The Fertile Unknown

Creative Emergence in Uncertain Times: Getting Back to Core Principles

Where there are layers of unknowns, core principles offer a port in a sea of foggy unknowns, and provide ways forward - foundations to build on, and create from. The following are just a few reminders, in no particular order. I'm sharing 7 (of many more) here today as considerations and reflections - not as prescriptions.
 
A Few Core Creative Principles
 
• Creative emergence is an evolving dance of expansion and contraction. In contraction, it is hard to see that next expansion, but just having the understanding that a contraction is a temporary state helps us better move within it. Nothing is static, and everything is in dynamic flux. Current versions of our stories often give way to generative emergent versions as we are present to them.
 
• There is always more than one right way. In any creative emergence process, it is not about one right answer, but uncovering what is possible in a sea of potential options. Binary thinking leaves out nuance, and nuanced thinking leads to more possibilities. To open the creative field is to go beyond just one or two ways of imagining something.
 
• Creativity thrives with purposeful actions. Challenging times can get us thinking about what matters most to us, and what we can do that is in alignment with what matters. When we align our creativity to a sense of purpose, we unfold a different quality of workable ideas than when we create from what we want to avoid. Brain research backs this up. We get more of what we reinforce. Purposeful actions relax our nervous systems by moving us from feeling helpless to serving. Paradoxically, we can use a sense of purpose to inspire actions, and we can also take actions to discover more of our purpose. It is not necessarily linear.
 
• Being informed from within. Our creative unconscious has more awareness than our conscious minds at any given time, and we can learn to access it and use it to help guide our decisions and creativity. We can use our inner creative selves to break “reaction patterns” (from our default zone) and turn them into new “creation patterns” (from our creative zone). So often in a creative emergent process, what emerges doesn’t fit neatly into our preconceived expectations. The creative unconscious, below the surface of our conscious awareness, contains more wisdom and creativity than that which is consciously known to us at any given time.
 
• Primary experience leads to creative empowerment. In discovery mode, we feel more free to go off script, to break our patterns. There is a certain type of empowerment that comes from knowing through discovery. Creative empowerment can't be fully experienced through "left brain" analytical thinking alone. Primary experiences goes beyond data (but includes it) into stories, and whole-brain/whole-body/whole-self engagement. The more of ourselves we can access and experience, the more empowered we feel making choices amidst the noise of the world about what we might want to create, and how.
 
• New metaphors and language replace the old. Using life-giving new metaphors allows us to conceive of situations and problems differently. Our language can keep up locked in our same everyday reality and thinking that created the problems in the first place. In an emergence process, using generative language can liberate our thinking, overcome blocks, assumptions, and connect our creative unconscious with our conscious mind.
 
• Generative questions inspire generative ideas. Generative questions are open ended, and are ones where we do not already have the complete answer. Asking "What's mine to do - no more no less - to serve this situation?" (see next section) is one example of a generative question. That question, if seriously asked and truthfully answered, narrows the field of all things possible into that which is most relevant at the given time for the particular circumstance. By asking any kind of generative question, and staying present to our insights and impulses that arise in us over time, we start to see options open up.
 
Principle-based navigating allows us to expand our stories beyond any one concept or story, and find a new place for ourselves within them. In any creative emergence, something new emerges in some way.

Facilitating Creative Process: What's Underneath How Your Show Up

Creative facilitation means tending to our creative self.  
How we show up plays a big part in facilitating the creativity of others. It starts with our own presence,
flexibility, and creativity before we get into the room. Facilitating creative process, especially in groups with strongly divergent views, or who are focused on deeper healing or transformation, can require a lot. The process can weave in and out of being light and fun, and challenging and demanding. It’s easier if we have built up our own resilience with awareness that there are different elements informing ourselves, and each person in the room.

Factors that inform how we create and facilitate include: our character and personality, upbringing, education, life experiences, background, culture, ethnicity, innate gifts, skills, talents, belief systems, values, habits, attitudes, stories we have about our creativity or facilitation, our health, energy, vitality, well being, challenges, hopes, dreams, aspirations, inspirations, direct experiences, insights, discoveries,our connection to purpose or our calling, our knowledge, wisdom,understanding, awareness, adaptability, resiliency, archetypal energies and drives, learning and creating styles, confidence in our own thinking and intuition, our sense of play and aliveness, our relationship to constraints, our frameworks, mental models, and worldview.

