Obstacles To Creativity (Part II)

This is part II of a series of posts on this blog on obstacles to creative expression.
Second obstacle:
• The need for knowledge, expertise, recognition, acceptance, …

The more we do something, the better we get at it. Soon we can become an expert in whatever it is that we have been practicing or doing regularly. This is how we think we become successful. Most high achieving professionals think that success is a result of being known for doing something that you are an expert in. Steve Jobs in his commencement address at Stanford University in 2005 said: “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

One of my clients who enjoys singing was explaining to me: “Every time I sing, it forces me to get out of my head. I have to be in the moment, I never know what will come out. No matter how much I have rehearsed, that moment with the audience listening, is all that counts. I have to be present and willing to take a chance. It sounds scary, but I love every bit of it.” She takes voice lessons and rehearses regularly and yet she is a beginner every time she sings. She even confessed that she does not care if she does not sound good during a performance, it is not about the end result, there is no end result. She sings because when she sings, she feels connected to something greater than she can explain in words. And I suppose an end result for her is the joy she feels and radiates as she sings.

This same client had to face her own obstacles to get to this place. She had to recognize what it was about singing and how it showed up in her experience of it that made it possible to face and remove her own internal obstacles.

There is no room for knowledge in the creative process. It is all a risk, one that can bring absolute pleasure and joy beyond imagination. In order for that joy to become a part of your life, you have to be willing to let go of knowledge or knowing how to do something. In other words, you have to be willing to be a beginner over and over again.

If you are interested in removing some of your own obstacles and feeling creative again, you may want to work with a spiritual life coach. Contact me for a complimentary 30 minute coaching conversation to determine if I can help you in your creative process.

Obstacles To Creativity (Part I)

This is part I of a series of posts on this blog on obstacles to creative expression.

Coaching professionals in the corporate world who want to express their creativity is a challenge I love to face every time! I love it because, they know what is missing, so that part of the work is done. Now, it is all about removing the obstacles that hinder their path to self-expression. It is a challenge because, the obstacles don’t seem like obstacles to them. They have worked hard to create the obstacles that I am asking them to remove!

What are these obstacles?

1. The notion of discipline

Wassily Kandinsky said: “There is no must in art because art is free”. The moment a coaching client says, “I have to …” is the moment the obstacle has been identified. The moment you take your corporate mind set, your disciplinarian identity, your controlling aspect, whatever you want to call it, is the moment creativity ran out the door.

Creativity is an energy or consciousness that cannot be boxed in. It cannot show up at 8:30 every morning and be done by 5 every evening. It may or may not fit into your schedule. It is not an exercise routine, or an appointment. If you dare to express yourself, you have to be open to when and how it shows up.

Creativity does not repeat itself. In other words, if you created something one day after you went for a walk and it was sunny and beautiful, you felt rejuvenated, etc. and now you have created the same background and hope to create something just as masterful as you did then, it won’t work. We as humans want so badly to find patterns, and structures. It is how we understand things. You cannot understand creativity. It has an elusive and mysterious quality about it.

So, then why bother you may ask. This seems impossible. It is, if you think of it as a chore. It may feel like a chore if you are tired after a long day’s work, coming home to family and personal demands and now you have some time left for creativity. Sometimes, it is necessary to take some time out. Take a personal day or two or a week off by yourself to find your connection. Yes, it comes at a price, the price is time away from structures, routines, and all the musts in your life.

Creativity is not something you can squeeze into your busy day at the moment you require it to show up. If you are not feeling playful, inspired, enthusiastic, and connected to something greater than the physical world you perceive around you, you cannot feel creative. If you do not feel creative, you cannot truly create. Yes, you can be skilled at putting things together in a beautiful way, play music, or make a meal from scraps in your pantry, but that is your talent and not your creativity!

Creativity is a source of boundless energy that is calling the artists in all of us to have a sip or dive in as we wish. All she asks is for our willingness to abandon old structures, patterns, musts, and any kind of discipline to discover a brand new version of ourselves. Yes, indeed this is a challenge for all my disciplined, productive, structured friends who are successful in part, because of these qualities that they have developed within themselves. Letting go is not how we accomplish any kind of logical endeavor. Letting go however, is the first essential step in self expression.

