(Heart Art)

So yesterday I was telling you about my idea to hold a workshop in a small town in the Loire. Today it’s about the workshop. The Dream Reality Workshop – Making your dream a reality even if you don’t know what you want!

For years I thought I didn’t know what I wanted. I wandered from bookshop to internet to personal development course wondering if I would ever find out. But I needn’t have wondered. I was already doing what I wanted – reading books, getting information, attending courses. When I look back on that time I was doing exactly what I needed to do to become what I was becoming. I was putting in time in the 10,000 hours university.

(Another beautiful building in the Marais)

There’s a book called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. In it he describes how experts in one particular area or another all share the phenomenon of having spent 10,000 hours working in their chosen field. Gladwell includes lots of stories. My favourite one is about the Beatles.

Back in 1957, when they were starting out, the Beatles got an opportunity to play in a club in Hamburg, Germany. They weren’t very good, but no one complained, no one was listening…. they were playing in a strip club. The band was in training. By the time they had become famous in the early sixties they had performed live twelve hundred times. This training set the Beatles apart.

(So much dedication to beauty)

The Beatles didn’t go to Hamburg for the training. They didn’t have a world domination plan. They went because they loved to play. Ok you may not want to be an expert but… to be good at what you love, keep doing what you want to be doing and do it for hours and hours and hours and… easy! Well…… for most people it’s not easy at all and that’s what this workshop is all about.

More tomorrow, Mairead.

PS. Apologies, comments are not working at the moment –  technical difficulties.