Metalsmith – Story of a Maker

Today’s Oracle

You can use my Potent Quotes Oracle page whenever you need help.  Hold a question in your heart, and see what quote comes up for you when you scroll down.  It will be a response to your question.  Play with it.

Quotations act as little doorways into new worlds and new perceptions. They consist of distilled genius. 

My software angels choose this oracle quote for you today:

185) Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father. --Roger von Oech

Get the Wizard's Handbook on Oracle Creation and have fun with oracles.  

Metalsmith – Story of a Maker

This lovely film models many things for you. 

First, Lisa and Dan carefully crafted this three and a half minute film – modeling doing what you love.  Second it’s about a master maker who overcomes scary stuff with his retina to continue his work.  It models the joy of creation.  It models presence. 

 

This film models everything I want for you and for me as we endeavor to live a life we love.

Walk in beauty,

William

P.S. My newest book Drawing the Sacred: Communing with the Sacred through Drawing - An Illustrated Journey echoes all these ideas.  Go read the description and consider getting it.

P.P.S. Please let your friends know about this.

P.P.P.S. Get Notified: Have you filled in your email at the top right corner yet?  Do it now while you’re here.  Obviously, you can unsubscribe anytime if it doesn’t serve you.

 

Announcing 99 Cents

You can get my newest book Drawing the Sacred: Communing with the Sacred through Drawing - An Illustrated Journey as a Kindle now. 

I’ve dropped the price from $9.99 to $.99. Why?  Because, I want you to enjoy the book and then write a shining review. 

And yes, if you’ve been paying attention, the book price will eventually drop to zero for five days.  Then back to $9.99. 

Will you help me by getting the book now and reviewing it?  Please and thank you. 

Soon I will publish it as an 8 in. by 10 in. paperback.  The print proof looks beautiful.  I’m excited by it.  It feels like Christmas.  It’s going through a final check process, then it will be available. 

 

Here’s What the Book Gives You 

In Drawing the Sacred, I share my heart’s journey of connecting to the Sacred through drawing and painting, mostly in Nature.

I will show you the ancient method of Owl Eyes that original peoples around the world employ to enable their children to thrive in Nature, what some call the wild.

This method will still your mind sufficiently so that you can connect with the Sacred and see the face of God. Maybe it won’t surprise you, but it surprised the heck out of me.

Obviously, your ability to connect to the Sacred, to see the Face of God whenever you choose, will change your life. I want you to own this ability to connect to the Sacred whenever you wish.

I have shown Owl Eyes and Owl Ears to lots of people, and observed their success; I feel confident that you can master it as well.

Once you have gained a sense of place using Owl Eyes, I will illustrate a way using your right brain, which I call the Buddha brain, to draw what you see before you. Drawing in this way lets you see behind the veil of the mundane and see the revealed pure face of the Sacred. You can call the revealed pure face – the Face of God.

When you look with these eye and draw from your right brain, the ordinary becomes Sacred. Not becomes… Rather you see that when the ordinary is revealed, it truly is Sacred.

This book will help you connect to the Sacred Ordinary more than it will instruct you in how to draw. It may show you how to be an artist. What’s the difference? Ponder.

Along the way I will provide some great resources for learning to draw and will highlight them at the end of the book in the Resources section as well.

When you draw or paint what you see in front of you, you deepen your experience of the Sacred. It matters not if the finished product sells in an art gallery, hangs in a museum or on your Mom’s refrigerator. Your engagement in the process fills your heart and soul.

Drawing the Sacred contains 39 lovely illustrations.  I purposefully included some that you may find quite crude.  I did that to let you know that anyone can do this.  And even though simple, each image connects me to the Sacred, and that’s the whole point. 

You’ll read later about my ruining 1000 paintings. 

If all this sounds good, consider buying the book. 

May you walk in beauty, 

William

P.S. Tell your friends -- Drawing the Sacred: Communing with the Sacred through Drawing - An Illustrated Journey now 99 cents.

 

 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DPYEMRA/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00DPYEMRA&linkCode=as2&tag=williamwittmannv

Timothy Ferriss – YES

I first encountered Timothy Ferriss when I read his excellent book – The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich.  I recommend this book highly if for no other reason than it will give you permission to re-invent your own work rhythms.  Ferriss offers strategies and permission that will free you from your email and phone tyranny.

