Today's guest is Marney K. Makridakis, who wrote an interesting new book and created a whole program around the concept of time.
For writers and other creative people, Creating Time: Using
Creativity to Reinvent the Clock and Reclaim Your Life, is right up there with
The Author's Journey and other books that inspire and gently nudge us to stay
on track, or maybe get on the track in the first place.
However, the book is not just geared toward the artistic
types. People in all walks of life and with many other careers can find
inspiration and some good, practical advice in this book.
The sections of the book take us from exploring our
relationship with time and how we measure it through various ways we can create
time through gratitude, love, ritual synchronicity, visualization, and my
favorite, stillness. Each section is illustrated with lovely art work by the
author or by readers who have used her concepts for "creating time."
Among all the jewels of wisdom I found in the book, this one
resonated with me. Perhaps because I have less years left in my life than I
have lived, and also because of family and friends who have made drastic
changes in their lives after receiving a diagnosis of cancer or some other
terrible disease that had the potential to end their time all too soon.
"The truth of the matter is that life is a 'life-threatening diagnosis'
for all of us. We have no way of knowing how much time we have. So we might as
well realize how precious each and every moment truly is. We can create time by
creating our own urgency to live as if every moment counts, because it
does!"
Lest you think that the book is all about stopping to smell
the roses or ticking things off a bucket list, be aware that it is much more
than that. The chapters present ideas and suggestion for helping us make a mental shift in
how we relate to time, and they all have real-life examples, step-by-step
introspective processes, and powerful creative projects that inspire a new
sense of time.
Karen Karsten, a prosperity coach and teacher had an
interesting concept of time. "When I think about time as one day, I think
of it like a lake, with connections to the earth and the universe. There's
total joy in diving into the lake: no waiting for the weekend here!" For
her ARTsignment she painted a picture that featured a lake with the hands of a
clock in the middle and one swimmer was diving off one of the hands, while a
kid was swinging on another. She also had several skeleton keys in the picture
because she said the ARTsignment "offered a little key to unlocking time.
Come with me to this lake, swim in the stardust, surf with the music of time,
unlock time for yourself."
I learned a long time ago how important images are to me for
reflection and reminders of things I need to be mindful of, so the idea of
creating artwork as I move through the chapters and concepts in this book is
not alien to me, although my artwork will not compare to some of the pictures I
have hanging above my computer. That's okay, though. Nobody is expected to turn
out great masterpieces of visual art. The point is to make something that will
remind you of what you learned and want to remember as you complete each
section.
Now, just a few words from the author:
Why did you write Creating Time? Like most people,
time has been a big challenge for me throughout my adult life, but it escalated
after I gave birth to my first child in 2008 and struggled to find the time to
“do it all”. I devoured every time- management book I could get my hands on,
but found that I was still chasing time. I finally put myself on mission to
find a new solution and explored ways
that I could apply my best
resource (imagination) to my biggest problem (time).
What are the main challenges with time that
you've identified, and how does this book address them? To personalize the reader’s
process, Creating Time contains a
“Time Diagnosis Chart” which identifies 14 of the most popular time complaints
and recommends which of the book’s tools are most effective in addressing them.
I find it interesting that, while everyone’s specific time complaints are
unique, they usually boil down to one very primal theme: I don’t have enough time to live the life I want to live.
What do you most hope that readers take
away from this book?I hope that readers will come away with a new sense of
a time, as well as practical tools to put this new approach into action, both
in their day-to-day lives and into their fuller spectrum of meaning and purpose
in life.
If
you would like to purchase a copy of the book, click on the cover image on my
right sidebar.
CREATING TIME by Marney K. Makridakis
April 17, 2012 •
Personal Growth/Creativity • 288
pages • Trade Paperback in Four Color
Price: $22.95 • ISBN 978-1-60868-111-2
