The Fertile Unknown

Whole-Brain Creative Practice: Abstract to Concrete

Abstract to concrete. This is a painting I did on a large mirror a few years ago. The focus was goals for the new year. I first painted the painting (abstract “right brain”) then starting writing out the goals (concrete “left brain”) that came to me. The goals were different, expanded, and more alive after I did the painting than they had been before in my mind. And, ironically, more clear and realistic.

When you access the visual part of your brain, you access more intuitive information less inhibited by your conscious everyday assessing editor (we all have one). By going not the visual first, then the verbal, draw upon a different part of your brain and consciousness, and get more information about what you are seeking to understand or create.

PRACTICE: You can do it with anything. Just think about what you want to create or understand, get present and "hold the question" for a few minutes, then start painting. Then afterward, look at the painting and extract out information by talking out loud about what you see (even to yourself). In doing that, you are engaging more of your brain (left and right brains interaction), and that means greater access to information. What you get will be different - slightly or dramatically - than if you try it with sitting down with your everything thinking and doing it. Try it and see. First do it before the painting. Then see what else comes to you after the painting.

This is one of the whole brain practices I do with my coaching clients around their business and life aspirations...and entering the unknown to get information about the emerging known. the process can also work for moving out of fear, contraction, or feeling frozen, as many are feeling right now. If you’d like more information or clarity on how to do it, contact me anytime for a free, no obligation 30-minute Discovery Session.

Michelle James ©2020

Creativity: Being Present to the Moment

Michelle James ©2020

Thoughts on Creating What's Next while in the Unknown

I run a group on Facebook Applied Creativity Network (open to anyone if you'd like to join) where someone asked, "What's next? How is the world going to be with this coronavirus? How are the remaining people going to relate to each other...social life?"

Kay Ross, a member of that group wrote: "I don't know how it will be. The question is: How do we WANT it to be? What kind of world/life/society do we want to design and create?"

I really resonated with her answer, and "yes-anded" it with some thoughts of my own. Because they're directly related with the work I do with my clients, I thought I would share them here:

Also don't know how it will be. I don't think anyone can know at this time, but we can make choices about what's ours to do now, even in this big unknown. We can discover where what we are inspired to do meets what is needed now, even without knowing the whole picture.

We do have agency and, like Kay Ross said, can ask what we want, and what we can design and create. Our feeling of creative empowerment comes from looking at what we CAN do in any given situation...what calls to us, what inspires us, what we want to do, what needs we can meet, what can we create, and how we can serve the situation, etc.

As far as relating, while challenging now, I imagine people will adapt as they always have to find ways of connecting
- or create them, even within these  unprecedented constraints. I don't think we can know what the will look like...so that means being OK (or at least accepting) being in the unknown for a while - without knowing how it will look - and creating that as we go, like in an improv. And not needing or expecting it to look exactly like it was in the past. It won't be the same. If we can accept that, and not fight it, we're more empowered to create what's next.

I have faith in the creative life force in each of us, and the universal creative life force that animate all of life (why I created my business around that)...so I have faith in humans capacity to find or create ways of staying connected until we can gather again in person, and faith in those who feel called to create new ways of connecting we don't even know of yet. We're seeing that already. That doesn't mean it’s not hard to be these isolated now (or that there is not real suffering, fear, pain, and deep loss in the world right now - there is!), but it is just about switching our focus to what we CAN do within the constraints - looking beyond what is to what we imagine can be, and discovering what is ours to do in the process. That is an emergence process. If everyone did that, I think we’d see a modern creative renaissance during and after this situation.

Sometimes our deepest fears about what will be lost (as well as the reality of what IS being lost) can lead us to create something new to meet those needs. Historically, people have always used their creativity to move beyond even the most challenging situations. That's where I put my trust when in the unknown...in the creative alive spirit in each of us that is infinitely rich with alive potential for creating new ways of engaging. So, while we can’t know what’s next, we can meet the moment and ask what we are called to do or create, and help create what's next.

Michelle James ©2020

Creating Generative Work in a Chaotic World: Doing What's Ours to Do to Move from Helplessness to Helpfulness

Picture from last Sunday's hike at Bearfence Rock Scramble in the Blue Ridge Mountains

Trying to take on the healing of the world is a daunting task, which can leave people feeling hopeless. Focusing instead on on what’s ours to do, in our own life - with our own unique set of gifts, skills, talents, and experiences that no one else can possibly have - to serve the betterment of the world in the unique way we're destined to serve makes our soul’s work accessible, and empowering. And it will help the healing of the world, because embedded in every soul’s calling is always some way to serve that is for the greater good. It’s not limited to the small palette of choices that others put forth for us.

We can create life-giving work outside those lines that serve our hearts and souls and spirits as we serve others. We’re not limited to jumping on pre-existing bandwagons - though we can choose that if we’re called to it. Yes, and…we always have the ability to create our own ways of serving, and they doesn't have to fit neatly into the conventional norms of what it looks like to serve. Creativity is messy, but there can be order in the chaos if we care to delve into the unknown to find it:

1. The first step is to open to that there are options we don’t yet know…and that we can access them from within ourselves. Just opening to that possibility frees us of being beaten down by what is going on outside of ourselves.
2. Next begins the work of connecting with our inner selves, and engaging our Creative Source (the life-generating-life, love-generating-love creative energy within each of us), exploring and creating with it until we can move past limiting belief systems and outdated stories of what we can do, and into a deeper reservoir of potential and possibility. As unconscious stories of helplessness become conscious, we can change them to new stories of helpfulness.
   
