The Fertile Unknown

10 Creative Emergence Reminders for Volatile Times

 

Many people are going through what feels like

accelerating challenging times now. There is much

happening in our world beyond our   control…and…much more that we can control than we think. This post is a reminder of that…that it is not about living in a world where there are no constraints (i.e., social, relational, political, familial, health, financial, etc), but finding and applying your own purposeful creativity WITHIN those constraints.

 

Sometimes it’s the constraints that offer us what will one day become out greatest learnings and potential for growth. The following are a few points that came to me, when working with recent coaching clients, that I thought I would share with you to use as food for thought. They will be part of a larger, more detailed writing in my certification program and coaching guide, but wanted to share a few of them with you now in case they could be helpful now. As always, take what’s useful, and leave the rest.

 

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10 Quick Creative Emergence Coaching Reminders

 

1. Your inner Creative Source (call it whatever feels right for you) is a life-generating-life part within you that is always for your holistic generativity - your highest aliveness at all levels. It's invitation is to get connected to it, and stay connected to it, because it has no other agenda than your highest aliveness, thriving, and expressionl. At any given movement you can listen to the voice of fear, doubt, worry (which may have validity at times), or the inner creative voice. The Source voice in never judgmental and it’s not tough love - it’s unapologetically life-giving and generative. It may mean slowing down, letting go, and listening in to hear it, though - giving it space, time and attention.

 

2. No matter what circumstance you find yourself in, there is a part of you that knows what is yours to do to navigate it. Asking “What’s mine to do, no more no less?” allows that part to become more internally empowered, with more choices and options; and, not force or coerce a situation or person down a path that is not generative for you or them or all involved. No matter how much influence someone else seems to have over you now, you have the empowerment to discover what’s yours to do within that situation. Do your part…and let the natural, animating life force  (Universe, God, Creativity, Time, Flow, Spirit, Nature, Creative Unconscious, etc - whatever you see it as) do its part. I.e., plant the seed, water the soil, give it sun...then let go and let the animating life force help it bloom.

 

3. At any given time, we’re being invited to go beyond our current construct (set of beliefs about anything - ourselves, our lives, others, how the world works, etc), and up-level into a larger, more inclusive framework that may or may not be familiar. Allowing ourselves to move beyond our current beliefs and constructs (inner map of things) and into what Life is really showing us at any given time frees us to navigate our calling. Get centered, ask, call it forth, dance it forth, draw it forth, pray, meditate - whatever feels right for you - then receive. Just don’t box in how what you get needs to show up…instead, watch for clues, feelings, impulses, signs, synchronicities, dreams, intuitions insights, a-has, and messages in all kind of ways. Ask for clarity…then let go and pay attention, letting your creative unconscious work with you, making the unconscious conscious. Just be present...and open for the unexpected.

 

4. Forgive your resistances, procrastination, back-tracking, divergences, missteps, or other judgements about yourself you feel you may be doing to sabotage. Sometimes there is great wisdom in that “sabotage” that we can’t see at the time. Just like in nature, emergences have right timing, and sometimes there are other foundational things we need to learn on the way, that we don’t know about until they occur. And always, there is a pay off for all choices we have made. (In the work I do with my clients, the most common pay off is staying in the familiarity and comfort zone of the known - “the devil we know”). Be gentle with yourself as you locate the pay off. That gives you options of how else to proceed, or something else that you may need to heal, move though, cultivate, or be with for a while first. The key is not to jump into evaluation. There are times of contraction in every birth, times of resistance, and times of “ two steps forward, one step back.”

 

5. Be conscious. For whatever you DO really need, if you become conscious and aware of it, you won’t just act out of the contractions without consciousness. If you have to make a tough decision, don’t make it out of fear or hope…get conscious of your inner voice, and see where it guides you. Being conscious and aware is our friend in tumultuous times. It gives us choice and possibility.

 

6. This work is not about being fearless…it is about feeling the fears, doubts, questions, wonderings…and doing it anyway. Moving forward anyway, without any guarantees. Inspired guidance will not make you guarantees that fits into a smaller consciousness of yourself….it always invites us into a larger consciousness of ourselves You get that expansion - living into it - during the journey, not before it. The comfort-with-discomfort emerges over time and often through moving through contractions. We get to feel more connected to our inner voice and out path as we walk it, not before...each step of the way.

 

7. Your soul’s true work is never just about you. It is always also about those whom we serve. Whatever you are called to do by your inner Creative Source has embedded in it a greater call - ways that others will benefit by your service. When you go into doubts, it can be helpful to think of them - makes it easier to keep going when focused on those who could benefit from you doing your work.

 

8. With every healthy YES, there is a series of healthy NOs. What you say NO to is as important as what you say yes to in any emergence process. With every yes to something new, adjustments usually need to be made - some of which can be tough. There usually needs to be boundaries set somewhere. Healthy, life-giving boundaries are a friend in an emergence process. Every emergence has its own set of flow-and-boundaries integration to accompany it.

 

9. You are infinitely amazingly creative and unique already! You have a path no one else in the world ever has or ever will. You have a unique integration of gifts, experiences, ideas, hopes, dreams, visions, hardships, hurts, strengths, challenges, skills, learnings, and wisdom that no one else ever has or ever will. We all need you to use all of those things to create your unique offering to the world. No else else ever can. It is your great gift and the world’s great privilege to receive your offering.

 

10. I love this quote by Angeles Arrien in the forward to Gabrielle Roth's Maps to Ecstasy: The Healing Power of Movement.: “In many shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman or medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions. When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence? Where we have stopped dancing, singing, being enchanted by stories, or finding comfort in silence is where we have experienced the loss of soul. Dancing, singing, storytelling, and silence are the four universal healing salves.” No matter what you go through or what you need to do for your soulful work/business, using dance, movement, art, creativity, storytelling, crafts, writing, and silence (emergence space) will help you get more clarity, feel more alive and connected, and better able to be resilient in challenging times. Creativity in any expression generates more creativity.

 

Cheers to your creative uniqueness, and you unique offering to the world! You so got this!

 

Michelle James©2018

Creative Emergence Coaching, Facilitating & Training

The Energized Facilitator: Getting the Most out of Creative Process Facilitation

image from fitnessandwellnessnews.com

As a facilitator of creative process, your energy has an impact of those in the room. It’s an often overlooked part of facilitating creativity, yet it's the most immediate, primal, and direct way of connecting in ways words and actions alone can not (like when someone walks in a room and you get a feel about them before they even say anything). Most people feel energy immediately and instinctively, before the analytical brain gets on board to think about it. Your energetic state can help draw out or hinder the creativity of others, as well as your own.

While most facilitators of creative process already have Energizer activities for participants, not all take time to prepare their own energetic field before the workshop. The energy you enter a space with, and cultivate as the day goes on, adds to or takes from participant experience. Actors, improvisers, athletes all warm-up before they preform. They don’t just show up and start performing. Similarly, warming yourself up with pre-workshop “energizer rituals” helps you not only get present, but also energized and enlivened. If you find ways of energizing yourself before entering the room - “prep rituals” you do alone before the workshop starts - that begins to create an energized container for participants as they enter. Because energy is something felt, and not thought, it is immediate, and has an impact on the nervous system of participants, non-verbally - not just their minds.

There's no limit to the ways you can generate energy for yourself before a workshop or meeting. Over the past 14 years facilitating Creative Facilitation workshops, I’ve heard countless ways facilitators get energized. I play around with different ones myself to keep it fresh in me, and to stay on my own creative edges, mostly improvising as I go with the goal of trying something new. The times I did not warm up, I noticed a difference in the group’s creative energy, cohesiveness, and output, and how I was holding their energy. I learned the hard way how important it is for me to do my own energy prep work. Some people naturally have a full-on energizing presence any time of day, and in almost any circumstance…and others of us can cultivate it consciously.

You can try it playing around with Brain Gym (Google it), dancing wildly, moving non-habitually, brain teasers, tongue twisters, acting things out, meditation and other centering practices, yoga, marshal arts, and other body-centered practices, solo improv games, etc. If you do something more meditative, try also adding in something that expands and heightens your energy, so you can hold an expanded energetic space for a group - a big part of generating risk taking and creative novelty form a group. And, if you try something that pushes your own envelop - breaking your pattern with something you normally do not do - which also engages your own creative edges, the brain research repeatably shows that enhances presence, creativity, and adaptability.

If you already have awesome activities and content to share, and they are interactive and highly participatory, you can take it to a new level if you take some time to generate your own energy before showing up. Preparing yourself energetically is like starching out like a rubber band when you are by yourself, so when you get with a group, you are energetically flexible enough to expand out to whatever emerges in the group. Research had also shown that most people in groups will either consciously or subconsciously not feel psychologically safe to out-energize a facilitator, and that can impact what and how they create. A facilitator who shows up as flexible, energized, and ready for anything makes it safer for participants to engage more enthusiastically and energetically in interactive activities, and explore their own creativity in a group and each other’s creativity as a group.

If you try something new that works well for you, or if you want to chat about some ideas for your next facilitation, please drop me a line. :-) 

©Michelle James 2018

The Creative Yes

Creative Destruction within the Creative Process

Image by Gem J Shimada

A friend recently asked on Facebook, "How do you motivate yourself and stay enthusiastic when surrounded by a collapsing civilization?" I thought I'd post my response here since it was, not surprisingly, all about applied creativity. Specifically, the creative destruction within a creative emergence process - being with both the destruction of the old and the emergence of the new. Here's my 2 cents:

In any detox process, it gets worse before it gets better as all the sickness, toxins, chaotic nasty stuff rises up to the surface before it is ready to be released, and a new healthier order emerges. In a healing process. the same thing happens….all the layers of wounding, pain, shadow, and nastiness emerge to our conscious minds to be healed, released and/or transformed. Some of us see what's happening as going through a giant collective detox and healing, and re-calibrating to a more life-giving, heart/soul-centered foundation.

Right now are faced with all the darkest, most shadowy aspects of human nature - and results of the actions that emerged from that - at the same time the most previously buried and empowering aspects of human nature are also emerging in order to heal the wounds, nurture the detox process, and create new foundations form the healthiness, not the sickest, parts of ourselves. The nastiness we see all around us is disheartening and devastating…and…is a great invitation to access the life-generating-new-life creative source within us to create new foundations. Things horrific have come up to the surface for us to see, be conscious of, and transform. That process is painful and joyful, hopeless-feeling at times and hope-filled, scary and empowering.

We are being invited to take our creativity to new, more inclusive levels - including and transcending personal expression to that which serves the greater unfolding. We can still fully feel the pain and frustration of what is happening, and the injustices to humans, animals, and the earth (which can feel overwhelming at times) AND stay connected to the life-giving source underneath that is calling to emerge new foundations. It's there that we have power to move beyond the current situation and create something new, one person/group/org/community/etc at a time….which means not using old paradigm approaches and change-structures to try to "control" the process of how we navigate this transition that like so many well meaning groups still do.

