The Fertile Unknown

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Facilitating Creative Process: Tending Our Inner Landscape

What stories do you carry about yourself as a creator? Knowing yourself as a unique amazing creator, and knowing that you are walking into a room filled with other unique amazing creators, allows you to help facilitate a new story for those in the room.

What stories do you carry about creativity? Our inner landscape is not just a place of stories, it is a space of memories, dreams, visions, fears, triggers, drives, imaginings, and seeds of creation.

Like any landscape, it needs tending to regenerate and remain fresh, alive, fertile, and creative.

That means weeding out what’s no longer alive, planting new seeds to creatively cultivate out into the world, and nurturing it along the way - making sure it gets the attention it needs, such as:



1. Becoming aware of what is already there, such as our stories, beliefs, wounds, strengths, aspirations, callings, triggers, visions, drives, etc.
2. 
Releasing that which no longer serves (an ongoing process), and discovering, cultivating, and building on what does.
3. 
Moving into the emerging new: unfolding more generative stories about ourselves and the world; opening up to multi-dimensional levels of our whole-brain, whole-self creativity; and staying present, as in improv, to what is calling to emerge within us at any time.



We keep our inner landscapes fresh with our attention, presence, and exploration. The more discovery time and space we allow ourselves, the more we can hold for others. And the more we learn how to see, listen to, and practice tending to our own inner landscapes, the easier it is to navigate the variety of different inner landscapes of those who are in the room.



More on this is in my creative facilitation book.

Creative Emergence in Uncertain Times: Getting Back to Core Principles

Where there are layers of unknowns, core principles offer a port in a sea of foggy unknowns, and provide ways forward - foundations to build on, and create from. The following are just a few reminders, in no particular order. I'm sharing 7 (of many more) here today as considerations and reflections - not as prescriptions.
 
A Few Core Creative Principles
 
• Creative emergence is an evolving dance of expansion and contraction. In contraction, it is hard to see that next expansion, but just having the understanding that a contraction is a temporary state helps us better move within it. Nothing is static, and everything is in dynamic flux. Current versions of our stories often give way to generative emergent versions as we are present to them.
 
• There is always more than one right way. In any creative emergence process, it is not about one right answer, but uncovering what is possible in a sea of potential options. Binary thinking leaves out nuance, and nuanced thinking leads to more possibilities. To open the creative field is to go beyond just one or two ways of imagining something.
 
• Creativity thrives with purposeful actions. Challenging times can get us thinking about what matters most to us, and what we can do that is in alignment with what matters. When we align our creativity to a sense of purpose, we unfold a different quality of workable ideas than when we create from what we want to avoid. Brain research backs this up. We get more of what we reinforce. Purposeful actions relax our nervous systems by moving us from feeling helpless to serving. Paradoxically, we can use a sense of purpose to inspire actions, and we can also take actions to discover more of our purpose. It is not necessarily linear.
 
• Being informed from within. Our creative unconscious has more awareness than our conscious minds at any given time, and we can learn to access it and use it to help guide our decisions and creativity. We can use our inner creative selves to break “reaction patterns” (from our default zone) and turn them into new “creation patterns” (from our creative zone). So often in a creative emergent process, what emerges doesn’t fit neatly into our preconceived expectations. The creative unconscious, below the surface of our conscious awareness, contains more wisdom and creativity than that which is consciously known to us at any given time.
 
• Primary experience leads to creative empowerment. In discovery mode, we feel more free to go off script, to break our patterns. There is a certain type of empowerment that comes from knowing through discovery. Creative empowerment can't be fully experienced through "left brain" analytical thinking alone. Primary experiences goes beyond data (but includes it) into stories, and whole-brain/whole-body/whole-self engagement. The more of ourselves we can access and experience, the more empowered we feel making choices amidst the noise of the world about what we might want to create, and how.
 
• New metaphors and language replace the old. Using life-giving new metaphors allows us to conceive of situations and problems differently. Our language can keep up locked in our same everyday reality and thinking that created the problems in the first place. In an emergence process, using generative language can liberate our thinking, overcome blocks, assumptions, and connect our creative unconscious with our conscious mind.
 
• Generative questions inspire generative ideas. Generative questions are open ended, and are ones where we do not already have the complete answer. Asking "What's mine to do - no more no less - to serve this situation?" (see next section) is one example of a generative question. That question, if seriously asked and truthfully answered, narrows the field of all things possible into that which is most relevant at the given time for the particular circumstance. By asking any kind of generative question, and staying present to our insights and impulses that arise in us over time, we start to see options open up.
 
Principle-based navigating allows us to expand our stories beyond any one concept or story, and find a new place for ourselves within them. In any creative emergence, something new emerges in some way.

Designing for Creativity: Finite and Infinite Design

James Carse’s book, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility, speaks to designing games which cultivate play, improvisation and engaging the unknown, creating as you go. I first read it about 18 years ago, and it is still one of my favorites. He writes:

"A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play...infinite games are unscripted and unpredictable...the rules of an infinite game are like the grammar of a living language, whereas those of a finite game are like the rules of a debate...Finite players play w in boundaries...infinite players play w boundaries...the rules of a finite game may not change in the course of play...the rules of an infinite game must change in the course of play..."

Finite and infinite games can both generate creativity. Finite games have tighter constraints. They are played w in structure. Infinite games play w structure. For example, in improv, when you’re first learning the games, you play them finitely, by the rules. There’s a beginning, middle, and end. The creativity emerges within these constraints. The seasoned improvisers play w the structure of the game itself. They discover the new structure, not just the content w in the structure, as they go. That makes it more of an infinite game.

As facilitators of creative process we can design for both. Any finite game can be adapted to become an infinite game. Try new, unplanned ideas, using whatever comes to u in the moment. Try a new variation in real time. Let them co-create rules of the game as you go, asking them to add or change a rule. It then becomes a living, co-creative game structure.