3. Then is the ongoing the creative cultivation of the creative impulse and what we've discovered out into the world - turning it into a set of guiding principles, applicable ideas, life-giving stories and manifestos, approaches, services, and products - whether we work for ourselves or for others. We all have generative ways to contribute.

We can stay in a fight-flight-freeze reactive mode to the world’s harshness...or we can acknowledge it, and choose a proactive, procreative stance in the face of it…and choose to discover and uncover what's ours to do anyway, even in the external chaos, to serve and steward our own little corner of the world (humans, animals, the earth) in the ways we can - creating a healthier new operating system from new paradigm aspirational energy instead of reacting only from the outdated familiar one.

If enough of us do our part in cultivating and doing soul/heart/aliveness/creativity-centered work in our own corner of the world (whether it's locally, nationally, or globally; with individuals, group, organizations, or communities; with people, structures, or systems; high tech or low tech; for profit or not for profit), and level up into a new aspirational story, it can't help but impact the good of the whole.
#my2cents #newparadigmwork #creativeemergence

Michelle James ©2020

Taking Back our Creative Power

Taking back our creative power starts with owning the choices we make…not waiting for other people’s choices or situations to give us permission to move forward…and not using other people or situations as an excuse to not follow our own inner call. It means following our aliveness, not our fears - moving through the fears as they emerge…taking time to discover what’s ours to create…and then cultivating it over time, like a garden - watering what we want to grow, and weeding out what’s no longer healthy…using our time and energy toward what we want and feel called to create.

Now is always the right time to begin - from exactly who and where you are. Many people use their creative energy toward fixing a problem to get back to the static status quo…choosing what feels comfortable and known to what feels most alive and engaged the unknown. In creative emergence immersion, we focus on moving beyond our familiar static status quo to create our dynamic life-giving what’s next. It’s messier, and sometimes less comfortable, because it means bushwhacking through the jungle of our own unknown - our yet-to-be-cultivated creative territory. But it’s alive, and vibrant, and offers the unique creative life expression that only you can give.

In that, there are explorations to be had, insights and ideas to incubate, creativity to cultivate, priorities to align with, choices to make, and boundaries to set. Sometimes its easy, sometimes not. Sometimes its fun, sometimes not. At times there is natural resistance in the process. But it is alive, it is uniquely yours, it’s full-on engaging, and it serves the greater good in some way. That’s organically built in to holistically generative work.

Taking back our deeply sourced creative power is a choice we can make at any time without even knowing how to do it. The HOW unfolds over time as we engage the creative process. #creativecultivation #creativeemergencecoaching

Story-hopping: Meaning Making is a Creative Act

Making meaning is a creative act. It takes us out of the static, binary thinking of good-bad/right-wrong/pass-fail and brings us into an upward dynamic growth spiral of more possibilities. It allows us to break old patterns and create new ones. Whatever we can find meaning in transforms it. Meaning making something we can do any time with conscious intention and attention...and it in turn creates a flowing, yet focused, channel for more purposeful creativity to emerge.

One of many ways to make meaning is through storytelling...telling a story of something (an event, a person, a vision, an object, a process, a situation... anything! - past, present, or future) can help extract the meaning from or about it. Then you can apply that meaning to your life, work, and business offerings...you can use it for deeper understanding, for releasing something that no longer works, for stepping up to something new to create...

And we can use it to move and level-up from one story context to another...Story-hopping to the next level. I.e., transforming what could seem like a victim story at one level into an empowerment story at the next level can happen by looking at it through a new, different, and more expansive context than we were seeing it.

When we combine storytelling with up-leveling - hopping into a larger, more generative framework from which to view the story (and create new parts to it) - the meaning we extract from it changes. It can transform the story we have held from being a creative energy drainer to a next-level creativity generator...among so many other possibilities.

Our creative source and imagination can create, or re-create at a new level, any situation or belief to better serve what is calling to emerge in our work and lives. We just need to play with engaging it, exploring, and experiementing until we land in the new stories, and the meaning, that feel alive and right for us. What stories about your work, or other areas of your life are you ready to release? Transform? Reframe? Hop into at a new level?

Michelle James ©2020

Staying True to What's Yours to Do

Michelle James ©2020

Facilitating Creative Process: Preparing Yourself before the Workshop

Athletes warm up.Improv/theater/dance/performance groups warm up. Warm-ups clear your head and get you out of habitual thinking, bring you into the present - where you can access more novel thinking, be more responcive and adaptive, and get people more genuinely connected. The time spent warming up is made up exponentially by the effectiveness of the subsequent creative process you can facilitate, and increase the chances of something new and different emerging within you and your participants.