The ways these factors show up and integrate within us, and how they interact with different situations is unique to each person - part of our irreducible "creative signature." Facilitating creativity is a creative process in itself that is also uniquely our own, which emerges from the variety of these elements on different levels within us (while also having common universal patterns that emerge), and each person in the room has their own integration of these elements as well. So there is always a lot happening under the surface in any creative workshop - and that's what can make it exciting and surprising, if we anticipate, allow for, and value creative differences.

This is from Chapter 3 on Pre-workshop Preparation in my book, Pattern Breaks: A Facilitator’s Guide to Cultivating Creativity, where I break each of the elements down a bit more than I have space to do here.

#facilitatingcreativity #coachingcreativity #patternbreaksbook

Creative Process: The Dance of Opposites

Creativity comes to life at intersections. It thrives on opposites—engaging the polarities until something new emerges. Polarities can seem like opposites at first glance, but they are actually two different interdependent expressions of a larger whole. When we can accommodate polarities, instead of focusing only on one right way, idea, or solution, we have a more creative ecosystem, with the different parts “dancing” together.

Creativity moves us beyond either/or to a place of both/and, where the polarities interact as dynamic parts of an expansive creative playing field, not limited to one side. Here are some“opposites” related to creative process to invite thinking about how to create, design, or facilitate with polarities in mind.

Pattern Breaks Video Series: Part 2

As part of the book launch celebration for my creative facilitation guide book, Pattern Breaks: A Facilitator's Guide for Cultivating Creativity, I've been hosting a video series with several seasoned guest facilitator friends. They each share different creative facilitation techniques and approaches, along with some lesson learned. Click here for Part 1 with the first 4 videos. Below are links to the next 3 videos, with more to come: 

Michael Margolis, founder of StoriedInc., shares a possibilities-first reframing approach for expanding the narrative in creative process. 20 minutes.

 

Sam Horn, founder of the Intrigue Agency, shares a multi-faceted creative framework for writers and facilitators to tell or facilitate captivating stories. 20 minutes.

 

Jim Smith, The Executive Happiness Coach, share a lively body-centered approach for creative embodiment, and bringing more energy into your workshops. 20 minutes.

You can watch them here, or pop over to my YouTube Channel, Michelle James Creative Emergence, and see them all there. If you subscribe to the YouTube channel, you'll be notified when the new ones come out. More to come in future posts here as well.

Click here to order the Pattern Breaks book.

Pattern Breaks Video Series - Part 1

As part of the book launch celebration for my creative facilitation guide book, Pattern Breaks: A Facilitator's Guide for Cultivating Creativity, I've been hosting a video series with several seasoned guest facilitator friends. They each share different creative facilitation techniques and approaches. Here are links to the first 4 videos, with more to come: 

 

Dr. Paul Scheele, founder of Learning Strategies. Whole-brain creative process protocol. 20 minutes.

 

Kat Koppett, founder and CEO of Koppett. The Story Spine technique in depth with variations. 20 minutes.

 

Gary Ware, founder of Breakthrough Play. 3 playful and fun creative agility techniques. 20 minutes.

 

And to kick off the book launch, I had a juicy 55-minute conversation with Stephen Nachmanovitch, author of Free Play and The Art of Is.

You can watch them here, or pop over to my YouTube Channel, Michelle James Creative Emergence, (just getting it started) and see them all there. If you subscribe to the YouTube channel, you'll be notified when the new ones come out. More to come in future posts here as well.

Click here to order the Pattern Breaks book.

5 Types of Creative Blocks and How to Navigate Them

There are many reasons resistance show up in creative process, which can play out in blocking behaviors. These often come from conscious or unconscious reasons that people may feel inhibited, such as the fear of being wrong, looking silly, being judged, and the fear of the unknown, among many others.

Moving through these “barriers” frees them to allow for and access more of their creativity. Sometimes, it’s helpful to spend time up front acknowledging the blocks, and taking steps to move through them in real time. How you take extra time to create a lively and safe container at the beginning of the workshop, it reduces these playing out. 


Introduce principles of creative engagement at the beginning. Improv performances are more than just making things up in the moment— they are contained by adhering to the principles. Similarly, principles of creative engagement help create a safe container for people to be willing to explore and be more vulnerable in their creative explorations.

There are typically 3 ways to set up creative engagement for the group: 



• Ask the group for their rules of engagement (aka ground rules) 

• Give them the rules of engagement

• Hybrid: give them some rules and ask for others

When you ask the group for ground rules they often say what is familiar: listening, not interrupting, respecting each other, etc. These are all good, but predictable. They don’t always know how to ask for the things that support group creativity (like Yes-anding). As the facilitator, you can bring in additional rules of engagement specifically for creativity because most people don’t think about them on their own, and people tend to not break their own patterns or habits unless they have to, or are prompted.