If approached w the spirit of play and discovery, it moves from binary, static “the game worked/didn't work” to a dynamic exploration of what was learned. Cultivating group creativity works best w both finite and infinite design.

Generative Questions to Inspire Your Design

• How do I design for participation and interaction?
• How do I make it safe for sharing diverse values and perspectives?
• How do I inspire contribution?
• How do I create shared understanding (even without agreement)?
• How do I make the design inclusive for all participants?
• How do I balance context w content?
• How do I create the conditions for participants to take risks?
• How do I incl. space for the unpredictable to emerge?
• How do I set conditions for a “we” space?
• How do I design for diff. learning/creating styles?
• How do I design to challenge assumptions?
• How will I partner w participants in co-creativity?
• How will I go beneath platitudes into meaningful conversation?
• How will I include check-ins & reflection time?
• How will I bounce back if the focus gets derailed?
• How will I record what emerges?
• How will I get feedback from the group?

From my book, Pattern Breaks: A Facilitator's Guide to Cultivating Creativity
Link to book 

Designing for Creativity: Design from Your Edges, Not Your Comfort Zone

We are most alert, alive and present when we are on our own creative edges, not when we are in our comfort zone. Designing to keep ourselves on our own creative edges can help bring fresh energy into the design.

It can be as simple as trying new variations of an activity (doing it non- verbally), a new type of activity (using a poetry-centered activity), or new ways of interacting (having people change levels physically). It can be anything that engages you in your own discovery. Talking with others who have different creating styles than you about what would keep them engaged, or bring out more of their creativity, is also helpful for ideas beyond your norm and comfort zone.

Designing for your own surprise—when you’re not exactly sure what might happen, but willing to be present to follow the emergence when it does—keeps you at your creative edge. While you are the one creating the container and holding the space, this role is balanced with your own openness to what emerges. Creative facilitation is a both/and open system.

Creativity thrives between disciplined and wildly undisciplined thinking.

Creative Edge Questions

• Where do I imagine my edges might be?
• Are there times I play it small, safe, or familiar in my facilitation because
  to play bigger means a change or commitment inside of myself?
• Are there places I only go if I feel certain the group would like it?
• Are there places I wish I could go, but hold back? Why do I hold back?
• In what ways might I add something new to what I do or how I do it?
• How might I use my knowledge or expertise, and still hold space
  for something beyond what I know to emerge?

From Chapter 5: Workshop Design in my book, Pattern Breaks: A Facilitator's guide to Cultivating Creativity. Link to book

12 Ways to Engage Your Creative Self

Engaging our creative selves is an ongoing

journeythat needs space and time for refection, exploration, and cultivation. Here are 12 reminders of  ways to engage with creative self this summer:

 

1. Cultivate a creative mindset. Stay open to new ideas and perspectives. Embrace ambiguity and uncertainty as a creative wellspring filled with creative opportunities.

 

2. Engage curiosity and wonder about the world around you in your daily living. Ask questions, seek out new experiences, and be willing to to be uncomfortable in the unknown.

 

3. Make time for reflective thinking. Journal about your experiences, thoughts, feelings, dreams, hopes, aspirations and intuitive knowings. Look for patterns that emerge over time to gain more insights about yourself of whatever you are reflecting on.

 

4. Follow your aliveness. Make choices and engage in activities that resonate with your passions and interests. Try different things out until you discover what is. Authenticity fuels creativity and aliveness.

 

5. Embrace playfulness. Engage in activities that are fun and joyful to unfold new ways of thinking, being, and interacting. This also changes our brain's chemicals and keeps the energy high - opening us up to new levels of creativity.

 

6. Tap into something meaningful for you. Align your creative pursuits with your values and sense of purpose to create something meaningful for you. It can be anything - meaning generates creativity.

 

7. Integrate left and right brain activities. Use both analytical and intuitive thinking to get clarity and generate ideas. Balance planning and structure with allowing emergent space for spontaneity.

 

8. Use your body. There's a connection between your physical body, your passions and your creative mind. Practices like movement, dance and somatic exercises enhance creativity. Move differently to think and embody differently.

 

9. Get present. Stay present and engaged in the moment. Improv theater, mediation, and mindfulness can help you tap into deeper levels of presence for creativity.

 

10. Engage with diverse perspectives. Co-create and collaborate with others who bring different perspectives, skills, and talents. Explore different cultures, art forms, values and disciplines to broaden your world view and inspire new directions.

 

11. Follow creativity's natural rhythms and cycles. Allow for periods of activity/generating (yang) followed by rest and integration (yin). Sometimes the most creative thing you can do is focus, while other times is it to release focus. Follow your feeling and energy (where it generates, and when it wains) in this, not a prescription.

 

12. Cultivate resilience and adaptability to navigate challenges and setbacks. Know that resistances happen in every creative process, and find ways to recognize and move through them. Let yourself embrace mistakes as iterations toward what actually does eventually work. Creativity is messy.

 

 

Michelle James © 2024

Moving Beyond Binary Thinking into Creative Thinking

Based on my facilitation experiences w strong polarities present, I have come to see holding paradox, integrating opposites, and transcending polarities as core to cultivating creativity.

Understanding the tensions that emerge when different polarities are in the room allows us to use the tensions to inform—and to form—a large enough creative playing field for participants to move beyond only two perspectives or choices. Binary choices can limit creativity if not diverged on (exploring while suspending judgement) first - like trying to fit an essay question into a 2-option or true-false question. Expanding our mindsets to hold the possibility of both/and allows us to move beyond two reductive choices into multiple generative ones.