I feel if enough of us do the real work to discover what's uniquely ours to do (no more, no less), then connect with others based on that resonance (not an externally imposed set of values), we will reach a tipping point for a new - an unstoppable energetic momentum - and life-giving way of being in the world. The old ways and power structures will not hold the power they have and currently hold, and new possibilities that we literally can't yet imagine unfold to guide the global healing, re-generating process. As you find what's yours to do, that meaning often becomes the motivator to go on in the scary space of the collapse of the familiar, and before the new has been formed. Destruction within creation is part of the creative emergence process.

© Michelle James 2015

The Creative Life - Poster

 

New Work Paradigm: Holistic Generativity

One of the things I've been most passionate about on my own work for many years is focusing my energy toward the emerging paradigm of work, one where financial generatively (making money) is only part of the whole and not, as in the conventional paradigm, the central bottom line...or even the only driving bottom line. The new paradigm has multiple bottom lines; multiple ways of creating and engaging; and includes new ways of being and interacting as well as doing and acting. It requires an entirely new foundations, not just new ways to "succeed" in the old foundational landscape.

There is a larger movement of integration underfoot, and more and more people are committed to helping bring this new life-giving work paradigm forward. It is already happening. We can focus on creating/unfolding a better future - leaving that which no longer serves, "yes-anding" what does - or we can carry the baggage of the past and be limited by what worked then. We get to choose where we put our intention, attention, creativity and action. In the new work paradigm, we can bring more of who we are into the structuring of our work, our collaborative partnerships, our companies and our service in the world. We don't have to silo oursevles or our company missions.

We can create work, businesses and organizations that are alive, creative, adaptive, resilient and holistically generative by establishing new foundations; integrating the isolated parts of ourselves and our lives; questioning the assumptions underneath our current beliefs and our value systems (including our current relationship with money and set of accompanying beliefs); engaging the creative unknown to go beyond what we currently hold as "the way it is"; forming life-giving collaborations based on resonance and aliveness; giving conscious space, time and attention to our creative imaginations; developing generative practices and rituals to help us "live into" our visions and embody new ways of being; listening to what calls to us from within; and expanding the conventional bottom line to include more of our creativity, humanness, connection and deeper contribution..

Related post:  27 Elements fo the New Work Paradigm  - shifting our ways of working to ways that are expanding the notion of what work and business is and can be.

 

Cultivating Your Creatively Unique Calling - An Intentional Practice

Once you connect with your calling, the question isn't IF it can
be done - it's an ongoing, "What's mine to do (no more, no less) to serve it?" Asking if it can be done takes you out of the present and into a place of guessing, hoping and trying to 'figure it out.' It is binary. It takes you out of direct experience.

Listen into what is yours to do

Instead, asking what's yours to do is an intentional practice that keeps you in the present, moment by moment, where you can unfold and cultivate it as it emerges. No more = not taking on more than is yours...and letting go of whatever is not. No less = stepping up to what is needed to serve it, even when it is uncomfortable and ambiguous. (See my blog post about difference between Just-do-it thinking, Whatever-will-be-will-be thinking, and What's-mine-to-do thinking).

Don't wait to start walking until after you get clarity

Unlike with conventional planning or goal setting, you can't see the end when you get started cultivating a calling. When you are called to into your truly alive work - your inspired vision and mission - asking if it is possible is no longer a relevant question. The daily whats and hows - in doing and being - are what's relevant. As is learning the discernment of what's not yours to do. With every healthy yes, there is a series of healthy no's.

You discover exactly what is possible and how as you engage the process.

You discover what is authentically for you, and what's not. And you discover an infinite resource within you (I call it the Creative Source since is contains pure life-giving creative energy - there are lots of different names for it) that you have as an ally for the rest of your journey.

It is this, our inner sherpa, that helps us navigate the landscape of the amazing, rich, abundant fertile unknown. It carries the most holistically generative choices for us at any time - creatively, financially, and spiritually/meaningfully interconnected. Working with it it to cultivate your unique calling is an intentional practice. It will not lead you astray. It's job is life generating more life.

Use your whole brain and body

There are many ways to cultivate its creative wisdom. The more of our whole brain's multiple intelligences we engage - and the more of our whole selves we bring to it - the more expansive our understanding of it can be...and the more fun we will have! In addition to verbal questioning, start drawing it out, painting it out, journaling with both words and images, embodying it, bodystorming (acting it out in your body - using your somatic intelligence), etc. Using non-habitual ways to generate answers "tricks" the habitual thinker in us into generating something new. I see this everyday in my work...once we intentionally use our brains and bodies in different ways, breakthroughs happen more quickly and consistently. Breaking patterns leads to breakthroughs.

The world needs your Creative Uniqueness

Time for us all to claim and create what is ours to do! I believe the world is waiting for your unique creation that you and only you can offer us. There is no competition for that role - no one can be a better you than you. And when we find what is ours do it. it is always connected to helping other in same way - that really is embedded into the authentic callings...they are never just for ourselves. It just does not have to be limited to society's views of what is means to serve...our true callings always serve a higher purpose. :-)

Co-creative Global Citizens

I am in a Facebook group and someone posted the question asking what
capacities are needed for Global Citizenship and how might they be developed. I just wrote the following stream of consciousness as a wall post there and thought I would share it here as well since it's connected to my own purpose, work with creative process and vision of an ever-evolving, more generative world - one that is co-created by each of us from the inside-out.

Some of the capacities that come to mind are creativity and imagination; holding paradox and uncertainty; consciously engaging the unknown; yes-anding, improvisation, adaptiveness; getting into the body (many cultures are much more embodied than we are) - using our somatic intelligence as a resource; re-wakening the senses; using more right-brain ways of engaging and communicating integrated with the left-brain; weaving in more aspects of the Feminine archetypal qualities in with the Masculine; empathic communication, intuition, holistic (not binary) listening - with co-discovery in mind.

Also, cultivating the inherent exuberance, aliveness, and joy in our children and reclaiming it in ourselves; expanding our capacities by breaking old patterns and intentionallly engaging practices that invite us in to more of our hearts, bodies, and and whole brains; incorporating purpose and relevance in everything we engage, among other aspects of our potential; expanding upon our existing models, theories and approaches to allow for ongoing modification and constantly inventing new ones we creating conditions for new, liberating structures to emerge; creating conditions for those in their organization/culture/system to unfold their "what's next" from within; new ways of being in addition to thinking...

By developing these and all kinds of other capacities within ourselves, I believe we can begin to transcend the edginess of the differences and can meet more as global humans. That creates the space to hear, connect and co-create what's next as global citizens using the gifts of our unique cultural differences.

Your Calling: Inspired Vocation

Invocation, evocation, and provocation share the suffix voke, which means "to call." 



Evoke  - to call out, call forth, elicit, awaken, call forth, excite, bring to conscious mind, bring into being, brainstorm, bring about, generate, give rise to, originate, sow the seeds, dream up, make, produce

Provoke - stir up, arouse, incite, cause, make waves, stimulate, start, fire up, enthuse,  lead to, motivate, instigate, pique, thrill, promote, challenge, kindle, electrify, bring on, induce, inspire

Invoke - to call upon, appeal to, conjure, call from within, call on inspiration/something larger, entreat, implore, summon, pray, solicit, urge, implement, bring forward, appeal to, quest for.

(Definitions are compiled from several online dictionaries and thesaurus's)

While the distinctions are subtle and not clear cut, I see each as an essential part of cultivating your unique calling - the place where your creativity and aliveness meet the needs of the world:

Creativity for your Calling: Engaging Your Aliveness

I have create a new summer program - a week-long immersion into the Creative Self:

Creativity for your Calling: Engaging Your Aliveness

Do you feel you have a calling - a purpose - but are not quite sure what it is? Do you yearn to connect with and express that juicy creative wellspring you know is in you? Do you desire to move beyond the voices of fear, resistance and judgment into the voices of aliveness, meaning and passion? And do you want to have fun doing it? Then come play with us as you become more of YOU!

Your calling is unique to you and you are the only one who can bring it out into the world. A purpose, a path, an invitation, vocation, contribution, passion and/or a business, it’s your most significant "mission" in life - the call you know is deep inside of yourself just waiting to be expressed out into the world. It can be challenging to clearly hear that inner voice in the midst of everyday distractions. The good news is that your Creative Self knows how to carry it out

In this fun, soulful and wildly creative program, you will use your whole-brain and your body to answer the call. You will immerse yourself in arts-based activities, improvisation, body-centered practices, storytelling, intuitive reflection tools and other forms of creative process to hear your calling, draw it forth, and discover ways of making it real in the world. You already have your unique “signature” set of gifts, skills, experiences, and talents. This retreat will give you the chance to indulge and cultivate them. This program contains a balance reflection and action, receptivity and generativity, heart and mind; body and soul; and lighthearted play and diving deep.

By combining your unique creativity with focused intention you can: 
•   access and use your rich inner guidance
•   awaken deep layers of your creative potential
•   understand your big picture patterns and archetypal drives
•   discover delicious new possibilities and directions
•   connect with your "creative source" to move toward inspired expressions
     and outcomes
•   channel anxiety and overwhelm into productive creativity
•   feel more engaged and alive in your every day life

You are vaster and more creative than you can imagine. This program is designed to have you experience the full-on aliveness of your Creative Self as you unfold, shape and form your distinctive “Calling Card” - an Action and Reflection Plan to continue the journey beyond the retreat setting. You’ll also leave with approaches you can practice at home, and ways of navigating the resistances that can show up. Creativity materials provided - just bring an open mind and heart!  

Check my the Workshop page on my website for the next one

9 Practices for Cultivating Creative Aliveness

A day of one's, 1-11-11 seemed like an appropriate time to talk about new beginnings! In the spirit of new beginnings and creating what's next, I thought I would share a few (of many) ways to engage creative aliveness as we shift into 2011.  

9 Practices for Cultivating Creative Aliveness

The following 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; others times creating it out actively. By intentionally and consciously setting the "container" with the first three practices, you can be more present to adapting to the rest. 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 also 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. I experience all the time with my clients - 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 - what keeps it so juicy and alive! 

1. 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.

2. 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 an 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 comfortable...whether you do this via visualization, meditation, affirmation, embodiment, or however else you get centered. It can be any small ritual that serves as a pattern break out of your normal everyday consciousness and centers you. 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.
 
3. Asking. Ask yourself what is most alive for you NOW. It's 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. I often ask, "What's calling to emerge for me now?" which helps take it out of future potential (all that can be) and into the realm of the immediately actionable (what is now and next).

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


4. Holding. Release the need for an immediate answer...or a familiar one. Hold the question before rushing to an answer or "the" answer. 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, evlauted and figured out. It is not about rushing into sense making. Indulge non-sense-making for a while.

5. Listening. Listen with your whole self, and whole brain. not just the left brain language. 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? Do not wait for it to make complete sense before you validate it (more passions are not realized because they are judged as ridiculous before they have a chance to evolve. A new emergence, like any new birth, can be messy when being born. Listen for incomplete and partial directions, not entirely clear and sensible answers. In a creative process they usually unfold through cultivation.

 6. Cultivating. Use whole-brain creative processes - draw it, paint it, move with it, embody it, act it out, etc - to break habitual thinking patterns, open up the creative aliveness wellspring, and draw forth its insights and wisdom. It's not about the entirety of your vision and all that you can imagine - it is about what is calling to emerge from within you now. By creatively cultivating it out, you access far deeper levels of information and insights about it than just by thinking about it alone. Use both left-brain linear practices with right-brain practices and whole-brain storytelling. Every emergence is a multi-dimensional story that fits into the context of who you are and expresses what's unfolding.

