The Fertile Unknown

Creating from Uncertainty: 11 Reminders

The more uncertain the outside world,
or my own  world, the more I attempt to
lean into certain ways of being and
working to help get me through. I'll
share some here as reminders, in case
they can be helpful to anyone
having a hard time with ongoing

uncertainty. Not all things work
for all people or situations, so take
whatever is useful and leave the rest.

1. Remain directed, present to your larger purpose (your own Why), even if it has to be expressed differently than it has been in the past. A strong Why is like a tree trunk - the center - and the branches are the various forms of its expression. Some will bear fruit.
2. Create from what's in front you right now, adapting as you go (like in an improv), allowing that you don't have all of the picture. When in doubt, do what is just in front of you, one step at a time until more clarity or information emerges.
3. Say ‘yes’ to, and act on, what feels most alive and vital day by day - and say ‘no’ to what does not - as you can - claiming your own healthy boundaries.
4. Pay attention to emerging patterns in your field, as well as outside of it, and adapt what you do to new information and advances as they emerge.
5. Accept the changes - constraints - that may not be so welcome, and don't spend a lot of time begrudging them. Instead, do what you can to create from within those constraints. Much novel creativity has emerged form unwelcome constraints.
6. Engage supportive people on or offline. Being able to share your creative ideas with a trusted friend or colleague reduces stress and enhances creativity. Having trusted people with whom to bounce ideas around can keep you going at times of self doubt. Or work with therapists, healers, coaches, bodyworkers, fitness trainers - whatever you need for your mental and physical well-being. You don't have to go it alone.
7. Practice the art of Reframing. Reframing how you perceive something, and how you hold it conceptually and energetically in your mind and body, can make a huge difference in how you move through it. I.e., Instead of seeing a constraint as a block, you can see it is an invitation to discover something new - that can reduce judgement and open new possibilities. Instead of seeing a situation as an either/or, you can hold it as a both/and - that can open new ways of engaging it. Instead of thinking there's the one right way or solution, you can assume there are multiple paths that work - and that can change how you approach it.
8. Use the time to get clarity about what you can get clear on and influence, and focus on working and designing more from there. It helps you feel more empowered when you have a sense of what you can influence in your world, and act on it.
9. Let the process be messy. Creativity is messy. Exploring and experimenting can be messy - ask any artist or scientist. Allowing time in the messiness of divergent space, indulging in the exploration time, can be a juicy time of discovery if you let it. Give yourself time and space to play with things that might not work out exactly as hoped, and play some more until you start to see new patterns emerging.
10. Create mini-aspirational stories to live into. It's helpful when we have a motivational story to aspire to. They serve as beacons to keep us in the direction of our passions, structured and expressed. In times of immense rapid change that story is likely to need edits. We can create smaller mini-stories, editing them in real time as we go to get more insights and ideas. Create the next chapter of your vision as you go, instead of going for the whole book.
11. Get in your body. I do this every day for my own sanity. Try adding body-centered practices that ground and energize you to your daily practices. When we are more fully in our bodies, and more flexible, we're more present and resourceful. For an abundance of ideas on that, check out the free online Somatic Expeditions event stating later this week - chock-ful of somatic practices to help you stay centered, vibrant, and creative in this wild world.

 

In times like these, I think in terms of “entry points” – what I know now and what is next. And then let that "next" inform the following "next." Emergence works uncertainty: we can know the direction, but not all of the details. They shift and change over time. The unexpected happens. Evolving technologies and social systems, and our own internal drives, inform and expand our vision along the way. There are ways of doing and being that can support that process to make it more live-able and generative for us.

 

The 11 ideas are what came to mind today as I wrote this. What other mindsets, reframes, and practices would be helpful to you? Start mindmapping them, or writing them out in your journal - whatever works for you - and see what else emerges.

 

Creative energy is the most transformative energy there is – it has the power to change all situations - history has shown us that. It's not always easy, but it is always possible. Your infinitely creative, resourceful Self has got this!

