The Fertile Unknown

Creativity Engages Both the Intuitive Mind and the Rational Mind

Michelle James ©2023

Serve, Don’t Sacrifice

 

Michelle James ©2022

2 Questions ot Ponder on Your Soul's Creative Calling

There are no guarantees when we start engaging what we feel what feels most alive in us toward our calling. We can’t know for certain the if and how and when for anything. But as we get deeper into what is ours to do, for who we uniquely are, and stay true to our authentic selves and what brings us alive, those other things eventually start to emerge along the way.

 

We can’t wait until these things are lined up to begin. We can't wait to feel secure or certain. These things show up in the journey, and not always comfortably or predictably, but we can’t know this ahead of time. We are vulnerable when we begin this process. But once we do, and if we stay true to it, we get support our of nowhere that couldn't have been predicted or prescribed.

 

On this International World Creativity and Innovation Day, what if you treat yourself to some generative, creative exploring on these questions (and/or whatever else comes to you), in whatever ways resonate with you. There are always some (or many) people in the world who need what only you can create.

Michelle James ©2022

Happy Giving-Thanks!

In the spirit of this week of Thanksgiving I would like to share three Giving-Thanks practices with you. I know this year has had challenges for most of us in some way or another. My hope it that no matter where you find yourself at this time doing these practices can help create a more aspirational and generative space within you. The first is for what already is. The second is for deepening into the meaning of it. The third is for what can be created.

 

Gratitude Practice 1: 100 Thanks

 

I learned this one over 15 years ago and still do it every year on Thanksgiving day. It's a great way to get into the appreciative space of what what feeds you positively in some way. It's very simple: just write down - preferably in one sitting - 100 things you are grateful for. Just list them off. It can be people, experiences, materials items, events, offerings, types of food, learnings, feelings, where you live, nature's gifts, podcasts, inspiring quotes, states of being, a grocery store, etc - anything that you are thankful for, no matter how large or small.

 

Doing it in one sitting helps us go underneath our everyday conscious thoughts and into finding the gifts "hidden in plain sight." At one point you may feel like you've exhausted your list and be tempted to stop, but if you commit to the full 100 chances are you'll connect with more gifts than you think about in your everyday living. It just requires presence. If you stick around to get to 100, you may find things - some even surprising - that you might not otherwise stop to think about as gifts.

 

Gratitude Practice 2: Grateful Because

 

Take 5-7 of the Gratitudes from the first list and list out the "why" for each one. It helps deepen into the feeling, the purpose, and your appreciation. it helps expand the Appreciative Field, which opens up more feelings of well-being and possibilities thinking - and extracting meaning from some things that were challenging. Finding meaning in something can be like finding the diamond in the rough. Here are a few prompts to play with. As always, make up your own versions.

 

• I am grateful for (a person) because_______

• I am grateful for (a positive experience) because it gave me_______

• I am grateful for (a challenging experience) because I learned_______

• I am grateful for (a thing) because_______

• I am grateful for (a situation) because it helped me_______

• I am grateful for (a book/podcast/class/talk/workshop) because I better understand_______

 

Gratitude Practice 3: Creative Future Gratitude

 

This one starts with doing something to get present and centered first. Whether that's breathing, dancing, meditating, or whatever it is for you, it works best if you find yourself undistracted and fully present. Once you are in a space where you won't be distracted, start imagining it is Thanksgiving week 2022, and you're writing down 3-5 things that happened in the past year (from today on) that that you are happily grateful for.

 

Rather than list them out from your head's habitual thinking (which is quicker and easier, but carries little creative "energetic weight" behind it), take time to immerse yourself in the full sensory, emotional, and energetic experience of each one of those - a luxurious indulging of your creative imagination, not a rushing through.

 

When you write it down, feel the feelings, see the sights, and feel the energy within yourself associated with each one. For example, when you're imagining it, does it feel alive, open, exciting, fun, or expansive within you? If yes to any of those, chances are it carries positive creative potential for you. If it feel heavy or contractive, leave that one off your list for this exercise for now.