Doing this early reduces the blocks that will show up, but when they do show up in the workshop, these are some steps to consider. A few of the ways to do this include:


1. Get participants interacting with easy storytelling about something familiar. For examples, Have them share a 2- minute story with a partner about how they used their creativity toward something that worked out well, or about something that's alive for them. This changes the energy.


2. Get into the body with a fun, physical activity. Getting into the body shakes things up and breaks patterns. This moves energy, and helps the brain think differently. And, people that are playful together feels safer with each other.

3. Recognize a creative block as a common contraction. It loses power when held as a mutable story, and not a permanent way of being. Knowing this is normal, and might arise in a creative process, helps people feel more comfortable with their discomfort.


4. Commit to moving through it. There is a big difference between letting the block take over or letting the movement through the block take over. It is aligning with what wants to emerge rather than aligning with what is blocking the emergence.

Blocks can transform more easily with pattern breaking, when taken into different contexts in fun creative ways.

For many more ideas on why blocks show up, and how to navigate through them, check out my new book, Pattern Breaks: A Facilitator's Guide for Cultivating Creativity, for facilitators, educators, trainers, and group leaders. There are several pages on navigating resistance. 

Creative Practice: Adapting (and Evolving)

Today's practice is Adapting. This is the final practice in this "12 practices" series (but there are so many others!) 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 wouldn't 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.

Adapting takes us out of binary, static thinking of good/bad, right/wrong, either/or and into new possibilities. “Every success story is a tale of constant adaption, revision, and change.” ~ Richard Branson

I heard a great term by Holacracy founder Brian Robertson that resonated with me for this concept: dynamic steering. Have the direction in mind, and let yourself adapt the goal, and your self, along the way. Improvisers adapt all the time...adapting to what's emerging in real time, and using it to create something new and unexpected.

Creative aliveness is about growing, learning, and expanding, which are are cultivated by our willingness to adapt and evolve. “Adaptability enforces creativity, and creativity is adaptability.” ~ Pearl Zhu

 

 

Creative Aliveness Practice: Acting

Today's practice is Acting. It's not enough to imagine what can be, we have to act on our imaginings. As I mentioned before, the creative process is non-liner, and these practices do not follow one sequence. Taking action happens at different points along the creative process.

"Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing." ~ William Shakespeare

By taking action, you are beginning the validation process of what you are creating. By taking action on your vision or project, you are becoming its first supporter. How it's received can give you feedback toward evolving what you are offering, but nothing can happen without first taking action.

It can be scary or hard to try something new, or put our something publicly that has meaning for you. It is much easier to put our something that has little meaning, but the more meaning it has for you, and the more of yourself you have put into it, the more vulnerable it can feel. By taking action, it becomes easier each time.

"Thinking will not overcome fear, but action will." ~ W. Clement Stone

Action also opens up to new creative aliveness possibilities we may not have thought about. By trying something, we get to know if we like it, or what part of it we comes alive with and what part we don't, and how it connects to others.

Action moves energy. In that, it opens up our creative aliveness through experiencing that thinking alone can't do. And in the act of taking action, we discover things we otherwise would not know had we waited until we were certain of exactly how everything would go. We learn by doing most of all.

Sometimes we freeze in the face of too many ideas and options. In those cases, it is good to just narrow our focus to one part, and taking action only on that. By taking  an accessible step, that gives us confidence to take another accessible step. And after a while step-taking becomes fun, alive, and easy. Small steps lead to big transformation. Start wherever you are. Get clear on what feels alive. And then take actions that support more of that. 

"It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that we find our supreme joys." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

 

Creative Aliveness Practice: Structuring

Once you have more clarity – after you have diverged out and expanded the “playing field” of new, emergent creative surprises – then look at how to structure that aliveness into you work and life....how to form it, shape it, and create it into something. Structuring makes it accessible...like taking the ocean and transforming it into drinking water. It makes whatever you are creating accessible, transforming the whole into actionable parts.

It's important to not skip over the cultivating and go right to structuring it, as many strategic plans do. With that approach you can get an action plan, that is attainable, but not necessarily feeling alive. It may not give you the passion-infused life energy to see it through. Think of it as a yes-and to staying motivated through will and perseverance. In two decades of coaching passion-centered entrepreneurs, I have consistently seen that connecting to our own purposeful aliveness is the most amazing motivator. 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.

