SHIFT ENTRY IDEA EXAMPLES
As Leading Members it is important to constantly be exploring new forms of creative expression. Here you will find a variety of assignments that you can practice creating through both written and video format that will serve as valuable entries for the community while helping showcase your work!
Though there is a general order to this list, it is encouraged that you choose the ones that you feel most excited about!
A Story of Your Awakening
Sharing Your Purpose
Everyone has a story. Practice sharing yours by telling it as an intentionally engaging tale of your quest that has lead you to where you are now. You can choose to keep what you want in and take out what you wish. It is okay to share about the highs and the lows that added up to you realizing more of who you are as a multi-dimensional being. Be honest, intentionally engaging, and focus on the common threads that connect us with the intention of inspiring the audience.
What is your purpose? Why are you here?
Are you here to help others? To serve? To co-create a bigger story?
What are some of your skills, interests, and abilities?
Create an inspirational entry that will help hype up the audience, develop a further relationship between you and them, and add to the bigger story.
This assignment is a powerful tool to help you reflect and receive clarity as you move forward on your path.
There is a poet inside all of us.
For this assignment you are asked to write out an inspirational conscious poem ahead of time that will take about 2-3 mins or longer to read on camera. Combine audio and / or video of you reading your poem with footage of your choosing.
Play around with filming your own footage of things such as nature or other ambient settings. You are also encouraged to incorporate stock footage as you wish.
To increase the production value even more look into adding additional music to your video. See what music you can find that is already online through the team Google Drive.
A poem is a beautiful artistic way to speak to a person's soul.
Artstic Poetry Video
Informative Topical Entry
What are some of your favourite topics?
Create a list of about 3 or 5 things to begin with and then choose one to start.
Your objective is to create a post that will help educate the audience about this topic while also giving you the opportunity to practice explaining it in your own words.
From here begin writing out a point form script of 5 main ideas.
If you are writing an entry then each point should be at least a paragraph to itself. If you are making a video then the video could range between 3-10 mins.
Incorporate as much original graphics and stock footage as you can gather. If you are using specific images you do not own then be sure to credit the authors as best as you can.
Einstein says that intelligence is being able to explain something complex simply. Make it your objective to explain your topic as best as you can so that someone who may not be familiar with conscious themes would perhaps still be able to understand it.
You can repeat this assignment numerous times with the topics of your choice.
Single Subject Interview
Every person you meet has something interesting to say.
Think about someone who you know who has perhaps been a teacher to you on your path, someone whose insight you value, or even someone whose creation or work you would like to help feature. This could be a friend, a family member, or perhaps even someone who you are still getting to know.
Tell them that you are interested in interviewing them to help share some of their story and insight related to their spiritual journey, their work (if relative) and their perspective on consciousness related topics.
This assignment can be done as both written, video, both, or even a live broadcast or podcast recording. This assignment can be repeated with as many subjects as you choose.
Multiple Subject Interview
Similar yet different from the single subject interview, this assignment can be presented much differently.
Instead of the focus being on the individual person instead focus on a particular theme, topic, or question(s) that you can practice asking multiple people. Aim for somewhere between 4-10 subjects.
These could once again be friends, family, and as well as strangers if you are able to approach people in a public place and ask them off camera ahead of time if they would like to share.
When interviewing people who you just met be sure to get their contact info so you can send the entry to them when it is completed as well as be sure to ask for their name on camera if you are filming and ask them to say "I consent to you using this footage for your project".
Once you have your interviews completed aim to edit together a weaving pattern between the subjects to great a steady flow that will be engaging for the audience.
Event Journalism
As a journalist for the shift in consciousness it is important to keep your ears and eyes open for upcoming events in your community. Is there a neat spirituality expo? An activist demonstration? A festival? Drum circle in the park? Some kind of celebration?
Events such as these are great places to practice documenting. You can approach this assignment in a few ways. You can focus on telling a story about the event itself and the people there as well as your own experience (gonzo journalism).