Michelle James©2021

Image credit: Dave Bayliss

NEW Creative Body Workshop! September 9th

NEW Creative Body Workshop on 9/9! 10-12 EST on Zoom.
https://www.creativeemergence.com/creativebody/

Many of us are sitting in Zoom calls, or at our desks, for much of the day. It can be energy draining, and we can lose touch with our creative flow. I take frequent "pattern breaks" to get in my body in energizing and enjoyable ways to be able to stay "on" with the work I do. When I take the time to move differently, it opens up my more of my creative energy, focus, and resourcefulness. I do body-centered practices every day to keep me present, engaged, and co-creating with my clients. It's been a life-saver for me doing all my work online these days, and I would love to share some of the practices for you to do yourselves or with those you coach or facilitate.

 

Your body is an amazing creative resource. It has it own creative intelligence. Using your body in ways aligned with this natural intelligence increases adaptability, creativity, and resilience. When you move and embody in new ways, new perspectives and thinking emerge. Breaking patterns of movement and opening to new ones create space for novel ideas and insights.

 

This highly interactive workshop integrates different interrelated body-centered modalities that work together toward a cohesive whole. The convergence of somatic philosophy and techniques with other creative practices help you experience a deepened awareness of, and connection to, your body intelligence and unique creative expression. We explore and experience using our bodies to overcome blocks to creativity, create new visions and solve problems, feel more empowered, generate feelings of aliveness, hopefulness, and more ease of movement, and more.

For more information or to register, go to: https://www.creativeemergence.com/creativebody/

Cultivating Creative Energy Using Your Body

It is hard to generate creative flow when you
are in a contractive state. While contraction
is part of any creative birth process,
staying in that place too long becomes an energy block - it prevents the creative energy from flowing more freely. Divergence in creative process needs the open energy of expansion. When we are in expansion energy state, we think, act, perceive, respond, and create differently than when we are in a contractive (more closed) energy state.

So how do we get into a creative energy state when those around us may not be not there? There are infinite ways to engage our creativity, thankfully, but I’ll talk about a couple that involve the body. My next public online workshop is The Creative Body workshop, where we will explore many ways to engage the body creatively. We don’t need to wait for others to change our internal states - we can start anytime.

Creative Ways to Get the Creative Juices Flowing Using Your Body

Here are a couple of the many ways I play with moving energy based on my own ways of creating, and what I need that day. Try the ones that resonate for you. And definitely try modifying these in real time - as you are doing them - to get into Discovery to make your own. You may need tweaks to get them to resonate for you. We’re never limited to anyone else’s way of doing anything. :-)

Dancing the Creative Alive Energy in

Movement. Loosen up your body. Have fun in your body. Play with the non-habitual. When I start moving my body differently, my entire mood and energy shifts. I do this before every session I facilitate, and most days in some form. One way to do this is play upbeat songs you love and dance around the room as you breath our tension and old energy. I like to play songs that are silly and fun to uplift my mood, so I literally have a playlist list called “Goofy Playlist.” These are songs that help me not take myself or anything so seriously so they help me move to a different energy state. They are not necessarily songs I listen to on a daily basis - though sometimes I do that. I just know that that when I am having more fun in my body, I feel more alive, expansive, and it is easier for me to be present and creative.

Moving Non-habitually Break Patterns

I also like to move in non habitual ways - trying new moves every time I dance - to be in that “Improv” discovery state, which always feels move alive( not to mention scientists show that creating new moves creates new neural pathways in our brain). I literally do this every day. Whether I am dancing or just sitting at my desk, I play around with all kind of ways to move my body non-habitually (new for me), whih help me feel more alive, present, and awake (especially when on long Zoom days) The key is to play with it, judgement free - let it be off-the-wall and nonsensical to you. It’s abbot breaking patterns in your body movements to help break patterns in your thinking. Do what you can form where you are. If you have some physical limitations, just start small with whatever you can move. (I am not a medical practitioner so please don’t do anything against the advice of one).

