The Fertile Unknown

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.