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time." ~ Thomas Merton

7. Tending. Also pay attention to images, feelings, thoughts, ideas, impulses that emerge as you go about your days, outside of your "sacred" time. Record them. Ask the question to your creative source a lot, not just once. Let it marinate. As Rainer Maria Rilke said, "Live the question." Deepen into it over time. Notice the patterns that emerge, the key themes. 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 - and we can feel overwhelmed, or judge ourselves if not "on track" - and then we can shut down. By working with what is next day by day, the bigger vision becomes more and more clear over time...and accessible. Instead of a target to be hit, creative aliveness is more of a garden to be cultivated...and shaped into something tangible.          

8. Creating. Once you have more clarity - you have diverged out and expanded the creative "playing field" of new, emergent gifts - then look at how to structure that aliveness into you work and life. The key, though, is to not skip over the cultivating and go right to the creating-it part as so many strategic plans have us do. With that approach you can get an action plan, strategy, or goal that is attainable...but may not give you the passion-infused life energy to see it through. The conventional way to stay motivated is through will and perseverance. This is still valuable for those times you do not feel like doing it. To YES-AND that...I believe, and have seen this consistantly over the past 14 years of coaching passion-centered entrepreneurs, that once you have connected to your purposeful aliveness, it is the greatest motivator there is. 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.

9. Adapting. 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 would not 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. I heard a great term by Holacracy founder Brian Robertson that resonated with me for this concept: dynamic steering.

There is an improv principle: "Be changed by what is said or what happens" that I find also applies to cultivating passion-infused creativity. In engaging your creative self at deeper levels, you tend to grow and change as a person and meet up with the parts of ourselves that held back our creative flow. As we engage our creative aliveness, this often shifts our original goals into something else - often a more expansive version with some unexpected, emergent surprises. The key is not to get stuck when best-laid plans do not look as planned. They are often "evolutionary invitations" in disguise. Creators and pioneers throughout history have made some of their most profound discoveries and contributions via what was not planned en route to what was. Like John Lennon said: "Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans."

Like an improv scene (which is more what life is like than a formulaic, unwavering, static direction), know that that your visions will probably not play out exactly as planned. It can be influenced by a variety of factors and conditions you can't know ahead of time. It is a living, apdaptive story that will morph and change over time with real-time feedback...and being present to your alive-feeling, creative impulses.

Unseen resources that we do not know when we begin our journey show up along the way as we are engaging the journey. In emergence, the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts, and it often leads us to happenings far more alive, fun and meaningful than what our original vision can possibly give us. Life shows up most vividly in the cracks. Aliveness rewards letting go of over-controls. It's important not to need to know the whole HOW before you begin, just a direction and what is most alive...and an entry point. Be kind to yourself in your not-knowings and have fun!

~ 2011 Michelle James  ~ www.creativeemergence.com

15 Foundations for Facilitating Creativity at Work

The following are lessons learned and insights gleaned from the trial and error of facilitating creative process with hundreds of individuals and organizations over the past 12 years. It requires a different focus, skill set, way of being and "container creation" than facilitating analytical processes. Below are some of the many principles and practices I've learned or discovered. Take what resonates and leave the rest :-)

Dynamic Balance and Facilitating Creativity in the Workplace 

1. Set intention and embody purpose. Get clear on your intention - not only from a business perspective, (i.e., leave with a Strategic Plan), but also from the human element. Creative process in human beings is organic, and contains emotional energy. In fact, the more passion and inspiration, the deeper and more coherent the creativity that emerges. If you intend to support the growth, creativity and awareness of those you serve, you facilitate from a more meaningful place than if focused only on the business goal. If you take time, both in the program design and in the room when facilitating, to think about what is the service you are providing - the gift you are offering - it frees up your own creativity more to support that in your facilitation. Focusing solely on the task limits the creative potential. By genuinely focusing on what is yours to GIVE, (not how you come across doing it), participants pick that up – either consciously or unconsciously - and are more receptive to trying new things with you. Creative Facilitation adds some new “yes-ands” to what already works.

2. Focus on awareness in addition to what happens. Focusing on the awareness aspect allows it to be transformative. In all facilitation, the debrief can be one of the most powerful parts. It integrates the learnings and serves as a bridge to what’s next. In debriefing creative process, focus on what was going on INSIDE of the participants as well as what actually was created OUTSIDE in the room. This leads to self-awareness, which increases the chances of continued creativity and co-creativity after the workshop, program, or process is over. The more aware participants become of what emerges within themselves as they create - both what was most alive as well as what was most challenging - the easier it is to continue to navigate and cultivate their creativity beyond the workshop setting.

3. Understand the normal resistance that occurs with navigating the unfamiliar. Resistance is a healthy, natural part of the creative process. It only becomes unhealthy when it is allowed to block the process (by overemphasizing it and spending too much time engaging it, or by not acknowledging it all and trying to barrel past it). Be prepared for resistance to show up. It's usually a result of fear of entering the new territory, and it can show up in a myriad of forms - deflection, sarcasm, distraction, disengagement or, most often and most subtly, talking about what is already known. It's not something to be pushed down or avoided, but rather something to be acknowledged and moved through if it shows up. Acknowledgment ahead of time gives it permission to follow it natural course when and if it emerges. It is the natural “contraction” to balance the creative expansion. You find this in all of nature’s creativity. The flower feels the resistance of the bud most just before it blossoms.

4. “Fail” gracefully - be comfortable with messing up. This is a great lesson from improv theater. Improvisers do not see mistakes as static failures. Instead, we see them as dynamic invitations to learn in real time and an opportunity to create something new. To authentically learn how to deepen your experience in facilitating a transformational creative process requires you to be the explorer as well. Unlike facilitation that relies on what is known, creativity depends elements of the unknown. You can better facilitate that which you're willing to experience for yourself. Applied creativity has vulnerability attached to it as being experimental means being vulnerable. And, that means something you try may not work, or may work differently than you had anticipated. Go with it. USE that information as feedback to either refine for the future, or, in that moment, to take the group to another place. The facilitator’s discomfort with the challenges of creativity can inhibit the group's craetive process. (If you can take an improv class, do it…it's the quickest way I know to free yourself of the “the fear of failure” and develop a comfort with thinking on your feet.)

5. Adapt in real time. There's always a dynamic balance between creating enough structure and releasing. If you as a facilitator need to control the process, do whatever you can on your free time to get comfortable with letting go, shifting gears, and modifying the agenda in real time. Use the real-time feedback loop: engage, get feedback, modify; engage, get feedback, modify, etc. It’s an ongoing process, and like with all things, takes practice to embody. Do this enough and it becomes comfortable and easy…and alive! In fact, you will get to a point where it takes more energy to try to stick to the exact plans than to follow the creative aliveness of what is trying to emerge in the room. Be ready to adjust your "agenda" at any time for what is REALLY going in the room. Otherwise, you can get engagement, and even expanded perspectives, but generally no real novelty. Novelty contains an unpredictability within it, and to facilitate creative process means adapting to that unpredictability in real time. May as well have fun with it :-)

6. Work from your own Creative Edges, not your comfort zone. This creates a palpable dynamic aliveness in the room. You are all in it together. This may seem antithetical to our "expertise" culture. The paradox is that you must still deeply know and understand what you are doing before you enter the room, but then once in the room, hold it loosely and respond in real time. Be in your own unknown - a co-discoverer instead of the expert on their creativity. Allow yourself to be surprised. Don't limit them, or yourself, by your creativity experience or pre-existing assumptions. 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 an open system.

7. Respect creative style diversity. To further expound on #6, one size, approach, method, technique, or even paradigm does not fit all. One creativity model definitely does not fit all. Understand that each person in that room is at a different comfort level, and will have a unique relationship with the creative process. Each carries unique and different stories of creativity in his or her consciousness. You give them tools and techniques as entry points, but be ready to let their creativity show you ways of creating that you can’t imagine. This expands your own Creative Practices repertoire.

8. Understand patterns found in the creative process. This allows you to facilitate during times of resistance. Another paradox: while each person has different creating styles and approaches that work for them, there are also re-occurring universal patterns that tend to emerge in a creative process. The deepest understanding comes from your OWN experimentation and learning, and will most likely be refined over time. Start with what you know, and open up to being "yes-anded" all the time. Look for patterns, not just techniques. Techniques only get you so far…patterns and principles allow you to create new techniques on and ongoing basis. Start where you are, be gentle with yourself as you learn, and learn from direct experience. Insights that emerge from experience and observation are give you a real-time agility that book learning alone cannot offer.

9. Embrace dynamic balance. Divergence AND convergence. Left AND right brain. Structure AND flow. Reflection AND action. That is one of the re-occurring themes in this post because it permeates all of creative process...and the complexity of being human. Creativity is filled with paradox. Setting up conditions for creativity is as well. Like with all natural systems, every situation, project, and group has a dynamic balance that will allow the most amount of creativity to emerge in that situation. Too rigid keeps the creativity bound; too loose, it gets unfocused. There is a balance between structure and flow. This is why whole brain practices are needed...the right brain to access NEW levels of ideas and information, and the left to discern and organize it.

10. Allow for self-organization when facilitating a group project. Inherent in the creative process is a self-organization found in all of nature. You see this all the time in improvised jazz or improv theater...something larger than the sum of the parts emerges and it is a coherent whole and unexpected. It is similar to the experience you have in those moments when everything just seems to effortlessly come together in a brilliant, yet totally unexpected, way. This possibility always exists in any group. One key is to not over-control the experience and allow enough space for the next level of creativity to emerge in the room. This takes some trust in the creative process itself...and practices recognizing, like in an improv performance, when you need to step up and lead, or step back and follow. Without question, groups have the capacity to self-organize around a creative task - a collective creative intelligence can take over that is larger than any one person's idea. You have nature on your side. We are natural meaning-makers, and creativity is naturally self-organizing. By balancing both directing and following in real time, you can more naturally moving to higher levels of coherence, meaning, and sense. (All “Aha’s” are deeply grounded in common sense at their new level). We have simply been socialized, educated, and trained to over-plan. Instead, we can learn how to work WITH the natural creative process.

11. Seek to make it safe, not comfortable.  
Safety will allow people to open up and move into
unknown territory without the fear of criticism, failure. Too much stability, and nothing new emerges. Asking people to share what they already know is different than guiding them into their unknown. On the other side, without doing the “container creating” to make it safe, taking people in too deep too soon can throw them into chaos and they will shut down – and they lose trust in you. In either case, nothing new emerges. Find the balance of the Creative Zone - the place of creative potential between stability and chaos. Create a safe space AND guide your participants into new territory, which can be uncomfortable. Discomfort is a normal part of the creative process. In fact, if everyone is the room is entirely comfortable the whole time, chances are you did more
of an information gathering process than a creative one.