Letting the Energy Move your Body - Following and Inhabiting the Energy

The mind is an amazing resource. Even if we don’t feel something at a given time, we can shift our state by putting attention on it and calling it in. Intention leads to attention. Energy follows attention. So if we intend to feel an energy, we can call it in an engage with it, we can actually start to feel it move through us. This one may takes a few times to get used to because, like with meditation, it takes time sometimes to feel the energy, and woks best when we are not distracted. Some people can access this immediately, others practice to get the energies flowing. But if you do practice it, you will be able to state-change by calling in an energy.

For example, if you intend to feel more aliveness energy, you can call it in, and start bringing your sense to it. Ask, “What does aliveness look like? (You can draw it in the abstract or just imagine it) What does it sound like? What does feel like? What does it move like? And start moving form it. As you do it, you may hear the inner voices of judgement (about yourself or about the activity itself), but keep going. Let them be there, but keep bringing your attention to the energy and the full-on experience of it as best you can. Sometimes it takes a few times before you feel anything - other times you feel it right away. The invitation is to try it…to play with it until you feel it and embody the state change.

Create a Judgment-free Zone

Remember to suspend all judgement as you play with these. Be kind to the part of you that forgot what is was like to move and play freely in your body. And to go beyond my descriptions into discovering your own “yes-ands” to this as you go. When we allow our bodies to explore without judging them, they can take us to creative places and more vibrancy. Feel free to email me and let me know what you discover.

–––––––
We’ll do a deeper dive into these and many other ways of engaging your body to bringing in more creativity, aliveness, presence, and flow in my next Creative Body Workshop on September 9.  There we'll do a deeper exploratory dive into Somatic Intelligence and it's connection creative thinking, being, and moving...and using your body as a creative resource.  If you are interested to learn more, click here or contact me directly.

Michelle James ©2021

Synchro-tunity: A Creative Inflection Point

Synchro-tunity is where synchronicity (unpredictable events that are somehow seemingly connected) meets opportunity (new possibilities opening up.) This inflection point is a place from which we can create what’s next. When we pay attention to what’s emerging, and we’ve prepared ourselves for the current moment, then we can recognize and step into new possibilities that were previously unavailable for us.

It's about setting intention, preparing ourselves, paying attention to signals from a variety of places and sources,and taking ripe (timely) actions on those. #applieddiscovery

Valuing Intuition in the Creative Process

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift
and the rational mind is a faithful servant.
We have created a society that honors
the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

― Albert Einstein

We've been generally educated and socialized to see reality/create/act from only the rational mind - from only what we currently see or consciuosly know (and it times of challenge, when people contract, that becomes louder). But the intuitive mind allows us feel into/see into/have knowings into that which goes beyond what we currently know, have evidence for, or can be proven - in our own lives and in society.

 

The intuitive mind allows us to leave the confines of "space-time" and go into the world of our yet-untapped possibilities - our emerging-future selves - and bring the knowledge it carries back into the present. It allows us to access more and varied ways of knowing and imagining - from much more deeply in our creative unconscious - and it bypasses the conscious editor, who carries a lot of limited stories and assumptions about who we are, who others are, why we are here, what's ours to do, etc.

The intuitive "right brain" information we get is direct and immediate, and sometimes abstract (colors, feelings, shapes, a-has, awareness', knowings, glimpses, words, energies, sounds, surprising connections, etc) - and it's the job of that rational mind to unpack it - to mine its riches - for next-level information...and often transformation. The rational mind is supposed to carry out the insights of the intuitive mind, not block it, keep it down, discredit it, and treat is as "woo-woo" like is done on most of our current systems.

So if you get an idea or intuitive feeling out of "space-time" (something that does not fit into your current knowledge or information system, or may not make complete sense to your current self), don't be quick to discard it just because it's unfamiliar, incomplete, or disjointed. Honor it, and bring the rational mind on board to explore and engage it, and see what it has to tell you.