Binary thinking leaves out nuance, and it’s in nuances that novelty emerges. Nuance leads to more possibilities. When faced with opposing ideas, opening the creative filed means going beyond initial reactive judgments of "good/bad" or "accept/reject" about what's familiar, and into new territory. Not liking x doesn't necessarily mean y is the best solution. Sometimes it’s neither. Sometimes it's both, and often the most generative ideas offer a third way that contains a bit of both, along with something new.

Navigating dynamic tension expands creativity thru various ways of yes-anding with each other—and w the unexpected. An unpredictable third way can emerge that is greater than both sides, but includes something of significance for participants on both sides of a polarity.

This can happen by breaking our patterns and releasing attachment to the original (status quo) version to the more inclusive emergent vision. A specific action plan may be let go, but the essence (values, purpose, aspiration, goal) is kept as the foundation from which to co-create a new action plan. Many ORs are ANDs-in-waiting at the next level - if we give them breathing room.

Abandoning the limitations of any one original agenda allows something more innovative to emerge collectively—a true co-creation. It's about letting go of preconceived ideas into what's actually emerging. The more comfortable we are w the dynamic tension in the room, the more space there is for resistance to transform into productive creative energy.

This takes setting up the right conditions - a safe "container" where diverse and messy ideas can be engaged. It needs time and openness to be with the exploration. As facilitator's, getting to know our own mental landscapes and biases leads to more consciously holding the space for the diverse views and values of our participants. When binary static thinking gives way to dimensional dynamic thinking, more innovative, inclusive options can emerge that come closer to serving the good of the participants, team, and organization.

More in Chapter 2 of my book, Pattern Breaks: A Facilitator's Guide to Cultivating Creativity

#creativethinking #facilitationskills #leadingchange

Facilitating Creative Process: What's Underneath How Your Show Up

Creative facilitation means tending to our creative self.  
How we show up plays a big part in facilitating the creativity of others. It starts with our own presence,
flexibility, and creativity before we get into the room. Facilitating creative process, especially in groups with strongly divergent views, or who are focused on deeper healing or transformation, can require a lot. The process can weave in and out of being light and fun, and challenging and demanding. It’s easier if we have built up our own resilience with awareness that there are different elements informing ourselves, and each person in the room.

Factors that inform how we create and facilitate include: our character and personality, upbringing, education, life experiences, background, culture, ethnicity, innate gifts, skills, talents, belief systems, values, habits, attitudes, stories we have about our creativity or facilitation, our health, energy, vitality, well being, challenges, hopes, dreams, aspirations, inspirations, direct experiences, insights, discoveries,our connection to purpose or our calling, our knowledge, wisdom,understanding, awareness, adaptability, resiliency, archetypal energies and drives, learning and creating styles, confidence in our own thinking and intuition, our sense of play and aliveness, our relationship to constraints, our frameworks, mental models, and worldview.

The ways these factors show up and integrate within us, and how they interact with different situations is unique to each person - part of our irreducible "creative signature." Facilitating creativity is a creative process in itself that is also uniquely our own, which emerges from the variety of these elements on different levels within us (while also having common universal patterns that emerge), and each person in the room has their own integration of these elements as well. So there is always a lot happening under the surface in any creative workshop - and that's what can make it exciting and surprising, if we anticipate, allow for, and value creative differences.

This is from Chapter 3 on Pre-workshop Preparation in my book, Pattern Breaks: A Facilitator’s Guide to Cultivating Creativity, where I break each of the elements down a bit more than I have space to do here.

#facilitatingcreativity #coachingcreativity #patternbreaksbook

Facilitating Creative Process: Being with the Awkward Silence

When facilitating creative process, introducing participants to a a new activity, process or framework; or asking them a question they don't readily know the answer you can get a
deer-in-the-headlights look, often accompanied by a palpable silence.

This silence can feel awkward for facilitators. It did for me when I first started facilitating, and I used to do anything to fill it - re-explaining or over-explaining what I just said, asking them questions, asking for their questions, interjecting comments, or anything else to try to reduce the uncomfortableness in the room - theirs and mine. Until I got that this is part of the emergence process when introducing people to something new and unfamiliar for them. I learned over the years to love the pauses, and see them as fertile and alive, and an indication of creative up-leveling.

They are processing in the silence. They are taking it in. They are experiencing the dissonance and discomfort (for some) that comes with learning something new, making new connections, or taking a perceived  - or real - psychological risk within a group. They are thinking, reflecting, and being with whatever you just asked. It's new so not readily available to their conscious awareness. The more experience I got, the more inner work I did, and the more I learned about the brain and its natural meaning-making system, the more I came to love these palpable "pregnant" moments of potential, before something emerged.

Here are some reflections on holding the space and be with the silence while facilitating creative process:

1. Give them the time to take it in and be with it. Hold the space. If they ask questions for clarity of your instructions or your question, clarify. Then go back to holding the space without intervening or trying to fill it. Hold the space for someone to eventually say something, or start the process.

2. Hold the space with positive intention. Have faith in them and their creativity - even if they don't. If you hold the intention that they will absolutely be able to do come up with what they need, you impact the energy in the room differently - with an inner authority - than if you are filled with doubts about whether they can do or get it. Or if they'll like what you're doing. The facilitator is there to be the strong container-holder for the participants, not the other way around. If you hold it with peace and ease in your heart, they will feel it, and it will open them up and put them more at ease.

3. Let it take however long it really takes. (Not how long you think it should take.) Whether they feel ready, or just feel uncomfortable in the silence, someone will eventually start the process. Every time. Then others will follow. That is creative process, and the "group field" at work. Jumping in too soon breaks the dynamic tension that is often needed in the creative process for something new to emerge.

4. Do your inner work to hold space with your full presence. That might include your own pre-workshop rituals to get yourself centered, or energized, or whatever you need to be able to hold space with presence. Being present mean showing up as the facilitator full-on to whatever shows up in your session, and standing in that presence for the group as they navigate their doubts or fears.