Structuring is organizing and arranging parts of something, and sometimes not valued in the creative process. Structuring is is how to be able to live our creative visions in the world.It's not enough to have the vision, and feel the energy and motivation...we have to have a structure for our creativity be expressed.

Creativity need both flow and structure - just like any new birth. In all of nature's creative aliveness, there are organizing structures. We structure speeches to give them a coherence - an organized flow - instead of talking randomly about all of the ideas. Similarly, part of creative aliveness is giving it structure to be expressed and experienced, by ourselves and others.

 

 

Creative Aliveness Practice: Discerning

Today's practice is Discerning. “An open mind must be mitigated by discernment. Knowing what to take in and what to discard or file  away for future perusal is important to one’s growth.” ~ Safi Thomas

And discernment takes practice. Discerning is the ability to know of something is aligned with your creative self and your truth. It includes the art of what to say yes to, and what to say no to along your journey. With every life-giving yes, there is a series of healthy no's to anything not on alignment with the yes. Those no's create a stronger container for what you do what to focus on.

Like the other practices, discernment starts with awareness. And asking questions, such as: Why am I doing this? Why does it have meaning for me? What feels alive? What might sound good, but does not feel alive in me? What do I need to step into to carry it out? What do I need to let go of? Is this my own thinking/feeling, or am I just going along with someone else's? What are my gifts, skills, and talents? What is not fun for me? What does alignment feel like in me?

“True discernment means not only distinguishing the right from the wrong; it means distinguishing the primary from the secondary, the essential from the indifferent, and the permanent from the transient...distinguishing between the good and the better, and even between the better and the best.” ~ Sinclair Ferguson

Boundary-setting helps with discernment. Once you know your boundaries, it becomes easier to discern what is yours to do, and what's not. Good boundaries protect your creative aliveness.

Discernment also requires an intuitive understanding of what feels right along your process. It includes learning to discern how you creative self speaks to you (words, images, feelings, dreams, insights, etc.), and learning what feels right in your body. Discernment is easier when we are willing to let go of assumptions, how we've always done something, and exact expectations...and open to Beginner Mind.

“Compassionate action emerges from the sense of openness, connectedness, and discernment you have created.” ~ Joan Halifax

Creative Aliveness Practice: Tending

Notice and be present to images, feelings,  thoughts, ideas, impulses that emerge as you go about your days, outside of your
“sacred” time. Record them. Repeat thequestion you are holding often, not just once, and do what you need to stay connected to your creative self. Let it marinate. Deepen into it over time. Notice the patterns that emerge, the key themes.

“If you wish to make anything grow, you must understand it, and understand it in a very real sense." ~ Russell Page

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. We can feel overwhelmed, or judge ourselves if not “on track” – and then we can shut down. But if we focus on tending just what is next, it becomes accessible and actionable.

By tending to what is next day by day, the bigger vision becomes more and more clear over time…and do-able. Instead of a target to be hit, creative aliveness is more of a garden to be cultivated and nurtured into something tangible.

“Our soul is like a garden in which the weeds are ever ready to choke the good plants and flowers that have been sown in it. If the gardener who has charge of this garden neglects it, if he is not continually using the spade and the hoe, the flowers and plants will soon disappear.”~ John Vianney

Creative Aliveness Practice: Cultivating

Today's practice is Cultivating. “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” ~ Thomas Merton 

Using whole-brain creative processes – drawing it, painting it, moving with it, embodying it, acting it out, dialoguing with it, dancing with it, etc. – helps break habitual thinking patterns, opens up the creative aliveness wellspring, and draws forth new insights and ideas.

This particular practice not about the entirety of your vision, but about what is calling to emerge from within you now. The moment we are in is always the most alive (That's why improv is so energizing and filled with life energy...it's unfolding in the alive moment.)

Presence is fully alive. By being the moment, we have more access to creatively cultivate what's arising in us, and access different insights than just by thinking about it alone. When we combine left-brain linear practices with right-brain non-linear practices, we can cultivate a new story, or place our situation/goal/vision into a new narrative. Every emergence is a multi-dimensional story that fits into the context of who you are, and expresses what’s unfolding.

“We were handed two extraordinary gifts...The first is a talent to cultivate, and the second is the opportunity to cultivate it.” ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Creative Aliveness Practice: Committing

Today's practice is Committing.  

