Practising the art of believing in the impossible

If you fell down a rabbit hole, and didn’t already have some experience at believing in impossible things.. well, you might be stuck there for a very very long time. But it’s okay, you can practise here. Can you come up with Six impossible things that you believe in? Or one. but six is what the Queen in the original Alice in Wonderland suggested.

“There is no use trying,” said Alice; “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I dare say you haven’t had much practice,”said the Queen.
“When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day.
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” 

Lewis Carroll

The concept “Creativity” is as misconstrued as the concept “God”

The struggle with what I do is this word, “Creativity.”  For a life coach who truly knows the value of accessing the ‘creative right side of the brain’ to quickly get past limiting beliefs, find answers, find passions, be inspired, and find ways unique to the individual to move forward.. the stigma that goes with ‘creativity’ is a problem.  A big problem.It’s like God.   The  most predominant concept of God has been through Christian religions and the image that many imagine is a man who thinks we are all sinners and has the power to determine if we go to heaven or hell and might grant us our prayers if we are good enough.  Well, that doesn’t hold much water  for a lot of people. There are so many traditions and teachings, including Christian, that attempt to shift the image.. to our collective energy, the universe, a power within all of us, source energy, higher power… very empowering  concepts indeed.  But people, I’m sorry… using the word God with those concepts isn’t winning the day quite yet.

And so, the  mere mention of the concept “God” can create a resistance, and even a rebelliousness to anything further that might be said.

Please know I do not mean to offend anyone here. If your image of God is the first one, and it is your ‘truth’… kudos to  you.

When one uses the term ‘creative’ or ‘creativity’ – unless the person knows they are creative and is already able to freely admit it (that’s a rare portion of the population) – the concept of creativity also brings up resistance and even rebelliousness and most certainly, limiting beliefs.

“I haven’t got a creative bone in my body”

“She’s one of those flaky creative types.”

“Creative?  I couldn’t paint a thing.”

“Oh, my teachers told me I wasn’t creative.”

Yes, the concept of Creativity for many people means you are an artist, and a usual first thought even fine tunes it to being a painter.

To want to spend more time with your creative processes, causes many to think they are implying they are ‘artists’ (also a concept with stigmas) and they feel that would be rather presumptious of them.  So. There ends further exploration when the word ‘creativity’ comes up.

Sure, I can use the phrase ‘we will creatively find your answers.’  But then ‘creative’ becomes a non-word..  just a word to throw into a sentence to make it look nice. And cliches… “We’ll have to be more creative about this” (meaning the meeting ends because no one knows exactly how to be more creative about it.)

My clients are creative beings.  They are not the folks who successfully and easily use linear, logical, task and goal oriented strategic plans.   They are the ones who wonder why that doesn’t work for them, and if they can get past beating themselves up for ‘failing’, they might be the ones who know that method of moving forward feels, quite simply, boring and uninspiring to them. They might notice that they feel caged and are not accessing their potential.

That’s actually a fairly large percentage of the population.  I hope something of what I do, or that others do, reaches them in support.

Celebration.. do more of that.

When I trained as a coach, a component was learning about the value of celebrating and bringing that to the coaching relationship.  I cheered when this was being taught. It was such a valuable ‘aha’ for me and brought home a concern I’ve always had about how we are functioning in, at least, our western culture.

In my past I would organize huge events that could take months of prep and many sleepless nights the few days before. I’d work with communities of people helping them to collaborate and create something amazing. One favourite was the “Chopping Mall” – a dance event held on Halloween in the otherwise closed shopping mall.  2000 haunting youth in a Mall. Yup, you can imagine the work it took to convince shop owners that their shops would be safe (they were closed for this evening event), and the police that we could make this work, and the insurance companies, etc etc etc. And to convince youth that this was a cool event worth coming to!

The event was a great success and the next day I showed up for work as usual, to a few “good job”  comments and by 8:31 am I was working on all the other paperwork that was waiting, and the next event or program.

Not even a day off to bask in the success.  I could have booked a day off, but my thinking at the time was that would be a waste of day that I could otherwise save for holidays later. And other than that I did not know how to celebrate me for doing something good.    After all, it was just my job to do it.

I knew there was something wrong with this picture. I thought my employer should give me permission to take a day off, or even a paid hour to reflect.

What I needed to do was give myself permission to do something to celebrate. Do something that would have me pause long enough to embrace who I am and my successes.

And now, I know  celebrations can be THE THING that keeps us going. We need to remind ourselves of our successes with a conscious celebration.  The celebration can be as small as having cookies and milk on your patio in the middle of the day. Even the tiniest action is affirming and motivating. The celebration technique is a huge and fun part of my coaching, and my life.  Try it on for size?

The creative soul

I’m thinking of changing the tone of this blog.  More about the magical access creativity has given me to spirit. More about the strange and wondrous things that have occurred in my life.  More about the ‘way out there’ ways of experiencing life and afterlife.  But, I dunno, does one switch a blog up that drastically?  Perhaps.  I’m thinking on it.

No doubt playing in the clay has triggered this meandering of thought.

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