Life Design

Ink and Watercolour, (1980) Jeri Childers

I didn’t know it at the time, but the same concepts used in design thinking, innovation and product design can be applied to your life, career, and business. I originally went to university thinking I would design fashion. I knew design would be in my future, more than forty years later I help entrepreneurs, business builders, and creatives to use their inspiration to design the lives they truly desire. When you awaken to your passion and purpose, life, career, and business design flows!

Reflective question: How can I awaken my passion and purpose?

My Garden

Mixed Media, (2010) Jeri Childers

I love gardening, particularly in the Spring, when the garden awakens to the possibilities. Just as you tend to your garden during each season, each transformational journey calls you to awaken and gain clarity to your dreams and the insights that come from defining success in terms of the outcomes you want and how you will measure success.

Reflective question: What does success mean for me in this moment and how will I measure it?

Weaving the future

Mixed Media, (2008) Jeri Childers

When you prepare for that big leap in your career or are contemplating starting up a new business or starting a new phase in our life or business, you must create a focus or concentrate your imagination. Take stock of your strengths, values, and intentions for your future. It helps to ask yourself what is missing or what do you want more of your life. When I was making this piece, I selected each thread to represent the values and experiences I wanted to weave into my life and career. This took deep excavation. I found even in documenting the piece and seeing my own reflection looking back at me, I was looking for answers to what I would intentionally design into my future.

Reflective question: What do I need now and how can I focus on my transformational process?

Problem Patterns

Mixed Media, (2012) Jeri Childers

We carry within us the negative emotions, beliefs, and influences of family, friends and society and can establish painful, problem patterns for self-sabotage, perfectionism, and imposter syndrome. We aren’t free from these patterns until we clear them and awake to our own strengths and authentic leadership style. This step toward success requires that we awaken to what is blocking us and often it is a limiting belief about ourselves.

Reflective question: What do you need to clear to move forward?

Seeds of Change

Acrylic, (2012) Jeri Childers

Sometimes I trace back my transformational journey to tiny, meaningful moments of clearity. One of those moments was standing under a tree that was on fire as if it were decorated for Christmas. I was standing in a park in Auckland, New Zealand, experiencing a point of indecision that held the pain of inaction and grief. This pain was so real it propelled me to an awakening that would change my life forever. I was standing under a Metrosideros Excelsa tree, commonly known as in the Maori language as Pōhutukawa, or New Zealand Christmas tree or the iron tree, a coastal evergreen tree in the myrtle family that produces a brilliant display of red flowers, each consisting of a mass of stamens.

Reflective question: What is left to discover, communicate or clear before I make this important decision?

Preparing for the Journey

Acrylic, (2013) Jeri Childers

Preparing for the journey of change can be painful and confusing. It can also feel like breath, exhaling. I was guided by mentors, coaches, and spirit guides, step-by-step. It wasn’t clear at the beginning of the journey where I was going to land. All I knew is that I wanted to live a life with no regrets, designed to be filled with adventure, freedom, and creativity. My totem was the butterfly, and my guides were sacred witnesses. My coach asked questions that helped me clarify each step.

Reflective question: What do I desire and what do I want to create?

Taking the Leap

Ink, Paint & Paper, (2014) Jeri Childers

In 2013 I created a dramatic life and career leap. I moved from Blacksburg, Virginia, USA with a population of just over 44,000 to the sparkling City Sydney, Australia with over 4 million people nestled along the harbour and the coast of New South Wales. I had sold every thing that I owned and left my family and friends on a life and career adventure of my dreams. For this leap, I needed to focus on process of ‘re-birth’ and awakening my mindsets for success. I learned and adjusted through a series of discoveries and experiments, each time moving closer to my definition of success.

Reflective question: How can I awaken my ‘inner game’ or mindsets for success, now?

Safe Harbour

Mixed Media, (2014) Jeri Childers

I landed in Sydney and made a new home. All my free time was taken walking along the harbour foreshore, visualising what would be next in my steps to success. The harbour felt safe, the shoreline was warm, and the water lapped rhythmically against the seawalls. I spent time simultaneously reflecting on the future and releasing the patterns from the past. This was a fresh start that called for visualising possibilities and unlocking my limiting mindsets. For the first time in my adult life, I took time to lean into solitude, and learn about what was important to me in my life design.

Reflective question: What is working and what is holding me back?