 

But today, I want you to explore The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman. 

 

The Four Hour Body 

I was skeptical about what Ferriss could possibly know about the body, but it turns out, he’s a master at learning and devoted to the idea of doing anything more simply – like getting in shape FAST.  Subtracting fat FAST.   

Other Sections of this huge book:  

·         Adding Muscle,

·         Reversing Injuries,

·         Pre-Hab: Injury Proofing the Body,

·         Perfecting Sleep.

 

He recommends that you don’t read the whole book as it’s daunting.  Just start with the things you want to influence in your life.  Later you can read it all if your want.   

I’m writing the review now because I started to read the book cover to cover.  In reading the chapter: Ultraendurance: Going from 5K to 50K  in 12 Weeks, I uncovered something that might be profoundly useful for a friend.  He’s not running ultra marathons,  but he is walking a 500 mile pilgrimage route in Spain.  The injury prevention goodies may be of help. 

Obviously, I recommend injury prevention for anyone who wants to be active in their later years, not to mention next weekend. 

I’m using his Slow Carb plan for subtracting fat, and some of his strength material comes right from the kettlebell geniuses I’ve been working with for a decade.  I trust him and his sources.

 

Meta Learning 

Meta learning is learning how to learn.  It’s fascinated me for years.  Ferriss opens the doors for you. 

I’m still exploring The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life.  Maybe the best of all three books.  Why?  Besides turning you into a powerful chef in a surprisingly short time, the book demonstrates how to learn anything quickly.  His goal is to be in the top 5% of something in record time.  He wisely doesn’t aim for the top 1%.   

He uses cooking as a way to illustrate rapid learning.  But just reading his language learning tips will blow your mind.   

He uses his life as his laboratory.  In The 4-Hour Body, he uses his body.  I love that. 

He has a playful spirit that makes me laugh.  I frequently have to stop reading and go back and read sections to my wife Suzanne.   He mixes his humor and sense of fun with a skeptical scientific rigor that I appreciate.  He tests everything by using measurement.  In fact that could be the most useful aspect of the books.  Find out how to measure what you are changing.  No measurement, no real results. 

For example, if you want to lose fat and just measure your weight, you will be misled.  You need to measure your inches as well.  People often stop losing weight but drop dress sizes.  If you just look at the scale, you’ll get discouraged.  Measure.  And measure the right stuff.  Tim will show you.

 

Your Physical Potentials – Be Inspired 

4-Hour Body encourages you to expand the idea of what you can achieve.  Although you won’t be dong these standing jumps illustrated below, Ferriss increased his vertical jump by a large percentage and tells you how. 

Watch these to whet your appetite of what humans can do. Mutants?  You decide.

 

 

55’” box jump (1.39700 m) – Woof. 

 

 

Ferriss's comment, “No run-up, no expression of effort, and he’s in goddamn slippers.”  Go back and notice the “no expression of effort.”  Holy Moly. 

My font of all wisdom, Pavel Tsatsouline shatters what we know about strength when he declares – Strength is a skill.  Ferriss shows you the skills. (I recommend anything Pavel does too.)    

I watched Pavel increase a student’s strength by 20% in ten minutes, teaching some simple skills that you can learn.   

Another time, Pavel showed a woman how to increase her flexibility dramatically in toe touching.  Initially, she could only reach a bit below her knees.  Within five minutes, Pavel taught her how to hack into her nervous system to instruct the tight muscles to let go.  Ta Daa!  She could now touch her toes.  5 minutes! 

Until I read the 4-Hour Body, I had no interest in swimming. Now I might try the Total Immersion System that changed Ferriss’s life. 

I recommend all of these books as a way for you to live a life you love by breaking through your false limitations.  It’s all about permission and possibilities.  Do the impossible.  You’ll like it. 

Tip: If you buy the books, consider the Kindle versions – they’re easier to search through when you want to go back and find a gem.  Again, you can read Kindles on any device. 

Walk in beauty, 

William 

P.S. You can get my newest book Drawing the Sacred: Communing with the Sacred through Drawing - An Illustrated Journey as a Kindle now.  Soon I will publish it as an 8 in. by 10 in. paperback.  Très joli.