Riding a Moon Wave[ image by the amazing Georgia Hofer ]
Springing Forward
The Earth travels over a half billion miles each year as it orbits around the Sun.So today, on the Winter Solstice, you can think of as being the end of one orbit and the start of the next. It’s a good time to reflect on this orbit’s highlights and what’s coming up on the next spin around our home star.
Here’s what’s been happening since this blog I wrote at the Summer Solstice :
What’s already planned for the next 1/4 billion miles:p.s. If you want to know how to produce this volume of creative output, take the Mindfulness-based Time Management self-study course
We can be very creative about not being creative. When we schedule time for our creative activities, quite often other more pressing tasks pop up. As a result, our books don’t get written and deadlines move from being comfortable to being tight.One of the factors which mitigates against us is the modern calendar. Our modern time systems are brilliant when it comes to allowing us to operate in a sophisticated society. We don’t want all planes to arrive at an airport just when they feel like it. It’s nice to be able to turn up to the theatre and for it to start on time, on the date that we’ve booked.
We should be minded though that seconds, minutes, hours, weeks and months don’t exist in nature, they are man-made. Likewise the names of the days of the week and the division between working week and weekend are arbitrary. Not everyone on the planet has Saturday and Sunday as their weekend, for example.
The varying lengths of the months are made up too. The only real time constants are the day and the year which are of course driven by the rotation of the Earth and its orbit around the Sun. Even these vary quite a bit and our 24 hour days and 365.25 day years are only averages. The tugging and pulling between the planets in our Solar System make everything a bit fluid and variable.
When we superimpose false deadlines inside our time system, it is often hard to be at our creative peak just at the perfect time. Of course, we can use tools and practices like meditation and mind mapping to help us out of our creative log jams. The best way by far to be superbly creative though is for us to schedule our creative tasks around the times where we are most productive.
Firstly, we can easily identify when we are most creative in the day. I am a morning person and I always write between 8am and 11am, as I am doing with this article right now. I also meditate before each writing session but that’s just a practice I use to tune into my Creative Muse.
The second trick I use is to give the days of my week my own names on which I focus on different aspects of my business. You can have some creative fun making up your own.
Once we get our days sorted, we can superimpose two other overarching slants on our creative output.
The first is to tune into the phase of the Moon. I have noticed I get much better results if I plan between the New Moon and Full Moon and act and deliver between Full Moon and New Moon. I also believe that it doesn’t matter if the Moon affects our creativity or not but that the oscillation between planning and action gives us space to breathe, reflect and measure how we are doing. There are more subtle divisions to use with the quarter phases of the Moon but this simple method is very workable.
By the way, if you don’t know what the Moon phase is, there are loads of free smartphone apps these days. I’ve also found that inspirational talks and workshops work well when timed on or around the Full Moon. New concepts and product launches on the New Moon seem to swimmingly too.
The second aspect to bear in mind is which season we are in. Only after writing my first three books did I notice that I had created them all in Spring. So now I plan and research my next book in Autumn and Winter and start writing it in earnest on the Spring Equinox.
Now if all of this sounds a bit wacky and you think I have lost my marbles, let me add some caveats. Firstly, each of us is free to tune into our own creative cycles. There is no creed or religion to follow here. Secondly, any system like this works exactly because it gives us a framework to follow. Our outputs are the only measure of its efficacy.
We should never limit our creativity either. My iPad is always to hand to capture words, speech, art, maps of my mind and images or even video, should the Muse call.
This post has been timed for publication on the day and exact time of the Spring Equinox …The exact time of this cosmically significant event is 20th March at 11:02 UTC
From where I am sitting and where you are reading this blog, we are completely unaware of this twice yearly event – and why should we be? In our modern day world where we are totally in control, nothing as trivial as the orientation of the Earth could possibly have any effect on us … surely?
When viewed from space however, a different perspective emerges. We can see clearly that half the world is in darkness and half in light. Well there is nothing new there as it is like that every day of the year. The difference is that the cusp between light and dark is lined up with the rotational axis of the planet.
This means that every person on the planet experiences approximately the same amount of daylight and darkness, apart from those standing right on the Poles … and of course miners and submariners.
The exact time and day of the equinox, however, is not strictly that important. What is significant is that we should use it as a time for reflection. Too often our years just bleed into each other with each one following the pattern of the last. The fact that the Earth goes around in circles doesn’t mean we have to.
It doesn’t matter so much if there is any astrological or cosmological significance to the Equinox, just that every so often we should take stock and do some forward planning and, once we’ve done that, we should take action.
Spring is a great time to start a new project – for example, I’ve written all my books in Spring – something I only realised after I’d published the fourth book !
So for the last two months I have been planning and Mind Mapping my next book – today I start to write it in earnest !!
So, whether you are planning to write a book, or not, take some time out today to Spring Forward and so the seeds of what you are going to grow over the next 12 months.
Note, although the word equinox is often understood to mean “equal [day and] night”, this is not strictly true. For most locations on Earth, there are two distinct identifiable days per year when the length of day and night are closest to being equal; those days are referred to as the “equiluxes” to distinguish them from the equinoxes. Equinoxes are points in time when the Sun is right over the equator. Equiluxes are days which can be a couple of weeks either side and can vary depending where we are on the planet.
Now many vintners and farmers have twigged that the Moon has a significant affect on their crops. Sailors are very respectful of the Moon phase as their lives might depend on the height and power of the tide.
Astrologers are somewhat derided by their observance of the Moon phase. One day astrologers and astronomers will compare notes and find there is more common ground than they thought.
It’s the closest astronomical object to us yet, if you asked most people, they couldn’t tell you the current Moon phase – not least it’s distance from the Earth and in which direction it was moving relative to them. It’s almost too much in our faces. Any Martian would be able to tell you that the Earth has 13 lunar months a year and they are all about 28 Earth rotations long (that’s a day to you and me) – give or take one or two. Our man-made calendar obfuscates what is really going on … conspiracy theorists might tell you that this is on purpose.
Incidentally, you can find out the current phase of the moon here … or if you have an iPhone, get one of the many excellent apps like Moon Phase
And to understand how Moon Phases work, see this excellent exposition and explanation …
… or why not have a go at taking great photographs
If you synchronise your marketing (and sales) activities to the Moon Phase, you will find that everything flows with much more ease and customers and opportunities will start to find you … as if by magic. I’ve been doing this for about two years now and have virtually abandoned all other ‘formal’ types of marketing activity.
Now there are two reasons why this works. Either the Moon is having an affect on our consciousness or it’s acting as a big reminder in the sky that we should work through our concepts in a logical manner. If it works, it’s academic if it’s either, or both, of these in operation.
The diagram below shows how to do it:
Step 1 : from new Moon to 1st quarter : engage in brainstorming activities
Step 2 : from 1st quarter to Full Moon : brief the client, get them to buy into your dream or, for yourself, just imagine where this might take you
Step 3 : from Full Moon to Last Quarter : evaluate your options, market test your ideas
Step 4 : act on your marketing plan based on acquired knowledge from the last three steps
and Step 5 is to report back in the Comments here to tell me how you get on
If you want to know more about synchronisation with natural daily, lunar monthly and yearly cycles, get a copy of my new book, The Art and Science of Light Bulb Moments
If you think this is completely bonkers, just try it once before you make that call … if it’s wrong there is no harm done. If it’s right, you may find a whole new way of being and doing.
