Paula's Paradise

Excited to announce that this January 19-22, 2017, I’ll be collaborating with one of my most favorite, brilliant, and fun-loving mentors, the inspirational humorist/author/illustrator/yoga teacher and Founder of the Kaizen Muse Creativity Coaching Training program— Jill Badonsky—to offer a warm-winter retreat and joy-centered learning experience in beautiful Delray Beach, Florida: Finding Uber Bliss … A Wildly Creative Journey to the Present Moment.  It’s an amazing opportunity to hang out with Jill in person and discover more ways to deepen your own imaginatively-inspired life as an Artist of Being Alive. You’ll be guided through stories of wisdom, creative adventures & writing, smart camera art, drawing, painting, brushes with the absurd & sublime, and enlightened contemplation … all in a gentle, non-pressurized, rooted-in-playfulness environment.

For KMCC coaches, it’s an ideal chance to ground yourself and learn in-person as you become certified to lead your own Finding Uber Bliss groups or classes. And for any creativity-loving attendees (artists, writers, gardeners, non-coaches, musicians, spiritual-seekers, everyone welcome!), it’s a wonderful way to amp up your awareness, more fully embrace your own distinctive creative thinking, deepen peace-of-mind practices, meet more mirth, and enhance the ongoing layers & blending of your own daily collage-of-life.

“Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man’s faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.” ~Giacomo Puccini

“Anyone at all who is known for having found a path to consistent, recurring joy — cites staying present as the essential teaching.” ~David Cain, Author of You Are Here

“Living creatively, you don’t constantly manufacture a future, you grow the life that is present.” ~Thomas Moore

“If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.” ― Amit Ray

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each MOMENT. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”  ― Henry David Thoreau

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.” ~Henry Miller
 
“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” ~Kurt Vonnegut

Why the name “Uber Bliss”?

(A note from Jill Badonsky about Finding Uber Bliss beginnings)

“Über” is a German word meaning “over”, “above” or “across”. 
 
“Uber” crossed over from German into English in 1883 when German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche coined the term “Ubermensch” to describe the higher state to which he felt men might aspire. Mensch means “man” in German.
 
The name of this program, “Uber Bliss”, was a spinoff of an explanation Dr. Seuss gave when people asked the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” He invented a fictitious account involving a hamlet in Switzerland called Über Gletch where he claimed he went every August to get his cuckoo clock fixed and while waiting, strange people would give him his ideas. It turned out to be an explanation that was as absurd as the question, “Where do you get your ideas?”
 
“Where do you get your ideas?” is a confounding question to most artists and writers because the genesis of ideas is elusive; there often is no explanation that the conscious mind can grasp. Because he was so imaginative, Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss), was frequently asked this question and rather than get annoyed, he invented a description, which showed us his tongue-in-cheek resourcefulness, his ability to rise above predictability, and his comfort with being imaginatively absurd. (All handy elements in the creative process as well as in life.)
 
The Greeks, who were known for inventing myths to explain the unexplainable, invented Muses to justify where ideas come from. So you see, Muses and Uber Gletch have a common theme—not to mention, the reference to “uber” as aspiring to a higher state.
 
When the transportation network, Uber, created a new association to the word, I was concerned people would be think Uber Bliss was related to a taxi service and considered changing the name. Instead, my inner Dr. Seuss helped me get resourceful, which was easy since both the Uber transportation network and Finding Uber Bliss, “transport” people to places that will make them happy.
 
Consider that you are about to get a lift to a new way of existing in your world. – Jill Badonsky

Duncan Conference Center Room