"Until one is committed, there is always hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness...the moment one definitely commits oneself a whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising to one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would come her way. Whatever you can do or dream you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." ~ Goethe

There is a difference between hoping, desiring, imagining, or trying and actually committing. Commitment creates a boundary for us - helping guide us on what to say yes to, and what we say no to. Without commitment, it is easy to get distracted and derailed. It is easy to leave at the first hints of discomfort, or when resistance shows up (as happens in the creative process).

It seems safer to not commit so we have a way out of things don't work out. But commitment acts as a safety net for our goals and visions. It means that when things go awry, or we feel resistance, we will find other ways or options. Our brains and creative unconscious will work with us to find options that because of the commitment. With commitment to get anywhere, if we get lost on the way, or if there are road blocks, we find another way to get because of the commitment.

There is a difference between a real commitment and a pretend one. A real commitment has meaning for us. It has to be something that has some kind of value for us. It comes from a place within us that is ready. It is saying to our creative unconscious that we are going to stay with it, even amidst the possible challenges. Commitment creates the structure for the flow of our creative aliveness.

Creative Aliveness Practice: Listening

Today's practice is Listening. Listen with your whole self, and whole brain...not just to words.

Your mind knows only some things. Your inner voice, your instinct, knows everything. If you listen to what you know instinctively, it will always lead you down the right path. Share this Quote Henry Winkler
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/inner-voice-quotes

Your mind knows only some things. Your inner voice, your instinct, knows everything. If you listen to what you know instinctively, it will always lead you down the right path. Share this Quote Henry Winkler
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/inner-voice-quotes

"Your mind knows only some things. Your inner voice, your instinct, knows everything. If you listen to what you know instinctively, it will always lead you down the right path." ~ Henry Winkler

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?

You don't have to wait for it to make complete sense before you validate it. More passions are not realized because they are judged as ridiculous before they ever have a chance to evolve because they are unfamiliar.

A new emergence, like any new birth, can be messy when being born. Listen for incomplete and partial directions - not only the entirely clear and sensible answers. In an emergent creative process clarity and sense-making usually unfolds through cultivation.

Creative Aliveness Practice: Holding

Today's practice is Holding. This practice is about releasing the need for an immediate answer…or a familiar one. It is  about holding the question before rushing to an answer or “the” answer.

"Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Live the questions now..."
~ Ranier Maria Rilke

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, evaluated and figured out. It is not about rushing into sense making. Allow yourself to indulge non-sense-making for a while. Stay in the Divergence. That's the domain of the creative imagination, and it always delivers if we give it the time and space to work it's magic.

Creative Aliveness Practice: 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 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 right for you…whether you do this via visualization, meditation, mindfulness, yoga, breathwork, affirmation, embodiment, earthing/grounding, movement, a nature walk, intention setting, prayer, doodling, journaling, qigong, reflection, or however else you get centered. There is no one right way. It can be any small ritual that serves as a pattern break out of your normal everyday consciousness and centers you. It just requires some focus and boundaries for no distractions during your centering time.

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. Taking the extra time to get centered in your day, or before working on your creative visions and projects, makes a difference in the depth, breadth, and personal meaning of creativity you access.

Creative Aliveness Practice: Clearing

Over the next couple weeks, I will be sharing "12 Practices for Creative Aliveness." The 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, and others times creating it out actively.

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 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. 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!

Today's practice is 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.

My creative facilitation book, Pattern Breaks, is now available to order online!

I am delighted to announce my creative facilitation guidebook, Pattern Breaks, is now available on Amazon and other online
booksellers to pre-order. You can go to
https://amzn.to/3QDbZ65 for the book details, and to order it if it resonates with you.

 

My hope it that this guidebook reaches those who resonate with it, and can benefit in some way from it - for yourselves and for your groups. In a world where much is out of our control, we each can contribute to a better world by contributing to what we do have control over in our local world. It may small, but it is something. For some of us, that includes the groups we lead, teach, or facilitate. If that is you, this book is dedicated to you.

Order at https://amzn.to/3QDbZ65

About the book: Pattern Breaks is a handbook for navigating the world of creative facilitation. It is for facilitators, trainers, educators, group leaders, and anyone who would like to bring more creativity out of their groups and out of themselves. It provides food for both thought and action. If you would like to cultivate creativity and aliveness in your design and facilitation, this book has ideas for you.