Creative Emergence is all about that future what's next showing itself into the present...where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and can not be predicted by what the rational mind knows alone, since there is no existing evidence yet for what the emerging future carries - outside of the hints from the intuitive mind. And connect them with the rational mind. That's the "Both-And" sweet spot of next-level creative thinking and being...and the sweet spot of cultivating our sacred calling in the world. For that, intuition is the sacred gift indeed. When we value it, we can experience the creatively unique ways it wants to engage with us.

Michelle James ©2020

Life as Improv: Opportunity for Creative Discovery as We Go

Creativity for Staying Grounded in Uncertainty and the Unknown

In times of huge unknowns, with much we have no control over, one of the things that lightens the intensity is creatively focusing on the things we CAN control...like getting out in nature, creative arts and crafts, drawing, painting, moving our bodies to music we like, watching funny videos or comedy specials, meditating, journaling, cooking, playing games, online improv, designing business offerings, or anything we like doing that we're able to do that lightens us up. That will be different for everyone, but we do have agency and at least some things we can choose into and control in the midst of uncertainty.

While that may not change what's happening outside of us in the world, it can help shift our energy and internal state to feel more solid, grounded and centered within it, especially in periods of long-time unknowns. Instead of just waiting for the unknown to pass, we can use it to focusing on what we CAN control and create that is alive for us helps to better be with the things we can't control, or being with long time unknowns. We can change our energy and our way of being with it.

 

Michelle James ©2020

The Pregnant Creative Moment

Michelle James©2020

2 FREE Juicy Creative Aspirational Online Events in September!

Creativity, Frameworks, and New Possibilities: Two FREE Online Aspirational Events this Month Exploring a Generative "What's Next"

I'm delighted to be one of the speakers in both these online events focused on a more hopeful, positive, creative future! With the world as it is, we can all use some inspiration, hope, support, and aspirational explorations and visions of what can be possible - along with applicable practices you can start right away. We all contain the seeds of creative change we've been looking for to birth healthier new foundations...and we all need each other.   The Magnificent New Normal Speaker Series September 14 - October 24   How do we want to respond to the calling of our collective future? This series is an exploration in making generative, impactful choices for yourself and others.   With one interview/day for 40 days, this series offers daily infusions of hope, wisdom & opportunity to inspire transformation and propel civilization forward in this new, emerging reality. Forced out of familiar patterns, we have the chance to make creative new choices for moving forward. This series engages creative visions, principles, and hand-on practices for a generative, creative, hopeful post-pandemic civilization.   A diverse array of other speakers include Dr. Bruce Lipton, Matthew Fox, Lynne McTaggert, the singer Jewel, Lynne Twist, Alberto Villodo and many others, each coming from a different lens and framework. Magnificent New Normal FREE Registration     Creativity and Culture Online Conference September 19   This conference is designed to provide a creative space for stimulating conversations between academics, educators and entrepreneurs with a deep interest in developing a creative economy, and more creative, generative, prosperous future. This year's themes are Presence, Emergence and Impact.   Following the conference, there will be an opportunity to remain in contact with the speakers and other conference attendees through monthly online follow up sessions to continue creative conversations which may lead to collaborative projects and creative business opportunities.   An international group of other speakers include Frijof Capra, Terry Tillman, Talmud Bah, Susan Sharp, Paul Z Jackson, Siddarth Agarwal, and Linda Naiman among many others. Creative Culture FREE Registration

The Unknown as an Evolutionary Co-Creative Space

NEW Program! Creating with Purpose: New Foundations for Creating and Producing What's Next in an Uncertain World

9-week Immersion Program! 

CREATING WITH PURPOSE:
New Foundations for

Creating and Producing
What's Next in an

Uncertain World Using

Whole-Brain,
Whole-Self Creativity

9-Week Immersion Deep-dive into Creating from the Inside-Out With Meaning, Purpose, and Heart for Tangible, Applicable Outcomes to Meet the Needs of Today's World - and Your Own!

