A Creative Compass

Untethered

“Time slows down. Self vanishes.
​Action and Awareness merge. Welcome to flow.”
​~Steven Kotler

Can there ever be too much summer? Even though the calendar says we have until later in the month, the start of September always feels like the end. We’d like a little more, but seasonal cycles prevail and the world returns to its regularly scheduled program.​

Sometimes, though, it can be tough. There is such a looseness to summer. Lengthy days, languid weather, a slack tether to normal routines.

Maybe there can be too much summer. We say we need to get “back in the swing” or “refocused”. We have to “regroup”. September feels like the right time to do so, but we feel scattered and untethered. Now, where was I???

Does this resonate with you? If so, perhaps summer has pulled you out of flow.

Flow, that hum deep in our bodies when we are in connected to what makes us come alive. Just like the stream that moves unimpeded, steadily, from its source.  It is a meeting of your life forces that can propel you toward the manifestation of what is most important to you.

This manifestation doesn’t need to be world altering, but it does need to have meaning for you. When you step into this flow, you allow your own life to be altered.

What is most important to you as you move forward into this new season?

It’s not just summer that pulls us out of flow. Life offers many distractions and externally imposed changes. When you feel detached to the important and are just running in circles with the urgent, your initial response may be to just stop everything. However, when you recognize that feeling, it might not be the best time to do nothing.

What generates flow and that lovely hum? How do you get reconnected to your purpose?

Here are five suggestions to help you ease into flow:

  1. Check in with yourself and the activity or focus to which you want to reconnect. Make sure that it’s connected to meaning. We’re not talking about the car pool or leaf raking, but rather that something that makes your heart sing. That something that is on purpose and deserves your flow. Meditation, journaling and or small questions can help you with that deep knowing.
  2. Physical movement- Get out of your head (and your chair) and into your body. Autumn (or spring in the southern hemisphere) weather is much friendlier for walking and gardening. Or, it could be cleaning out a closet or taking a shower. While you are in your body, the bits and pieces of fractured thought begin to coalesce. Ideas form, aha moments arise. The bigger picture may begin to emerge and show you to your next small step. And your next small step is all you really need to know to move you into momentum and flow.
  3. Intentional exploration – Rather than go down the rabbit hole of the next great idea (and the next and the next), consider taking one idea through to an action step. Continue with it even though you’re not sure how it will pan out. Let each step determine the next. Be okay with what might feel like failure. Failure is necessary for all creative acts. In the words of Samuel Beckett: “Fail, fail again, fail better.” Stay with an idea until you’ve exhausted it, beyond the point where it is hard or something else catches your eye. It may have so much more to tell you. The act of continuing can produce a flow.
  4. Mindful pauses – Instead of stopping because you’ve hit the proverbial wall, make an active decision to pause. During that pause let your ideas and thoughts go off on their own. Choose other activities that stimulate you. Come back to your idea refreshed.
  5. Seek like-minded people – So much creative work – business, writing, art… all the work that connects to your essential self and provides a beautiful flow – is done alone. When you connect to others who are also called to express their passions, you will find a new energy. They will feed your idea, keep you accountable, be a sounding board and a witness to your work. They will accompany you out of your head and into action.

Do you need help with this? Some of us just need a nudge; some a witness. Others need a guide. Which are you? Contact me to learn how I can help.

On Being and Beaning

“Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still.”

~ Barbara Kingsolver

Just be.

Oh, boy. That’s a hard one for me. How about you?

When I was first confronted with the challenge of “just being” I was very apprehensive. I was going off on a weekend retreat at the beach with two writing buddies. We were going to write and be quiet and “just be.”

“I don’t know if I can do that”, I told my friends. “It feels really hard to not be doing.” A weekend that should have been the ultimate in relaxation was becoming fraught with anxiety.

Being, Beaning, Beaners

They indulged me. You see, they were a lot further along in their being-ness. An ad for a local coffee shop lightened things up by inspiring the alternative of just “beaning”. That, in turn, christened us “Beaners.” Ahh, okay, much easier. I could work with that.

