How Does the Online Idea Party Work?
You have a dream or a wish, and an obstacle to getting there. (If you don’t think you know your wish, work through my kick-starter and read this post. To learn why you must put logic aside to find your dream, read the following.)
The online Idea Party is here to help you – and the other fellow party goers – with your wishes and obstacles.
Voices from Success Teams and Idea Parties:
Having a team to report to and hearing what everybody did each week is very exciting. It’s kept me moving all year. In the past I made some good starts on my own, but found, every time, when the energy ran out, I ran out. Now it doesn’t run out.
Jade G.
Children’s Playroom Therapist, New York Hospital
I would do a painting a year, a sketch a year. If it was only me I know I would never do it. Having to tell you makes all the difference. It’s crazy why I didn’t do this years ago, it’s so easy all of a sudden.
Caroline R. Personnel Executive, Macy’s Dept Store
Post Your Wish and Your Obstacle Here!
And help your team mates out when you can. Use the Reply link to help, the form below the comments to add your own Wish and Obstacle.
(Your first comment below has to be approved, so it may not display instantly depending on the time of the day. Once your email address is approved you can post instantly. If you want your own profile photo to show up beside your comments, instead of the cute little design, upload your photo on Gravatar.com and give them an hour or so to make it happen.)
Hi, I’m Paula from Argentina. I am an artist, I make sculptures; (this is what I love to do), but cannot live from that. I’m also a computer programming student and I teach programming at schools for living.
I wish I could make a lot of money from art. I’m really good in what I do; but it seems I cannot find the way.
Obstacles: I’m a single mother of two young ladies with no help. I have no money, and do have a lot of debt. I’m really bad at selling, and it seems I cannot find the correct type of customers to buy my art. I’m having a hard time finishing my career because of my economic situation. I live in Argentina. I have no support, really needing a success team. Any help?
Maybe you can find a place to lend and exhibit your work, like fitness studios or cafe or restaurant ….if your sculptures fit there and are “safe”.
Do some more teaching.
Stop combining thoughts about money with art. Try to earn money because you need it, in the best possible way, try to be clever, and do your art because you want to. Try to be clever to spend less money in your daily life.
You can be more than an artist. It is no good if you define yourself too much only as an artist. “You are a mother, an organisator for your family and living, a teacher, a student, a friend, and an artist” Everything is a worthy part of you….
Maybe you can care for other children as well together with your own and earn money.
What do the other students around you need? Are there things you could do together or for each other in exchange?
Try to contact unknown students, different people to get new input.
Talk to everybody, Family, neighbors. Talk to people you normally avoid.
Maybe someone can do your selling or offering or has some idea in general.
Think about whether there are unsolved or unfinished things in your life you could do now.
Find some little personal success for each day.
Only successful persons get even more success. So try to feel successful with little things: make your children happy and you will feel successful as a mother as a beginning….. Or enjoy creating new sculptures without thinking of money, or give a special good teaching lesson….
Thank you for this comment. Your comment resonated with me (in fact when it came up in my inbox I thought it was for me!…) I love what you say about success. I followed your advice the other day and had what I felt was a really, really successful day at work (it could easily have been a bad day). So thank you!…. X
I want to see my idea, Ecofiction Challenge, take off in many “communities”, and be able to read lots of awesome short stories generated by the “challenge”. Details on FB page of that name, deadlines should allow readings or postings for Earth Day, April 22. Great for Scanners because you just write a short story (not a novel!) set in your own community as it could be if sustainable. Last year, the first, my town’s winner was a spy romance with 4 twists in 1500 words (we also had challenges in Costa Rica and Brazil). Obstacle? Discouraged, not advertising, could use support, need to reach out more to allies I found last year when I got the idea. Working my grumpy way towards setting up a Patreon account and writing more ecofiction myself (have a blog).
Hello Alison! Nice idea – maybe you should get a wel-known organization promote it. My idea would be NaNoWriMo (they could make March the Ecofiction month!) or funds like WWF.
Maybe I will participate – if I come up with the idea and the writing on time.
Best Regards,
Evgeniya from Kaliningrad Russia
I am a producer, writer, speaker and coach. I know I could be very popular if I could get my website up. I paid to have it built. I want to know how to update it myself. Need someone to do it, show me how they did it, and work with me until I can do it too!
Hi Samela. Did you get someone to do this for you yet? I started my own small business last year, and among the things I do are helping people with websites and other online stuff. I’m also a trained Barbara Sher life coach. So I can probably do what you want.
I am a scanner with good, innovative ideas and even detailed concepts for product the world would need. I would like to realize my ideas but
1. I have no money.
2. I am fatigue and maybe depressed as my whole energy goes to an very sad marriage with a man I can not trust. And I don’t want to leave either cause so far no argument could persuade me that a divorce would not destroy the souls of my kids which are in primary school age.
I want a loving, loyal partner and I want to realize my ideas. But how?
Ok here’s a thought. How about putting less emotional energy into your husband and think of him as if he was a disobiedent child. As long as he’s not abusing you. If he’s abusing you the for your sake and the well being of the children you should leave. I agree that your children need their Dad but it does harm them to watch their mum being abused or live in a house full of conflict. But only you will know when that line is crossed. In the meantime try to give him less of your energy and forget about a loyal loving partner, for now anyway. Get yourself together and moving on with your life and other things will fall into place. He is not your solution. Your banging your head against a wall trying to get him to be something he’s not.
