I have just finished my new book and putting the last tweaks and final edits to the manuscript so that it can go off to print.
I have really enjoyed writing this last book and a lot of it was done when I was recovering from cancer and during the months that followed that.
Just like many other people, when I was young I was under the impression that I had little creative talent and wasn’t very good at art, singing or writing. My English teacher covered my creative writing exercise books with fierce-looking red lines, crossing out words, correcting my style and adding critical comments that were discouraging to read, especially at that tender young age, and it remains a strong negative trigger all these years later. I don’t remember the negative comments being balanced by any good things she noticed. I also received low marks consistently in all my creative lessons.
Back then I didn’t dare to dream that I would become a published writer, and yet, here I am doing what I love. During my early working life, I had over fifteen jobs that were all very different, and each one of these contributed to the skills that I use in my work today.
My first summer job as a teenager was spent in the art therapy department of a rehabilitation unit at a local hospital. We used art as a tool to help people recover from severe mental and physical illnesses. It was here that I saw for the first time the power of creativity to heal and restore the human spirit.
Painting, storytelling, poetry and art brought these people together in a community and gave them a chance to reconnect with their hearts, with their souls and to one other. The healing that the patients experienced through the creative therapy sessions was evident for all to see, and for many patients, it became their favourite part of the week. Later, I worked in the creative industries, including producing TV shows and creating international events for MTV.
I founded an entertainment PR agency in London and ran large-scale events that took me to all corners of the globe and allowed me to get creative with big budgets to produce ideas and publicity for mind-blowing music and entertainment shows, such as the MTV European Music Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards in New York and Madonna’s world tours. These were all culminations of high levels of creativity in design, performance, artistic rendition and fashion, and meant that I got to work with the most talented creatives in the field.
In later years, I was asked by Paul Mckenna, one of the UK’s most successful self-help authors, to become managing director of his personal transformation company. I was in charge of running the neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) personal development seminars hosted by him and Dr Richard Bandler, the creator of NLP. I worked with both of these highly creative people for over seven years, producing workshops, events and programmes and managing the teaching of advanced mental techniques for creating fast and powerful personal transformation.
In these seminars, I saw how people who were self-confessed non-musicians and non-artists could get up on stage after a couple of hours of hypnosis and NLP and perform incredible musical sets, jamming with instruments they had just picked up for the first time. Others painted extraordinary artworks that sold later to members of the audience, some for substantial sums. The art produced by these previous ‘non-artists’ was very impressive. Witnessing these experiences exploded my long-held belief that creativity is something we are born with, and we either have it or we don’t. I now know that we can be taught to develop the skills of creativity and that it can be accessed by anyone given the right mind training.
I am excited to take readers of my new book on a creative journey, holding their hand and watching their expansion into their true creative self. It’s a process that I am really looking forward to and can’t wait to hold people’s hands along their path of self-discovery and unfolding to being the creative soul they are meant to be.
I am looking forward to sharing the book with you when it comes out in the Summer. I hope that if you are looking for some creative inspiration right now, that it will come looking for you and you will collide together. It will come if you open up and allow it. There has never been a better time to get creative as now. The world needs its artists and creators now more than ever.