Years later we continue to riff on that moniker and have fun with it. I, in turn, am much more in tune with the need to “just be”. I’m not great at it, but my anxiety has almost disappeared.

The Myth of Productivity

My discomfort stemmed from a belief that I needed to be productive. Constantly. I know how unrealistic this is. At least my head does. However, somewhere in my vast unconscious, this idea has taken up residence and thrived.

I have also come to understand that my idea of productivity might be a little skewed. Multitasking and buzzing around is not always the best use of my time. Ping-ponging between different to-dos in different categories leaves me exhausted and feeling that I gotten nothing done. This mistaken belief of how to be productive has been given its eviction notice.

That space is now occupied by the gentle understanding that being on a walk or being with a thought or being fully with my husband or family gifts me with spaciousness. Ideas arrive, as if on wings. Thoughts are completed. The creative process flows with ease. That is a style of productivity that, while initially counter-intuitive to me, is much more desirable.

I love this quote by Kafka:

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” – Franz Kafka

What would you have “rolling in ecstasy at your feet?”

“Do not even listen”, he advises. He, too, is saying ignore the imperious voice. When we do that we move out of our head and into our bodies.

How can I do this, you ask, in this fast-paced crazy world we live in? I don’t have time to just sit and wait.

I hear ya!

Here is what I have discovered:
  • Just being aware of the fact that it was difficult to sit quietly and be still created a shift for me. I was no longer on auto-pilot. I realized that there could be a different way of being.
  • Daydreaming is productive. Who knew! What I like to call wool-gathering was actually a moment of quiet discovery. I began to notice where I was going. The next time you find yourself staring into that mid-distance, allow it. At the same time, be curious about what’s going through your mind. Listen. (Apologies to Kafka)
  • Just 3 minutes of meditation is super beneficial. Just one example of the benefits: I had never quite grasped just how impatient I was. Meditation showed me. It also lowered it. When I return to meditation after a lapse, I see it again. I know now that it will dissipate. And, yes, 3 minutes is a reasonable way to start. How long does it take a kettle to boil or a pot of coffee to brew? There you go!
  • Practicing quiet opens up a portal from which my inner wisdom flows. Now, if you’re anything like me, your head is a veritable circus. Sometimes, it’s a great place to be with thoughts and ideas careening about. But, that’s not where our true wisdom resides. It lives in the space between the thoughts. For that we need quiet.
  • Finally, I have found that curiosity is an important quality. While that might put us back into our heads, it carries no judgement. It provides an opening to what your true self needs at that moment.
And, here’s the challenge:

Where can you claim small moments of just being?

Can you tell that imperious voice in your head to be quiet? Over and over again?

How would it feel to accept without judgement the offerings of world? Be curious about what shows up? Watch them “roll in ecstasy at your feet”?

All of this has a story to tell you. Make sure the story you carry forward is the one you want.

And, finally, contact me for a chat to see f I can help you with this. With being or beaning and creating the story you want to leave behind.

Circles

For years, when my family gathered, music accompanied them. There were guitars, maybe a tambourine or maracas. A piano, a banjo? Absolutely, whatever was available. And there was always singing.

Certain songs were always on the playlist because 1) the musicians knew the whole song and 2) the rest of us knew all the words.

And whenever the music began, we naturally gravitated into a circle. (One of the regular songs was Harry Chapin’s Circle. “All my life’s a circle, sunrise and sundown.” With that one we could sing all the verses and add a little harmony.)

Right Circles

The right circles are inclusive and supportive. (Notice I say the “right” circles. Yes, there can be wrong circles but that’s not where I choose to focus.) Those right circles expand and contract as needed. The shape sustains the intention and perhaps the intention informs the shape. With my family we gathered close to listen and sing; we opened out to let others join.

Many writers extol the power of the circle. As I contemplated writing this post I asked myself about the significance of a circle. I already had opinions and I went online to do some research.  Was there was any geometric strength in a circle?. (Geometric shapes don’t have strength. Strength is a property of physical objects. OK…) I searched for quotes on circles (found lots!). I found an article by a design firm discussing the meaning of shapes, the “grammar” of a circle. Of course, that piqued my interest. “What do you feel when you see a circle, square, triangle?” For instance, think about how we are influenced by the universal color and shape of traffic signs. If you see an octagon what comes to mind? (Very good. You may proceed.)

