ABOUT

Peggy Jessome, MBA

For as long as I can remember I've been thinking about creativity and wanting to experience more of it in my life. Like many people, however, I started my career in a more conventional way, working first as a clinical dietitian, then department head, before obtaining an MBA at the University of Warwick. I chose a specialization in Continuous Quality Improvement, and implemented a quality program at Children’s Hospital before leaving to start my own consulting business. Those experiences gave me a strong grounding in the value of structure and logic, and how to use that as a way to support intuition and creativity, rather than to squash it.

Since 1992, I've worked with businesses and individuals to clarify what they want, and to find ways to bring that into being, through visions and strategies, team building and coaching.

At the same time, I began to re-discover my own creativity, creating portrait collages and handmade books (See samples of my work in Classic Scrapbooking: The Art and Craft of Creating a Book of Memories, by Vera Rosenbluth and Susan McDiarmid). What I noticed for myself and my clients was that working creatively was a fundamentally different way of being in the world. Rather than problem solving (trying to make something go away) and struggling with the circumstances that existed, it was possible to use those circumstances as part of the raw material to create what was wanted. It was both more effective, and more satisfying.

It was also more sustainable. Because the experience was inherently more satisfying, it built energy rather than draining it, and because it was a way to use whatever circumstances existed as a way to move to what you want, it didn't depend on things going well.

Since I’ve entered the Third Age, it has become more and more important to me to orient my life in this way – to create more space (time and physical space) to art and to live and work in a way that is creative. For most of us, including myself, the frameworks in which we live and work don't support this kind of orientation. I believe that it's possible to change these frameworks and to change our experience, and that is what The Resting Step™ is all about. It’s a way to make the third age a real renaissance.

Christine Reed, MA

Throughout my life I have struggled with the idea of creativity: what is it? What is it for me? There must be “how to” rules for this kind of thing, right? I envisioned the “state of creativity” to be akin to flying through the air on a trapeze without a net below. I have since discovered I am not only creative, but I also enjoy it…when I make time for it, ala The Resting Step™. In fact, I sometimes feel like the Queen of Reinvention in terms of my career. I have created work I love doing, several times.

I began my career as a teacher and consultant in school systems, even working out of the country (U.S.) in a non-American school for one year. Some years later, after earning a Masters Degree in Education, I learned about the business world through different work experiences including sales, marketing, and general management. In those roles, I created products, business relationships, and business results. Since 1997, my path has led me to coach individuals and groups who are ready to make changes in their lives and work. Reinventing myself has necessitated utilizing The Resting Step™ in order to really listen to where I would move next in my work.

As I enter this Third Age of my life, I realize the present contains the results of my past experiences and intuitive choices. There is value in putting myself in the flow of circumstances while keeping an eye on my intuitive vision. My experience has been that intuition, conscious choices, and creative force determine where we go from here. In order to make the future magnificent, it is critical that we stay open to the possibility that we are catalysts for personal and professional change.