Or you can use some of the above assignment prompts such as multiple subject interview or Shiftivism documentation while at the event with the event being the setting for the piece.
Be sure to freely focus on your own experience, get footage of the activities, and do interviews when possible with participants and organizers.
A good event journalism piece in video format will function almost like a news report or mini-documentary.
Shiftivism Documentation
As a Shifter you have the power to take action in your local community through intentional acts of creativity and compassion. Shifters are consistently encouraged to engage in acts such as Free Hugs and other acts of kindness.
For this assignment you are encouraged to do so while also documenting the experience. This can be done in both video and written with images format.
If you are going out by yourself then be sure to get some video or images of you holding your sign ahead of time. If you can get some footage as you go that is great, but you can always do an after action report aswell on camera, and flesh out the majority of your adventure in corresponding text.
If you are able to invite a friend or two then you can take turns getting footage of your adventure and have fun playing. Focus on the upbeat energy of your intentions to help inspire others to take action where they are too knowing that anyone can do it.
Be sure to get as much permission as possible from anyone you are getting video footage or images of. It is totally okay to have a friend filming you in public doing free hugs and then after you hug someone you politely ask them "Is it okay if I may or may not use some of this footage in a youtube video?" And of course if they say no then you politely honour that. Often times people will say yes. Consent is key, so be sure to get it as much as possible before or after.
This form of media creation is extremely potent and something every Shifter is encouraged to create at some point.
Intentional Pump-up Video
Have you seen those videos or written entries that just light the fire under you?
You can create them too!
Move into this assignment with the clear intention that you are making it to get people pumped up. Practice bringing your energy on camera if you are filming and even exaggerate some of your features. Use your hands. Move around. Yell out into the world about how beautiful life is!
Combine this with footage you film of things like nature, you doing activities such as dancing, yoga, meditation, skate boarding, running through the woods.
Aim to find a specific message you want the audience to reflect on and then expand on it. As a video this can be between 3-5 mins.
Guided Meditation
Meditations are a wonderful way to practice being os service.
You can either film yourself ahead of time or plan to do a guided meditation as a live broadcast. Focus on a particular theme or outcome you want the audience to experience.
Plan things out ahead of time by making a point form skeleton walkthrough of the main points. Each meditation should have a lead in, body and breathing calibration where you bring people into theta, a point of focus or the beginning of a journey, a realization or reflection, focus on integration and embodiment, gentle conclusion.
A guided meditation can be anywhere from 5 mins to over an hour.
Play around with the idea and allow yourself to step into your potential as a creative story teller and facilitator.
Self-Organized Event Documentation
A core part of Paradigm Shift Central is helping encourage people to organize their own conscious community events. Often the focus on these are to be open-minded discussion and meditation circles. But this idea can expand into sound healing ceremonies, larger group meditations, ecstatic dance, presentations, and more.
Help share with the global community about the story unfolding in your location that you are helping facilitate. You can document a local self-organized event by combining some of the methods of the previous prompts such as multiple subject interview with the setting taking place at the event.
You can also speak on camera or share in written detail from your perspective talking about what the event is, before, during, and after.
People love being able to see community events unfolding and this form of entry is incredibly important to help inspire people to take action where they are.
Music Oriented Entry
Are you a musician? Are you developing your skills as a musician?
Practice sharing your voice and the consciousness inspiring musical content you are creating. If you are working by yourself then you can literally work on creating a music video of your song. Film yourself in one or multiple locations. Get additional relative footage or even weave a story into the video.
Music can come in many forms, and it can be natural for it to blend with something similar to a poetry entry through either casually recording yourself reading it or by intentionally performing it in a more spoken word format.
If you do not have music to go with your lyrics then collaborate with musical content already online created by other community members.
If you already have your content online without a video then be sure to include perhaps multiple tracks as well as a written description of your content ahead of time.