• Bring more enthusiasm and ingenuity out of participants
• Become a more adaptive, improvisational, and resilient facilitator
• Gain more confidence and ease in navigating challenges, resistance, and the unexpected
• Actualize your unique creativity for impactful and meaningful design
• Establish environments more receptive to novelty and transformation
• Bring more fun and lightness into facilitating serious topics
• Get easier buy-in from clients for nontraditional approaches
• Cultivate conditions for emergence and co-creation
• Generate life-giving outcomes that serve the good of the whole

Pattern Breaks explores both ways of being and ways of doing. From concepts to mindsets to practical applications and more, this book provides a rich trove of ideas, principles, and practices, along with an abundance of activities, to apply before, during, and after your workshop or event. It focuses on two levels at the same time— you as a facilitator of creative process, and you as a creative individual.

Order at https://amzn.to/3QDbZ65

Creativity Engages Both the Intuitive Mind and the Rational Mind

Michelle James ©2023

NEW Workshop: Connecting with Your Creative Source

December 28, 2021 • 1:00-2:30 EST on Zoom
Register at http://www.creativeemergence.com/creativesource

 

Register Here Kick off a creative new start to your new year!   Hi all. I had a client ask me to do a workshop last weekend on Connecting with the Creative Source. It was such a joy, it inspired to offer a 90-minute version of it this month open to the public. I'll eventually turn this into a multi-session workshop but wanted to offer you a dive into it now as a way to start the new year off feeling more connected to this vibrant, generous, and unique part of yourself...and your full-on creative partner in your visions, goals, and whatever it is you feel called to create.   Over the past 20+ years I've centered my coaching around the Creative Source in our sessions as part of creating what's next - from ways of being and embodying to creating products, services, and workshops to whatever is calling to emerge. I would like to offer this part now to the public, and offering it a discounted introductory rate.    Once we have a trusting relationship with our creative source, we see options and choices we wouldn't have previously imagined; we see more openings when some doors close; we're more resilient in the face of adversity; we find inspiration and motivation more easily; and we can access creative flow states more often.   Working consciously with your inner creative source helps with: vision creating, problem solving, discerning, decision making, ideation, resolving seeming opposites, moving through resistances, expanding thinking and constructs, understanding others views...and feeling more alive, fertile, trusting, lightened up, and more empowered and confident in our own creativity, intuition, and sense of purpose. And, it's FUN!   Hope you can join us for this juicy dive into our creative selves on the 28th!    With love and hope, Michelle Register Here www.creativeemergence.com •  creativeemergencecoaching.com [email protected] • 434-995-5077

Trusting Your Intuitive Voice for Deeper Creativity

 

We've been educated and socialized to perceive/think/create/act from the mainly rational mind - what we currently see, have been told by others, or consciously know. Yes, and...the intuitive mind allows us feel into, see into, and experience that which includes AND goes beyond what we currently know and have evidence for. It's essential for next-level visioning, imagining, creating, and building.

What if you took some space and time time to treat your intuition and creative imagination to some one-on-one attention? What if you indulge yourself in exploring with it?

 

It's always there, waiting to help you in your emergence. From every day decisions to clarity around your calling to creating in new ways, your intuition is a juicy part of of your Creative Self that is always on your side, working FOR you. We just have to learn how it shows up within us, and communicates to us, which is also unique to each of us. No one else knows exactly how your unique intuitive source voice talks, but if you take the time to listen, feel, and get to know it, you will find out.

 

PRACTICE INVITATION: Let yourself explore, experiment, and discover this amazing creative resource within you. Instead of using someone else’s technique (save them for another time), try seeing what emerges naturally in you. Let go of expectations of how it should show up, and see what really does show up. Pay attention while doing the practice as well in in other, unexpected moments. Like a flash of an insight or feeling or image seemingly put of nowhere.

Just intend it and be present to it…and see what you feel, notice, and what comes into your consciousness.

 

It's natural that other thoughts, voices, and fears may show up first in your consciousness...those are just the habitual thoughts, stories, and evaluations we all carry. Let them show up, but don't spend time engaging them for this exercise. Instead, stay open to the creative voice of your own intuitive source - impulses, feelings, words, images, shapes, colors, sounds, energies, insights, knowings, etc - however it show up for you. Be patient with yourself - this is not a one-time practice, but one that needs some practice.

Over time, you will learn its voice, and begin to trust it more than you trust anything else. Because it is always is for your aliveness and best interest. It's a great partner to trust. It is intimately connected to your unique creative flow, expression, emergence...and to what, why, and how you create.

