Bursts of Inspiration

Move Beyond Your Past

by Dusti Arab, Minimalist Adventures

Hi, I’m Dusti Arab. I’m a student, mom, writer, and radical minimalist. I live with 60 things, write, and create every single day.

Tweets: @dustiarab

Find Your Inner Guide

by Gabrielle Bernstein, Add More ~ing To Your Life

Recently featured in the New York Times Sunday Styles section as the next generation guru, motivational speaker, life coach and author Gabrielle Bernstein is making her mark. Expanding the lexicon for the next generation, Gabrielle is a #1 bestselling author of the book “Add More ~ing to Your Life”. A hip guide to happiness published by QNY.

Gabrielle was just one year out of college, when she co-founded the Women’s Entrepreneurial Network, a non-profit professional organization that connects female entrepreneurs. WEN started a local mentor program for young women, WEN Mentors, and is best known for its signature Gift of Service Exchange events. That same year, Gabrielle incorporated her own boutique public relations company, SparkPlug Communications.

In 2003 Gabrielle was the president of the Young Professionals Council for NARAL Pro Choice New York. Her brainchild event Strut Your Choice became a YPCC yearly fundraiser.

Since 2004 Gabrielle, who has a degree in theater from Syracuse University, has been on the speaking circuit. Gabrielle has presented lectures at the Massachusetts Conference for Women, Learning Annex, Seattle Center for Women in Democracy, Nobel Women, Integral Yoga, Kripalu, Universities nationwide, The Step Up Women’s Network, The Junior Leagues and other venues. She also shared her message through her regular guest spot on bestselling author Karen Salmansohn’s Sirius Radio show “Be Happy Dammit.”

In 2007, she launched the brand Falling in Love with Your Future: A Young Woman’s Guide to Passion and Happiness, which takes the form of books, life coaching, lectures and more. An integral part of the program is the emphasis on guidance and mentors. Gabrielle recently launched her social networking site www.HerFuture.com for young women to find mentors.

How can we kick our spending habit and find joy in more simplistic activities?

by Tammy Strobel, Rowdy Kittens

>>Tammy Strobel is the author of Simply Car-free and Smalltopia, blogger at RowdyKittens, a tiny house enthusiast, cat-lover, and coffee addict.

What’s Stopping You?

by Rebecca Barry, I Am A Girl

Rebecca Barry is a director, writer and producer of documentary and drama films and a graduate from the Australian Film Television and Radio School. Her films have screened at Melbourne International Film Festival, Sydney International Film Festival, St Kilda Short Film Festival, Flickerfest, ATOM, WOW and Columbia University USA. She has been the recipient of many awards including winning the Best Student Documentary prize at the Australian International Documentary conference 2003, the AFTRS Film Australia Award 2003 and was the recipient of the AFTRS Screen Critics Circle award for Best Director and Best Film. She was also a nominee for the Emerging Talent Award by the Screen Critics Circle 2003 and recently Highly Commended at the 2009 Australian Directors Guild Awards.

Her work as director or producer include:
Footy Chicks (SBS), Inspiring Teachers (SBS), Home and Away (Channel 7), The Surgeon (Channel 10), You Am I – The Cream and The Crock (DVD release), Beats Across Borders (ABC), Dunstan Baby Language (DVD release), The Space In Between, The McDonagh Sisters (SBS), A Modern Marriage (SBS), Overture (ABC).

Tweets @iamagirldoco

Access Your Real Creative Power & Genius

by Andrea Schroeder, ABC Creativity

Hello, I’m Andrea
I am a creative goddess/healer/teacher, artist and all around magic-maker.

I believe that creative magic is what makes the world go round and that creative dreams can save the world.

I have been trained and accredited as a New Thought Healing Practitioner, which I describe as “a guide, mentor and teacher in making positive change, living the life you want to be living and creating dreams come true.” I am also an Artist and Designer with a Bachelor of Applied Arts in Fashion Design and 1/2 of a degree in Interior Design.

