LiLi Kathleen Bright

I’m in week 4 of the Amplify course for creative flow and week 1 of the Earnable course for starting a business. And I wanted to reflect on how it’s going and what I’m learning.

Is it worth it?

Yes.

Amplify

• It’s easy to say yes with Amplify. It cost $300 (around £215) and I’ve been doing it for a month. Plus, it includes weekly live calls with Steve and 60-80 other students. Live video calls make a huge difference to learning for me.
• Amplify is really challenging a lot of the ideas that contribute to my being stuck. Different ideas about reframing how I see the world – and not needing to believe the frame in order to use it – have been so freeing. Today I’ve been getting into my relationship with my creativity, and personalising creativity to better understand how to nurture that relationship. 

Earnable

• It’s harder to say with Earnable. It cost $2K (around £1450) and I’ve only just started. However, I’m finding the course really engaging. I’m a bit surprised because I do struggle with asynchronous courses. But today I’ve spent 3 hours studying this course. With occasional breaks to write about the experience. (So meta!)
• Everything has been so helpful so far, and I expect that quality to continue for the rest of the course, so yes, I think it’ll be worth it too.

I really needed support with freelancing and entrepreneurship. As I mentioned yesterday, I don’t have many peers who are running their own businesses and living the kind of ‘rich life’ that matches my rich life. And it feels like this particular combination of courses is delivering on the support I need. Yay!

Being courageous with Amplify

• I spoke for the first time in this week’s live call. Because I was the one who had drawn our co-creation in our small group, which was bringing together messages we channelled to share with the whole group.
• I was nervous, partly because I’ve been learning from Steve since my late teens or early twenties 😅 and this was my first time interacting with him, and partly because it was a video call with 60+ creative people around the world, and being recorded to boot. 😜
• I didn’t consider not doing it though. That wasn’t an option for me. Which is huge progress on the ‘be more courageous’ front.
• I’m reflecting that being more open, vulnerable & courageous leads to more opportunities to be open, vulnerable & courageous. Which is kind of terrifying. But also, helps me achieve my goal, I guess?! 😅

We were invited to channel an inspired message to broadcast to the group, to invite it to come through us from our higher selves, muses or elsewhere, and to consider how these messages want to be expressed. In our group we decided on an illustrated poem.

• 

In order to ride a dragon, you must learn to drive with your heart.

Have courage to act on inspiration and torch partial matches.

Do what you love and travel light.

Remember to be kind to yourself —

How it feels is more important than how it looks.

Some other words of wisdom that stood out to me

• Be generous
• Trust the process
• Be gentle with yourself
• Go with your heart
• Focus on feeling good, an empty cup can never overflow
• Everything you need is already within you, you just need to get those unhelpful ideas and frames out of the way, and create the new frames that allow your creativity to flow out into the world. The world needs you. The world needs your gifts, your spirit, and your heart.
• Take the risk and show up real. Do it! Be open to change. Embrace the new self you are building now.
• It’s our playtime, so let’s roll with it!
• I’m on a new path
• Gratitude as a palette cleanser between thoughts, fears etc

Unexpected benefits & surprise learnings of Earnable

Learning what I’m good at… according to other people

I was prompted to ask my friends what they think I’m good at. I would never have done this if I hadn’t been a) told to do it by the course, and b) given a script of what to say! I asked 6 friends  and got back 21 ideas from them, which brought the list I was creating from 60 to 81…! 81 ideas! (That’s ADHD superpowers for you… Ideas definitely not in short supply… 😅) I found this SO affirming.

One of the things I learned about ADHD recently (from the Translating ADHD podcast) is that it’s much harder for ADHDers, generally, to recognise the impact we have. That’s true for positive and negative impacts, and/but humans have evolved with a negativity bias (we are better at paying attention to wild animals about to attack us, or criticism; than wild berries ready to eat, or praise…) so I know that I miss more of the positive impact I make than then negative impact I have. (Especially when you throw rejection sensitive dysphoria into the mix…) I digress.

Generating ideas for interests and hobbies!

I got a bunch of ideas for stuff I want to do, regardless of whether I can/will make money from them. I think we call those hobbies? Anyway, interest, hobbies, whatever – I got 11 ideas for those, which I was just not anticipating.

As someone who often struggles to think of new + fun things to do, this is priceless! I recommend this method for coming up with artist dates! I think it could be helpful during depression too. When I’ve been depressed, it’s been hard for me to connect with, or even remember, things I like – or used to like – doing. And things that help me remember, or prompt ideas of new things, were really valuable.

These are the prompts from the course that I used:

• If I had an extra 3 hours this weekend, I would… 
• Other people struggle with this, but it comes easy to me… 
• Skills I’ve developed… 
• Knowledge acquired 
• Biggest challenges I’ve overcome
• Problems friends ask me for help with… 
• My friends think… (this is where you use the script below to ask your friends)

I’m taking a business class and one of our assignments is to ask friends a question, so I’m reaching out to you. If you had to point out 3 things you think I’m good at, what would you say?

For example, I always go to you for ______.

What are some things you’d go to me for? Thank you!

Ramit Sethi, Earnable: The Overnight Business Idea Generator

Eliminating a bunch of ideas

So, then I had WAY too many ideas and it was time to filter those ideas by what people would be able & willing to pay for, and then ranking them.

So, this got me from 81 ideas to 31 ideas to 12 potential business ideas. Which is still too many, but I guess that’s what happens when you start with 81 instead of 20… 😅

I’ll go over the list tomorrow, after sleeping on it, and cross some more off until I get to 1 idea to start with. I have a pretty good idea what it’ll be actually, since I started the course with a business idea to try. Going through these activities has helped me add to that idea already, which is great.

Suffice to say, I’m so glad I decided to take this course.

Stuff to explore

• Octalysis Prime, a gamified learning platform. Freemium, with no ads