5. Delight in and support whatever does finally emerge. If it needs re-direction, or modified instructions, do it then...but build on and support what is happening - that will bring out more from the group. They're already are creative - you're just helping them remember that, and part of that is giving them the space to pause as they generate from within.

Pauses can be meaningful in creative process. It's OK if there is a little uncomfortable tension in the room for a bit, until someone is genuinely moved to speak. Those responses are often more thoughtful and novel that the top of head responses that feel most comfortable. Reframing pauses in our minds from awkward to creative up-leveling can make it easier to navigate.

#patternbreaksbook

Creative Process: The Dance of Opposites

Creativity comes to life at intersections. It thrives on opposites—engaging the polarities until something new emerges. Polarities can seem like opposites at first glance, but they are actually two different interdependent expressions of a larger whole. When we can accommodate polarities, instead of focusing only on one right way, idea, or solution, we have a more creative ecosystem, with the different parts “dancing” together.

Creativity moves us beyond either/or to a place of both/and, where the polarities interact as dynamic parts of an expansive creative playing field, not limited to one side. Here are some“opposites” related to creative process to invite thinking about how to create, design, or facilitate with polarities in mind.

Pattern Breaks Video Series: Part 2

As part of the book launch celebration for my creative facilitation guide book, Pattern Breaks: A Facilitator's Guide for Cultivating Creativity, I've been hosting a video series with several seasoned guest facilitator friends. They each share different creative facilitation techniques and approaches, along with some lesson learned. Click here for Part 1 with the first 4 videos. Below are links to the next 3 videos, with more to come: 

Michael Margolis, founder of StoriedInc., shares a possibilities-first reframing approach for expanding the narrative in creative process. 20 minutes.

 

Sam Horn, founder of the Intrigue Agency, shares a multi-faceted creative framework for writers and facilitators to tell or facilitate captivating stories. 20 minutes.

 

Jim Smith, The Executive Happiness Coach, share a lively body-centered approach for creative embodiment, and bringing more energy into your workshops. 20 minutes.

You can watch them here, or pop over to my YouTube Channel, Michelle James Creative Emergence, and see them all there. If you subscribe to the YouTube channel, you'll be notified when the new ones come out. More to come in future posts here as well.

Click here to order the Pattern Breaks book.

8 Ways to Unlock Creativity in Challenging Times

Throughout history, times of great challenge have also always brought with them times of great creative opportunities. They are inexorably linked - crisis and opportunity. The world as we have known it is changing in so many ways at an unprecedented rapid pace. We can't sugar-coat or avoid that...but we do have agency in our response. We have it in us to adapt, respond, and create.

We may not have control of much of what plays out on the world stage, and we many need support to be with it...but we can influence our small part - in our own lives, and in the lives of those we serve in whatever way we are called to serve.

The following are questions I put together as a reminder of what we can choose amidst the chaos. I divided them up in 8 categories. These are offered as a "yes-and" to whatever else you are already doing and being, and this list not complete. As always, take what resonates and leave the rest.

1. Foundation Building. What foundations are you building to be able to navigate the tumultuous and rapidly changing times? What are your daily practices? What are you doing for your own self care? What are you doing for your creative expression? Strong foundations keep us grounded in the storms. They support our resilience, strong ideas, and purposeful actions.

2. Pattern Breaking. What patterns are you consciously breaking? What small pattern can you start with to practice? By consciously breaking patterns in low stakes, low risk ways, breaking patterns becomes more natural. So when life gives us higher stakes challenges, we can pivot more easily, and break our habitual patterns more easily to be able to meet those challenges. Pattern breaking not only helps creativity, it helps build resilience. Life will break our patterns for us anyway, so become more fluid in pattern-breaking helps prepare us for the pattern-breaks we cannot predict.

3. Aspiration Framing. What vision of story do you to hold for the present Do you hold a bleak vision for the future, or an aspirational one? Or a bit of both? If we can play with zooming out of our current story, and ply with imagining larger, more aspirational stories to live into, it can free up our creative energy to move toward the larger visions. By not denying the current story, but reframing it in a larger narrative where people can triumph over adversity (like history has shown us), we can move our creativity, and ourselves, into more generative new territory.

4. Creating. What types of creativity call to you? What can you do right now for your creative self? What have you always wanted to try but have keep putting off? Studies have shown that taking up some kind of creative endeavor in one area helps us open up more or our creative flow in other areas, and in practical ways. For example, when we take up painting, or improv, or playing an instrument, etc., it helps us them meet life situations and challenges from a more possibilities-oriented perspective. Try approaching it like a child, with no expectation (or evaluation) except the joy of creation..and see where you creative self takes you.

5. Releasing. What have you carried that was useful at some point, but no longer serves you? What stories are ready to be released or transformed? What perspectives are ready to be expanded? What limiting belief systems are ready to be shifted? What are you holding on to tightly that can be held more loosely and spaciously? Where can more light get in? Part of the creative process is letting go of what no longer serves us. And that includes for sure letting go of anything in you that tells you you are not creative.

6. Accepting. In every creative process there are constraints - things that can not be changed. We can fight them, resist them, avoid them, try to force them, or accept them. There is a huge sense of peace, and freedom, that comes with accepting constraints - there things we can't change - and creating from within those constraints. Instead of being a limitation in the creative process, the constraints can drive the creative process. All creativity needs flow and structure, and constraints are a particular kind of structure. Acceptance of what is, paradoxically, free us to create something else.

