Greetings! and Happy July to you.

I'm dedicating this newsletter to creativity - to helping you connect with your unique creative talents and passions.  Doing so renews your life energy and solidifies your commitment to living full out.

Moving forward to breakthrough and living your true spirit takes energy, passion, and commitment, and it also takes powerful self-esteem.  We gain self-confidence and self-esteem as we learn to love and honor ourselves, and begin to understand that our own creative gifts are special and useful in the world. 

Please read on below for some tips for tapping into your creativity.

Last week, I launched my new 6-week workshop Live Your True Spirit in Life and Work.  It's been a powerful experience of connection, insight, and life change for all involved.  If you're wanting to create a major change in your life or work, please join my next session in September.  Write to kathy@elliacommunications.com to save your spot today.

To help individuals Create Your Life Breakthrough! in a new way, I'm co-delivering a unique and exciting new workshop in July and September with Beth Leas, gifted energy healer and Founding Director of the Total Life Care Center of Norwalk.  This fascinating two-hour program offers the wisdom of the Tarot with the power of life coaching to help you gain new insights, release your blocks and fears, and create the life breakthrough you're wanting.  Read on for more!

Thank you for reading and sharing!  Hope to "see" you soon,

Wishing you many happy breakthroughs,

Kathy

P.S.  9/11 Survivors Research: Mike Jaffe and I are conducting a national research study with 9/11 survivors who, through a "random" act of fate, were kept from harm and have changed their lives because of it.  We're exploring how our intuitive selves can shape our lives, and also what contributes to lasting positive life change.  Please forward this newsletter to anyone you know who may fit the criteria and might be interested in participating (anonymously if they wish).  Read the Call for Participation to the left, and click here for more.  

Create Your Life Breakthrough!
Through the Mysteries of Tarot and the Power of Life Coaching

with Kathy Caprino and Beth Leas

Tuesday, July 28th 7-9pm $75
Total Life Care Center, Norwalk, CT

This unique workshop combines the wisdom of the Tarot with the power of life coaching to reveal a wondrous new way of being present and powerful in your life.

Renowned life and career coach Kathy Caprino joins expert REIKI Master/Tarot Teacher Beth Leas, Founder of the Total Life Care Center of Norwalk, CT to guide you through an exhilarating process of gaining deeper understanding of the obstacles that keep you from reaching your dreams, and releasing them once and for all!

Beth guides you through a personalized Tarot journey, helping you gain insight to your most intriguing questions. Kathy builds on your new insights, offering breakthrough coaching to help you reclaim full passion, power, and purpose in your life and work.

Tuesday, July 28th 7-9pm $75
Total Life Care Center
152 East Avenue
Norwalk, CT

To RSVP 203.249.7405
or write to: kathy@elliacommunications.com

By Kathy Caprino

Today I'd like to explore the concept of creativity, and how it shapes and enriches your life to access your well of creativity.

What is "creativity?" The typical colloquial definitions of creativity involve:

• Producing or bringing about something partly or wholly new
   
• Investing an existing object with new properties or                 characteristics
   
• Imagining new possibilities that were not conceived of before
   
• Seeing or performing something in a manner different from what was thought possible

To me, creativity represents expressiveness, originality, productivity, and possibility--in life and of the human spirit.
Personally, there are three forms of creative expression that I loved, but pushed underground for many years: singing, researching human behavior, and writing. As a young adult, I was accomplished at each of these, but for the next 25 years I let these endeavors go unnourished and hidden as I was hacking my way through life, attempting to balance my professional wants with my desires and goals of nurturing my family.

What I've realized is that we cannot "find ourselves," or achieve a joyful, meaningful and fulfilling professional or personal life if we force these creative dimensions to go underground. These creative lifelines are wanting and needing to be integrated, recognized, and honored. Pushing them out of our view only prolongs our dissatisfaction with our lives, and keeps our unique contribution hidden from ourselves, others, and the world.

Over these many years as a parent, I've attended musical concerts, theatrical and dance performances, and art exhibits of my children, and have been astonished at the depth and breadth of creative genius that young children reveal. These little beings are completely filled with light, love, uniqueness, joy, and creativity, and they know it! They shine with unabashed self-love. In my observations as a therapist, coach and parent, I've seen this self-appreciation flow in people until they reach the pre-teen years when they begin to hear and incorporate messages that beat down their expressiveness and self-acceptance.

These societal and cultural messages insidiously imply that it is unseemly or worse to brag, shine, and express the wonder of ourselves.

Has your creative expression been stifled? Are you supporting your creative talents as fully as possible?

To access your creative well more deeply, I'd like to offer some key questions to ask yourself:

What are my creative passions?

What creative endeavors give me great joy, make my heart sing, and allow me to feel in the flow, experiencing the passing of time as a blink?

Am I giving myself time and energy to focus on my creative gifts? If not, what holds me back from doing so?


Your creative gifts are not yours by accident. You were meant to have these gifts, and express these sparks of creativity for the betterment and enrichment of your life and others.

Now is the time to access your creative well again.
Here are a few tips to reaching within and bringing forth the creative flow that is waiting to be tapped:

1. Identify the creative talent that you wish to nurture in yourself, and begin today to make it a priority.

2. Make a list of all the reasons that have held you back from expressing your creative gift(s). Most of these reasons will most likely revolve around fear of exposing or embarrassing yourself, lack of time, and lack of energy and focus. Acknowledge your fears, then move forward despite them.

3. Commit to finding a channel for creative expression this month (a new class, clinic, support group, online course, etc.)

4. Find a mentor, friend, or coach who can help you gain even deeper access to your creativity. Ask him/her to assist you on your path to your goals and dreams of expression.

5. Come forward with your creative talents. Tell all your family, friends and colleagues what you intend to do. If they laugh or diminish your efforts, so be it. That's their diminishment coming through. Shine the light on your creative gifts, and don't allow them to be hidden any longer.

As for me, I am now singing, conducting research about powerful life-changing experiences, and writing again (and loving it)! Expressing my true nature through these activities has been transformational, and reminded me again of what I intuitively knew was true when I was a child: each of us is special, unique, gifted, and valuable, and sharing our creative gifts is what makes our lives joyful.

Please write and tell me about your creative gifts, and how you have brought them forward this month, on my blog for Ellia Communications.

Enjoy and honor your gifts, today and always!