12. Fun is functional. There is more research emerging all the time that shows how fun, play, and “lightening up” have a serious role to play in increasing creative thinking and establishing creative work culture - not just as an outlet to do on your free time, but as a driver to navigating change and working on serious challenges in work and life. It frees the brain to think more creativity, and frees the energy in the room for more effective and safe collaboration. In fact, I have not come across any research anywhere that points to not having fun and not being playful as a more effective way of living and creating. To facilitate creativity requires accessing and being comfortable with having fun yourself. And, knowing how to bring it in purposefully, and in a way it can be accepted (and not shut people down). It's different for every group and every culture. Once you access your own "deep fun" self, you have more choice on what methods to use and how. As with all facilitation, know your audience.

13. Your inner stories directly impact the container you create for others. Check out all the stories you carry around creativity, fun and play. Do you hold them as separate from a business bottom line? Most of us grew up with the programming that creativity is something you do on your free time after the “real work” is done. Facilitating Applied Creativity carries a new story – that it is an essential part of the real work. It is more than something fun to open up a group, but actually something to help transform individuals, groups, teams and organizations; create a thrivable work culture, and feed the bottom line. Do you carry a story that creativity is for the domain of the arts...or do you know it to be present, in infinite abundance, for every person, group and system? What stories do you carry about yourself as a Creator? In knowing yourself as a Creator, and knowing that you are walking into a room filled with other Creators (whether they are aware of it or not) allows you to help facilitate a new story for those in the room.

14. Diverge...and Converge with discernment. 
Facilitating transformational creativity requires your presence, adaptability, agile thinking…AND
discernment. Discernment keeps whatever
emerges in the room focused on the objectives, relevant, and purposeful…not just random creative expression (unless that is your goal). This means having processes for Convergence as well as Divergence. Divergence explores, discovers, yes-ands, and accepts to expand the playing field – the increase the field of potential from which to draw. Convergence discerns, focuses, fleshes out, uses what is relevant and leaves the rest. For a visual with more on Divergence and Convergence click here. As with each of these points, the dynamic balance is the key: expand, contract; explore, refine; value logic and intuition; planning and spontaneity. Most people naturally gravitate to more comfort with diverging or converging…find out which is your preference and practice giving more time and attention to the other. 



15. Prepare yourself with pre-workshop creativity rituals. Creativity, by its nature, contains a lot of energy and newness. Facilitating novelty is not "business as usual." It's about leading a group into the non-habitual. It requires being resilient, agile, compassionate and an "expedition guide." Taking some time to do whatever you need to enter your own non-habitual state first can makes a significant difference. One of the best ways to do that is by taking some alone time before the facilitation, to do pattern-breaking exercises to increase your own energy and become present, alert, and responsive. The more of the whole-brain - and whole-body! - you bring in, the better. Like an athlete who warms up by stretching muscles, you’re a creativity facilitator who warms up by stretching beyond your familiar patterns. Try different things, like moving in non-habitual ways around your living room before you leave your house. You'll be alone, so the more “out there” you can be in the privacy of your own space, the better. Surprise yourself at how “out there” you can get! It will also help you be more comfortable when something “out there” emerges from a participant. Do it until you transform any negative self-judgment or evaluation you have into the joy of exploration. It will increase your energy and aliveness, and help you be more attentive and at ease with what shows up in the room. Creativity is messy. Non-judgment of self and others during the process is essential!

I am so passionate about this topic that I could go on ad infinitum :-) I have covered some of the basics here. It's challenging to use words-only to describe a fullness of whole-brain experience. This is not about one right way - it's a loose guide and exploration. My hopes is that something in here gives you food for thought, inspiration or validation. 

~ Michelle James ©2010

Go to http://www.creativeemergence.com/wbfacilitation.html  for more on our next Creative Facilitation Workshop. Offerred once or twice a year since 2005 in the Washington, DC area. 

"Dose of Creativity" Blog Interviews Me

Melanie Sklarz, from Dose of Creativity,
interviewed me for their 5 Questions Creator Series about creativity and work. Click here for the entire interview. Some excerpts are below:

DoC: What does creativity mean to you?

MJ: Life, aliveness, life energy, life trajectory, the core, the source, the natural way of being, the driving force, the unique self, the essence of all living being and systems. It is that energy within all of us and all living things which animates, liberates, and generates. It is the same force that paradoxically expresses our absolute individual uniqueness and connects us in community. It unites things, people, ideas, frameworks, concepts that were previously divided. It is there, ever-flowing, for us all to engage it, shape it, form it, express it and apply it to anything - from expression to solution finding to new structure creating...Creativity is not about the one right way...while creativity is ubiquitous and universal, is is also uniquely personal.

Creativity is living paradox. It contains a balance of left and right brain, cultivating and emergence, thinking and being, reflection and action, receptivity and generativity, improvisation and planning, heart and head, analysis and intuition, and structure and flow.

DoC: What is your creative process and what tools do you use to stimulate it?

MJ: I call my meta-process the Creative Emergence Process (named my business after it), and within that, there are many types of creative processes I use, and that list is always expanding. The creative Emergence Process unfolded in my consciousness over a period of several years, more as a life calling than a creative outlet , and led me to create a whole business around it. It is a whole-brain, whole-person, whole-systems approach to merging creativity, purpose, business and serving the larger good. It is based on the Emergence Principles - natural principles that create conditions for creativity to emerge - and generative Practices that cultivate and focus creativity. My focus is in the workplace.

I use both left and right brain approaches to engage creativity for myself and with my clients. Some tools I use to engage it are storytelling, improv theater, movement, visual arts, imagery, design thinking, movement, intuition-based techniques, reflection tools, journaling, accelerated learning methods, ritual, insights from psychology/archetypes/mythology and process work, systems thinking, analytical processes and structured creative solution finding approaches...pattern breaking, doing the nonhabitual...

DoC: What is your most creative time of day?

MJ: I have cycles when I feel more creative, and when possible, I try to follow those, and do the busy work in less inspired moments...When I have a project (work-related, artistic, new structure, etc)...time has en entirely different meaning. My energy feels endless. When I am in routine busy work, or work that is predictable, I can lose my creative “mojo” very quickly. I then have to consciously focus on breaking patterns and commitment to get it done...in times when I know everything that needs to be done and still have to do it, I either (1) switch from enthusiasm to discipline mode to keep me going or (2) do something to break my habitual patterns. That usually helps me get the creative juices flowing again...

DoC: How do you infuse creativity into your daily life and tasks?

MJ: It is so integrated into my every day way of thinking and being that is is hard to me to separate it out. My life’s work and business is based on it. Whenever I feel the call for something new to emerge, I seek to find a way to create it.

Because of my belief about the essentialness of making it an explicit part of every day work and life, I started my business, the Center for Creative Emergence...developed Quantum Leap Business Improv...founded and run the Capitol Creativity Network in DC...and put on DC's first Creativity in Business Conference...My mission is to help "mainstream" creativity and engage people into their full humanness for innovative work, positive social change, and consciously creating a life-giving future. That is always at the core of all the choices I make.

Having a purpose and mission larger than yourself, and larger than expression (but including it), is one way to keep creativity infused in your daily life. Another is to make it a priority, and set aside time for your Creative Self - making it your most important appointment of the day. Your Creative Self need space, time and attention, like all living things, to flourish.

DoC: What creative tip or resource would you like to share with our readers?

MJ: Above all else, let go of any voice in you that says you are not creative. That is based on an outdated - and just plain false - definition of what creativity is. Creativity is not reserved for those in the arts. It is in every person and every field and discipline. By expanding your definition or what it mean to be creative, you can become more comfortable with knowing your self as a creator.

One thing I recommend for everyone - and think should be required in all schools, universities, and business training - is taking improvisational theater classes. The transformational power of improv, in my mind, in unparalleled because you learn how to become fully and completely present. You have to leave planning, agendas, judgment, and just be there, in the moment, without any safety net except for the naturally self-organizing creativity that can’t do anything but emerge. It takes you into the present moment - the place where we can really see and feel and get out unlimited creativity. We have just been socialized, educated, and traumatized out of our natural creative selves, and improv is one of the many ways to help us reconnect. It provides you with a set of principles that, when practiced over time, will free you up to be more adaptive, responsive, generative and creative in your life and work. The tip: find an improv class in your area and take it!

For the complete interview, go to the Dose of Creativity Blog.

Breakthroughs at Every Turn

Had to capture this inspired intersection:

I took this picture at Kayser Ridge in Berkeley Springs, WV

Wisdom from a Paradigm-Shifting Creative: Bucky Fuller

Last night I saw R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe at the Arena Stage in DC - written & directed by D.W. Jacobs - based on Fuller's life, work and writings - and awesomely performed by Rick Foucheux. It was FANTASTIC! A one-man show with integrating storytelling, multi-media, scientific theory and universal mystery, it, for me, was its own hybrid genre of theater - one where where engagement, education, inspiration, entertainment, resonance, audience interaction and evolutionary invitation converged.

Years ago, I had read his well known Operation Manual for Spaceship Earth and some of his articles and became enthralled with his ideas, vision and wisdom. But it wasn't until I took a design class that I really appreciated the power of physicalizing structure with those ideas - and "nature doing more with less." We were given toothpicks and glue and one egg. We had to create a structure for the egg by which we had to stand on a chair and drop the egg, encased in our toothpick structure, on to the ground...and the egg was not supposed to break. Long story short: only one person succeeded at not breaking the egg as he dropped it with nothing but a few toothpicks to protect it. His secret: he had created a geodesic dome around his egg. He used the least number of toothpicks, and he used them most coherently - just like nature creates. That was a powerful learning for me.

Last night I was reminded of Fuller's work and the magnificence of nature's creativity. I left inspired, re-invigorated and deeply grateful for the legacy of this brilliant, heart-centered pioneer who not only thought the great thoughts, but animated them with great actions and creations - and all is service of the good of "spaceship earth" for which he cared passionately.

A small piece of his story: Until 4.5 years old, when he got his first pair of glasses, he could barely see so he learned to live in and create from his imagination and internal experiences. In kindergarten, while other kids were putting together simple toothpick models based on everyday structures they observed (like box houses), he was designing triangles because they "stayed together - they made sense."

After diverse jobs, many hardships, and no particular direction, at age 32 he had a mystical experience that changed the course of his life while walking in the streets of NYC. He emerged from that experience committed to think for himself, discovering and speaking Truth. And in a way that is in integrity with nature. He wanted to find "the coordinate system that nature employs." Later on, in thinking about patterns, and especially "patterns in a mutable kind of way," he later discovered (what he had hints of intuitively at a young age) that "the triangle is the only stable structure" which eventually led to the development of the geodesic dome among his countless contributions. (More on him here).

Below are bits of his wisdom, as shared in the performance last night (in no particular order).
While some are not so cutting-edge anymore, they are still not universally accepted, let alone enacted or embodied. Other are still pushing at the edges. He was talking organic complexity, systems thinking, patterns, non-linearity, emergence, intuition, creativity, dynamic movement, biomimicry, sustainability and heart/mind/brain integration 60 years ago...steeped inside of a static, linear, dehumanizing, mechanistic world view and accompanying set of values. When I think about not only what he cultivated, but when - the context in which he, like all out-of-time visionaries before and since, emerged his insights - I'm inspired by his courage uncommon. The following is from the play:

•  It is only through feeling that you are truly yourself. Thinking and knowledge can be learned form others,
   but feelings can only from within you.