Next week, I will write about a second obstacle to creative expression. If you are a professional in a logical, rational business of any kind and would like to flex your creative muscles, you may want to work with a spiritual life coach. Spiritual life coaching is about discovering the artist within and creating the required space for it to show up in your life. If interested, contact me for a complimentary 30 minute consultation.

Influence is a Two-way Street

We just got back from a wonderful college tour trying to find colleges my son would be interested in applying to. What I enjoyed the most about this last college was what the Dean of Admissions said during his talk. He mentioned that he wouldn’t be focusing on how the school would shape the students, but rather in learning how the student would affect or change the school. I had to think about that statement. How could an 18 year old affect or change a college or university?

Thinking about this statement reminded me of how influence truly is a two way street. A teacher certainly influences a student, but a student can also affect a teacher, just ask any teacher. The only difference is that it is expected that the teacher will influence the student.

In many relationships, the expectation is that one of the parties will be having the “influential” role. Yet, influence is not a one way street. We influence the world we live in by the way we show up every day. When we are happy, and open to receive, we are received a certain way. When we are angry and negative, we are received another way. The moment you are in the presence of another, you are influencing them whether you like it or not.

Sometimes we don’t realize how we affect others. For example, certain emotions like disempowerment or victimization can be so self-absorbing that we forget how we impact those around us when we show up that way. Self-pity is not fun to be around. If only we could see how these types of negative emotions can color us in a way that is truly not only ugly, but unappealing to be around.

Perhaps, if we thought about ourselves as influential individuals, powerful just because we are alive and social creatures living and interacting with others, we might be more aware of our responsibility. Yes, we are responsible for how we show up in the world and hence, how we influence others.

This is the conversation I have with many of my coaching clients who are going through a difficult transition trying to pick up the pieces of their lives. In order to create what you want, you have to be what you want. You can’t create something that feels foreign to you. You can’t find a job that you don’t feel you are qualified for. You can’t be in a relationship you don’t feel like you deserve. You influence the outcome of what you create every time.

If you are interested in finding out about how you might be influencing others or the outcomes that you keep on creating, you might want to consider working with a spiritual life coach. Contact me for a complimentary 30 minute coaching conversation to determine if you’d like to work with me.

To Coach Is To Provoke

A prospective client had recently called me and wanted to know how and what techniques I used in my coaching. There are lots of fancy words, techniques, methods, and names of other leaders in the field that  coaches use in their conversations. When I first started doing this work, I wanted to use the most sophisticated language to describe what I did thinking that the more complicated and fancy it sounded, the easier it would be to impress a potential client and hopefully get them to become an actual one.

The past year I have spent a lot of time re-discovering the value of the coaching I practice. I have learned that in the most severe cases where a client is deeply stuck in whatever it is they are going through, it is my disbelief that they are truly stuck that helps them move forward. Simply, put, I don’t buy the picture they have drawn for me. I buy that that is what they believe they have, but the reality is far from the picture in their hands. In other words, I don’t go down the rabbit hole with them.

Let’s take 3 independent stories about procrastination as an example:

She wanted to come up with a plan to tackle the tasks at hand. She mentioned that she had been procrastinating. It sounded simple enough, typical coaching material. When we went deeper, she realized that she was procrastinating, because she was depressed, things were not going well in other areas of her life, she couldn’t tackle the tasks because she was standing on shaky ground.

Yet another client I worked with that same day, brought up procrastination. For her it was about “order”. She couldn’t do something before she did something else. And that something else could not be done until something else was taken care of.

Today I worked with someone who was avoiding an important project, something she really cared to complete, because she was exhausted from taking care of some other things in her life. She had no energy left to finish her project.

All 3 wanted to accomplish their tasks or projects, but something  (depression, belief systems or habits, other distractions, lack of confidence) got in the way. None of them had much energy or enthusiasm. These were three different women with 3 different scenarios, stuck and unable to move.

Procrastination isn’t just about putting things off and being late or finishing at the last minute. Procrastination can lead to severe inertia to the point of depression, anxiety or physical illness. There is a reason for why we don’t do what we want to do. It is not because we are lazy, or slow. Under all procrastination there is at least one other layer of muck.