7. Taking Action. Taking action is about acting on what's there for you, and not waiting to feel comfortable in doing it. It sometimes means feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Stepping into something before you feel guaranteed everything will go perfectly and feel easy. A cornerstone of creativity is dynamic tension - the "Yes" energy of birthday something new often comes with the "I'm not sure if I am ready" energy of our natural resistance. Is there something in you that has comes to you in whispers, but you have not acted on because you weren't sure how? What if you act on that now?

8. Partnering with the Unknown. I've have written about this for over 20 years because I feel so strongly that our relationship to the unknown dictates so much of our creative lives - what we create, how we create, and how we serve. Seeing the unknown as the fertile place of creative possibilities instead of only something to fear or avoid make all the difference. (Check out my blog post 7 Tools for Navigating the Unknown.)

There is no way to not be impacted by the atrocities and polarization in our world. My hope is you may find something in here to support your own journey, amidst both the immense devastation and the immense beauty of our world. I believe so deeply in the creative spirit we have, the vast power it has for transformation. History has shown us time and again what human ingenuity can transform with passion and focus.

Michelle James ©2024

Pattern Breaks Video Series - Part 1

As part of the book launch celebration for my creative facilitation guide book, Pattern Breaks: A Facilitator's Guide for Cultivating Creativity, I've been hosting a video series with several seasoned guest facilitator friends. They each share different creative facilitation techniques and approaches. Here are links to the first 4 videos, with more to come: 

 

Dr. Paul Scheele, founder of Learning Strategies. Whole-brain creative process protocol. 20 minutes.

 

Kat Koppett, founder and CEO of Koppett. The Story Spine technique in depth with variations. 20 minutes.

 

Gary Ware, founder of Breakthrough Play. 3 playful and fun creative agility techniques. 20 minutes.

 

And to kick off the book launch, I had a juicy 55-minute conversation with Stephen Nachmanovitch, author of Free Play and The Art of Is.

You can watch them here, or pop over to my YouTube Channel, Michelle James Creative Emergence, (just getting it started) and see them all there. If you subscribe to the YouTube channel, you'll be notified when the new ones come out. More to come in future posts here as well.

Click here to order the Pattern Breaks book.

Creative Resourcefulness within Constraints

5 Types of Creative Blocks and How to Navigate Them

There are many reasons resistance show up in creative process, which can play out in blocking behaviors. These often come from conscious or unconscious reasons that people may feel inhibited, such as the fear of being wrong, looking silly, being judged, and the fear of the unknown, among many others.

Moving through these “barriers” frees them to allow for and access more of their creativity. Sometimes, it’s helpful to spend time up front acknowledging the blocks, and taking steps to move through them in real time. How you take extra time to create a lively and safe container at the beginning of the workshop, it reduces these playing out. 


Introduce principles of creative engagement at the beginning. Improv performances are more than just making things up in the moment— they are contained by adhering to the principles. Similarly, principles of creative engagement help create a safe container for people to be willing to explore and be more vulnerable in their creative explorations.

There are typically 3 ways to set up creative engagement for the group: 



• Ask the group for their rules of engagement (aka ground rules) 

• Give them the rules of engagement

• Hybrid: give them some rules and ask for others

When you ask the group for ground rules they often say what is familiar: listening, not interrupting, respecting each other, etc. These are all good, but predictable. They don’t always know how to ask for the things that support group creativity (like Yes-anding). As the facilitator, you can bring in additional rules of engagement specifically for creativity because most people don’t think about them on their own, and people tend to not break their own patterns or habits unless they have to, or are prompted.


Doing this early reduces the blocks that will show up, but when they do show up in the workshop, these are some steps to consider. A few of the ways to do this include:


1. Get participants interacting with easy storytelling about something familiar. For examples, Have them share a 2- minute story with a partner about how they used their creativity toward something that worked out well, or about something that's alive for them. This changes the energy.


2. Get into the body with a fun, physical activity. Getting into the body shakes things up and breaks patterns. This moves energy, and helps the brain think differently. And, people that are playful together feels safer with each other.

3. Recognize a creative block as a common contraction. It loses power when held as a mutable story, and not a permanent way of being. Knowing this is normal, and might arise in a creative process, helps people feel more comfortable with their discomfort.


4. Commit to moving through it. There is a big difference between letting the block take over or letting the movement through the block take over. It is aligning with what wants to emerge rather than aligning with what is blocking the emergence.

Blocks can transform more easily with pattern breaking, when taken into different contexts in fun creative ways.

For many more ideas on why blocks show up, and how to navigate through them, check out my new book, Pattern Breaks: A Facilitator's Guide for Cultivating Creativity, for facilitators, educators, trainers, and group leaders. There are several pages on navigating resistance. 

Creative Practice: Adapting (and Evolving)

Today's practice is Adapting. This is the final practice in this "12 practices" series (but there are so many others!) Let the vision be mutable and change over time. Balance planning with emergence. Have goals and hold them focused enough to guide the process and loosely enough for new information, insights, and awareness’ in the moment can shift them into something more alive (and often unexpected) – something that you wouldn't have known until you are in the midst of your process.

Some goals shift. Some are released entirely. And some new ones show up along the way. By keeping the long term directed and flexible both, and focusing on what’s next, you have room to move, respond, adapt within the goals, making them more accessible…and energized.

Adapting takes us out of binary, static thinking of good/bad, right/wrong, either/or and into new possibilities. “Every success story is a tale of constant adaption, revision, and change.” ~ Richard Branson

I heard a great term by Holacracy founder Brian Robertson that resonated with me for this concept: dynamic steering. Have the direction in mind, and let yourself adapt the goal, and your self, along the way. Improvisers adapt all the time...adapting to what's emerging in real time, and using it to create something new and unexpected.