Discover, Design, and Develop What’s Next in Your Work or Life 

Where Purpose, Creativity, Your Uniqueness, and Tangible Outcomes Meet

People with a strong sense of purpose find opportunities others miss. The internal sense of purpose and meaning anchors and grounds us to better weather the external storms. When we discover and feel connected to what is ours to do - what we are uniquely designed to offer - it acts like a compass in a volatile storm or uncertain fog. It then becomes not certainty that gives us security, but meaning. In these times, many people are feeling called to take positive action. This program focuses on strengthening your inner compass, being intentionally directed, and producing something tangible from it (even if you have no idea what that will be when we start).

New Foundations: Using Transformational Creative Principles, Frameworks, and Practices

In this workshop, we will explore and experience some of the foundations - constructs, frameworks, ways of being, and principles - that establish the conditions for purposeful creativity to emerge. We'll use creative whole-brain, whole-being-engagement approaches, and actualize our unique Inner Creator, to craft and carry out what we're called to create and contribute. This is not about just knowing it cognitively, but embodying the ways of thinking and being to draw it out into the world.

 

Use the Creative Resources within you to Create New Directions,
Offerings, Projects, Products, Services, Workshops, Programs,
or Thought Leadership in your Work, Cause, or Mission

Who is this for?

Entrepreneurs, leaders, educators, coaches, consultants, change-makers, healers, creators, pioneers, social transformers, and anyone who wants to contribute and create a more life-giving what's next for themselves and others. This is an intensive immersion program. It is for those who are truly committed to themselves and their process, and to showing up for each other in a safe, supportive space.

 

Why?

•  You want to purposefully create what's next in your work/mission
•  You were clear before, but now feel a little like a deer in the headlights
•  You have a sense about what you'd like to do, but need it further fleshed out

•  You want to do something that matters to you and serves others

•  You know what you want to do, but feel inner "blocks" or fears around it
•  You want to develop your signature process and offerings
•  You have a sense of purpose, but not sure how to move forward with it
•  You want to carry out your work/mission in a way that fits who YOU are

•  You want to bring more of your hopeful energy amidst the chaos
•  You want to actualize your unique creativity in your work/calling/mission
•  You want to find a peaceful inner creative sanctuary within you
•  You want to move beyond self-imposed limitations about what’s possible
•  You're seeking what is yours to do here, now, and in what's next
•  You want to move forward authentically and with confidence
•  You want to cultivate and apply your gifts, skills, talents and experiences toward something purposeful

How? The Exploration and Experience

It's so important to take care of and ground yourself - taking "your own oxygen" as you discover your ways to support and contribute to others to come from a centered place. This deep-dive program focuses on both your inner landscape (being) and your external expression (doing). It contains a balance of left and right brain activities, crafting and emerging, thinking and being, reflection and action, and structure and flow, and mind/body/heart/soul creativity. We’ll use the Creative Emergence Process with an integration of storytelling, improv, the arts, imagination, movement, body-centered practices, reflection tools, ritual, depth psychology/archetypes/mythology, systems thinking, and structured creative solution finding approaches. By working on releasing what no longer serves, creating new foundations, and expanding what is most generative, the external expression of our work changes.

Leave with:

The next evolution of your work or personal project, approach, product, service, process, offering, program, concept, or model; a sense of purposefulness and meaningful contribution; a self-designed structure for applying your unique gifts, skills, experiences and talents toward something that inspires you; and practices to use beyond the workshop setting to stay in your creative flow.

 

Includes:

• Five 3-hour virtual interactive workshops with the group, each building on the one before.
  (there are super engaging, creative, and interactive - not lecture format - we will take 2 short breaks)
• One 90-minute personal Creative Emergence coaching session
• A course materials and resources list (for various creative projects we'll do)

• Engaging whole-brain and somatic assignments and practices to do in between workshops
• Ongoing support throughout the program

• Bonus 2-hour Follow-up Integration Session

Schedule

When: 5 Fridays, over the course of 9 weeks – 1:00pm to 4:00pm EDT (10:00-1:00 PST). 8/28, 9/11, 10/2, 10/16, 10/30. Individual coaching sessions will be done in the break between the 2nd and 3rd workshops  If you have to miss a workshop, we'll do a personal Zoom call to catch you up. Bonus 2-hour Follow-up Integration session 3 weeks after the course is completed to further integrate the learnings. 