 

Stay in the divergent (yes-and, non-evaluative) space even if uncomfortable. During this exercise, if other voices come in saying, "Yeah, but how will I make that happen?" "Yeah, but that's not realistic" or any other "Yes, but" message, let it go. The "game" is a Future Gratitude Imagining for what already happened by Thanksgiving 2022, so just stay with the focus of what happened in this vision - not the how. Play this game with the rule of not following any of the Yes-Butting voices. :-)

 

For example, it might be something like, "I'm grateful that my _______ (course, book, workshop, product, idea, presentation, business, brand, offering, etc) was so successful/alive/worthwhile in that it________" ...then define what that means to YOU (helped others x, brought people together, created x,  allowed me to x, allowed others to x , served the mission of x, made money, helped a cause, solved problems, generated conversations, cultivated creativity, etc).

 

Once you've done that, let it go. Don't worry in that moment about how to make it happen. Pretend it already has and all you are doing is writing out why you are grateful for it happening. When writing them, let yourself feel the real Gratitude energy you'd feel if it already happened. Then let it go. Your creative unconscious now has something to start working with.

 

Then come back to them at another time, and start imagining the how with what you currently know, and let the rest of the how emerge over time as you start engaging the process. If you start engaging with what you do know the next "how" emerges out of the process over time.

 

Happy Giving-Thanks!

 

 

Michelle James © 2021

My New Etsy Art Shop is Live!

I uploaded some of my mandala art to Etsy! I will do an official launch in the fall, and still have more to frame and upload. I will eventually offer prints and paintings, but right now it has the original drawings on there.

www.etsy.com/shop/CreativeEmergenceArt

All of the mandalas on the site now are the originals. They are hand drawn with Prismacolor colored pencils and put onto round black wood frames. 10" wide, and 1/2" thick. They have both hooks and two-sided tape on back for easy hanging.

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

The Creative Source

My short reflection on, and homage to, the Creative Source -                  
the creative, life-giving, mysterious, generative source within
us that gives birth to all things creative and emergent...
filled with new potential, dreams, directions, expressions
and creations (posted originally in 2013):

The Creative Source

Inside us there is a spacious fullness, a coherent wildness...
The kind of power that doesn't always display
its full plumage in grand revelry.
Instead, one of swimming silently-boldy
throughout the ether waves
Creating its own energy currents...
Calling, leading, guiding, emerging.
It is the source, within, of full-on aliveness,
generativity, creativity,
and your pristine uniqueness.

Creative source energy moves and meanders and twists
and turns and spirals into itself through our Selves.
It is spiraling dynamics embodified.
It is hide and seek, the seeker and the sought,
yearning and satiation all at once.
It beckons, but does not beg.
It captivates, yet holds no captives.

It thrives on your realness to reveal its true nature.
It is ever-generous and forgiving.
It mourns and rejoices simultaneously,
as it unites and differentiates...and unites again.

The creative source is
bonding, binding, bounding, boundarying,
unbinding, unwinding, unraveling,
restructuring, reorganizing,
deconstructing, disorganizing,
pattern breaking and new pattern making.

It is both the riddler and the riddle...
The one-eyed gypsy dance of converge and diverge,
where what is isn't, and what isn't is.
(The other eye faces inward).
It leads the inside-out, outside-in dance of creation.

The creative source is at once yin and yang,
gentle and strong,
humble and bold,
nurturing and activating,
behind-the-scenes and front-and-center...
throwing streamers, lighting sparklers
to celebrate your uniqueness.

But it will settle for nothing less.
You must be you.
Stay in your ground and
no one, no thing, no way
can make you less than!

The creative source is mutable, fluid,
stable, hard, soft,
transactional and transformational.
It is honoring, sobering, intoxicating,
lifting, holding, releasing.
It is un-languaging and re-languaging.
First, it asks, break some rules.

The creative source can draw forth
the whirl in a dervish,
the bloom in a passion,
the fruition in a dream,
and the purpose in a soul.

