Listen to this awesome meditation story.
“How awesome can a meditation story possibly be?” you might ask.
Well, listen up.
So last Friday, as we were trying to finalize the design and content of the back cover of Blooming into Mindfulness, one of my marketing advisors suggested that I add a stylized “DP” to the bottom of the book spine to represent my indie imprint Damselwings Press.
We’re beyond the eleventh hour in the book production process, and this hadn’t even occurred to me. But looking at the books on my shelf, every one of them has the publisher logo on the book spine. Talk about a classic first time self-publisher oversight!
Though I have a beautiful damselfly logo for www.marthabrettschneider.com, a marketing expert friend had advised me to only use that logo for my personal brand (Martha Brettschneider), not Damselwings Press as well. Then I just forgot about the whole thing, since I don’t plan on marketing my publishing business to outsiders.
“Where will I come up with a Damselfly Press logo for the book over the weekend?” I thought to myself while trying to fall asleep Friday night. I had such a hard time falling asleep, in fact, that I skipped meditating Saturday morning to catch up on lost zzz’s.
I spent all day Saturday at an art business conference and didn’t have a second to think about the logo.
But during my 20-minute meditation session starting at 6:00 a.m. on Sunday (earlier than usual for a weekend, but I had to be back at the conference that morning), something really cool happened.
I settled in and focused on my breath, as usual. It took a couple of minutes, but I was able to let go of most of the thought clutter and experience some luxurious pockets of stillness. If an unimportant thought made its way through, I simply refocused on my breath.
BUT DEEP INTO THE SESSION, SOMETHING ELSE FLUTTERED INTO THE SPACE.
It was a pair of damselfly wings—the same wings that my friend Doris in Singapore designed for my website logo. The wings were persistent, no matter how focused I was on my breath.
They beat harder, demanding an audience.
Observing the image with my mind’s eye, it occurred to me that the line of wings (if they would just sit still for a minute!) could serve as either the spine of a D or the stem of a P. The wings would evoke my personal damselfly logo, but be something different entirely.
When my meditation bell chimed from my phone, I opened my eyes and sent Doris a Facebook message. The twelve-hour time difference worked out perfectly. She was just finishing dinner and happened to check her computer. (This story is also a great example of synchronicity.)
After reading my note, Doris messaged back quickly, “What if the wings were in the middle, the vertical line for both the D on the left (flipped) and the P on the right?”
Brilliant!!
She sent me some samples ten minutes later. The logo was finalized in less than half an hour—the only free chunk of time I had that day.
So what do you think? Do you love my Damselwings Press logo as much as I do???
THIS IS HOW MEDITATION NURTURES CREATIVITY
I am absolutely convinced that if I hadn’t taken a few minutes to sit in silence Sunday morning, I would simply have gotten caught up in “there’s no way I can do that” stories. Or I would have settled for a lame fall-back like a plain old DP.
Instead, I got rid of the crap in my head, made room for inspiration to float to the surface, and was able to act on it without drama or time waste. Mindfulness in action!
I’m happy to announce that the interior and cover files are, as of TODAY, ready to upload to the printers at Amazon and Ingram Spark (the print on demand supplier to Barnes and Noble online). Keep your fingers crossed that the test copies come back glitch-free!
Thanks for the positive vibes, everyone. The most supportive action you could take on my behalf is to sign up for my email list if you haven’t done so already so that I can keep you up to date on launch details and book signings. Spreading the word to your circles would be that much more appreciated! I’m SO grateful for your help!
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Thank you again!
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