10 Steps to Take You From Perspiration to Inspiration

Are you running on life�s treadmill with the speed setting turned up a little too high? Does everything feel like a struggle? Why not use inspiration to create energy that propels you up and over life�s inevitable speed bumps? Here are ten steps to get you started.

1. Be grateful: Instead of focusing on what you don�t have, take a look at what you do. Write a list of the �50 Things I Am Grateful For Today.� Take a minute each morning to mentally express your gratitude for at least 5 things whether it�s the air you breathe, the clothes on your back, or those closest to you.

2. Celebrate and list every success: How would you like to have a boss who only ranted about what you did wrong or what you failed to achieve, never giving you credit for the wins? Take a look in the mirror and make sure you aren�t abusing yourself like a boss from hell. We tend to gulp down the little successes and minor victories instead of savoring them. Keep a running list of your successes for the year and post it near your computer or nightstand.

3. Learn from your setbacks: Failure happens. It�s part of life and a necessary component of growth. Accept failure as something good, as proof that you are taking risks and stretching yourself. However, in addition to accepting the losses, you must go back and, like an unbiased scientist, ask yourself what went wrong. What will you do differently in the future? Mistakes are only truly valuable if you learn from them.

4. Fill your glass: Forget the debate over whether the glass is half empty or half full! Why not take a pitcher and fill it up? Tackle every situation with the perspective that you can affect the outcome. Acknowledge that you have the power to choose. Even doing absolutely nothing or feeling sorry for yourself is a choice you make.

5. Look for role models: Who inspires you? Is there someone who walked in your shoes and faced similar battles? Maybe even someone who went on to become a superstar in his or her own life? Identify her but don�t put her up on a pedestal. Remember that she is a person just like you, who overcame the odds, or struggled through extreme hardship and persevered.

6. Become a visionary: You don�t have to be a guru to have a vision of the future. All it takes is a bit of imagination and the courage to reach for something bigger than your current reality. If time and money were no object and success was guaranteed, what would you want to create for yourself, your family, or the world? Give yourself at least 30 minutes to let your thoughts dig into this one. How does this vision of the future relate to your life today?

7. Identify the milestones: Set concrete goals for yourself that can be broken down into measurable pieces or milestones. If you want to lose 20 pounds, each 5-pound increment is the next milestone you should aim for and celebrate. Instead of shooting for a distant peak, it�s much more encouraging to set your sights on the corner at the end of the block.

8. Say it with pictures: Research says that 89% of what we learn is visual, 10% is auditory, and 1% comes through our other senses. Draw, photograph, or assemble a collage that represents your aim in life. Hang it on the wall or download it to your computer desktop as a reminder of what you�re working towards.

9. Play: If you feel like you�re toiling, take a break and interject some fun. Do something ridiculous. If you can�t think of anything, spend an hour or two watching 4-year olds play. To them, everything has the potential for fun. Learn to enjoy the journey even more than the destination.

10. Ride the wave of change�don�t run from it: Like death and taxes, change is inevitable. However, resistance to change is common and causes untold amounts of struggle. Become a master evolutionist�respond to change eagerly and rapidly.

We all need a push once in a while. Choose instead to latch onto inspiration as a force that pulls you forward and you�ll discover that success can be effortless.

About the Author

Certified fitness coach, Kim Nishida, is the author of the innovative program, �Conception to Completion: The FIT Mind Method to Getting It Done.� To learn more about this step-by-step program and to sign up for FREE how-to articles and workshops, visit http://www.ReadyToEvolve.com

‘No compromises in art’

Kishore Singh / New Delhi January 12, 2008

Ambadas has spent five decades railing against the claustrophic hold of figurative artists on Indian collectors.

At 85, age may have tempered his vitriol, but Oslo-based Ambadas is a mass of flying hands, jabbing fingers, gesticulating wildly, getting teary-eyed in despair, now ruminative, now excited or, as curator Roobina Karode surmises, “exhilarated, disoriented, flowing…”. It is quite a performance and it all comes from his heart.

“Husain,” his hands stretch out in a horror he cannot imagine, “Souza,” he adds for good measure, “they set the style for Indian art and,” he hisses angrily, “I am sorry about that.” Not because the two were not great artists but because, in fact, “they were good painters”. As a consequence, he is now observational, “younger painters have not had the courage to change, to do anything different”.

“Careful,” cautions his wife of 35 years, Hege Backe, cognizant of the dangers of speaking so candidly to a journalist. But Ambadas is not to be contained, a dammed stream pouring out his pain at the continuing popularity of figurative art. “They want popularity, they want to sell,” he says sadly of emerging Indian artists.

Ambadas, a founder member of 1890, a Delhi-based movement against the “vulgarity” of Western and Ravi Varma realism, along with J Swaminathan, Jeram Patel, Himmat Shah, Jyoti Bhatt and G M Sheikh, has remained true – and perhaps too close – to their manifest.

“He has been uncompromising, he has not changed in five decades of painting abstracts,” says Hege Backe, an interior designer and amateur photographer herself and, as she smiles, “his sotto voce”.

On Monday, a four-decade retrospective of his work, Sublime Encounters, will go up at Delhi Art Gallery, curated by Karode where, interestingly, the only articulate changes may be his choice of colours – “they have become lighter and lighter since he moved to Norway,” says Backe, “there’s much more blue, which could be a result of his living in Norway, or because of the stage of his life”.

Ambadas does not enjoy his life in Oslo, or its people. “I love everything about India,” his eyes mist up. Then the quiet mood is gone again, and he is once again a blur of hands and hollow laughter. “I refuse to think when I paint,” he says startlingly.

“All thinking is a reflection of what you are living with, and I don’t wish to paint that.” Instead, his oils, watercolours and, more recently, drawings, embrace a formless, abstract reality, a sense of light and darkness creating forms and, for want of another expression, unforms. They have, according to Karode, “a raw, explosive energy”. There is, she adds, “profound thinking and great depth in both his life and art”.

He is, she iterates, “very distinct even in his non-representational work which, unlike others, is shorn of iconic, meditative symbolism – instead, there’s constant movement, a restlessness, strokes chasing strokes…”

“Our philosophy” – Ambadas refers to Brahma, for instance – “is totally abstract, our thinkers were abstract, but later thinkers, like our artists, have become smug”. And just as he broke the contours of form, he insists, “you have to break through in search of new awareness”, scathing about “blind devotion to the old, to experience…”

Is that the reason for Ambadas’s slow recognition in India? “I think,” says Backe spiritedly, “he has been respected all along, but if recognition depends on sales, on how many lakhs a painting is worth, then yes, it has been slow in coming.” To which Ambadas might well add, “No problem.”

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