•  Change is the normal state, as opposed to the Newtonian view where rest was normal
   and motion was abnormal.

•  Out of information comes synchronized principles.

•  Nature is about doing more with less. Economists, on the other hand, have been about doing
   less with more.

•  I m not a re-former. I am a new-former.

•  We need to re-orient production away from weaponry - away from killing-ry to living-ry.

•  Behavior of the whole is unpredictable by the behavior of it parts.

•  Oppositeness re-generates life.

•  Each individual is a verb.

•  You as an individual must have courage to go by the truth or you will be swayed by the crowd. 
   Only the individual can let go of his fear and plunge into the design science revolution.
 
•  To reform the environment is the design responsibility of Spaceship Earth.

•  Selfishness made sense when humanity didn't know there was enough to go around.
   Now that we know there is, selfishness does not make sense anymore.

•  All is expanding and contracting.

•  We need idle time. It allows people to think, "What do I see that needs to be done?"

•  Intuition is the key to thinking - the contact between the conscious and the subconscious.
   The mystery is ever more entrancing and ever more beautiful.

•  You can deceive your brain self, but not your mind self. The mind deals only with the truth.

•  Everything is energy. Instead of seeing is as fixed - up or down - see it as inward or outward.

•  We have a choice: Utopia or Oblivion. If we make it, we'll make it because of truth and love.

In an age when "visionary" and "renaissance" is found in every other manifesto, I think we need a more discerning word or phrase to do justice to the Bucky Fullers. For now, I am feeling gratitude for the "verb" of who he was.

The image is of the geodesic dome donated to Expo '67 in Montreal.

Navigating the Unknown: 7 Reflection Tools

This is a re-post of an article I wrote in 2006 based on my experiences with creative emergence - in my own life and working with my clients. Just came across it again today so I thought I would share it.

1. Change the lens you use for seeing the unknown. Do you see the unknown something to be feared,  challenged, dealt with, managed or overcome? Or is it something to be navigated, explored, embraced, cultivated, or expressed? If you think of facing the unknown in your work what thoughts and emotions come to mind? What metaphor? A beast to be tamed, a wave to be surfed, a game to be played? How we perceive the concept of this unfolding future we call the unknown determines how easily we navigate it.

2. Consciously engage uncertainty. Whether we like it or not the unknown has now become our working partner. By actively engaging the unknown in small ways at first - such as with a low-risk/high-ambiguity project - you develop the essential skills to work with it in larger high-risk/high-ambiguity arenas. What would it take for you to go deeper into situations, pushing past what you currently know, before going forward? It feels counterproductive in our fast-paced culture, but by taking the up front time to go deep and explore multiple dimensions, next-level solutions begin to reveal themselves.

3. Allow the process to be messy. When we start consciously exploring unknown, there is a period of time where logic, order, and organization are put on hold as we get into the unearthing of new information. It can seem illogical, nonsensical, and even foreign-sounding as it emerges. Like all births, new directions are not necessarily tidied up and pretty as they enter the world. Similar to a baby being born, the ideas, structures and systems that emerge from the unknown space can look unrecognizable at first. The task it to continue to draw whatever shows up forth, amidst it messiness, until the new order emerges. There is a natural, self-organizing system at play in every emergent situation. How much time and space do you give to ideas to go formulate?

4. Actively leave the familiar. Just because something worked for one group in one situation doesn't mean it is necessarily repeatable. Look back to the past for what is relevant to the new situation and bring it with you. Leave the rest behind. It is in our nature to seek the shelter of the familiar even if we know it is no longer serving us. Leaving what is comfortable and not working to dip into the "empty space" to draw forth the new is challenging. Do you have compassion for yourself (or others) when you are frustrated, overwhelmed and feel like you hit a wall?

5. Use multidimensional creative approaches. By using a variety of creativity tools, techniques and approaches you can engage more of your brain and more of your senses. The human habit is to approach uncertain situations with the same set of analytical tools each time. No matter how focused and capable your thought process, unless you do something different to activate new parts of the brain, the information will still travel down your same neural pathways in the same way and you will come up with the same types of solutions. If you purposefully integrate alternative methods, whole brain thinking and multi-sensory stimulation, awareness is heightened and you become more responsive and resilient. What are some ways you can intentionally do this?

6. Be the Beginner. Probably the most significant, yet challenging aspect of navigating the unknown is the willingness to enter the beginner mind. We live in a knowledge based society. We are educated to have the right answers. The more we know, the more intelligent, capable, and competent we are considered. We are rewarded and recognized for that which we know, not for that which we don't know. Yet, in a world where the word innovation is showing up in almost every mission and vision statement, this is often exactly what is needed to move forward. It's not about abandoning what you know, but bringing it to the table to sit side by side with what you do not know.

7. Accept the human paradox. Within the paradox of human nature, being what it is, the unknown is both dangerous and exciting, a threat to be feared and a mystery to be revealed. We are mystery seekers. There is a multi-billion dollar mystery industry--books, movies, adventure tours, Internet games, and haunted houses. There is something about walking around the corner and not knowing what will pop out that is inherently exciting and alive to us. Uncovering and discovering are in our nature--just look at a child exploring the environment, looking behind every crack and crevice for what's next.

While a part of us may love the mystery, we have another part of us, in our reptilian primal brain, that has been hard wired to fear what is around the corner. Our ancestors knew well knowledge of our surroundings gave us control of a dangerous world. There was a real danger in leaving the safety of the cave. This is still true today. When we perceive threats to survival, we like to know what is next. Ironically, the same world that makes people want to retreat to their caves to hide from the "predators" is this same world that is requiring new levels of innovation to adapt and thrive. When is change exciting and when is it threatening to you?

The more you work with the unknown as a co-creative partner, the easier it is to stay grounded in the winds of change. It takes more than just deciding to embrace uncertainty to be able to do it. It takes understanding where you are in relationship to the unknown now, and then consciously choosing to be with the discomfort, and perhaps excitement, of exploring new territory. Underneath business buzz words, mission statements and strategic goals, there is an unsure human facing a new world. It takes practice. As with mastering any new skill, navigating the unknown is an ongoing process.

This is a re-post of an article I wrote in 2006 based on my experiences with creative emergence - in my own life and working with my clients. Just came across it again today so I thought I would share it.

1. Change the lens you use for seeing the unknown. Do you see the unknown something to be feared,  challenged, dealt with, managed or overcome? Or is it something to be navigated, explored, embraced, cultivated, or expressed? If you think of facing the unknown in your work what thoughts and emotions come to mind? What metaphor? A beast to be tamed, a wave to be surfed, a game to be played? How we perceive the concept of this unfolding future we call the unknown determines how easily we navigate it.

2. Consciously engage uncertainty. Whether we like it or not the unknown has now become our working partner. By actively engaging the unknown in small ways at first - such as with a low-risk/high-ambiguity project - you develop the essential skills to work with it in larger high-risk/high-ambiguity arenas. What would it take for you to go deeper into situations, pushing past what you currently know, before going forward? It feels counterproductive in our fast-paced culture, but by taking the up front time to go deep and explore multiple dimensions, next-level solutions begin to reveal themselves.

3. Allow the process to be messy. When we start consciously exploring unknown, there is a period of time where logic, order, and organization are put on hold as we get into the unearthing of new information. It can seem illogical, nonsensical, and even foreign-sounding as it emerges. Like all births, new directions are not necessarily tidied up and pretty as they enter the world. Similar to a baby being born, the ideas, structures and systems that emerge from the unknown space can look unrecognizable at first. The task it to continue to draw whatever shows up forth, amidst it messiness, until the new order emerges. There is a natural, self-organizing system at play in every emergent situation. How much time and space do you give to ideas to go formulate?

4. Actively leave the familiar. Just because something worked for one group in one situation doesn't mean it is necessarily repeatable. Look back to the past for what is relevant to the new situation and bring it with you. Leave the rest behind. It is in our nature to seek the shelter of the familiar even if we know it is no longer serving us. Leaving what is comfortable and not working to dip into the "empty space" to draw forth the new is challenging. Do you have compassion for yourself (or others) when you are frustrated, overwhelmed and feel like you hit a wall?

5. Use multidimensional creative approaches. By using a variety of creativity tools, techniques and approaches you can engage more of your brain and more of your senses. The human habit is to approach uncertain situations with the same set of analytical tools each time. No matter how focused and capable your thought process, unless you do something different to activate new parts of the brain, the information will still travel down your same neural pathways in the same way and you will come up with the same types of solutions. If you purposefully integrate alternative methods, whole brain thinking and multi-sensory stimulation, awareness is heightened and you become more responsive and resilient. What are some ways you can intentionally do this?

6. Be the Beginner. Probably the most significant, yet challenging aspect of navigating the unknown is the willingness to enter the beginner mind. We live in a knowledge based society. We are educated to have the right answers. The more we know, the more intelligent, capable, and competent we are considered. We are rewarded and recognized for that which we know, not for that which we don't know. Yet, in a world where the word innovation is showing up in almost every mission and vision statement, this is often exactly what is needed to move forward. It's not about abandoning what you know, but bringing it to the table to sit side by side with what you do not know.

7. Accept the human paradox. Within the paradox of human nature, being what it is, the unknown is both dangerous and exciting, a threat to be feared and a mystery to be revealed. We are mystery seekers. There is a multi-billion dollar mystery industry--books, movies, adventure tours, Internet games, and haunted houses. There is something about walking around the corner and not knowing what will pop out that is inherently exciting and alive to us. Uncovering and discovering are in our nature--just look at a child exploring the environment, looking behind every crack and crevice for what's next.

While a part of us may love the mystery, we have another part of us, in our reptilian primal brain, that has been hard wired to fear what is around the corner. Our ancestors knew well knowledge of our surroundings gave us control of a dangerous world. There was a real danger in leaving the safety of the cave. This is still true today. When we perceive threats to survival, we like to know what is next. Ironically, the same world that makes people want to retreat to their caves to hide from the "predators" is this same world that is requiring new levels of innovation to adapt and thrive. When is change exciting and when is it threatening to you?

The more you work with the unknown as a co-creative partner, the easier it is to stay grounded in the winds of change. It takes more than just deciding to embrace uncertainty to be able to do it. It takes understanding where you are in relationship to the unknown now, and then consciously choosing to be with the discomfort, and perhaps excitement, of exploring new territory. Underneath business buzz words, mission statements and strategic goals, there is an unsure human facing a new world. It takes practice. As with mastering any new skill, navigating the unknown is an ongoing process.

The Creative Zone & the Edge of Chaos

How I see the Creative Zone - and the edge of chaos is the creative inflection point:

Improv Theater and Complex Adaptive Systems

I am in an improvisational theater performing group. We improvise full-length plays with nothing planned in advance. No structure. No outline. No character or plot development. Nothing, except for 2 locations we get from the audience at the beginning of the play. The play is then titled, "The Space Station and the Bathroom" or whatever locations we get from the audience. Two of us then run on stage and start interacting, and thus the play begins.

When the play goes well, the audience says, "That HAD to be scripted. At least some part of it had to be scripted. It looked too easy." It was easy. When the performance does not go so well, the audience says, "That looked hard." It was hard.

