style="font-size:15px;"> To women everywhere; claim your creativity, be your true self in the world, and trust.
Contents
Express Your Creative Gifts and Life Purpose
Sift Through Your Ideas to Get Heart-Focused
Heal Your Self-Esteem and Your Fears
Learn New Mindsets for Courage and Success
Design Action Strategies That Work
Commit to Your Muse and Your Intuition
Crafting a Business Plan That Helps you to Grow Personally, Generates Prosperity, and Enhances Your Lifestyle
Short-Circuit Self-Sabotage, Obstacles, and Failures
Learn to Let Go and Leap—Embrace Transition and Being Unnerved
Avoid the Female Burnout Traps
Build Effective Mind/Body/Heart/Spirit Strategies to Nurture Your Success and Well Being
Initiate Transformation for You and Your Team
Preface
Hello!
You are about to embark on a journey of self-discovery and learn the wisdom of success. I suggest that you invest in a compact, beautiful journal that you can carry with you long after you read this book for the first time. Throughout the book, you will find many special Challenges exercises to complete to make this experience more meaningful for you. Use your journal to record your responses to these Challenges.
Then, after you have finished your first reading of this book, carry your journal with you and note down your own secrets to success and your stretch goals for a happy and prosperous future of heartfelt success and a life of fulfillment. It all begins with loving yourself and extending that love to others by being the person that you aspire to be. Do creative work that nourishes you, other people and creatures, and the planet. You are meant to be here. Take advantage of it.
Just a note, as there are so many wonderful, successful women in America, I invited a diverse group of one hundred women to be interviewed for this book, with a goal of only interviewing twenty-five, although I interviewed a few more than that. The women who responded positively to my request generously and openly shared their work and life experiences and their wisdom with us. As with my first book, The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women: A Portable Mentor, I did not chase women for the book. I trusted that each woman who chose to participate and to serve as a mentor to other women knew intuitively that it was the right thing to do and that she wanted to be part of this project. We owe each of them our gratitude and respect. Their website addresses are in the back of the book in the Resources section. I thank them with all my heart.
Gail McMeekin, LICSW, Creative Success LLC
Boston, Fall 2010
Acknowledgments
Last spring, I was getting ready to pitch a few new ideas to my publisher, Conari Press, when out of the blue, Associate Publisher Caroline Pincus got in touch with me first. We agreed on two book ideas: this one you are reading, and a journal to accompany The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women, which my readers have been asking me for since it was first published. I will write the journal this winter. Caroline is a dream editor, and she feels a bit like my fairy godmother as she weaves her magic. She is smart, fast, loaded with clever ideas, and very supportive. She is a gift and I hope to collaborate with her again in the future. I also want to acknowledge Barb Fisher for designing the beautiful, playful cover for this book, which brings me joy every time I look at it. Major thanks also go to Bonni Hamilton and Lisa Trudeau and the entire marketing team in Newburyport, Massachusetts, for their efforts to get the word out about our books and for teaching us about the new world of social media and blogs.
I feel very lucky to be part of the Red Wheel Weiser/Conari Press family. My two books are still selling, and I still get emails or Facebook posts from all over the world thanking me for writing them. What every self-help author wants is for our work to endure and continue to motivate people to create better lives. The entire staff at Red Wheel Weiser/Conari Press deserve credit for birthing wise and visually appealing books. I salute them all.
I am deeply appreciative of the community of women who made the time to be interviewed for this book, shared their varied experiences, and agreed to be mentors for other women. It felt important for me to duplicate the formula that worked so well in the first 12 Secrets book. This group of women is also highly creative, as well as kind and caring, which were criteria for selection. These are remarkable, no-nonsense women of courage who have a strong passion for life and for their mission of service. They don't “settle,” but instead they take action and make big things happen. They fail sometimes, as we all do when taking positive risks, but they get right back up again and move forward on their paths. I am grateful to each of you for participating in this sacred project with me.
I also hired a team of people to help me with all the administrative details of this book, and there were many. I want to especially thank Linda Poirier for her endless patience and perseverance in dealing with many changes and challenging tasks, and for her edits. To Beverly Morrison and Clare Nielsen, my transcription team, many thanks for the hours you spent listening to the recordings of my interviews and
