Being brave Archives - Vintage Stamp Paper Art

IMPERFECTION IS OKAY

February 3, 2014 by LiskaStampCollective

Yes I am back!

Happily refreshed by sunshine, holidays and lots of laughter and good times with friends and family.

While I have been silent out there in Social Media Land, my brain and heart have both been busily percolating lots of ideas. In, out, yes, no until yesterday, bobbing in the clear ocean waters at Balmoral Beach, I finally realized it doesn’t have to be perfect.

The swim was worth the traffic

Imperfect is okay, actually it is more than okay, kind of perfect really!

If I waited until I had the perfect newsletter or the perfect printable to gift you, then I would miss out on learning new skills, making new friendships and a whole lot of joy along the way.

I realized that the gorgeous souls of The Stamp Collective are far more interested in exploring new ideas, asking questions and being inspired than they are in perfection.

Danielle La Porte, Leonie Dawson and Chris Brogan amongst numerous others talk about having a guiding word for the year rather than a goal. Danielle writes how you should pick four words that describe how you want to feel in her book The Desire Map. Chris Brogan talks about four influencing words, for example Green might be your word and it would influence the food you ate, the way you considered your energy consumption or that you wanted to exercise outdoors that year.

Mine you ask?

ACTION and CHOICES.

I want the end of 2014 to look different to the end of 2013 so, for me, it comes down to those two words. Big scary, audacious words that mean embracing imperfection, just having a go, not worrying about what people will think and opening up to the surprises that I have no doubt will come along for the ride!

So The Stamp Collective blog will post weekly inspired by colour, travel, flowers, relationships, the choices we make, people being brave and sometimes even stamps. I will master MailChimp and Canva and there will newsletters and printables!

A fabulously imperfect place to talk, share or just be silent and listen.

So looking forward to being imperfect together!

Liska x

“WHERE DID YOU COME FROM?”

November 4, 2013 by LiskaStampCollective

Me at 2

Each week I think about what I am going to write about and as the days progress I start to put some words together in my head and they begin to coalesce together into a piece of writing.

Up until last night I was going to write about a phrase I read last week, “I am choosing not to suffer” but that is now for next week or maybe the one after that.

You see, my Dad rang to ask my husband what his picks for the Melbourne Cup are but first he tells me that he saw my business card.

‘So Liska,’ he says, ‘what is a Creative Thinker….what kind of a title is that…….pause……where did you come from?’

This isn’t about my Dad because I know that he’s got my back, always! And I know that we are not alone in parents not necessarily understanding the choices that their children make (me included).

Its about the instinctive response it prompted in me.

Two things at the same time:

A special moment between you and Mum so somewhere, somehow you two have a stake in this, and
Where am I going?

Response number 1 is self evident. Enough said.

Response number 2 is about choices.

I am also reading another book (more on that a lot later) that asks the question and to paraphrase it goes something like this ‘why do people wait until something really bad happens before they choose a different way of life?’

So Dad, my business card is about ‘my outside matching my inside’. I am a creative being who likes to ask lots of questions.

When the opportunity presented itself for The Stamp Collective to come to life I had to have a business card and I thought long and hard about what to put on it. I know my final choice might be considered pretentious by some but you know what I don’t mind because that’s their choice to feel that way and it’s my choice is to own my identity publicly.

What choices are you making now that might challenge those closest to you?

If this post resonated with you please share it with your friends or subscribe here for a weekly update.

Liska x

THE GRAY SCALE

October 21, 2013 by LiskaStampCollective

‘The Gray Scale & Value Finder’ by The Colour Wheel Company.

Embarking on the adventure that is The Stamp Collective has been a bit like a yacht capsizing! It’s all so new so there are no structures and routines and I feel a bit like the upturned sailor – making my way to the surface of the ocean gasping for air.

Don’t get me wrong, the changes that led to The Stamp Collective being a full time gig were in equal parts liberating, exciting and terrifying. Time to step up and own all those creative bits of me and coalesce into one creative identity.

It’s made me think of a lot about one of my guiding principles in life – ‘Life is easier when you get comfortable with gray’.

It took me a long time to get to that place. As for most of my life, structure and routine has offered a certainty that resonates with me at a core level. Especially as a teenager and in my twenties life was easily interpreted through black and white lenses. It was either this or that.

But you and I both know that life is not really like that and I have learnt over time that most of the time life is really a shade of gray. Not gray as in boring and bland rather gray as in fluid and dynamic. You see I love colour and I see all the shades and complexities in one colour. So to me gray has a life force of its own.

When deciding on a title for this post, I remembered that many years ago I had to paint my own gray scale for an art class and so I went looking on Google for an image of a gray scale. I found this one by The Colour Wheel Company, the Gray Scale & Value Finder. Such a perfect name because when life is viewed through the gray lens as opposed to the black and white lens it also makes you start to look more closely at your values. Especially the relationship between your actions and your stated values.

Developing the capacity to be comfortable with gray was a space I really started to explore in my thirties and I know it will be a life long journey. At times I still fight really hard against the gray and the irony is that the certainty of black and white doesn’t really move me in the direction I want to go in any more.

Even my head knows that good stuff happens when I step lovingly into the dynamic fluidity of the gray. I can see new opportunities and fresh perspectives. Gray allows me be to be a bit kinder, gentler with myself and feel strong and grounded.

In my world gray is a place where the heart lives not fear and ego.

Sailing through life is more interesting if you can learn to adjust the sails especially when it’s dark and you can’t navigate by the stars. This is when you need to dig just that bit deeper and draw on your instincts and intuition.

Trusting in the ambiguity of gray allows me to navigate my way to my heart. The source of the good stuff in my life.

How do you navigate the gray spaces in your life?

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