I became fascinated by what makes it work. What creates peak level creativity in our group? What allows a complex, coherent, sense-making structure to emerge from nothing but a simple location? What is the "magic formula" that allows a fully formed, organized play - with believable characters and plot - to emerge before the audience’s (and our own) eyes? And what gets in the way? Why does it work seamlessly sometimes and not so well other times? I became a serious student of improv theory - reading the seminal books in the field and observing the patterns in my group and other groups.

I soon recognized the connections between adhering to the principles of improvisational theater in a performance and being able to adapt, create and improvise effectively in the work place – and in any social system. The same principles that allow a performing group to improvise a 90-minute play out of nothing but a location are the same principles that allow groups, teams, and organizations to solve problems in new ways and reach peak levels of creativity and innovative thinking. The principles form the “container” that allows the group to self-organize to emerge what’s next.

Around that same time, I began exploring complexity sciences theory in creativity and could not help but recognize the stark similarities between improvisation and complex adaptive systems such as emergence, self-organization, interdependence, pattern making, increasing complexity, dense local connectivity, coherence emerging out of disorder. Both are open, inclusive, non-linear, dynamic systems that use interactive agents, feedback loops and multiple variables. Both require resilience, collaboration, structure and flow, spontaneity, and engaging the unknown. Both result in a surprising emergence.

In our troupe, we don’t go on stage with a pre-formed notion of our characters, plot, conflict, challenge or situation. We just let them emerge based on our interactions, actions and reactions. The "magic formula" is the adherence to the basic improv principles. When we adhere to the principles of improvisation, something emerges that is more intelligent and creative - and intelligently organized - than any one of us could have planned. As with any good emergence, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. By adhering to the principles, a play unfolds that is so original and unpredictable, that you have a sense of being entirely in flow - getting to fully experience the adventure as you create it.

The principles that allow this to happen are simple, yet profound. They seem easy, but in practice, they are almost the exactly opposite of the ways in which we navigate our everyday work lives. They take re-learning. I say that because we were born natural improvisers and then got "educated" and "civilized" out of the playful aspects of our own improvisational complexity.

The following are 7 basic improv principles – all of which I believe tie in to complexity theory. There are others, but I have found these to be essential.

1. Yes and. Fully accepting the reality that is presenting, and the adding a NEW piece of information - that is what allows it to be adaptive, move forward and stay generative. Each performer (agent) interacts with what is offered and offers a unique contribution.

2. Make everyone else look good. That means you do not have to be defending or justifying yourself or your position - others who will do that for you and you do that for others. Without the burden of defensiveness or competition, everyone is free to create. Complex characters can form that enable unpredictable complex actions and directions to emerge.

3. Be changed by what is said and what happens. At each moment, new information in an invitation for you to have a new reaction, or for your character to experience a new aspect of them. Change inspires new ideas, and that naturally unfolds what's next. You adapt as one structure dissipates and re-organizes into a new structure that expands, yet includes, what was before.

4. Co-create a shared "agenda." This principle involves the recognition that even the best-laid plans are abandoned in the moment, and to serve the reality of what is right there in front of you. You are co-creating the agenda in real-time. In order to keep the play going, you respond to the moment and an "agenda" co-emerges that is more inclusive than anything that could have been planned. It is not consensus, which reduces. It is co-creation, which expands.

5. Mistakes are invitations. In improv, mistakes are embraced – they are the stimulating anomalies that invite the performers into a new level of creativity. By using improv techniques such as justifying any mistake can be transformed into surprising plot point or dialogue that never would have happened in following a conventional pattern. In improv, justifying creates order out of chaos. Mistakes break patterns and allow new ones to emerge.

6. Keep the energy going. No matter what is given, or what happens, you accept it and keep the energy gong. Unlike in everyday life, where people stop to analyze, criticize or negate, in improv you keep moving. A mistake happens - let it go move on. The unexpected emerges - use it to move on. Someone forgot something important - justify it and move on. You’re lost or confused –make something up and trust the process. Just keep moving. The system is not static – it is alive and dynamic.

7. Serve the good of the whole. Always carry the question, "How can I best serve this situation?" and then you have a better sense of when to run in and when to stay back, when to take focus and when to give it, how to best support your fellow performers and how to best support the scene. By focusing away from how you will look into serving the larger good – the aliveness of the system - you have more creative impulses and resources available to you at any moment. And the choices you make are more in alignment with the higher levels of creative integration that form a coherent play.

So, what make it "look hard" when it is not working so well? Simple: any violation of the principles. If one of us tries to orchestrate, or worse impose, our own agenda or plot on the piece. If one of us tries to be the "star" and take too much focus. If even one of us is not present to what is unfolding, moment-by-moment. If one of us worries about the plot, and starts to figure out how to "save" it. If we expect that someone should respond in a certain way. In short, anything that gets us out of the moment and what is emerging - and into our controlling heads.

The rules are simple – the application can be challenging, requiring conscious effort. One of the paradoxes of improv is that you practice being spontaneous until it comes naturally. By staying present to each moment, getting out of thinking and planning and into being, you have a wellspring options and choices in each moment that you otherwise would miss. With positive intention, active engagement, presence and yes-anding, you can't do anything but be co-generative!

The truth is, in each performance we have some magic moments and some more effortful ones - some that work and others that fall flat. But by adhering to the improv principles we significantly increase the magic and decrease the efforting. A creative - and surprisingly logical - play can then emerge through that fresh and alive energy. We, and the audience, then get to experience the real-time excitement of riding the flow of a creative emergence. 



I first put my Improvisation and Complexity Matrix into action at the Plexus Institute DC Fractal a few years ago. Participants were led through a series of improv activities that we then tied in to complexity science principles and discussed how they played out in organizations and other complex adaptive systems. Everyone agreed that, although framed differently, the small number of laws that can generate complex systems are embedded in the small number of laws that can generate full-length improvised plays.

Improv takes you to the edge of chaos – the inflection point – filled with fertile creative potential. We are natural meaning makers, and left to our own devices, our brains naturally seek to evolve order, coherence and meaning. Once you allow yourself the freedom to explore and play; set the initial conditions; and then get out of the way, creativity can develop and unify all kinds of things that otherwise would seem impossible.

The principles of improvisation serve a much larger purpose than performance - they have the ability to create the life-giving container for cognitive, personal, organizational, social, political, and spiritual transformation. I see them as rules of engagement for a more peaceful, co-generative, co-creative, sustainable world. ~ By Michelle James

Michelle James, CEO of The Center for Creative Emergence, founded Quantum Leap Business Theater 10 years ago where she has lead improv-based programs for organizations such as Microsoft, The World Bank and Kaiser Permanente among others. She also offers public workshops such as Improv for Leaders, Creative Facilitation using Improv and Improvisational Thinking to name a few.

Pictures are from one of our performances - Precipice Improv

 

 

Content & Creativity: Facebook Generation vs. Fortune 500 Generation

Gary Hamel's article, The Facebook Generation vs. the Fortune 500, on the WSJ blog offers 12 characteristics of online life. Not only are these characteristics of the "Gen F" social media generation, they are characteristics of highly vibrant, creative organizations in general - and for all generations. They are:

1. All ideas compete on an equal footing.
2. Contribution counts for more than credentials.
3. Hierarchies are natural, not prescribed.
4. Leaders serve rather than preside.
5. Tasks are chosen, not assigned.
6. Groups are self-defining and -organizing.
7. Resources get attracted, not allocated.
8. Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it.
9. Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed.
10. Users can veto most policy decisions.
11. Intrinsic rewards matter most.
12. Hackers (anti-authoritarian rabble-rousers) are heroes.

For the complete article: http://tinyurl.com/c4vld5

Mentioned as Visionary Leader in Fast Company Blog

I am totally surprised - and completely honored! - to be named one of the Visionary Leaders in the Fast Company Blog, Leading Change  Truly honored to be in such inspiring company:

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/seth-kahan/leading-change/visionary-leadership  

10 Traits of The Creative Personality

Psychology Today featured an excerpt of an article written by psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (who popularized the term "Flow" in is books which include Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience and Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention among others). To build on Flow Theory, Csikszentmihalyi  interviewed 91 people, eminent in their respective fields, each of whom engaged in "flow" in an ongoing basis while contributing to the betterment of society. He found certain traits common to all that he called the Creative Personality. The following article summarizes his finding. I have copied only parts of it below - for the complete article, click here.

The Creative Personality
By Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Of all human activities, creativity comes closest to providing the fulfillment we all hope to get in our lives. Call it full-blast living...Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives. Creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals. Most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the result of creativity...When we're creative, we feel we are living more fully than during the rest of life...what makes their personalities different from others...complexity. They show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes; instead of being an "individual," each of them is a "multitude."

Here are the 10 antithetical traits often present in creative people that are integrated with each other in a dialectical tension.

1. Creative people have a great deal of physical energy, but they're also often quiet and at rest. They work long hours, with great concentration, while projecting an aura of freshness and enthusiasm...This does not mean that creative people are always "on"...When necessary, they can focus it like a laser beam; when not, creative types immediately recharge their batteries. They consider the rhythm of activity followed by idleness or reflection very important for the success of their work.

2. Creative people tend to be smart yet naive at the same time...Another way of expressing this dialectic is the contrasting poles of wisdom and childishness...a certain immaturity, both emotional and mental, can go hand in hand with deepest insights...Furthermore, people who bring about an acceptable novelty in a domain seem able to use well two opposite ways of thinking: the convergent and the divergent.

3. Creative people combine playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility. There is no question that a playfully light attitude is typical of creative individuals. But this playfulness doesn't go very far without its antithesis, a quality of doggedness, endurance, perseverance...Despite the carefree air that many creative people affect, most of them work late into the night and persist when less driven individuals would not.

4. Creative people alternate between imagination and fantasy, and a rooted sense of reality. Great art and great science involve a leap of imagination into a world that is different from the present...the whole point of art and science is to go beyond what we now consider real and create a new reality...this "escape" is not into a never-never land. What makes a novel idea creative is that once we see it, sooner or later we recognize that, strange as it is, it is true.

5. Creative people tend to be both extroverted and introverted...in the thick of crowds or sitting on the sidelines and observing the passing show. In fact, in psychological research, extroversion and introversion are considered the most stable personality traits that differentiate people from each other and that can be reliably measured. Creative individuals, on the other hand, seem to exhibit both traits simultaneously.

6. Creative people are humble and proud at the same time...Their respect for the area in which they work makes them aware of the long line of previous contributions to it, putting their own in perspective. They're also aware of the role that luck played in their own achievements. And they're usually so focused on future projects and current challenges that past accomplishments, no matter how outstanding, are no longer very interesting to them. At the same time, they know they have accomplished a great deal. And this knowledge provides a sense of security, even pride.

7. Creative people, to an extent, escape rigid gender role stereotyping...ability to be at the same time aggressive and nurturant, sensitive and rigid, dominant and submissive, regardless of gender. A psychologically androgynous person in effect doubles his or her repertoire of responses. Creative individuals are more likely to have not only the strengths of their own gender but those of the other one, too.