For those of us that facilitate creative process for others there is much we can do to shift our energy to be able to meet what emerges in that person or group with the presence and creative openness of Beginner Mind. Some people use inward-focused prep rituals like meditating, centering, breathing, creative visualization, intention setting, centering music to get centered and grounded. Others do more outward-focused prep rituals like dancing, moving non-habitually, wild music, vocal/ theater/improv type activities to get energized and expansive. (I like doing a bit of both - inward first, then outward). Playing around with different ones, familiar and unfamiliar, help us expand our own creativity as we support others in cultivating theirs. Our own energy makes a difference for those we facilitate.


Michelle James©2020

Emergence Space in the Creative Process

 #newideas #newchoices #newcreations #creativeemergencecoaching #mylatestposter

                                                                   ©Michelle James

Boundaries in Creative Process

In a creative emergence process, following the creative YES means also discovering the NOs that need to be released or transformed. Whenever we say YES to what's emerging, we often are being called to expand into being more of what we are - more into our wholeness - in order to live into and be able to fully create what's calling to emerge. In that, we may need to let go of the things, and/or how we navigate, that no longer serve us - taking stock of what needs to be let go of, modified, or kept for the new emergence (process, product, service, business, way of being, etc) to come into being. #creativeprocess #creativeemergence #creativeboundaires

Michelle James ©2019

Creativity Comes to Life Where the Known Meets the Unknown

No matter what challenges we face, or what our current circumstances, we can meet them with discovery and empathy (and kindness for self and others), and become more empowered as creators. By acknowledging our feelings and fears, and opening up to allow for new ways of approaching old and new situations, and then doing the work, we start to gain inner creative ownership and empowerment.

Once we feel that and own it, we meet up with future situations and challenges differently than we had in the past. It just needs us leaving the comfort of our known - with compassion for ourselves as we muddle through - and playing with new possibilities...exploring what emerges in real time...not rushing it to fit into what we already know, but staying open to expand into what we're discovering as it unfolds. Live in the questions for a while...
#creativeemergence #empoweredcreating

Michelle James ©2019

Yes-And is How Nature Creates

I love Improv's Yes-And principle because it's how nature organically creates...one thing building on another to create something new. It's nature's creative emergence. We just need to unlearn everything that got in the way of us being easy improvisational creators and co-creators before we were "trained" into the pass-fail/right-wrong systems that stripped away a good bit of our natural co-creative playfulness, exploration, and ways of being. When we Yes-And, we have nature on our side.
#creativeemergence #yesand #creatingwhatsnext

Michelle James ©2019

Storytelling for a more Meaningful Past and Generative Future

Telling our stories, instead of only listing out events, changes how we view and experience our past (giving more meaning and understanding), and how we create what's next (giving us more possibilities). In addition to doing vision boards, writing out goals, and whatever else we do, we can think about and start to tell our emergent story, without even knowing the how's of creating it. When we start to tell the story of what's calling to emerge, we see and feel the future differently, and it becomes more tangible, and easier to live into. The juicier the story, the more alive, palpable, and accessible it becomes. 

Michelle James ©2019

Creativity is Messy

So often in our emergence process, what emerges does not fit neatly into our pre-conceived expectations. That's because the creative unconscious - the which is below the surface - contains more wisdom and information and creativity than that which is consciously known to us at any given time. So what emerges can be surprising, disjointed, nonsensical, seemingly ridiculous, or messy as it is emerges.

But don't discard it just because it's not what you thought, or hoped, it would be, or should be. Engage it, play with it, learn from it, and cultivate it out until it starts to look like something. Instead of needing it to fit our vision, we're often called to expand who we are and how we think in order to be with the new emergence.

It can be messy and scary, but it is always more life-giving and generative - and more coherent when it is done emerging - than what we originally imagined, if we let it lead us and don't cut it off because it is not exactly what we planned. If we follow what's emerging, we start to make sense of it as we go, and often find it's something that that includes out original vision or idea, and far exceeds it.


#creativeemergence #creativeintelligence #creativityismessy

©2019 Michelle James

Beyond Problems with Creative Aliveness

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

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

©Michelle James 2019

 

Creative Discoveries for Inner Authority

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

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

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

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

©2019 Michelle James

Yes And is a Doorway to Creative New Worlds

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

©2019 Michelle James

Emergence Focus

Emergence is a process found throughout the natural world where the new whole emerges as greater than the sum of its parts. In improv theory, there is the concept of "Yes And" which accepts and includes that which already is, and add then adds something new. Using an Emergence-centered approach in the workplace includes the acknowledgment of problems and the need to focus on desired outcomes...AND expands beyond that to include new ways of approaching the situation, generating new patterns of solution-finding, immersion in the discovery process, as well as engaging that which is not yet known as a source of new information. Our unique Creative Emergence Process™ includes various whole brain and creativity approaches to cultivate the new ideas, thought patterns, and states of being which lead to new (and often surprising) innovations and outcomes. Emergence accepts and uses what already is - and adds a new dimension.

Characteristics of Creative Organizations

Michelle James@2019

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.

 

--------------------------

 

10 Quick Creative Emergence Coaching Reminders

 

1. Your inner Creative Source 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