It is serious, but does not take itself seriously.
It comes alive with play and fun and the delightful unexpected.
It gets top billing at the Cosmic Comedy Club:
"Take my life...please."

The creative source is not asking us to be filled,
but rather to feel - and engage - how full we already are.
Here. Now.
It is the inflection point where the past, present,
and future meet and tryst...
and, as if by magic, a new creation is born!

The creative source catalyzes resplendent
deepening, ripening, opening, furthering,
recognizing, rearranging, aha-ing, relationshiping,
connecting, embodying, and aligning.

Birth, death, rebirth-
the spiral unfolds.
Truth bursts forth,
shakes itself off,
and settles in to, ahhh,
its own rightful space.
Higher order has organized
and breathes a sigh of relief.

The creative source is in itself a parallel universe.
It is human and divine,
generous and claiming,
shielding and revealing,
It is large and small,
epic and mundane,
reality and fantasy,
universal and unique,
gathering and fraying,
stillness and cultivation,
mystery and revelation.

It offers us an inner authority,
a knowing, and a beacon
to sustain and inform us
amidst fears and doubts,
hardships and crises...
our own or others.

It is the place within us
where life is ever-seeking and
ever-generating more life...
filled with infinite creative potential
just waiting to be cultivated.
It contains the meticulous balance
of flow and stucture for all of our creations.

Just show up, let it lead.
It will meet you at your dance.
It's game.
It will swing you and dip you,
into your very Self.
It will kick up your heels
yet be there, sturdy and steadfast,
to catch you.
It will meet you in your pain
It will meet you in your joy.
Just show up - fully - from wherever you are.
It wants and needs to partner with us.

The creative source is not the answer,
it contains the question to the Universe,
"Who am I?"
It is a knowing, a wondering,
a paradox, and a circus.
YOU are the main attraction.
Step right up.
The world needs your uniqueness. :-)

The creative source is both speaker and listener--
the hearer and the heard.
It washes through the crevasses
of dried up hope and habit
until it becomes fertile,
alive, breathing potential.
I am. We are.

It allows the unique Being in me
to be with the unique Being in you.
Namaste.

By Michelle James ©2013

The Unknown as an Evolutionary Co-Creative Space

The Creative Unknown: Turning Uncertainty into Discovery

Because it is central to my work, I’m constantly learning and reminded - and in awe of - how what we see as a ”miracle" on one level (i.e., fulfilled intentions in the most unexpected, completely unpredictable ways) is just about partnering the with unknown-yet-to-emerge as a generative, creative resource and letting that be our guide.

I experience it not as "blind faith" in the process but rather faith-from-experience in the natural order of how things are created and emerge...and letting go of outdated, socialized assumptions and ways of being that no longer serve. I'm always looking to more fully inhabit and embody the "emergence lens" (which can be a struggle at times as I bump up against my own inner assumptions that need to be transformed).

But one thing is for sure…is that you can’t discover what you already know - to stay in the discovery process means allowing yourself the spaciousness of being in the unknown. Right now, we are all in a huge unknown. We have a choice to use that for discovery. It is the nature of how things emerge that when you bring intention, heart, and purpose into the unknown, you make discoveries that are often surprising, and always life-giving.

One of the tenets of the creative emergence process is turning uncertainty into discovery. It means you don’t fill up the unknown with something familiar - or avoiding it, relying on others ideas, or numbing it - for security, but allow yourself space and time to discover what is calling to emerge from within your own creative yourself. And something is always calling to emerge if we are present…and listening. Sometimes that means using various whole-brain cultivation “tools” to access it - from drawing it to to journaling it to acting it out in the body and so much more! There are infinite ways to harvest the “fertile unknown” (I’ve seen literally thousands of variations over the past 25 years working with my clients). Different ways work for different people - because we each have out own unique creative style and language.

