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