Attention Artists, Writers, Musicians, Crafters and Other Creative Types:
Why Your Creativity
Is Your Most Important Quality…
And How You Can (And Should)
Use that Creativity to Build
The Life of Your Dreams
Learn what no one has ever told you about the power your profound creativity
has to change your life…and the world
From:
Angie Dixon
Little Rock, Arkansas
Wednesday, 2:03 p.m.
Dear Creative Friend,
If your creativity puts you a little outside the range of “normal,” if you feel like an “oddball” or that proverbial (is it really in Proverbs?) “square peg,” please keep reading, because I have a concept for you that could literally change your life.
Yes, I know people promise to change your life or save your life just about every day online. If you spend as much time online as I do, you’re probably passing up life-changing offers over breakfast, lunch and dinner, and a bonus offer before you go to bed.
There are two things that make my offer different.
First, the information on this site is free, even if you never purchase the book that grew out of this concept. All the articles, the blog posts and future reports and other information are and always will be free so that you have a place to go where you really fit. I’m also working on a community for profoundly creative people to connect. That’s the first reason what I’m saying here is different.
Second, I’m like you. And this information changed my life. Which is why I’m sharing it with you. Sure, I have a book, and I’ll have future books and ebooks and courses and such, and if you like this you are more than welcome to buy other stuff from me as well. But I’m sharing this because I know how powerful it is and I want everyone to have it.
Let me tell you my story, and you see if it “resonates” with you, as the psychological folks (like me, I admit) like to say.
Let’s start with the early years…
I Was a Weird Kid and an “Eccentric” Adult
Now, when I say I was a weird kid, I mean I was a weird kid. I had an imaginary dog when I was 12, and I made him a leash and collar. About the same time I took to drawing pictures of bread hanging on museum walls.
I wasn’t just weird.
I was creative and thoughtful, too. Which equates to weird in junior high and high school, of course.
So I got bullied a lot, because I was so different and didn’t act like other kids. My mind was always working overtime and coming up with cool ideas. (Is any of this sounding familiar?)
In college I found people like me, “freaks,” we called ourselves, and I finally fit in for the first time with someone who was as weird in their thinking and as multi-brained (I now call it multipassionate) as me.
And as an adult, because I’m a writer, people just think I’m eccentric and I play to that. I tried to learn to not let my differences get to me.
But I am not your average person. For one thing…
I Always Have a Dozen Projects Going
My friends have learned that if they ask me what I’ve been up to, they better mean it, because I’ve probably started something new even if I talked to them last week—or yesterday.
I’m not happy if I only have one or two things on my plate; I need more stimulation than that. I can get overstimulated, too, but ideally I have two to four “focus” projects and a half dozen to a dozen things going on in the background that I kind of circle around to now and then and spend time on. And the priority of what’s a focus project and what’s a background project changes frequently.
I like long-term projects in some ways, but I’m really good at short-term stuff. I have to be really passionate to stick with something for the long term, but if I am, I’ll stay with it for years and put all my energy and time into it to make it work.
Because I believe that…
If It’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Overdoing
Moderation is not exactly in my vocabulary. That has caused me a number of problems over the years, and when it comes to projects, let’s just say that sometimes I’m… “overconfident,” I think is how my best friend put it when I announced I was building a kayak out of PVC pipe and duct tape.
It’s not just that I do too many things; it’s that sometimes I do something too much.
I’m the only person in the known world to accidentally refinish a desk.
That’s right, I accidentally refinished my desk. The whole desk. You see, it was an old desk and it was missing a drawer pull. So I bought one, and some stain, but the stain didn’t match the desk. It was too dark. So I started touching up the drawers trying to make the drawer pull work, and then by the time I got done I had put two coats of stain and a coat of varnish on the entire desk. And then I stained and varnished my chair to match my desk.
And all I wanted was a drawer pull on my desk.
At this point you’re either laughing or crying, or maybe both if you’re like me. And if you’re still reading, you are like me.
So let me share with you…
A Few of My Crazy Ideas That Worked
Speaking of desks, I built the one I’m using now. I like to do things with wood, but I’m by no means a skilled woodworker. However, I couldn’t find a desk I liked. Then I saw one in the Ikea catalog (I love that company!) with long bookshelves under the desk, opening to the sides. I loved it. And I had an old attic door made of planks, so I built some shelves and put the door on top and have a beautiful desk.
In my orange office. That I painted. That’s right, orange. Kind of a light dark orange, if that makes any sense. It’s actually the color of an orange. It’s great. With electric blue accents and dark red trim, and a dark red couch. I love it.
Also in my office is a guitar I refinished and restored. It’s fretless, because I wasn’t quite that ambitious, but it sounds like a guitar even after I worked on it. I’m still amazed.
And I’ve created all the graphics and book covers for every book and program I’ve ever written.
Oh, yeah, and I’m a photographer, have made money taking photographs, and once served as team photographer for a local football team even though I know nothing about football…
But It’s Hard to Be This Creative
I mean that.
The creativity is not hard; I love the ideas and the projects and doing things that other people wouldn’t even think of doing.
My motto is “Say yes first; you can think about it later.” That’s how I ended up as a football photographer, and I had a blast. (And still know next to nothing about football).