For the Program Structure, Registration, and more information go to:

http://www.creativeemergence.com/creatingwithpurpose.html

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

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

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

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

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

The Transformative Power of Applied Improvisation

Improvisational theater changed my life. I truly believe it should be taught in every school - from elementary to higher education. The transformation I have experienced in my life and work, as well as seeing it with countless others over the years, is huge. It helped me reach a new level of freedom, comfort, and ease with facilitating (and navigating the resistance that emerges when introducing non-conventional creative approaches), and helped me changed my relationship with mistakes.

Instead of fearing mistakes - and sometimes freezing to act because that fear was so great - I learned to more often experience them as discoveries, iterations toward what will eventually work, and invitations to create something new. And I have seen powerful changes in groups - from government to for corporate to non-profit to arts-based - where they leave changed inside of themselves, and within their team interactions when they re-ignite the creative spirit already within and between them. Improvising and the tenants of improv (principles of engagement) are inherent in us - it's what was there before we got socialized, educated, judged, or traumatized out of our natural improvisational, yes-anding, exploratory natures and into pass-fail, right/wrong binary thinking. We actually have nature on our side when we improvise - and when we apply the improvisation principles and practices to our work.

Improv theater and Applied Improv (when the goal is not only performance but applications to other areas of life and work) gets us out of our evaluation-first minds and into the presence, spaciousness, and creativity (divergence) of the moment, where more options and choices open us (before we get into convergence). Because we're trained out of our playful exploratory natures, and the ways our workplaces are set up - away from the part of ourselves that trusts the unknown, likes discovery, feels free in not having everything planned out, and can hear and trust the inner voice - many of us have forgotten we are improvisational by nature...or we have limited it to only small siloed sections of our lives.

If you have a chance, give your Creative Self the gift of taking an improv class in your city. Not only is it fun (if at times uncomfortable for some at first), it can change how you move through the world. If you lead others, it can change the quality of creative output you get out of your teams. There is an Applied Improvisation Network facebook group if the topic of of interest - https://www.facebook.com/groups/appliedimprov - where there are a lot of generous people exchanging ideas and offering support.                                                                                                                                                                           

Michelle James ©2019

Applied Improv: Integration of the Contraries

Michelle James ©2019

New Ways of Being for Creative New Results

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

Not to mention being more whole in ourselves!

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-habitual movement, and any kind of pattern breaking techniques are great ways to begin to engage new ways of being. 

Michelle James ©2019

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.

Applied Improvisation and Power Dynamics

Michelle James ©2019

Creativity's Dynamic Balance

Michelle James @2019

From Conventional to Creative Leadership

Henri Fayol was a French management theorist whose theories in management and organization of labor were widely influential in the beginning of 20th century. He was known for his 14 Principles of Management and 5 Elements of Action (referenced in left side of the graphic). They represent a paradigm that's still prevalent - yet not fully effective - in most organizations today. There's little room for creativity, individuality, meaning, and purpose amidst these ways of being. In that mechanistic model, the internal state - and creative contribution - of the people in the system can't fully flourish. The new, integrative, creative paradigm of leadership acknowledges and includes these elements AND recognizes them as incomplete - a useful as part of the whole, but not the driver.

The emerging paradigm is more BOTH/AND. I created this graphic to add balanced counterparts to the conventional elements. #my2cents. Together, these seemingly contradictory parts establish an environment for positive change and creativity to emerge. The dance of opposites - and what is in between, and emerges from, the polarities - expands the playing field for creative systems (which are living, human systems) to have more possibilities of flourishing.

Michelle James ©2019

Creative Thinking: From OR to AND

Michelle James ©2019

Choosing Aliveness Over Habit

Michelle James @2019