8. Creative people are both rebellious and conservative. It is impossible to be creative without having first internalized an area of culture...But the willingness to take risks, to break with the safety of tradition, is also necessary. The economist George Stigler is very emphatic: "In innovation, you have to play a less safe game, if it's going to be interesting. It's not predictable that it'll go well."

9. Most creative people are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well. Without the passion, we soon lose interest in a difficult task. Yet without being objective about it, our work is not very good and lacks credibility. Here is how the historian Natalie Davis puts it:  "...you can't be so identified with your work that you can't accept criticism and response."

10. Creative people's openness and sensitivity often exposes them to suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoyment...Being alone at the forefront of a discipline also leaves you exposed and vulnerable...invites criticism and often vicious attacks...Divergent thinking is often perceived as deviant by the majority, and so the creative person may feel isolated and misunderstood...Yet when a person is working in the area of his of her expertise, worries and cares fall away, replaced by a sense of bliss.

Perhaps the most important quality, the one that is most consistently present in all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake.

That was from Creativity: The Work and Lives of 91 Eminent People, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

My two cents: the Creative Personality can hold paradox without feeling conflicted - both paradoxical traits within oneself, as well as the ability to hold the world (and world view) as containing seemingly opposing realities without having to adopt one in particular. It is not reductionist, reducing a philosophy, creation or way of being down to one common denominator. It is expansive and yes-anding - accepting that contradictory ideas, situations and traits can be operating simultaneously or within the same individual or system - and that adds to the creative complexity, aliveness and richness of output.

The Big Glow

From Brian Peirgrossi's book, The Big Glow: Insights, Inspirations, Peace and Passion
(Thanks, Kate Jones, for sending it over!):

On the surface of the world right now there is war and violence
and things seem dark
But calmly and quietly, at the same time,
something else is happening underground
An inner revolution is taking place
and certain individuals are being called to a higher light
It is a silent revolution From the inside out
From the ground up

Most of us work anonymously
We are quietly working behind the scenes
in every country and culture of the world
Cities big and small, mountains and valleys,
in farms and villages, tribes and remote islands

Occasionally we spot each other in the street
We give a quiet nod and continue on our way so no one will notice
During the day many of us pretend we have normal jobs
But behind the false storefront at night is where the real work takes a place

Some call us the 'Conscious Army'
We are slowly creating a new world with the power of our minds and hearts
We follow, with passion and joy
Our orders from the Central Command
The Spiritual Intelligence Agency

We are dropping soft, secret love bombs when no one is looking
Poems
Hugs
Music
Photography
Movies
Kind words
Smiles
Meditation and prayer
Dance
Social activism
Websites
Blogs
Random acts of kindness

We each express ourselves in our own unique ways with our own unique gifts and talents

'Be the change you want to see in the world'
That is the motto that fills our hearts
We know it is the only way real transformation takes place
We know that quietly and humbly we have the power of all the oceans combined

Our work is slow and meticulous
Like the formation of mountains
It is not even visible at first glance
And yet with it entire tectonic plates shall be moved in the centuries to come

Love is the new religion of the 21st century
You don't have to be a highly educated person
Or have any exceptional knowledge to understand it
It comes from the intelligence of the heart
Embedded in the timeless evolutionary pulse of all human beings

Be the change you want to see in the world
Nobody else can do it for you
We are now recruiting
Perhaps you will join us
Or already have....
All are welcome...
The door is open

~  Brian Piergrossi, from his book, The Big Glow

Here's to the Crazy Ones!

Here's to the creators who change the world...

New Ways of Being

In the quest for new results, I think we have to go directly inward into new ways of being. My take - although not necessarily this linear - I see it more as interdependent and interactive:

New Way of Being - being, engaging - leads to
New Awareness - insight, expansion - which leads to
New Way of Thinking - cognition - which leads to
New Discovery - connections, breakthroughs - which leads to
New Process - structuring - which leads to
New Action - behaviors - which leads to
New Results!

(Not to mention being more whole in oursleves!)

We have all heard the saying, "Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting new results" but it rarely addresses that in order to do new things, a new internal patterning or shift is required. In order to achieve an internal shift, we can engage in news ways of being (which allows new ways of thinking to naturally emerge). Creativity, improv, storytelling, the expressive arts, meditation, deep reflection, non-habitiual movement, and any kind of pattern breaking techniques are great ways to begin to engage new ways of being. 

Michelle James©2007

Nassim Haramein: "The Vacuum is not Empty"

I had the pleasure of being in scientist-philosopher-mystic Nassim Haramein's session at the Institute of Noetic Sciences conference a while back. His was one of the most interesting presentations. A multi-dimensional pioneer, he is working on a unified field theory he calls the “Holofractographic Universe.” I deeply resonated with what he was saying - not through the lens of a scientist, but through my lens of the living, fertile, fractaled, integrative, shape-forming, creative universe. He has mathematically and scientifically discovered what creators and mystics have always known - that we create by feedback and change and that we are all beings of infinite creative potential - in a very literal sense: the vacuum is not empty - it is not nothing. It is actually highly organizing and always communicating - an "unknown" that is actually fertile with creative potential. He founded The Resonance Project Foundation. You can see him speak on the Crossing the Event Horizon video on YouTube.

I found this write-up of him at The Laughing Coach Newsletter:

Nassim Haramein, a world traveler, was born in Geneva, Switzerland. As early as 9 years old, Nassim was already developing the basis for a holographic hyper-dimensional theory of everything he calls the “Holofractographic Universe.”

The Holofractographic Universe theory is a unified field theory resulting from over two decades of investigation into the geometry of hyper-dimensional systems and their relation to the creation of three-dimensional reality and all of its forces—including consciousness.

The premise of The Holofractographic Unified Field Theory research is that space is not empty, it is full. It is full of an energy that, through a specific set of fractal geometry, creates atomic structures that are themselves made of 99.999% space. It is a sea of electromagnetic flux we call the zero point energy, which has been demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, since its mechanical effects have now been measured in laboratories.

This is nothing new, most ancient civilizations believed in a primordial soup of energy embedded within the fabric of space and in a primary geometric pattern coordinating creation. Later many of the world's great thinkers, including such scientists as Albert Einstein, Nicolas Tesla, Buckminster Fuller, and Walter Russell, believed in an all prevailing energy at the base of the fabric of space.

Haramein's findings have resulted in theoretical and practical developments based on a specific geometric array fundamental to creation. This theory has now been presented to the standard scientific community with great success, and his papers on the Holofractographic Universe will soon be followed by a book for the layman entitled "Crossing the Event Horizon."

Nassim's investigation of the geometry of hyperspace has combined quantum physics and cosmological understandings of universal forces with other sciences such as biology and philosophy, resulting in advanced unification computations that, astonishingly, relates to ancient codes left in monuments and documents around the world—including the Bible, the I Ching, the Mayan Sacred Calendar, Pyramids, and Egyptian temples. The results of his research may bring our planet to a new dimension of understanding and existence, one which was predicted by the ancients to arrive at this time in history.

Nassim is fluent in both French and English. He conducts workshops and seminars on his theories to help bring an awareness that is greatly needed in these times. His lectures are designed around his life experiences beginning with childhood illuminations and culminating in the discovery of a technology and united view that seems to have been left encoded by ancient civilizations for us to rediscover. His work may lead to some of the most important scientific, philosophic and technological discoveries in written history.

©Copyright 2000 by Nassim Haramein
All rights reserved

Precipice Improv and Emergence

I am in an improvisational theater performing group, Precipice Improv. (I'm pictured here with cast mates, from top left to bottom right, Dan Mont, Ric Anderson and Bob Adler).

We improvise full-length plays with nothing planned in advance. No structure. No outline. No character or plot development. Nothing, except for 2 locations we get from the audience at the beginning of the play. The play is then titled, "The Space Station and the Bathroom" or whatever locations we get from the audience. Two of us then run on stage and start interacting, and thus the play begins.

When the play goes well, the audience says, "That HAD to be scripted. At least some part of it had to be scripted. It looked too easy."  It was easy. When the performance does not go so well, the audience says, "That looked hard."  It was hard.

So what makes is hard sometimes, and easy others? What is the "magic formula" that allows a fully formed, coherent, organized play - with believable characters and a plot - to emerge before the audience’s (and our own) eyes?  And, what gets in the way?

What makes it work when it works?  We do not go our with a pre-formed notion of our characters or of a plot or of a conflict, challenge or situation. We just let them emerge based on our interactions, actions, and reactions. The "magic formula" is the adherence to improv principles. When we adhere to the principles of improvisation, an emergence occurs that is more intelligent and creative - and organized - than any one of us could have planned. As with any good emergence, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. By adhering to the principles, a play unfolds so original and unpredictable, that while in it, you have a sense of being entirely in flow - getting to fully experience the adventure as you create it.

The principles that allow this to happen are simple, yet profound. They seem easy, but in practice, they are almost the exactly opposite ways society navigates every day life and work situations. Thye take re-learning (I say that becuase we were born natural improvisers and then got "educated" and "civilized" out of the playful aspects of it). Below are 7 basic improv principles. There are others, but I have found these to be essential:

1. Yes And - fully accepting the reality that is presenting, and the adding a NEW piece of information - that is what allows it to move forward and stay generative.

2. Make everyone else look good - that means you do not have to be defending or justifying yourself or your position - you have a group of other who will do that for you. And you are comitted to doing that for others. Without the burden of defensiveness, everyone are free to create.

3. Allow yourself to be change by what is said and what happens - at each moment, new information in an invitation for you to have a new reaction, or for your character to experience a new aspect of them. Change inspires new ideas, and that naturally unfolds what's next.

4. Co-create a shared "agenda" - the recognition that even the best-laid plans are abandoned in the moment, and to serve the reality of what is right there in front of you. You are co-creating the agenda in real-time. In order to keep the play going, you respond to the moment and an "agenda" co-emerges.

5. Be fully present and engaged - by staying preset to each moment, getting out of planning and into being, you have a wellspring options and choices in each moment. To do so requires  engagement and attention. With engagement combined with presence and yes-anding, you can't do anything but be co-creative.

6. Keep the energy going - no matter what is given, or what happens, you accept it and keep the energy gong. Unlike in everyday life, where people stop to analyze, criticize or negate, in improv you keep moving. A mistake happens - let it go move on. The unexpected emerges - use it to move on. Someone forgot something important - justify it and move on. Just keep moving.

7. Seek the good of the whole - always carry the question, "How can I best serve this situation?" and then you have a better sense of when to run in and when to stay back, when to take focus and when to give it, how to best support your fellow performers and how to best support the scene. By focusing away from how you will look into serving the larger good, you have more creative impulses and resources available to you at any moment. And the choices you make are more in alignment with the higher levels of creative integration that form a coherent play.

So, what make it "look hard" when it is not working so well?  Simple, any violation of the principles. If one of us tries to orchestrate, or worse impose, our own agenda or plot on the piece.  If one of us tries to be the "star" and take too much focus. If even one of us is not present to what is unfolding, moment-by-moment. If one of us worries about the plot, and starts to figure out how to "save" it. If we expect someone to should respond in a certain way. In short, anything that gets out  of the moment and out of support - and into our controlling heads.