A place to start is just accepting that you are at the edge of what you know, and you are open to discovering what is there. Just that will start to reduce the fear of the unknown into something you do have choice over - which is engaging your discovery process. Then, stay open to impulses, insights, awareness, and dreams (they contain subconscious information that our conscious minds often do not see) that come to you. Instead of brushing something supposing off, start to connect with it in whatever way speaks to you…through images, words, energy, feelings, etc. - and you’ll deepen the insights.

Discovery turns the unknown for a dark, scary place into a rich, fertile landscape you get to explore. And with enough exploration, something new, clear, and life-giving will eventually emerge. Security comes not from being certain, or in control (which is impossible in volatile times), but from learning to experience the unknown as a creative ally - something that is generous, creative, and there for you. That "bond" strengthens over time as you practice navigating it.

If you’d like additional support in this process, or have questions on how to get started, contact me anytime for a FREE 30-minute discovery session.

Michelle James ©2020

Our Creative Uniqueness informs our Creative Service to the World

We are all needed to create more hospitable, loving, humane world. And, we are not all designed to contribute in the same way. We each have a unique set of gifts, skills, talents, drives, understandings, learnings, and experiences that combine together to create our unique signature offerings/contribution to the world. Whether you work for yourself or someone else, this creative "soul signature" is uniquely yours.

It takes some conscious effort to detach from the belief systems, fears, and judgements (in yourself, and in the world) that no longer serve you, and (re)establish connection to your own "creative source" - the life-generating, source of meaning, purpose, passion, and creativity within you - which contains the unique creative gifts of your soul. We are the ones we've been waiting for, and now is the time we've been waiting for.

For some, that means joining or leading a movement or cause. For others, it means working in the front lines...or creating new systems or structures...or creating in the arts, business, education, technology or science...or in coaching, facilitating, healing, teaching, or serving others...there are as many ways to be of service as there are people who need what you have to give.


Michelle James @2020

Creative Emergence Image Series - Emergent Potential

This  is a prismacolor pencil drawing I did a few year's ago for my Emergence Series, called “Emergent Potential” - the fertile place filled with potential waiting to be created forth. It's the place within us I work most with my coaching clients - tapping into their unique, ripe, creative potential, discovering what is calling to emerge, and cultivating it out. I see myself an emergence "midwife" helping my clients birth their creative calling and offerings out into the world. #creativeemergence


Michelle James ©2020

We Need More than Thinking-Only to Create a More Life-Giving World

When we are in uncertainty, we often first seek to go to the familiar...which is often the  left-brain dominant way of analyzing and making sense of things. I see that all the time in my work. This poster speaks to "Yes Anding" that with additional ways of knowing, intuiting, experiencing, feeling, and being to be able to solve problems, heal, make sense, and create a more generative habitable world.

It is not about the exclusion of critical thinking and analysis, it is about the INCLUSION of other ways of processing as well. Valuing rational-only thinking over feeling, the creative unconscious, and intuition keeps people disconnected. What about rational-AND thinking? We need our whole selves in order to be in connection. We need compassion. We need our creative imaginations. We need space to connect with our inner voice. We're not just talking heads, and emotions have a place in business and life because they contain passion, inspiration, and heart. Much meaningful was created with emotion in times of hardship. This is a reminder in these times, for those who resonate, to value all of your various ways knowing, processing and solution-finding.

Michelle James ©2020

Creative Emergence Image Series - Taking Form

Been getting back into drawing and panting lately after 6 years. In revisiting, I found some prismacolor drawings I made many years ago that I never posted. This one come from an Emergence series...it's called "Taking Form." It's healing to be back into painting, and helps me get more clarity about what's calling to emerge at this time.

I use an inside-out painting process w my coaching clients to help them access their unique creative source to paint concepts and use for transformation as well. Painting or drawing is one way you access otherwise unconscious thoughts, creative blocks, hopes, aspirations, and inner guidance. It also offers a sanctuary to feel your Creative Self within a chaotic world. Breaking patterns leads to new insights and ideas.


Michelle James ©2020

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.

Michelle James ©2020

Creativity: Being Present to the Moment

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