The Fertile Unknown

Calling in the Future

As the new within us is emerging, the old sometimes fights back to maintain its status quo. It can become a battle between the habituated, outdated familiar and the emergent, life-giving unfamiliar. During the transition, being neither here nor there can be quite unnerving (and sometimes problem-causing). It brings up fears, doubts, insecurities...feelings of not being on solid ground. It also brings up the most amazing creative, generative opportunities if we choose to find them, even amidst the discomfort.

That is not the time to seek comfort and direction by looking to the past to inform the present...it is the time to call in the future to inform the present...and see what is really ready to emerge. No matter how deeply I know this, it is still requires all my presence and commitment to it when I go through my own emergent transitions. #honoringemergence #followingthefuture

Michelle James ©2019

Beyond Problems with Creative Aliveness

At the core Creative Emergence is about Aliveness. It is about feeling alive, tapping into our creative selves to do and be what is most alive in us, and to use creativity to access that aliveness. When we are fully alive, we are all creative. When we feel blocked or stuck, we can use our creativity to generate more aliveness. Creativity and aliveness and interchangeable.

Rather than focus on problem solving with our minds, if we shift the focus to creating what is alive from our hearts, and the problem will shift because how we hold and see the problem will shift. When we put more energy into what is alive, then what is wrong has a chance to move. It may or may not be solved, but how we hold and see it can be different, and that opens us up to being with it differently than we have in our past.

©Michelle James 2019

 

Creative Discoveries for Inner Authority

Often in an emergence process, people come to a point where they fear they have nothing of real value to share. So they retreat and stay in or re-box the familiar, or they create sudden distractions, or they copy and use others ideas - anything to avoid that uncomfortable feeling of coming to the end of what they know, or feeling like a "fraud," or like not enough.

But if they start (with kindness to themselves) getting curious, start really exploring beyond that fear, and start doing the hard - and fun, and rewarding, and magical! - work of going into that unknown space, getting curious without judgement, asking inward and cultivating whatever emerges, they will begin to see - and deeply know - the places they are completely and totally unique, the unique set set of gifts, experiences, talents, skills, patterns, and ideas they bring, the ideas that emerge from WITHIN, and the trajectory of their soul's work. It is a discovery process - there are no short cuts.

If you stay with the curiosity, fascination, and discovery process (both before, after, and during the work you are doing), you can't help but make your own unique discoveries (about yourself and your work, your clients, patterns within your work, etc.) and you begin to own your knowings. It's not the arrogant ownership of someone trying to be impressive. And it's not the apologetic ownership of someone not really valuing what they do. It's a neutral ownership - an "it just is what it is" ownership - of someone who has gone through the work of real discovery...and actually discovered some juicy things.

You can go into your own infinite creative wellspring and discover what's yours to discover...and that becomes your knowing, your empowerment, and your unique gift to the world.
#my2cents #creativeemergence #therearenoshortcuts #youareworthit

©2019 Michelle James

Yes And is a Doorway to Creative New Worlds

The improv principle, Yes And, is a doorway to creative new worlds.
Yes And is generative, divergent, expansive, and opening.
It’s accepting the reality that’s presented AND adding something new.
Newness upon newness creates unimagined new worlds, ideas, visions,
possibilities, option and choices - in our business and our life.
We can Yes And our own ideas and creative impulses
instead of Yes Butting them out of existence.

©2019 Michelle James