars range from 10-18 years of age, both female and male. This year we had 113 participants. Each event is timed with a specific assignment. The scholars are brought into this huge ballroom, given an apron and a creating station, while they wait for the announcements. Some tower over their table, some barely reach the table. Some look cool as cucumbers, some look like it’s a high stakes game.
As soon as the rules are announced, the timer begins and off they go. Each participant’s process is unique to them. Some start by sorting their followers, getting organized. Others just grab stems and go for it. One of the more precious sites is watching a 10-year-old boy creating a bridal bouquet! He gives it his all. HI hands are barely large enough to hold the bouquet.
With lots of monitoring eyes and cameras capturing the action, they always beat the timer and submit a creation. What entertains me so, is the amount of focus and engagement they give these events. I admire each one for getting in the game to play with life.
Being in a room with 113 creatives creating is a fun energy to be in. I just soak it up. The energy is so intense as they sit in their anticipation and subsides when to buzzer goes off. I love the idea of kids creating with their hands, freely, with no one telling them what to do and with something alive. I believe it brings them an opportunity to get grounded and connected. When kids have the opportunity to draw from within, they GET that they have what it takes. Who doesn’t need to be reminded of that?
What have you been up to? I’d love to hear from you.
Sending smiles,
Cherie
by Cherie Ray | Dec 10, 2021 | Coaching, Inspiration
How’s it going? I wonder if you’re as surprised as I am that we are well into the month of November and staring right into the face of the holidays? Well, it’s true. Here we are. As we enter the holiday season (and any moment) I think this writing from Hafiz could support us all. I hope you enjoy it. This poem inspired me to resume my private dance lessons. I’m so glad I did!
If this writing wakes something up in you, I’d love to hear about it. Lemme’ know!
Wishing you the very best,
Cherie
A Good Reminder….
From Hafiz:
I sometimes forget that
I was created for joy
My mind is too busy
My heart is too heavy
Heavy for me to remember
that I have been
called to dance
the sacred dance for life
I was created to smile
to love
to be lifted up
and lift others up
O sacred one
Untangle my feet
from all that ensnares
Free my soul
That we might
Dance
and that our dancing
might be contagious.
by Cherie Ray | Dec 10, 2021 | Inspiration, Thought
Hello! How have you been? I hope you’re doing well. How are you doing with all the change, unclear information, and the way life is unfolding for you?
Since March of 2020 does it feel like the world has been shifting under your feet? During this time, I’m sure you’ve had your fair share of loss, disappointment, and unmet expectations. What are you doing with it all? I hope you’re not looking for new places to stuff it.
With what feels like truckloads of LDE (loss, disappointment, expectation) lately in my world, I got really curious about how to NOT be permanently changed by these occurrences. It looks to me like life is going to do what it’s going to do, and people are going to do what they’re going to do. I decided I want to flow better with these changes’ vs creating a story and living inside my story about what’s happening around me? LDE certainly appears to be part of the nature of life and part of the human experience.
When I got curious, what sounds like seconds but felt like years, out of the blue, an insight dropped in, “I don’t want to be a pickle.” What? A pickle? I had to laugh. My intuition has a profound sense of humor!
As I considered this insight, a pickle lives inside a rigid container steeped in bitter vinegar. Well, there’s nothing about feeling confined or living with an internal environment of bitterness that interests me. So, I got curious about how to NOT be a pickle. At this moment in time, I’m seeing I have some free will in this game.
So, I exercised my free will and put my pin on the map about how I desire to feel in my day-to-day life with the unpredictable nature of life. With a curious desire to see something fresh, on NOT being a pickle, I’ve gotten some very helpful insights on how to live in more peace and joy while the world does what it’s going to do.
This same process can work for you.
I’d love to hear from you! Let’s have a conversation. The focus of my work is to teach you how to eliminate struggle from your life and to live in peace-filled joy with what you can’t change.
Sending smiles,
Cherie
by Cherie Ray | Apr 19, 2021 | Coaching, Inspiration
Just the presence of her boss would set her off like a firecracker. With every interaction, she suffered a litany of “feeling criticized,” “getting hooked into her bad feeling,” or “watching my self-esteem erode under my feet.” Working in such an overwhelmingly toxic environment painted the picture to her that this is just the way it is when you work for someone else. She could only see two options: suck it up or quit. And she had tried sucking it up for long enough; there was no space left to stuff the stress. She was mentally and physically exhausted from dealing with the dissatisfaction in her work life – that had annoyingly wormed its way into her home life as well.
Jean came to me because she was at the end of her rope. Wearing an unyielding scowl on her face and with her hands frequently thrown into the air in frustration, she didn’t know how to maneuver her only apparent choices. She was not at her magical retirement age, nor was she financially prepared to stop working altogether. But Jean just couldn’t imagine sludging along, ticking the days off her calendar until it was finally time to cue up Johnny Paycheck’s glorious song, “Take this Job and Shove it” as she went a-walkin’ out the door.
When Jean and I began working together, I invited her to temporarily shelve the idea of quitting. We knocked around the idea of using her present situation as a laboratory for her learning. This was a challenging and problematic task because Jean wanted to feel “100% happier,” which she was certain could only happen if she exited her current circumstance. She reluctantly agreed to give it six months.
Our next conversation began with Jean declaring, “I quit. I couldn’t take it anymore.” With a glimmer of hope, she wondered what was next. Was there another way to eliminate the stresses and struggles she was up against?
Through our work together, Jean achieved results that are out of this world! She negotiated a re-hire with a 30k annual pay increase. She added 300k – minimum – to her retirement bucket by staying in the workforce longer. She had previously wasted 80% of her day distracted by the office culture, which only allowed a small portion of her time to be spent performing her duties. Today, efficient work blissfully dominates her workday – only 20% is distraction!
Jean is now leading a satisfying, centered, successful life and career. This is exactly why my clients come to me. Bringing a deep understanding of the way people universally operate and a keen capability to transform complex mountains into simple molehills, I offer creative solutions and fresh perspectives to eliminate struggle and inspire true living!