I see this in my children, when they are excited about something or enjoy doing something, it gets done before they even come in the door and take off their coats. If the task at hand is not enjoyable or reminds them of something negative, they cannot be held accountable to getting it done. That’s when as parents we think of ways of motivating them or holding them accountable. But the adults I work with, are self-motivated professionals. They understand the importance of the tasks or projects they are procrastinating. They are definitely not lazy or slow. So what gets in their way?

It is not procrastination as we know it at all. They get stuck, energetically stuck in their circumstances. They are not procrastinating, they simply cannot move forward. Depending on what is going on in their lives, they are frozen in a still life photograph that they bring with them to our coaching sessions.

Like a scientist examining an artifact or amber with trapped particles, a coach’s job is to imagine the particle outside the structure she is trapped in. Holding that possibility that there is a vibrant, energized, and alive being pretending to be stuck is what helps melt the amber and liquefy the solid trap. That is the beginning of the coaching conversation. It always starts from the same place, I hold the space and the possibility that being stuck is an illusion and that reality is far different from this state of inertia.

So, what techniques do I use in my sessions? I provoke to create a different possibility, one that the client found unimaginable or unattainable in the beginning. Once the provocation has taken effect, the coaching follows.

If you are stuck in procrastination or anything else, you may want to consider working with a spiritual life coach so you can begin imagining a different reality for yourself. Contact me for a complimentary 30 minute coaching conversation to determine if spiritual life coaching is something you might be interested in pursuing.

Drama

The most dangerous and destructive energy drain out there is one that is addictive, deceiving, manipulative, contagious, sneaky, and readily available. We are all guilty of partaking in it and offering or pushing it onto others. Most of the time, we are not even aware of how we engage in its distribution. It is bigger than us. It can entice us to talk up a storm, analyze a situation to death, and even keep us up at night. It breeds fear, negativity, anxiety, and depression.

Any guesses as to what it might be? If you guessed, drama, then you are correct. Drama is well disguised and yet it creeps into our lives all the time. My clients often complain about how talking to certain people brings them down. In fact, turning on the TV can be a very dangerous activity in that it opens the door to drama. Worse yet, you usually have your guard down listening to the news, unaware of how much drama was just injected into your psyche.

There are 3 major sources of drama: media (any kind of news, or entertainment), families, and work place.  Yes, it is everywhere. No, you don’t have to run away and live in a cave. You do have to be fully awake and alert and recognize it when it hits you. You don’t have to fight it, you’ll always lose. You don’t negotiate, you will lose. You breathe and allow it to blow through.

How? It is similar to hearing someone talk when you are not interested in what they are saying. You hear, you let them say what they have to say, you walk away. You turn on the TV, you watch, you listen, you recognize what is drama, what is real information, you take what you want, you walk away.

In summary, the best way to deal with drama is following the steps below:
1)    Breathe
2)    Recognize drama
3)    Keep on breathing
4)    Decipher what is useful information and what is not
5)    Choose what to do
6)    Move on

Sometimes, you might think you succeeded, but if you find yourself slightly irritated, doubtful, or anxious, then some of it got on you. Once again, go through steps 1 through 6 in your head and let go of drama. It cannot hurt you if you are aware of what is happening and choose not to let it get to you.

If you are interested in working with a spiritual life coach on learning how to cope with drama or any other kind of negative energy, contact me for a complimentary 30 minute coaching conversation to decide if spiritual life coaching is for you.

Hope

He said he was hopeful for the New Year.  I was concerned about him, he was about to lose his father to a terminal illness and he hadn’t been taking it too well. Today, he said he was hopeful. “A new year means so many things and I can’t help but be full of hope”, he said with a half smile on his face.

What is hope? According to the dictionary hope is: “desire with the expectation of obtainment” or “to expect with confidence”. To me it is directly correlated with a beginning. Early morning is a time for hope for a good or successful day. Hopelessness on the other hand is directly correlated with an ending, it has a death like feeling to it. The night when the day has ended, is the end of the hope for the new day. In fact, we always say or think that tomorrow will be a new day, a new opportunity to try again, etc.

