Welcome to the Erin Wilson Show.
I'm Erin,
Designer,
Creative strategist,
Intuitive,
And the CEO of Erin Rachel Designs.
This is a space for reflection,
Insights,
And storytelling with the intention of giving you the keys you need to unlock your creative potential and become the creative CEO of your own life.
So in my last episode,
I talked about these flowers,
Which in video you can see behind me,
Some red carnations that I bought myself,
And a reason that I love having flowers in my house.
And I don't buy them for myself super often,
But I love to have them in my house because it reminds me of beauty in life and being present and remembering what's important,
And also as a reminder to practice self-care and to really treat myself at the standard that I deserve.
And I was thinking about these flowers,
And I was also this morning sitting and having a tea and had the windows cracked and was listening to the birds and the sun was coming in in the most beautiful way.
And it hit me that there are people in the world who don't notice beauty in those everyday small opportunities to do so.
Surely if something really grand happens in their life that's beautiful,
They will notice,
But I realize that there's probably so many people in the world going about their day not noticing things like the sound of birds,
Or the way the sun hits the floor in your home in just the perfect way,
Or a rainbow in the sky,
Or there's so many little examples of beauty,
So many examples of opportunities to witness and be present with beauty.
And I realize that surely there are so many people who don't notice,
And it made me wonder why that would be,
And what came to me is that to be able to notice those little moments of beauty in life,
We need to be grounded and calm enough to do so.
And so many people,
And this has been myself at times as well,
Have very active nervous systems and are programmed to be hyper-vigilant and focused on self-protection,
Whether this is from childhood or recent experiences.
And from my own experience being in this type of state,
It can creep up on you.
And suddenly you realize,
Or maybe you don't realize for a long time,
But you're on autopilot and you're just surviving moment to moment,
Day to day,
And those little moments of,
Wow,
Look at how beautiful life actually is,
Become so rare.
And I realized that I have those moments almost,
I would say every day actually,
Not even almost every day.
I think I worked on my nervous system to a point where even during chaotic or particularly stressful periods of time,
I can still notice those things,
And maybe part of that is just my nature,
Because I've always been what you would consider a more stereotypical creative person in terms of being artistic.
And I know a lot of people don't identify with being creative if they can't paint or draw or whatever they deem as being creative.
And I may have said this before already,
But I think part of my mission here is really to show people that everyone is creative.
It's actually a very natural human quality that a lot of people just don't know how to tap into,
Or they're not aware of those powers that they have.
And anyways,
I realize that what I do for a living as a graphic designer is noticing,
Creating,
Or elevating beauty in some way,
Shape,
Or form.
And when I made that connection,
I was like,
Wow,
What an honor to be able to make a career out of that.
And it's really elevating potential,
And elevating it to a point that makes it awe-inspiring,
Or to have a better impact.
It can have a really practical,
Mundane purpose and output,
Or it can be something even more creative,
Like a painting or whatever it may be.
But it all comes down to elevating beauty and elevating potential.
I recently read the book The Big Leap by Gay Hendrix,
Which I highly recommend.
I really,
Really enjoyed it.
And an interesting concept that he talks about is Russian dolls,
You know,
Those dolls that sit within each other.
So there's a smaller one,
And then a bigger one,
And then an even bigger one than that.
And he relates it to your zone of genius versus your zone of excellence.
And you're not going to do it justice.
I highly recommend reading the book itself.
But essentially,
The zone of excellence is something that comes naturally to you.
If you do it for a living,
You're well compensated for it.
It serves a purpose that's really helpful for others.
But we can get stuck in our zone of excellence and stay there for too long and not elevate ourselves to our zone of genius.
And when you're in your zone of genius,
It's like your ultimate gift to the world and your ultimate purpose,
From my understanding.
And where time ceases to exist,
You can just be in a flow state,
And it feels so natural.
But essentially,
If we stay in our zone of excellence,
We're sort of hitting a ceiling for our potential.
And he offers clarity and guidance on how to move beyond that and make the leap into operating from your zone of genius.