Creative aliveness is about growing, learning, and expanding, which are are cultivated by our willingness to adapt and evolve. “Adaptability enforces creativity, and creativity is adaptability.” ~ Pearl Zhu

 

 

Creative Aliveness Practice: Acting

Today's practice is Acting. It's not enough to imagine what can be, we have to act on our imaginings. As I mentioned before, the creative process is non-liner, and these practices do not follow one sequence. Taking action happens at different points along the creative process.

"Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing." ~ William Shakespeare

By taking action, you are beginning the validation process of what you are creating. By taking action on your vision or project, you are becoming its first supporter. How it's received can give you feedback toward evolving what you are offering, but nothing can happen without first taking action.

It can be scary or hard to try something new, or put our something publicly that has meaning for you. It is much easier to put our something that has little meaning, but the more meaning it has for you, and the more of yourself you have put into it, the more vulnerable it can feel. By taking action, it becomes easier each time.

"Thinking will not overcome fear, but action will." ~ W. Clement Stone

Action also opens up to new creative aliveness possibilities we may not have thought about. By trying something, we get to know if we like it, or what part of it we comes alive with and what part we don't, and how it connects to others.

Action moves energy. In that, it opens up our creative aliveness through experiencing that thinking alone can't do. And in the act of taking action, we discover things we otherwise would not know had we waited until we were certain of exactly how everything would go. We learn by doing most of all.

Sometimes we freeze in the face of too many ideas and options. In those cases, it is good to just narrow our focus to one part, and taking action only on that. By taking  an accessible step, that gives us confidence to take another accessible step. And after a while step-taking becomes fun, alive, and easy. Small steps lead to big transformation. Start wherever you are. Get clear on what feels alive. And then take actions that support more of that. 

"It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that we find our supreme joys." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

 

Creative Aliveness Practice: Structuring

Once you have more clarity – after you have diverged out and expanded the “playing field” of new, emergent creative surprises – then look at how to structure that aliveness into you work and life....how to form it, shape it, and create it into something. Structuring makes it accessible...like taking the ocean and transforming it into drinking water. It makes whatever you are creating accessible, transforming the whole into actionable parts.

It's important to not skip over the cultivating and go right to structuring it, as many strategic plans do. With that approach you can get an action plan, that is attainable, but not necessarily feeling alive. It may not give you the passion-infused life energy to see it through. Think of it as a yes-and to staying motivated through will and perseverance. In two decades of coaching passion-centered entrepreneurs, I have consistently seen that connecting to our own purposeful aliveness is the most amazing motivator. Motivation is then embedded in the goal itself, and not just something we need to use to achieve it. It’s there within us to carry us forth even when we do not feel the energy of it.

Structuring is organizing and arranging parts of something, and sometimes not valued in the creative process. Structuring is is how to be able to live our creative visions in the world.It's not enough to have the vision, and feel the energy and motivation...we have to have a structure for our creativity be expressed.

Creativity need both flow and structure - just like any new birth. In all of nature's creative aliveness, there are organizing structures. We structure speeches to give them a coherence - an organized flow - instead of talking randomly about all of the ideas. Similarly, part of creative aliveness is giving it structure to be expressed and experienced, by ourselves and others.

 

 

Creative Aliveness Practice: Discerning

Today's practice is Discerning. “An open mind must be mitigated by discernment. Knowing what to take in and what to discard or file  away for future perusal is important to one’s growth.” ~ Safi Thomas

And discernment takes practice. Discerning is the ability to know of something is aligned with your creative self and your truth. It includes the art of what to say yes to, and what to say no to along your journey. With every life-giving yes, there is a series of healthy no's to anything not on alignment with the yes. Those no's create a stronger container for what you do what to focus on.

Like the other practices, discernment starts with awareness. And asking questions, such as: Why am I doing this? Why does it have meaning for me? What feels alive? What might sound good, but does not feel alive in me? What do I need to step into to carry it out? What do I need to let go of? Is this my own thinking/feeling, or am I just going along with someone else's? What are my gifts, skills, and talents? What is not fun for me? What does alignment feel like in me?

“True discernment means not only distinguishing the right from the wrong; it means distinguishing the primary from the secondary, the essential from the indifferent, and the permanent from the transient...distinguishing between the good and the better, and even between the better and the best.” ~ Sinclair Ferguson

Boundary-setting helps with discernment. Once you know your boundaries, it becomes easier to discern what is yours to do, and what's not. Good boundaries protect your creative aliveness.

Discernment also requires an intuitive understanding of what feels right along your process. It includes learning to discern how you creative self speaks to you (words, images, feelings, dreams, insights, etc.), and learning what feels right in your body. Discernment is easier when we are willing to let go of assumptions, how we've always done something, and exact expectations...and open to Beginner Mind.

“Compassionate action emerges from the sense of openness, connectedness, and discernment you have created.” ~ Joan Halifax

Creative Aliveness Practice: Tending

Notice and be present to images, feelings,  thoughts, ideas, impulses that emerge as you go about your days, outside of your
“sacred” time. Record them. Repeat thequestion you are holding often, not just once, and do what you need to stay connected to your creative self. Let it marinate. Deepen into it over time. Notice the patterns that emerge, the key themes.

“If you wish to make anything grow, you must understand it, and understand it in a very real sense." ~ Russell Page

As we engage the process of cultivating what’s most alive for us now and in the near future, then the next level of the vision will emerge – like a rose which unfolds in layers, revealing one layer at a time. That’s how an emergence works. Many dreams remain idle because there’s too big of a gap between all that can be in that vision, and what is simply next. We can feel overwhelmed, or judge ourselves if not “on track” – and then we can shut down. But if we focus on tending just what is next, it becomes accessible and actionable.

By tending to what is next day by day, the bigger vision becomes more and more clear over time…and do-able. Instead of a target to be hit, creative aliveness is more of a garden to be cultivated and nurtured into something tangible.