And what about in the middle of hope and hopelessness, what is that?  What is in that space or on that continuum? Or is it a continuum? Going back to the analogy of morning and night, the middle is the day. The middle is what happens between hope and hopelessness. The middle of desire and defeat is the practice or attempt to obtain whatever you were hopeful to achieve. The middle is where you forget about hope and how it started when you are busy doing what you thought you wanted to do. The middle is distracting, consuming, and deceiving. Only when the day has ended, you are reminded of how it began.

This kind of segmentation helps us digest our lives. 24 hour segments of beginnings and endings with the stuff in between, chunking life into digestible pieces. Yes, the New Year is a beginning full of hope and some time in December we decide whether we accomplished all that we had hoped to. In between January and the following December is when life happens.

What if every moment was like the dawn, full of hope? What if hope never ended? What if we were in a consistent state of hope? As young children we are more hopeful than as adults. Just look at a toddler when they wake up in the morning, they are bright eyed and fully alert and ready to go. Over time, we learn that we don’t always get what we want and with multiple experiences of defeat or what we perceive to be defeat, we become less bright eyed and hopeful.

Over time we learn that sometimes we get what we want and sometimes we do not. This is how hope gets diluted and eventually becomes hopeless. What if obtaining something or having an expectation was not part of the hope experience? What if hope was just a feeling, like joy or sadness or excitement? What if hope didn’t come with baggage?

That’s the hope that he was talking about. He had no expectations, he knew that his father would not survive his condition, yet he was still hopeful.  He was hopeful because it was a New Year and hope was just a part of the New Year experience. It was not logical or rational, it was an irrational emotion, a child-like enthusiasm, a beginning, a clean slate, endless possibilities, …

Spiritual life coaching provides an opportunity to explore concepts like hope in a safe space. Sometimes you can change what you believe they mean and then re-experience them in a new way. If you are interested in pursuing spiritual life coaching with me, contact me for a complimentary 30 minute spiritual coaching session.

In Love?

It was a cool, crisp, but sunny day in Manhattan. I was delighted to be engaged in a lively conversation with a 27 year old cousin of mine that I had just met. Our conversation lead to an older couple we both know. He was shocked at the revelation of the wife that she was no longer in love with her husband of 50 years. He couldn’t understand how people could stay married when they were no longer in love. I smiled inside my head and was reminded of his youth with such a declaration and wondered if I would react as he was reacting to such news when I was his age.

When do we learn that falling in love with and loving someone are two different concepts and that one can exist without the other. Falling in love is just that, a fall, almost like an accident. Unknowingly you fall into something unexpected. It is exciting and fun being high on dopamine. I have fallen in love more times than I can remember. It can turn into love.

Love is a more conscious and deliberate choice. I truly can say that I love only a few people in my life and that love will not fade away and weathers all kinds of storms. Love makes you stay or leave depending on your situation. Love is clear. Love does not expect, demand, or judge. Love does not have to make sense and this is the quality it shares with “falling in love”. They are both a condition of the heart and not of the mind.

I thought about the couple who were still together despite not being in love and I recalled the wife’s answer to my cousin’s question, “We have children and grandchildren now. What is the point of leaving him now?” I wonder if she is still looking for that feeling of falling in love and wonders if it is lost to her for good. I wonder if she truly wants to end her marriage or just doesn’t feel the love anymore.

What makes two people stay together in a marriage is still a mystery to me. I coach many clients who are in what may seem like a dysfunctional marriage to many for reasons that change every week. Marriage is a legal contract and as such it is binding even after the love is gone. That is the main reason people stay married in unhappy marriages. Many are also wise enough to know that it takes two and if the relationship is not a happy one, perhaps they need to take a good look at themselves first.

All of this was running through my head as we continued walking up 5th Avenue. I smiled thinking about all that he is yet to learn and experience in life and hoped that he wouldn’t have his heart broken knowing well that it was sure to happen!


If you are in the process of re-evaluating your marriage or relationships and need help making a decision, you may want to consider spiritual life coaching. Spiritual life coaching is a process where the client is always in the driver’s seat and the coach provides a safe space for exploration.  If you are interested in a 30 minute complimentary coaching conversation, please contact me.