The truth is, in each performance we have some of each - some magic moments and some more effortful ones. By adhering to the improv principles, however, we significantly increase the magic and decrease the efforting. A creative, and suprisely logical, play can then emerge through that  fresh and alive energy. We, and the audience, then get to experience the real-time excitement of riding the flow of a creative emergence.

Creativity is naturally self-organizing system. We are meaning makers, and left to our own devices, our brains naturally seek order, coherence and meaning. Once you allow yourself the freedom to explore and play; set the guidelines of play -i.e., improv principles; and then get out of the way, creativity can develop and unify all kinds of things that otherwise would seem impossible.   

For me, the principles of improvisation serve a much larger purpose than creating a play - I see them as having the ability to create the life-giving container for cognitive, personal, organizational, social, political, cognitive, and spiritual transformation. I see them as rules of engagement for a more peaceful, co-generative, co-creative, sustainable world.

Reinventing Capitalism

Thanks to Michael Strong's post on the FLOWidealism listserve for the link to Howard Bloom's new book, Reinventing Capitalism: Putting Soul In The Machine. Even of you do not have time to read the book, I recommend checking out the web site (www.howardbloom.net/reinventing_capitalism) for the description. It beautifully articulates the inexorable link between invention, innovation, passion and prosperity - not in a mechanistic, limited way of seeing capitalism, but through a soul-centered, integrative, fully human lens. Here are a few excerpts from the review on the web page:

Reinventing Capitalism lets you in on a secret Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and today’s mainstream economists, eco-critics, and business pundits never dreamed—forget greed and dedicate yourself to your own passions, to your ideals, and to others’ needs and you’ll unleash the power hidden in our civilization, a power that can make you a shaper of meaning, a maker of warmth, a creator of new wonders and abilities, and can offer you a new way to succeed.

...what lessons can we learn, what can we invent, what can we upgrade and create? What new twists of culture, of technology, of insight and technique will help us leapfrog over our assailants and carry us forward toward new ways of being? How can we take the values of our Founding Fathers to even higher peaks? How can we loft the best that’s in us into the next two centuries?
The answer lies in giving capitalism a heart and a soul. More specifically it lies in giving all of us something only saints have previously been required to possess—something Bloom calls “tuned empathy.”

...There’s a new form of capitalism struggling to be born among us. In reality it’s been here all along, but we’ve failed to see it. It’s Emotional Capitalism, a capitalism vibrant with the power of something that has to seize the heart of every boardroom meeting—the power to care, the power to feel the emotions of the people you serve, and the power to feel your own emotions in new ways

...The true businessman is a seer and servant. He is not trafficking in inanimate goods sold to anonymous “consumers.” He nourishes human souls. When he helps those souls catch fire, money flows. Those who look deep into their passions can anticipate the needs of others. A bone-deep love for others’ needs is the secret to personal growth, to profits, and to prosperity.

...It’s time for all of us—for those in our offices and our homes, and for culture-leaders in boardrooms, universities, and editorial headquarters--to wake up and see that humans are nourished by perception, nourished by passion, nourished by feeling. It’s time for us to see the emotional substance in what we’ve mistakenly labeled with a dehumanized vocabulary, the language of clods, lumps, stones, and numbers—the language of “materialism,” “commodification,” “consumerism,” “derivatives,” “transfer agents,” “utility maximization,” “quarterly profits,” “products,” “markets,” and “supply and demand.”

...We desperately need a reinvention and a re-perception of the system that has given Western Civilization its long-term strength and its recent weaknesses. We need the Capitalism of Passion.

...Capital is stored imagination. Capital is stored stress, stored vision, stored diligence to persist, and stored ability to inspire others to complete a task that seems impossible or frivolous. Capital is stored passion!

...There is a soul, a passion, inside of the economic machine. Our most personal desires and schemes sometimes scare us with their strangeness, with their lunacy. But some dare make them public—just as the first stone-chipper, the first stone-wall builder, the first brick-maker, and the first brick-city-planner did....Some risk looking foolish with the tales, the songs, and the fantasies they share. Others stare with wonder—they see their own unspoken feelings, their chaotic longings, echoed in a mirror there. Then we and our allies recruit, we proselytize. We make the masses see what we have seen. We organize believers to throw themselves with idealism, passion, commitment, and deep faith, into creating something that this cosmos has never previously seen. We organize others so they can make a reality of what is now shared fantasy, shared lunacy, acommunal and a corporate dream.

Inter-Generational Creativity

                 

Dominic Allamano, whom I met at the Gathering of Emerging Leaders conference in September, is filmed here speaking to the board and donors in an inter-generational dialogue at the Institute of Noetic Science (IONS) about what is creatively emerging in our culture.

Navigating the Unknown: 7 Reflection Tools

1. Change the lens you use for seeing the unknown. Do you see the unknown something to be feared, challenged, dealt with, managed or overcome? Or is it something to be navigated, explored, embraced, cultivated, or expressed? If you think of facing the unknown in your work what thoughts and emotions come to mind? What metaphor? A beast to be tamed, a wave to be surfed, a game to be played? How we perceive the concept of this unfolding future we call the unknown determines how easily we navigate it.

2. Consciously engage uncertainty. Whether we like it or not the unknown has now become our working partner. By actively engaging the unknown in small ways at first - such as with a low-risk/high-ambiguity project - you develop the essential skills to work with it in larger high-risk/high-ambiguity arenas. What would it take for you to go deeper into situations, pushing past what you currently know, before going forward? It feels counterproductive in our fast-paced culture, but by taking the up front time to go deep and explore multiple dimensions, next-level solutions begin to reveal themselves.

3. Allow the process to be messy. When we start consciously exploring unknown, there is a period of time where logic, order, and organization are put on hold as we get into the unearthing of new information. It can seem illogical, nonsensical, and even foreign-sounding as it emerges. Like all births, new directions are not necessarily tidied up and pretty as they enter the world. Similar to a baby being born, the ideas, structures and systems that emerge from the unknown space can look unrecognizable at first. The task it to continue to draw whatever shows up forth, amidst it messiness, until the new order emerges. There is a natural, self-organizing system at play in every emergent situation. How much time and space do you give to ideas to go formulate?

4. Actively leave the familiar. Just because something worked for one group in one situation doesn't mean it is necessarily repeatable. Look back to the past for what is relevant to the new situation and bring it with you. Leave the rest behind. It is in our nature to seek the shelter of the familiar even if we know it is no longer serving us. Leaving what is comfortable and not working to dip into the "empty space" to draw forth the new is challenging. Do you have compassion for yourself (or others) when you are frustrated, overwhelmed and feel like you hit a wall?

5. Use multidimensional creative approaches. By using a variety of creativity tools, techniques and approaches you can engage more of your brain and more of your senses. The human habit is to approach uncertain situations with the same set of analytical tools each time. No matter how focused and capable your thought process, unless you do something different to activate new parts of the brain, the information will still travel down your same neural pathways in the same way and you will come up with the same types of solutions. If you purposefully integrate alternative methods, whole brain thinking and multi-sensory stimulation, awareness is heightened and you become more responsive and resilient. What are some ways you can intentionally do this?

6. Be the Beginner. Probably the most significant, yet challenging aspect of navigating the unknown is the willingness to enter the beginner mind. We live in a knowledge based society. We are educated to have the right answers. The more we know, the more intelligent, capable, and competent we are considered. We are rewarded and recognized for that which we know, not for that which we don't know. Yet, in a world where the word innovation is showing up in exponentially more mission and vision statements, this is often exactly what is needed to move forward. It's not about abandoning what you know, but bringing it to the table to sit side by side with what you do not know.

7. Accept the human paradox. Within the paradox of human nature, being what it is, the unknown is both dangerous and exciting, a threat to be feared and a mystery to be revealed. We are mystery seekers. There is a multi-billion dollar mystery industry--books, movies, adventure tours, Internet games, and haunted houses. There is something about walking around the corner and not knowing what will pop out that is inherently exciting and alive to us. Uncovering and discovering are in our nature--just look at a child exploring the environment, looking behind every crack and crevice for what's next.

While a part of us may love the mystery, we have another part of us, in our reptilian primal brain, that has been hard wired to fear what is around the corner. Our ancestors knew well knowledge of our surroundings gave us control of a dangerous world. There was a real danger in leaving the safety of the cave. This is still true today. When we perceive threats to survival, we like to know what is next. Ironically, the same world that makes people want to retreat to their caves to hide from the "predators" is this same world that is requiring new levels of innovation to adapt and thrive. When is change exciting and when is it threatening to you?

The more you work with the unknown as a co-creative partner, the easier it is to stay grounded in the winds of change. It takes more than just deciding to embrace uncertainty to be able to do it. It takes understanding where you are in relationship to the unknown now, and then consciously choosing to be with the discomfort, and perhaps excitement, of exploring new territory. Underneath business buzz words, mission statements and strategic goals, there is an unsure human facing a new world. It takes practice. As with mastering any new skill, navigating the unknown is an ongoing process.

Are you a Cultural Creative?

Cultural Creatives are a rapidly growing subculture in our society. A term coined by sociologist Paul H. Ray and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson to describe a large segment in Western society that is co-creating a new work and life paradigm, it's estimated that there are 50 million adults in the United States and about 80+ million in Europe who have the worldview, values and lifestyle of the Cultural Creatives.

This group reflects the growing trend toward the living a creative - and eco-friendly - life: using more of our creative resources and expression in our every day lives, appreciating creativity and the arts, invention and innovation, interrelatonships, peace and valuing what is good for the whole beyond just "what's in it for me." This list can give you an idea if you are a Cultural Creative. It is from the CC questionnaire.  Choose the statements that you agree with.

You are likely to be a  Cultural Creative if you...

1.  ...love Nature and are deeply concerned about its destruction

2. ...are strongly aware of the problems of the whole planet (global warming, destruction of rainforests, overpopulation, lack of ecological sustainability, exploitation of people in poorer countries) and want to see more action on them, such as limiting economic growth

3.  ...would pay more taxes or pay more for consumer goods if you could know the money would go to clean up the environment and to stop global warming

4.  ...place a great deal of importance on developing and maintaining your relationships

5.  ...place a lot of value on helping other people and bringing out their unique gifts

6.  ...do volunteering for one or more good causes

7.  ...care intensely about both psychological and spiritual development

8.  ...see spirituality or religion as important in your life, but are concerned about the role of the Religious Right in politics

9.  ...want more equality for women at work, and more women leaders in business and politics

10.  ...are concerned about violence and abuse of women and children around the world

11.  ...want our politics and government spending to put more emphasis on children's education and well-being, on rebuilding our neighborhoods and communities, and on creating an ecologically sustainable future

12.  ...are unhappy with both the Left and the Right in politics, and want a to find a new way that is not in the mushy middle

13.  ...tend to be somewhat optimistic about our future, and distrust the cynical and pessimistic view that is given by the media

14.  ...want to be involved in creating a new and better way of life in our country

15.  ...are concerned about what the big corporations are doing in the name of making more profits: downsizing, creating environmental problems, and exploiting poorer countries

16.  ...have your finances and spending under control, and are not concerned about overspending

17.  ...dislike all the emphasis in modern culture on success and "making it," on getting and spending, on wealth and luxury goods

18.  ...like people and places that are exotic and foreign, and like experiencing and learning about other ways of life.