Michelle James © 2021

FREE Somatic Expeditions virual event with 25 Somatic Practitioners - Oct. 6-10

I'm delighted to have been invited to be one of the guests in this Somatic Experience Event online. During this FREE five-day virtual event, I will join host Ahni Bonner and 24 others to delve into exciting and innovative applications centered in body-based awareness. The work is inspiring, purposeful, and fun and I’m excited to be part of it. Th world is changing, and more people are valuing and (re)connecting with their body's innate intelligence. What does that mean, and how does that look? Join this event to discover many ways people are embodying the answers those questions.

 

Somatic Expeditions is a series of conversations and practices with 25 somatic-awareness practitioners of various types. Journey through the body into expanded awareness to connect with what’s alive and create new possibilities! Connect to your body/mind for clarity that is vital, energizing, and transformative. October 6th-10th.

 

Click this link register for FREE:

Somatic Expeditions

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/

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.

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

Using the Moment for Creative Insights

When we stay present In the moment, time
expands.  When we fill the moment by talking only about what we already know, or about what others have said, we bury the dynamic, creative aliveness of the moment with history. We have been socialized to fill the moment with history (what we've learned, what others have said said, what are accepted assumptions) - going out of time - instead of staying in time, where creativity emerges and flourishes.

The more we cultivate presence, the more we deepen our relationship with the moment, the more it provides - insights, ideas, creativity, solutions, aha's, guidance, peace of mind, an expanded framework, etc. I've learned this over the years through improv theater, meditation, being in nature, expressive arts, contemplation, etc. that when I engage in these practices, I live more connected to the moment and feel more access to creativity, meaning and motivation. When I get caught up in the daily grind without consciously giving myself the space to pause and engage presence, I lose that connection and feel the loss. Luckily, the moment is forgiving, and always here.

It's about clearing out the mental clutter so we can be present to what wants to emerge from our creative unconscious. Our creative unconscious always has more information and possibilities than anything we consciously know. The moment offers us more options, choices, and possibilities when we become fully open and present to it. It contains next-level possibilities that we don't always see from our habitual thinking lens. It's what allows something to seemingly emerge out of nothing. Presencing to the moment is a bridge to our creative unconscious that contains next-level answers, visions, and directions.

CREATIVE PRESENCE PRACTICE: Take a pause to breathe out anything that is on your mind (plans, worries, fears, to-do's, concerns - knowing you can come back to them after the practice) and breathe in the current moment. Really feel the moment expand as you breathe it in. Then bring your intention - whatever it is you want to envision, create, or solve (project, workshop, product, idea-generation, solution, situation, etc.), and be with it, expanding the feeling of the moment...and being present to what emerges. Like with any meditation or creative practice, it may take a few times before you get the clarity, but it will deliver if you stay present to it. Have paper on hand to write out or draw what emerges into your consciousness, so you don't lose the insight.

 

Michelle James ©2020

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

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

How to Think Creatively

Someone sent me this interview Massage
magazine did with me in 2016 on How to
Think Creatively. I hadn't posted it before
since it used only be available to
subscribers of their magazine, but is now public.

The full article is here: https://bit.ly/3o1yX7w

Main Ideas:

“We’re all born creative—it’s at the very core of who we are,” said Michelle James, CEO of the The Center for Creative Emergence. “We have been socialized and educated out of our natural creativity, so we tend to forget that.”

James, who serves as a creativity coach and catalyst for her clients, believes it is crucial for people to reconnect with their innate creative source, in order to live with greater balance and joy.

“The more access we have to our creativity, the more connections we make, the more opportunities we have,” she said. “At every level, working with creativity leads to a happier, more productive, thriving life.”

You Are Creative

According to creativity coach Marianne Mullen, one of the main blocks to living the creative life is a belief that only people with certain skills or special talents can be creative. Usually, this belief stems from a narrow definition of what it means to be creative.

“When you hear people say, ‘I’m not creative,’ they have been conditioned to limit their idea of creativity to something in the visual arts, such as painting or sculpting,” Mullen said. “Creativity and its expression are deeply personal—you need to define it for yourself.”

Beyond Polarities

Getting to know your existing mental landscape should help determine new directions for your thoughts, as you begin to cultivate creative thinking. Consider this process an inner exploration, where there is no right or wrong, only curiosity, observation and discovery.

“Part of not thinking creatively is the need for certainty, the need for certain outcomes,” James said. “To think habitually is to not explore, to not take any risks.

“To think creatively means you try on new ways of thinking and you modify as you go,” she continued. “It means you’re an explorer.”