You have a lot of ideas, are there any that you could do without money? Could you start to make things out of waste products? Can you make food to sell, birthday cakes? Can you paint? Start saving a little every week. How about babysitting children and earning a little from that and save it up.
It doesn’t sound like you can just jump into your dream now, your going to have to take baby steps first and prepare the way. But be encouraged, even baby steps are moving you toward your dream.
Definitely agree with not putting so much emotional energy into your husband… Instead of trying to shape him up, focus on the only things you can change – that includes YOURSELF. Can you do small things, like be nice to yourself every day in some small way?… Wear only your favourite clothes, laugh with your children, walk and run, cook yourself your favourite meals. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but build little pockets of positivity into your day, and realise that there are nice parts to your life!…
There is a fantastic video on YouTube by Tracy McMillan called ‘The person you really need to marry’ – I googled it and watched it and it made a few things fall into place in my head.
There is also a fantastic book – ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ – again, I read it and it changed my world a little bit; it made me realise that I am in charge of how I feel about my life, and no one else can make me feel bad. I definitely recommend it.
Hi there! My impossible dream is that I want to live in Hawaii with the love of my life and work in film/TV in some capacity. My obstacles are that I’m not a US citizen (I’m a Kiwi girl), I’m currently 39 and single (how did THAT happen?!), and I don’t have any real TV/Film experience, although I do act and I’m a good organizer, writer, good with detail and working independently to make things happen. I also know humans pretty well through being a strategic life coach, I have most of my teeth and can string together a sentence or two if required (also GSOH). Any ideas as to how this could possibly happen are really welcome!
Do you need to act or could you maybe produce documentaries instead? What about documetaries on Hawai so that you need to go there to produce them?
That is a pretty good idea! I’ve been thinking about doing a Master’s degree and the one that fits with my current Bachelor’s degree in called a Degree in Science Communication which would focus on documentaries and storytelling about the natural world. I haven’t thought I’d want to go down the environmental route again (that’s my old life) but in Hawaii, that would be a different story! Thank you so much for your reply Mia, I will ponder it more.
Could you coach actors and tv producers?
Hi!
I want to purchase something valuable, to save up for something big, that’ll change my life. More importantly, I also want to stop questioning what I should do in every moment of my life, to stop being obsessed with being productive and doing valuable things for me.
The obstacles are following.
I change my mind way to often, I just don’t know what to choose. I constantly question my judgement (I am Bipolar/Manic Depressive, so when you are in mania, you don’t do it at all, and I’ve been in that a few times in the past, so I guess that’s partially the reason for this problem).
I would like to join Hanging Out With Barbara Sher, but the registration is ridiculously expensive for me. I don’t want to take my mother’s money for that, it would be unfair from me if I do that, because we, as a family, are broke. I work as a freelancer on UpWork. The jobs I look for are internet research kind of jobs. I have one job running, but I haven’t heard from a client for 2 weeks. I would like to apply for more jobs, but there’s some resistance. I just don’t have an idea how I can earn (almost) any money without high school (I’m still an irregular/external high school student), without knowing what I can do with just investing myself, and without knowing that it would bring me some income. I don’t have anything to invest besides myself.
Actually, there is a bigger thing than that. I want to become financially independent. I have some ideas, I’m working as a freelancer, I want to make use of what I already have, and I am aware of some of the possibilities, but I already listed some of the obstacles.
I don’t know what else to say.
One tip that worked with me when I was having problems to focus on what I wanted (or simply knowing what I want), is to have long written conversations with myself. I start asking myself questions and then, trying to answer. For instance: A. Why do you want to be independent? B. Because I need to be free. A: what does it mean to be free for you? did you ever feel free? when? why?… and so on.
As you can see, if you play fare, it can be very interesting.
Hope it helps
😉
Hi.
I am in law school and want to do law for films. Or just work in the film industry in general. The big obstacles are that I don’t know anyone in the industry, I am located in Pennsylvania, and I can only work summers for the next 2 years because of law school.
Three urls that might tell you where you could work in film in PA, Ashley:
http://filminpa.com/
http://film.org/
http://www.pafia.org/
You could work for them or follow the links on their sites to find producers working in the state each summer.
Hi Margo,
I would see embroidery on clothes coming back. Remember the peace/love signs, flowers, rainbows. Would love to see that come back again.
I have had my own business for 15 years, teaching people to use sewing machines, writing craft books and producing machine embroidered items to sell. It started off OK but over the years I seem to have cultivated a self-sabotaging attitude and just make things worse instead of better. I don’t teach anymore and haven’t written any books for three years although the ones I did publish are still selling steadily. I have done very little embroidery work for a long time and I keep thinking I should change course completely but the strange thing is that every image or design I see, on television or when I’m out and about, I still imagine in terms of colour and stitch. This seems to indicate that perhaps embroidery really is my niche but I just can’t get going again and even if I did I don’t know how I would sell or share my work.
What part of the world do you live in Margo ?
Jake
Hi Margo. It sounds to me as if maybe you’ve got too isolated. You probably need to connect with other creative people to get some motivation and cross-fertilisation of ideas. Are there any maker spaces in your locality that you could work in? Or perhaps a communal arts studio or embroiderers’ group. There’s also a lot going on online e.g. groups for fibre or textile arts and embroiderers on Facebook.
You can get started selling on Etsy, EBay or have your own Shopify store.