Melting the Masques

Acrylic, (2015) Jeri Childers

To activate your steps for success is a process of finding your truth, letting go of the stories about yourself that limit you and to dissolve the masques we where to protect ourselves because we are afraid of what we really want or we afraid to be vulnerable. To author your own life, you first need to make room for the future. Activation is also a process of letting go.

Reflective question: What must I leave behind to step toward success?

Dark Emotions

Acrylic, (2015) Jeri Childers

Dark emotions like grief, fear, sadness may surface during change. Our healing of the Dark Shadow is a process that requires us to sit with our emotions, watching each pass through us, to find the clearing on the other side. These waves of dark emotions are sometimes mixed with the light emotions, like joy. During the activation of our transformation, we will experience a wide spectrum of emotions. I learned that these emotions are tell tails for what needs to be actively cleared.

Reflective question: What am I feeling now and what is the purpose of this message about my past?

Golden Shadow

Acrylic, (2015) Jeri Childers

The golden shadow symbolizes withheld courage, hidden talents, repressed passion, and stifled creativity. It’s the unfulfilled potential that people fail to see or develop because of fear and a lack of risk-taking. Working with a coach can help you clear your shadows and experience yourself in the light. Using matrix therapies can provide you with the developmental tools to transform stubborn problems like fear of failure, success, wealth, or happiness. This process can provide a deep sense of resolution of the self that clears pathways toward success as you define it. Entrepreneurs, business builders, leaders and creatives have found this process opens energy, inspiration, and focus.

Reflective question: How can I cultivate self-awareness, self-care, set boundaries, and prioritise my actions for success?

Riding the Waves of Change

Acrylic, (2015) Jeri Childers

Riding the waves of change means being present, moment to moment, for what happens naturally and refraining from moving toward the next thing and the next thing. Learn to pause, take a breath, and appreciate the good things happening around you. Like change, waves can feel scary. Finding yourself on the wrong side of a wave is no fun. Surfers will tell you that getting on the right side of that same wave, however, is incredible exhilarating, enlivening and empowering. The same is true when leading a company through a major change: If you harness the wave the right way, change can become a source of competitive advantage—energizing, stimulating and even fun.

Reflective question: What am I feeling now and how can I appreciate the moment?

Regeneration

Acrylic, (2015) Jeri Childers

We are in a constant state of growing and changing. Some of the changes have positive outcomes for us, some negative. Some changes keep us looking toward the future, others bring apprehension. Life is a dynamic process and as we grow, we experience the dynamics of these changes.

My transformational journey was akin to walking a spiralled path or labyrinth. I experienced the death of my marriage and there was the grief and feelings of loss felt from a divorce, the loss from not achieving all that I had hoped for in my life and moving from one country to another and leaving family and friends behind.

These types of events can leave you feeling a loss of purpose and not knowing where your life will go from in the future.

For me, coaching has helped me continue to design my passage with confidence. My coach helped me find my ‘North Star’ and chart my future to success on my terms. I made this piece as I walked through my grief and activated my steps toward success on what felt like a path of regeneration.

Reflective question: How will I engage my support team to create momentum toward the future?

The path of change

Acrylic, (2021) Jeri Childers

It may not feel like it to most of us, but we are constantly changing. Some parts of our lives, habits, values, and beliefs are relatively stable, while other parts of ourselves and our work, for example, are incrementally or dramatically changing. And, we have the power to positively disrupt ourselves to create the ‘big’ change we want in our lives.

We can view ourselves as the victim of change or the cause of conscious change. We cannot learn or grow if we cannot see, feel, hear, or experience these incremental changes and the emotions that flow with us through the changes in our lives.

One of those mindsets we must shift on the path of change is consciously seeing the transformational journey as a flowing river of shifts, twists, and turns and to see the river surrounded by a thriving and abundant valley or garden. Like the water in a river, we must move around and over one barrier after another.

I created this piece as I experienced my mindset shift and activated my steps toward success.

Reflective questions: How will I view my journey, setbacks, progress, and the trade-offs that come with conscious change? What resources do I have or want to tap to enable my path toward change?

My secret garden

Acrylic, (2021) Jeri Childers

We can consciously author and narrate our own stories about our life. I have chosen to see my life as a garden and you can too.

Analogous to planting seeds in soil, your life’s garden is space where the gardener is free to create anything imaginable. It's a place where you can cultivate resources, goals, ambitions, passions, truly anything that can grow.

If you can imagine it, you can create it. We must be creative and think outside the box to gain our greatest desires.

I believe that if you want more abundance, then you open yourself to creativity. Imagine what you really want and give yourself time to conceive and nurture it. Spend time regenerating in nature and nurture your dreams and yourself. Watch your passions and purpose blossom.

