want to thank Barbara Williams, Crissy Sutter, and Patrice Birenberg for holding down the fort with my newsletter, my website, and my clients, etcetera while I was submerged in weeks of intense interviewing and writing.
On a personal note, I must first thank my husband and soul mate, Russ Street, for once again stepping up to bat (he used to be a great baseball player) and taking care of things so that are lives stayed glued together. His support astonishes me daily. To Marilyn Veltrop, my daily email partner, our exchange gives me a daily dose of your intuition and your insights which enrich my life and ground me each morning. I am grateful to Nancy Monson and Deborah Knox for their special offers of support for this project. To Mary Headley, whom I just met in a year ago, courtesy of Suzanne Falter-Barns, thank you for inviting me to be your guest at Lisa Sasevich's amazing workshop called “Speak to Sell” in California. This invitation opened many new doors for me, plus we had great fun traipsing all around the country going to other incredible workshops this year hosted by Ali Brown and Baeth Davis, as well as Lisa and Suzanne. Our adventures were life-changing—thank you. My learnings from those workshops are interwoven into this book and several of the women in the book either ran or attended these workshops. I also want to thank my friends and family, as well as my cheering section on Facebook, who checked in on me to see how this book was coming along. It meant a lot. Of course, I am grateful to all my wonderful clients who share their creative journeys with me and whom I learn from as they grow into their own personal, heartfelt success. Lastly, I am grateful to my Trusted Source for inspiration and inner guidance which facilitates my creative expression.
Secret One
Express Your Creative Gifts and Life Purpose
“I've come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that's as unique as a fingerprint—and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of a service, working hard, and allowing the energy of the universe to lead you.”
—Oprah Winfrey
Over the past ten years, I received notes from thousands of women (and men) worldwide who said that my first book, The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women: A Portable Mentor, changed their lives, gave them inspiration and hope, and allowed them to embrace their creativity again and run with it. In contrast, I have run into many women (and men) in my travels who react to the title of that book by saying “Oh, that's not for me, I'm not creative at all.”
My heart aches when I hear those words, as we are all creative in our lives, not just writers, artists, and actresses. Watch a healthy two-year-old child at play while they gleefully try out new projects, like throwing sand to see what happens, running after a butterfly to see if they can catch it, discovering the wonders of glue, and sticking together everything they can find.
As we know, the definition of creativity is “to make or invent something new”—to make connections. Children allowed to engage in free play (as opposed to being perched in front of a DVD) invent and make all kinds of original creations without intimidation or self-consciousness.
But something happens to many of us as we grow up—we freeze up creatively or disown our gifts. Then we get bad advice and often get on the wrong path. Thus, creativity goes underground. Or we follow a creative path but we don't treat our work as a profession and end up living on the margin, and we don't get the recognition or financial rewards that we deserve. Other people have a creative outlet that they consider a hobby, like knitting, and choose to have a different day job. But both the job and the knitting can be creative outlets, too. Part of our creative process is to craft the life and the business that we want.
Then there are women who actively choose to pursue their creative interest (or interests, very often), and become highly creative women. But even then, they may fall prey to bad advice, low self-esteem, not marketing themselves actively, and the terror of being seen. This book will help each of you, regardless of which category you are in.
You are creative—own it!
You have the potential to become highly successful.
Your creativity is an essential ingredient to building a successful career, business, and personal life.
You can learn to be successful creatively by following the advice in this book.
You can potentially change your entire life and lifestyle to honor your creative gifts and finally feel free, fulfilled, and prosperous.
You have an inner brilliance that allows you to solve problems with novel and innovative solutions, help others, and profit from it.
This book is your ticket to becoming the highly creative and successful woman you long to be. But first, you have to do some healing work, learn new professional development and lifestyle strategies, and empower yourself as an entrepreneur or as a key contributor to an ethical, quality organization where you enjoy working. Even if you choose to spend some time working for someone else, you need to keep your eye on the door, your skills and your About Page updated, and a strong network going. Your best security is to grow yourself. You need to follow a special path for creative success. It will reawaken that creative little girl who either got squelched or silenced or went out on the creative path with the wrong guidance and has been stumbling along. If you are already operating as a highly creative woman, this book will propel you to the next level of growth, stretching your comfort zone and pushing you to step fully into a CEO mindset.
THE MAGIC OF TWELVE
Many of you may be wondering why I am writing another book with the title “12 Secrets” in it. In doing a little research, I discovered that 12 is the number of a whole and perfect harmonious unit. There are 12 months in a year, 12 signs on the zodiac, 12 inches in a foot, 12 face cards in a card deck, and 12 basic hues in a color wheel. And of course we have 12-Step Recovery Programs that are very powerful and teach a complete outline of what works. So my intent with this book is to share with you my model for the 12 secrets of highly successful women, compiled from my own life journey, the myriad of clients I have coached over thirty years in my business, now called Creative Success LLC, and the wisdom of the thirty women who I interviewed for this book, some of whom have been powerful mentors to me. Some of these women are multimillionaires and on television, while others value their lifestyle more than just money, and make business and lifestyle choices around those desires. Many of the women are trying to have balanced lives and be wealthy at the same time, or have already achieved that balance. They all work hard, feel strongly connected to their work, and feel called to express it in the world as a gift to others. Their stories are meant to illustrate the 12 ingredients that I outline that are essential to the soup of success for you.
DEFINING HEARTFELT PERSONAL SUCCESS
In my thirty-plus years of experience helping people to heal and create a life of fulfillment, I have been struck repeatedly with how essential it is for each of us to do the necessary soul searching to design and live by our own definition of our success. In this celebrity- and media-crazed culture we live in, it is easy to get confused about what composes a high quality and successful life for ourselves. Defining heartfelt success is a very personal and unique endeavor.
I have worked with thousands of clients who have been tortured by the agony and confusion of living according to someone else's values, misconceptions, scripts, or formulas. Just because your mother thought you were overly dramatic doesn't mean you are or that being so is even a liability. While the media or your family might worship fame, money, entrepreneurship, or corporate ladder-climbing, none of these pathways