And when I reflected on what that might be for me,
It's essentially you take the high level of what you do that you're really good at,
And then zoom in closer and closer to really get to the core of what it is that you're offering.
And for me,
What I came up with,
And what felt really aligned,
Is elevating potential.
Also,
Your zone of genius can often go back to something that you did in childhood that you may not have thought much about at the time,
But connecting the dots later,
It makes sense that you feel drawn to a certain area.
For example,
For me,
I loved to reorganize my bedroom.
My memory,
And probably my mom's memory too,
Was me very regularly moving the furniture around in my room.
And I think my mom would remember that because she hated how I scratched the really nice wood floors in my bedroom.
It gives it character.
And it was about,
I suppose,
Feng shui,
Like optimizing the energy of the space to suit my energy at the time.
It was also about craving change,
Which is something that's been really important to me in my life.
I do crave a lot of change and a lot of variety.
But it was also about elevating the potential of the space.
It was always a work in progress.
There was always,
In my mind,
A way that I could elevate and improve the space.
And I loved spending time in my room.
I feel like that's where I could be my own creative genius.
Locked away in my room,
I would spend lots of time creating,
Drawing,
Painting.
I was into crochet for a period of time.
All kinds of things.
And it was like my sanctuary.
So I was always seeking to improve and elevate the potential of the space so that I continued to want to spend lots of time in there.
So that's just one example of how I did that as a child.
And now it's something that I still do in my home,
In my physical environment.
It's also something that I've been working with people in terms of Reiki sessions.
So helping to rebalance people's energetic systems.
I was a nutrition counselor for a while.
And that's also about elevating someone's potential.
They have goals that they want to accomplish with their health.
How can we get there?
What are the blind spots that we need to look at?
And it's always been a very intuitive process for me to elevate potential,
No matter what the focus point is.
Whether it's a space,
A person,
My own life,
My own routines,
Or when I'm working on creating something.
Whether it's something for my clients as a graphic designer,
Or it's a personal art piece of some kind.
It's about recognizing the potential that's there and really bringing that to life.
So I guess the purpose of this episode is that it all comes back to beauty.
And this has always been the case for me.
And my life feels so much richer as a result of that.
And I would love to be able to make a difference for people who aren't able to see the beauty in their life.
It makes me feel sad to think that people go days without having those little moments of recognition and awe and inspiration.
I think if we lived in a world where everyone was experiencing those on a regular basis,
The beauty would just amplify itself.
Because what you notice,
What you focus on grows,
Right?
So if you're taking every opportunity you can get to notice and be present with beauty,
Then you're only going to notice more and more is going to keep showing up.
So I guess I'll leave you with the nudge to,
In the coming days or week,
To ground yourself in your body.
Do what you can to support your nervous system so that you feel safer to stop and recognize beauty.
Because the problem with an overactive nervous system is that we don't feel safe enough to slow down to be able to witness it.
So give your nervous system some love and take the opportunities that come to you to be with beauty,
To recognize it.
It may even be creating it yourself,
Whatever you feel called to do.
And to keep in mind that if we strive to do that on an individual level,
It does make a difference in the collective energy.
The more of us who can pull away from what feels dark and scary and stressful,
Because there's plenty of that to notice in the world.
And I think that the balance is off in terms of collectively,
We are focusing more on that.
But we each have our little corner of the world where we can shift that energy within ourselves.
And we have to remember that that does make a difference on a larger scale.
Every single person does make a difference.
We're all connected in ways that we don't even understand.
And a perfect example is if you can take an opportunity to go outside at night and look up at the stars,
If it's dark enough that you can see them,
There are there's someone else in the world also looking up at the same star as you.
And I really feel that that concept,
That concept can translate into the idea of us being all connected.
That's just one example of that.
It's like a metaphor for how we are connected.
And it's not something that's easy to explain to the logical human brain.
It's more of a knowing.
So I hope that you have many moments every day for the rest of your life where there's just an abundance of small and big beautiful moments that you can savor.
And that act as reminders of life itself actually being really beautiful.
And I'll leave you with that.
Thanks for listening.