‘To plant a garden is to believe in the future’ Audrey Hepburn.

Let us each create a future that will make this world of ours a better place for all.

Reflective question: What kind of garden do I want to grow? What will I plant and nurture? Where are the weeds I need to tend? How might I create an abundant garden for each season of my life?

Momentum!

Pastels, (2015) Jeri Childers

When we advocate for our vision, we know what we need in the present moment and ask for help. We deploy resources, delegate, make our desires know. This means fully stepping into the success you desire and taking responsibility for every choice you make toward your goal. You experience the momentum and the sense of power of owning your success

Reflective question: What do I want to ask for at this time?

The Nature of Change

Mixed Media, (2021) Jeri Childers

Spend time in nature and you will feel better, have better clarity and experience a sense of inner balance. Changing your internal nature can start by taking small steps I call experiments, looking for insights which are discoveries about what is working or not working, and using positive reinforcement can form the steps of change. It is helpful to see yourself as having a transforming nature and not a fixed identity. Each of us carries more than one archetype guiding us when we are in a state of ‘flow’ or focus. When you know your mindsets for success, you can design your life to achieve a ‘flow’ state more often which brings you greater satisfaction, joy, energy, and engagement in life. I work with my clients to help them understand their ‘genius flow’ so they can use this knowledge to design a life filled with success. We can use our ‘genius flow’ to innovate, create change, and enjoy life.

Reflective question: How can I cultivate my ‘genius flow’ and advocate for my success?

Mandalas of Change

Acrylic, (2021) Jeri Childers

Mandalas are also used in art therapy and as a tool for visualisation. The therapist uses a mandala created by the client as a representation of his or her current feelings and emotions, this technique is found to be self-calming and self-centring by some. Focusing on the mandala and your intended future can bring you a sense of focus and clarity of your needs and desires. This practice, when done regularly can help you get clear on what success means to you and how you will measure your success. Our minds’ Reticular Activating Systems can make these measures of success real and within our grasp—creating the momentum we need and making it easier to advocate for what we want. This is a mandala that I created and use weekly in my visualisations of success. I look into the yellow core of the painting, seeing a golden light that draws me forward toward what I desire.

Reflective question: What does success look like now and what to I need to claim or advocate for today?

Bright Lights of the City

Mixed Media, (2021) Jeri Childers

When we amplify, we continue to build our ‘inner game’ to enable us to step up, standout, and amplify our success. Throughout my life, I have taken the easy paths, avoided risks, and played it ‘safe.’ These are not steps or mindsets for success and don’t get us what we want in the end. When we amplify, we clear our fears, build our courage, and clearly communicate our vision with influence and impact. I work with my clients who are seeking to amplify their vision for advancing and accelerating in their career and venture. We work through what is holding them back, clear any negative emotions, beliefs, or influences and increase the confidence and motivation to take the next steps toward the goal. These clearings bring new-found energy and can amplify earnings, brand recognition, leadership influence, and so much more.

Reflective question: What are the fears that are holding me back now and how can I amplify my ambition, voice, or goal attainment?

Amplify!

Mixed Media, (2021) Jeri Childers

Vision boards are a great tool to achieve goals and amplify your steps toward success. I have been using diaries and vision boards in my personal life and coaching practice with great success. You can create your own board to amplify your wealth or revenue achievement, build stronger more meaningful relationships, boost your mindsets, or focus your career advancement. In this board I am considering the tools and the elements of transformation and deeply imaging my personal journey toward power, freedom, and creativity.

Reflective question: What do I need to discover, clear, or amplify to move toward my goal?

Peace

Mixed Media, (2021) Jeri Childers

As we clear what is blocking us and transform negative emotions like grief, loss, or fear we can achieve a greater sense of peace and joy. I created this piece after a significant clearing of loss and grief that left me with knowing that I have a new sense of inner peace that holding the space for what I am creating now in my life. I am advancing my life, career, and business design from a place of abundance which research has demonstrated is a more resourceful place of planning and growth.

Reflective question: What actions are needed today to bring me peace, joy, and balance?

Accelerating!

Mixed Media, (2021) Jeri Childers

In this step we are experimenting with results. We leverage the confidence that comes from action, persistence, and attainment. Taking radical action has accelerating forward toward goals and experiencing the inspiration that comes from achieving, investing fully in yourself, despite mistakes and setbacks.

Reflective question: Who can help me take action to advance and accelerate toward success?