Watch for Patterns

Remember to maintain that mindset of discovery, and avoid any pull you might feel to label unfamiliar thoughts as incorrect or unacceptable, simply because they’re new and different. The tendency to judge what we think as either right or wrong can cease creative thinking all too quickly.

“One of the blocks to creativity is what I call binary thinking—right and wrong, good and bad, pass and fail, black and white,” James said. “Most creative thinkers are comfortable thinking in shades of gray, which allows more to exist within them, even those thoughts that may seem contradictory.”

James calls this “paradoxical thinking” and she considers it central to the process of creative thought. Being able to hold the tension of two opposites—instead of dismissing one because it appears to conflict with the other—can allow for a third, more encompassing option.

“On one level, you might be holding two pieces of information that seem opposed to each other; for example, you need to make a living and you want to be creative,” James said. “Instead of thinking I have to choose X or Y, money or creative expression, acknowledge that it’s important to you to have both, and then assume that it’s possible.

“Creative thinking assumes there’s a third option that will allow both X and Y to exist—you just don’t know about it yet,” she continued. “Instead of choosing one or the other, look at how you might integrate the two, and allow yourself to explore that.”

As you go through the discovery process, nurturing new and creative thoughts, Mullen warns to watch out for your own inner resistance, which may stem from old thought patterns you’re looking to release.

“This would include feelings based on comparisons with others, judgments and that little voice telling you negative messages,” she said. “In order to break out from negative thinking patterns that do not support your creativity, you need to be conscious of what you say to yourself.”

On guard against any unnecessary resistance and equipped with a growing awareness of your own thoughts, you can begin to build and flex your creative muscles on a regular basis.

Dedicate Time

It may seem like one of those paradoxes, but developing a more creative mental landscape actually calls for a certain amount of structure and discipline, especially at the start. If you are committed to opening your mind to more creative ways of thinking, then consider setting aside time for creative practice.

“When you’re first beginning to cultivate your creativity, it needs time and space,” James said. “Schedule it in, and do it in a way that works for you—think of it as your creative practice time.”

For example, you might decide to devote 10 minutes each day to a different form of creative expression, from writing in a journal or drawing a picture to telling a story out loud or moving while you think.

“Make this a time when you explore creative ideas, feelings and beliefs,” Mullen said. “The point is, you are mindfully choosing to give your creativity time and space to play, explore, develop, grow and unfold.”

Question Assumptions

One powerful activity you can bring to this creative practice time is consciously questioning your own assumptions. Using various methods of creative expression, such as dance, writing, acting or painting, explore the beliefs that define your life.

“Assumptions run the gamut, from what success means and what my relationship is supposed to look like to what’s expected of me in the world and what it means to be happy,” James said. “Often, you find that something you accepted as a given actually came from someone else, whether it was parents, teachers or society—you discover it was learned, and once you discover that, you’re more free to shift your perspective.

“You can choose to keep the beliefs that resonate with you, and let go of the ones that are no longer working,” she added. “Then, you can bring in new beliefs that are more alive for you.”

Break Patterns

Another assignment to try during the time you set aside for creative expression is called pattern breaking. By doing tasks in ways you’ve never done them before, you may find that more creative thoughts begin to emerge.

“One way to do this is very simple: Write on unlined paper and use colors, because the right brain thinks in colors and images,” James said. “You’re even breaking patterns with the paper you’re writing on—with all my clients, we’re always writing on unlined paper.”

This creative act of pattern breaking can take place in so many ways. Turn on music you might not normally listen to and allow your body to move and dance freely, breaking your well-worn patterns of movement. Grab a sheet of paper and draw out, rather than dwell on, an issue that’s been bothering you.

“When you engage the brain in different ways, you have a chance at different insights,” James said. “When you begin to break patterns, you create new neural pathways and increase the connections in your brain.

“New connections allow more ideas, more aha moments, to emerge,” she added. “Again, when you begin to break patterns and think differently and non-habitually, remember to get comfortable with shades of gray, and let go of right or wrong.”

The goal of your creative practice time should be to try on as many different forms of creative expression as possible, using each method of expression to explore your own thoughts, assumptions, beliefs and patterns, as well as any pressing issue. If you stick to it, you should discover which kinds of creativity work best for you, or how you define creativity.

“Eventually, you’ll begin to find what feels really alive for you,” James said. “Don’t be limited by anyone else’s definition of creativity—what’s really alive for one person might not be for another.”

Article by Brandi Schlossberg, full-time journalist and part-time writer for MASSAGE Magazine