“Our soul is like a garden in which the weeds are ever ready to choke the good plants and flowers that have been sown in it. If the gardener who has charge of this garden neglects it, if he is not continually using the spade and the hoe, the flowers and plants will soon disappear.”~ John Vianney

Creative Aliveness Practice: Cultivating

Today's practice is Cultivating. “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” ~ Thomas Merton 

Using whole-brain creative processes – drawing it, painting it, moving with it, embodying it, acting it out, dialoguing with it, dancing with it, etc. – helps break habitual thinking patterns, opens up the creative aliveness wellspring, and draws forth new insights and ideas.

This particular practice not about the entirety of your vision, but about what is calling to emerge from within you now. The moment we are in is always the most alive (That's why improv is so energizing and filled with life energy...it's unfolding in the alive moment.)

Presence is fully alive. By being the moment, we have more access to creatively cultivate what's arising in us, and access different insights than just by thinking about it alone. When we combine left-brain linear practices with right-brain non-linear practices, we can cultivate a new story, or place our situation/goal/vision into a new narrative. Every emergence is a multi-dimensional story that fits into the context of who you are, and expresses what’s unfolding.

“We were handed two extraordinary gifts...The first is a talent to cultivate, and the second is the opportunity to cultivate it.” ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Creative New Year

Michelle James 2024

Creative Aliveness Practice: Committing

Today's practice is Committing.  

"Until one is committed, there is always hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness...the moment one definitely commits oneself a whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising to one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would come her way. Whatever you can do or dream you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." ~ Goethe

There is a difference between hoping, desiring, imagining, or trying and actually committing. Commitment creates a boundary for us - helping guide us on what to say yes to, and what we say no to. Without commitment, it is easy to get distracted and derailed. It is easy to leave at the first hints of discomfort, or when resistance shows up (as happens in the creative process).

It seems safer to not commit so we have a way out of things don't work out. But commitment acts as a safety net for our goals and visions. It means that when things go awry, or we feel resistance, we will find other ways or options. Our brains and creative unconscious will work with us to find options that because of the commitment. With commitment to get anywhere, if we get lost on the way, or if there are road blocks, we find another way to get because of the commitment.

There is a difference between a real commitment and a pretend one. A real commitment has meaning for us. It has to be something that has some kind of value for us. It comes from a place within us that is ready. It is saying to our creative unconscious that we are going to stay with it, even amidst the possible challenges. Commitment creates the structure for the flow of our creative aliveness.

Creative Aliveness Practice: Listening

Today's practice is Listening. Listen with your whole self, and whole brain...not just to words.

Your mind knows only some things. Your inner voice, your instinct, knows everything. If you listen to what you know instinctively, it will always lead you down the right path. Share this Quote Henry Winkler
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/inner-voice-quotes

Your mind knows only some things. Your inner voice, your instinct, knows everything. If you listen to what you know instinctively, it will always lead you down the right path. Share this Quote Henry Winkler
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/inner-voice-quotes

"Your mind knows only some things. Your inner voice, your instinct, knows everything. If you listen to what you know instinctively, it will always lead you down the right path." ~ Henry Winkler

Pay attention to images, feelings, thoughts, ideas, surprises, seeming disconnects that come out of nowhere, impulses that emerge. Pay attention to how it feels in your body. What feels most alive? What energizes you?

You don't have to wait for it to make complete sense before you validate it. More passions are not realized because they are judged as ridiculous before they ever have a chance to evolve because they are unfamiliar.

A new emergence, like any new birth, can be messy when being born. Listen for incomplete and partial directions - not only the entirely clear and sensible answers. In an emergent creative process clarity and sense-making usually unfolds through cultivation.

Creative Aliveness Practice: Holding

Today's practice is Holding. This practice is about releasing the need for an immediate answer…or a familiar one. It is  about holding the question before rushing to an answer or “the” answer.

"Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Live the questions now..."
~ Ranier Maria Rilke

Instead of writing down a list with the same thoughts that you always carry in your left-brain, try engaging your whole brain first. The right brain processes much more quickly than the left brain – and is not inhibited by habitual thinking. Let your left-brain take a mini-vacay.

Emergence needs so breathing room before being analyzed, evaluated and figured out. It is not about rushing into sense making. Allow yourself to indulge non-sense-making for a while. Stay in the Divergence. That's the domain of the creative imagination, and it always delivers if we give it the time and space to work it's magic.

Creative Aliveness Practice: Asking

Today's practice is Asking.  

“Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ~ Howard Thurman

This practice is about asking yourself what is most alive for you NOW - not 3 weeks from now or 3 years from now. It is not about the entirety of your vision and all that you can imagine – just what feels most alive within you now.

Listening to what’s alive now is like picking the lowest-hanging, ripest fruit from your tree of potential – it does have to be the complete vision. It is focusing in o what is most ripe now, and cultivating that. That will then lead to the next ripest fruit, and the next. It is am emergence process of unfolding your creative vision the way nature creates...by ripeness in timing.

Asking, “What’s calling to emerge for me now?” or "What is arising the loudest in me right now?" helps take it out of future potential (all that can be) and into the realm of the immediately actionable (what is now and next). And in the act of creating with it, what's next to focus on will reveal itself. It is a creative formation practice - shaping it into being in real time.

#asking #discovering #creativeemergence

Creative Aliveness Practice: Centering

Get centered. During your designated emergence time, getting centered allows you to be more present to what is calling to emerge within you. It is about having intentionality, a clarity of focus, and a presence to be able to begin to hear and connect with deeper aspects of your creative self.

Do this is whatever way feels right for you…whether you do this via visualization, meditation, mindfulness, yoga, breathwork, affirmation, embodiment, earthing/grounding, movement, a nature walk, intention setting, prayer, doodling, journaling, qigong, reflection, or however else you get centered. There is no one right way. It can be any small ritual that serves as a pattern break out of your normal everyday consciousness and centers you. It just requires some focus and boundaries for no distractions during your centering time.