But I live in Arkansas, in the United States, in 2012. They don’t exactly hang people like me as witches anymore, but let’s just say I don’t fit into the corporate mold. Or any other mold, for that matter.
You know how some people dance to a different drummer?
I dance to a guitar.
When I say I’m not like other people, I’m not kidding, and it can make things difficult. You know what I mean.
For one thing…
(Some) People Find Me Overwhelming
A few years ago I was looking to get a dog, and I found one from an organization that does a lot of good things. I volunteered to help the organization. I didn’t get the dog, because the founder of the group felt my house was “too cluttered” and “not safe” for her precious pup (I had two small children at the time; I’m not sure what she expected).
But the really painful part at the time was that she chewed me out for having too many ideas about helping her organization. She felt I was “getting carried away” and she told me she didn’t want to hear from me again.
This kind of thing has happened to me periodically. In the end, with this little incident, we got a great dog from a great group, who thought our house was just fine and we were, too.
Unfortunately, I learned to dial it back for a few years.
I’m fortunate that I had a best friend who helped pull me back out, and a coach and business partners who saw the potential in my ideas and my skills and said, “That’s why we love you.”
I needed them to say that, because, you know, sometimes…
I Embarrass Myself with All My Skills and Interests
A few months ago I went to the library (that’s not the important part; I do that a couple of times a day) to pick up the books I had requested from other branches. One of the library assistants, Jami Kath, said, “I knew those boat-building books were for you!”
Another time I went to pick up my holds and my friend Stephanie said, “I saw Write Better Lyrics and I thought, “That’s for Angie Dixon.”
I think they have little competitions to guess what I’ll check out next.
When they got a new employee she asked me, “What kind of books do you like? What gets you excited?” I said, “Everything.”
When people ask me what I do I say I’m a writer, but the real answer to what do I do is, “What have you got?”
While it’s fun, it’s also not fun sometimes. And one of the ways it’s not fun is that…
I Was Disorganized
If you talk to people who know me fairly well, they’ll talk about how organized I am, how I get things done and keep things going without dropping balls.
If you talk to people who know me really well, and read that last sentence to them, they’ll fall over laughing, because I am the most disorganized person in the world 75% of the time.
It’s the 25% of the time when I “get organized” that everything comes together. And I’m successfully increasing the amount of organized time in my life.
I’m working on organization so I can spend more time working on my other major problem, which is that…
I Was Unfocused
Well, of course I was. If I have ten to sixteen projects going at one time, how am I going to be focused with that all making noise in my head?
I can focus. I can even focus on one thing at a time. I just can’t do it easily or happily.
I am learning to focus in blocks of time, so that I spend an hour or half an hour or two hours focusing on one particular project or set of tasks, and that helps.
But the fact remains that my brain’s natural state is full of noise, racing around, and completely unfocused.
Like I said, I love my creativity. I love the ideas.
Still…
I Used to Wish I Could Be “Normal”
I know there’s supposedly no such thing as “normal,” but there’s way more normal than me, I assure you.
Did you ever feel that way? That you just wanted to fit in?
That’s how I felt. I just wanted to not be so “abnormal.” So out of the ordinary. So weird. So over the top sometimes.
I just wanted to be more like my best friend and the other people I knew who seemed to fit the world better…
Then I Realized What I Am
I did a lot of research on creativity, and it was all percolating in my mind, and one night I was up north (of here, anyway) visiting my best friend and we started talking about my reading.
I told her I thought that all creative people shared a certain trait…call it, “I don’t know,” I said, “The Leonardo Trait.”
And then I started describing a set of subtraits that described me and people like me, who are so creative we don’t fit in, who literally have different minds than other people.
That’s how the concept of the Leonardo Trait was born, and it’s a very powerful, very important concept because…
The Leonardo Trait is All About Profound Creativity
The Leonardo Trait, the book and the concept, are not about “how to be more creative” or “how to think creatively.”
You know how to do that. I know how to do that. What I had to learn, and what I want to share with you, is how to live a normal life with a brain that works in about sixteen different dimensions.
And what I learned about myself, and what I want you to learn, is that you’re special, because of that multi-dimensional brain.
The truth is…
You’re Not Weird. You’re Not Eccentric. You’re a Leonardo.
There is a place in the world for us. Not the place we thought we wanted, maybe, but a place that we fit.
That place is where we become more of who we are, stop trying to be who we’re not, and let our brains and our minds operate the way they do.
But there’s only one book, one ebook, that will teach you about being a Leonardo, because no one else discovered the Leonardo Trait, no one else created the Leonardo Trait program, and quite frankly, no one else knows how Leonardos think, feel, act and react the way I do.
At this point I want to say I’d love for you to buy a copy of my book. I’ve priced it affordably because I want to share The Leonardo Trait with everyone who needs to hear about it. I noticed recently that there was a used copy on Amazon for $47.39, which is flattering, but you can pick it up in softcover for $9.95 new.
But if you’re not up for the book yet, do stick around a while to read some articles or check out the FAQs or peruse the blog or even take a look at the free workbook that accompanies The Leonardo Trait.