Even in my yoga class, when there’s room, we arrange our mats in a circle. The energy changes.

The Power of the Circle

And, as so often happens, synchronicity presented me with Madison Taylor’s article Uniting in Thought and Action: The Power of the Circle.  One sentence that stood out for me in her article:

“People who take part in a circle find that their power increases exponentially while with the group.”​

Yes. Exponentially. That says so well what I want to convey about circles; why I’m drawn to them and why I believe in their power.

Particularly, in an intentional circle.

What have you experienced in a circle?

3 Things You Can Expect from a Coaching Call

First of all, there are lots more than these three but let’s start here. Let’s pull back the curtain and take any mystery away. And, yes, I am a creativity coach but don’t get hung up on the “creativity” part. It doesn’t mean you need to be working on something in the arts. It means you will tap into your creativity – yes, you are a creative soul – and use creative thinking and creative tools to get where you want to go. The creativity part is not as much about your goal in coaching as it is about how you will get there.

And, we will do all this in a rich space that is confidential, safe and accepting.

So, where do we start?

First, I ask a lot of questions.

Especially in the beginning. I ask you what brings you to coaching. People hire a coach to help them reach a goal. That goal can be a myriad of things. For my clients, it usually focuses on figuring out who you’ll be in the second half of life; wanting more joy in life; wanting to find “you 2.0”; looking to get back some of who you used to be and yes, it could be that there’s a book inside you screaming to get out or you’re not getting to your ______ (you fill in the blank).

I ask you what gets in the way. Often, it’s those old gremlins of procrastination, fear, self-sabotage, feeling overwhelmed or not enough time. Sometimes it may just be that you need the catalyst of coaching: the accountability, the appointment, the saying it out loud to someone else. Getting your dreams out of your head and into the world can be a gigantic jump start!

Second, you talk, I listen.

My ears are scrunched. I listen very hard to hear what you’re saying and what might be between the lines. After reflecting back what I’m hearing, I ask you to tell me more. One of my goals is that you feel heard and witnessed because sometimes a coaching session is the only place this will happen for you.  Listening might prompt some more questions and I will continue to listen. All of this gives you an opportunity to claim a dream, to begin to articulate your ideas and, thereby, see them become more tangible.

I don’t tell you what to do. The best solutions come from you. Those are the solutions that are the most resonant and make the most sense for you. In that way, they become much more do-able. I’m the one holding the light so you can see them.

Third, I get you to your next small step.

Part of my role as your coach is to familiarize you with the philosophy of Kaizen. We will work with small steps, small questions, small thoughts and small rewards. This builds sustainable momentum while engaging the thinking part of the brain as opposed to expecting big steps that engage the fight or flight response and get us nowhere. We don’t stop at a small step; the small step gives us a success moment that makes us feel like continuing. Which we do. One small step at a time.

A small step could look like asking yourself a small question over the next few days and seeing what comes to mind. It could be five minutes (or even 1 minute) of doing something you’ve been wanting to do. If, after five minutes, you want to continue, great! If not, you’ve kept your commitment, done what you said you would do and that’s success.

What if you don’t get to your small step?

Having said all that, a really important part of my coaching is that if you don’t get to your small step, I still want you to show up next time. The step may not have been small enough. It may not have been the best step. Come back and we’ll explore it and tweak it. Or you may have made a creative detour which is normal and very okay. Sometimes you’ve done many other things for which you need to give yourself credit. We’ll do that, too.

(All first-time clients who sign up for the minimum of 4 coaching sessions receive a gift of the book One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way by Dr. Robert Maurer, Ph.D.)

Onward!

As we move forward, I will continue to listen intently and ask you more questions. You will sense the next best step for you. And, step by step, you’ll move toward your goal with joy and wonder and ease.

Would you like to experience a coaching call and see what it would be like for you? Contact me to schedule a 30 minute discovery call. No cost, no pressure, no obligation. Just a gentle exploration of how your creative juices can be a source of fuel for the next leg of your journey.

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