I do this with my clients at the onset every coaching session, and the rituals we use vary based on who they are. Find what works for you. This is your “sacred” time. Taking the extra time to get centered in your day, or before working on your creative visions and projects, makes a difference in the depth, breadth, and personal meaning of creativity you access.

Creative Aliveness Practice: Clearing

Over the next couple weeks, I will be sharing "12 Practices for Creative Aliveness." The practices are not necessarily in a linear order,  and  you might go back and forth between them. It's not as much about a sequence as it is about engaging and responding in the moment: sometimes listening receptively, and others times creating it out actively.

Our right brain, by its non-linear nature, isn't one to follow our pre-set linear path...that's the domain of left brain. Any whole-brain creative process includes both linear and non-linear engagement. The right brain loves to imagine and create new practices as we follow any existing method or approach. If you have an impulse along those lines, go for it. As we get deeper into an emergence process, not only do new ideas and directions emerge, but new approaches for cultivating and discovering them emerge in the moment. There is an improvisational quality to each creative emergence!

Today's practice is Clearing. Give yourself space, time and attention. Consciously set aside some non-distracted time and attention. Like any healthy relationship you have, or creative project you engage, your Creative Self needs quality time to thrive. Make your creative self your most important client – even if that means setting official “creative self time” on your calendar. Just like (hopefully) you wouldn’t answer an email or tweet when with a client, give your creative self the same focused attention – it needs that to be seen, heard, and known; to be more active; and reveal its riches.

12 Days Creating

In the spirit of the holidays, I wrote  
"12 Days Creating"  as a reminder
to indulge your creativity (to be
sung to the tune of The 12 Days
of Christmas). Happy holidays,
however you celebrate them!

----------

On the first day creating, inspiration gave to me a new way to think and be.

On the second day creating, inspiration gave to me two ideas to love,and a new way to think and be.

On the third day creating, inspiration gave to to me three if-thens,
two ideas to love, and a new way to think and be.

On the fourth day creating, inspiration gave to me four prompting words,
three if-thens, two ideas to love, and a new way to think and be.

On the fifth day creating, inspiration gave to me five songs to sing,
four prompting words, three if-thens, two ideas to love,
and a new way to think and be.

On the sixth day creating, inspiration gave to me six concepts playing,
five songs to sing, four prompting words, three if-thens,
two ideas to love, and a new way to think and be.

On the seventh day creating, inspiration gave to me seven visions brimming,
six concepts playing, five songs to sing, four prompting words,
three if-thens, two ideas to love, and a new way to think and be.

On the eighth day creating, inspiration gave to me eight thoughts yes-anding,
seven visions brimming, six concepts playing, five songs to sing,
four prompting words, three if-thens, two ideas to love,
and a new way to think and be.

On the ninth day creating, inspiration gave to me nine theories dancing,
eight thoughts yes-anding, seven visions brimming, six concepts playing,
five songs to sing, four prompting words, three if-thens,
two ideas to love, and a new way to think and be.

On the tenth day creating, inspiration gave to me ten notions steeping,
nine theories dancing, eight thoughts yes-anding, seven visions brimming,
six concepts playing, five songs to sing, four prompting words,
three if-thens, two ideas to love, and a new way to think and be.

On the eleventh day creating, inspiration gave to me eleven goals uniting,
ten notions steeping, nine theories dancing, eight thoughts yes-anding,
seven visions brimming, six concepts playing, five songs to sing,
four prompting words, three if-thens, two ideas to love,
and a new way to think and be.

On the twelfth day creating, inspiration gave to me twelve dreams becoming,
eleven goals uniting, ten notions steeping, nine theories dancing,
eight thoughts yes-anding, seven visions brimming, six concepts playing,
five songs to sing, four prompting words, three if-thens,
two ideas to love, and a new way to think and be.

~ Michelle James 2023

 

My creative facilitation book, Pattern Breaks, is now available to order online!

I am delighted to announce my creative facilitation guidebook, Pattern Breaks, is now available on Amazon and other online
booksellers to pre-order. You can go to
https://amzn.to/3QDbZ65 for the book details, and to order it if it resonates with you.

 

My hope it that this guidebook reaches those who resonate with it, and can benefit in some way from it - for yourselves and for your groups. In a world where much is out of our control, we each can contribute to a better world by contributing to what we do have control over in our local world. It may small, but it is something. For some of us, that includes the groups we lead, teach, or facilitate. If that is you, this book is dedicated to you.

Order at https://amzn.to/3QDbZ65

About the book: Pattern Breaks is a handbook for navigating the world of creative facilitation. It is for facilitators, trainers, educators, group leaders, and anyone who would like to bring more creativity out of their groups and out of themselves. It provides food for both thought and action. If you would like to cultivate creativity and aliveness in your design and facilitation, this book has ideas for you.

• Bring more enthusiasm and ingenuity out of participants
• Become a more adaptive, improvisational, and resilient facilitator
• Gain more confidence and ease in navigating challenges, resistance, and the unexpected
• Actualize your unique creativity for impactful and meaningful design
• Establish environments more receptive to novelty and transformation
• Bring more fun and lightness into facilitating serious topics
• Get easier buy-in from clients for nontraditional approaches
• Cultivate conditions for emergence and co-creation
• Generate life-giving outcomes that serve the good of the whole

Pattern Breaks explores both ways of being and ways of doing. From concepts to mindsets to practical applications and more, this book provides a rich trove of ideas, principles, and practices, along with an abundance of activities, to apply before, during, and after your workshop or event. It focuses on two levels at the same time— you as a facilitator of creative process, and you as a creative individual.

Order at https://amzn.to/3QDbZ65