The Change Artist brings Carla Rieger's powerful recipe for mastering self change into a compelling story format.
The story begins with the troubled relationship between an adult daughter and her dying father.
Change leaders can become targets. Often the person who suggests a new idea gets shot down by people who are uncomfortable with change. There are plenty of examples throughout history of people who stood for change getting assassinated or vilified. It’s no wonder we keep our mouths shut.
There are inherent forces within nature to create, to stay the same for a while, then to destroy. It’s the cycle of life that also affects people. There are times in a person’s life (and times in history) when we need to release the old to make room for something new. This transition can trigger turmoil as the energy of one fights against the other, like two chemicals in a test tube. Finally, the two become one and a third entity emerges. The Phoenix rises from the ashes of the old. The new tree grows from the dead trunk of a mother tree.
If we keep our mouths shut when it’s clear a change is needed there can be negative consequences. Stifling your creative ideas, can undermine your own well being but also those you serve. Leading change comes with risks, but if that is your path then life tends to mysteriously show up to help. Choosing the path of a change artist requires you to have certain habits so that you can be as resilient as possible.
Here is Carla Rieger talking about The Change Artist, a novel about the perils of denying your creativity. It explores one woman’s path of reconnecting to her creative heritage and habits she needed to become a leader of change.
“Remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall — think of it, ALWAYS.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Creativity and innovation without integrity is, by universal law, unsustainable. We see this throughout history with investors like Bernie Madoff, or companies like Enron, or political leaders like Hitler. They impress people at first with their “innovative” way of changing things for the better. But if the innovation isn’t based in integrity then it cannot be sustained and eventually the leaders self-destruct and those that follow them lose out.
The Change Artist within us all is the archetype of the dreamweaver. It’s the part of us that can re-program our virtual reality movie. However, have you noticed that it doesn’t always create a rosy picture of health, wealth and happiness? Sometimes The Change Artist attracts challenge, loss and hardship into your life. Maybe these are opportunities to grow, to learn how to live more in harmony with universal laws, to make ourselves right with the world again. You cannot learn about integrity unless you transgress it from time to time and most humans have done that in big ways or small at some time in their lives. Like a child learning how to walk, we take a step and fall, then get back up and try again.
The suspense novel, The Change Artist, was recently reviewed by Clare Swindlehurst in her Blue Archipelago book blog in the UK. The novel explores how three people in three different generations of the same family deal with change, creativity and integrity in their own lives. The story goes back and forth through time and spans from the early 1930’s to the 21st century, and is inspired by true events of those who have suffered great loss but then found their way back to creativity with integrity.