I weave the creative and the spiritual together into magic potions to help dreamers bring their dreams to life.

When I’m not working: I sew and knit my own clothes. I art journal. I make amazing paper dolls and cloth dolls. I do holistic interior design. I play with makeup and am usually wearing 6 or 7 different shades of eyeshadows, glimmers and glitters. I am an adventurous traveler and explorer. And I spend quite a bit of time relaxing at the spa.

My mission is to overflow this world with dreams come true. Mine, yours, everyone’s.

And to fulfill my mission:

I teach in-person and online courses about everything to do with creative dreams and bringing them to life. (If you’re new you can start with Creativity 101: Discover, Explore and Express your Creative Genius which is a free course sent to you via email.)

I do one-on-one creative Coaching/Healing/Magic-making sessions.

I create life-changing healing affirmative meditations.

I creative journal.

I make amazing paper dolls.

And I blog about all of it at http://www.abccreativity.com/.

Tweets @ABCcreativity

Conscious Livelihood

by Michelle Vandepas, ConsciousLivelihood.com

>>I’ve been there, done that. I’m an entrepreneur, seeker, finder, traveler. I’m a radio and webcam TV host, interviewer. I want to know answers, I live in the space of no answers. I’m creative and practical, woohoo and grounded.

I’m creating my own universe in the middle of the void.

What about you?

Tweets @MichelleVan

Add Color to Your World

by Nitika Chopra, Your Bella Life

>>About the Founder of Your Bella Life–Nitika Chopra

If you were to ask me what my personal mission statement is my answer would be, “to show people that love is possible in every moment.”  This is a rather large pill to swallow for most people, and for many years of my own life it was something that I, too, struggled with.  After dealing with the turbulence of a debilitating disease for more than a decade of my life, I opened myself up to the expansiveness of happiness, and got busy creatively bringing joy into my life.

My unconventional (and often rocky) journey has taught me that we all deserve happiness, and we deserve it EVERYDAY. We owe it to ourselves to step into the happy, and we each have limitless potential to pass it on—in a big way. How we find happiness doesn’t matter, it just matters that we do. Whether it’s sipping a favorite tea in the morning, laughing like a child, or buying flowers, we need to find that daily dose of happiness and weave it into the fabric of our lives. I believe if we take this time for ourselves happiness will become a habit, rather than an afterthought.

I chose the words “adding color to your world” because this process is meant to be subjective.  To me, it represents a combination of things such as spirit, joy, laughter, love and passion.  For others it can mean any one of those things plus many more.  My intense desire to unite with others and make sure they get their daily dose of love led me to many different career paths over the years including becoming a certified professional Life Coach, being a successful actress and television host, as well as writing the beauty and fashion section for a South-Asian magazine.

I am here to encourage Bella Life readers to discover what it is that brings out the color in their worlds!

Connect with Nitika on Twitter @YourBellaLife

Create Personal Freedom

by Nina Yau, Castles in the Air

My name is Nina Yau, author of The Radical Minimalist and writer and founder of Castles in the Air. I live my life unabashedly through explorations of the human dynamic and this blog is a platform for such explorations to flourish.

I used to want to be normal and fit in, severely repressed by traditional, cultural, societal and personal inhibitions. That didn’t work out so well so I left my corporate day job in order to change the world through a minimalist revolution, inspire positive change in people’s lives and to live life according to my own terms.

Follow me on Twitter as I make my way across the world, beginning January 2011 in Taipei, Taiwan, and spanning other countries and more. This is going to be one amazing journey. Thanks for joining me.

Awaken Your Inner Goddess

by Amy Palko, Bloom by Moon

How Do You Find Your Passion on Which to Build a Business?

by Lea Woodward, Kinetiva

>>Lea Woodward is a mother and wife enjoying the nomadic lifestyle. She runs Kinetiva – an organization dedicated to creating online communities which enable people to create an income from their passion in life. She is also the founder of the Location Independent network which helps people live and work from anywhere.

Tweets @leawoodward