The Power of Commitment and Practice

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen events, meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would have come their way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!" - W.H. Murray The Scottish Himalayan Expedition

Whether its for writing, meditation, exercise, or anything you want to do but feel resistance to, establishing a practice can help you move forward in magical ways. It signals to the universe that you are committed. Having a practice means that you show up every day, no matter what. You are going to want to release all expectations of outcome or where you think you want things to go. It doesn't matter how good you are or what you accomplish or what happens with the practice. You sit down to meditate and your mind goes wild with chatter the entire time, that's fine. You show up to write and find yourself whining on the page, that's okay. The point is to show up and practice.

A lot of things are happening when you show up consistently to something. You begin to forge the neural nets in your brain needed for the task and strengthen them so that whatever you are committed to actually becomes easier to do and you are able to increase our level of skill. In writing your subconscious mind is working 24/7 on whatever you give it to focus on, so showing up everyday allows you to access new insights and ideas arising from your expanded mind.

You commit and take the action. The universe responds in kind, to the power of your willingness and the force your commitment. Free from expecting that you need to accomplish something, you relax and open up to allowing. In this receptive state, the your subconscious mind aligns with the workings of the Universe and you find support, synchronicities and inspired ideas coming to you.

Establishing a practice helps you move beyond any resistance that has been in the way. When you release the need for instant gratification you slip into a sense of satisfaction from the simple act of showing up for yourself. You learn to find joy in the practice itself and this allows you to expand your creative capacity.

To begin, start small. When I coach writers who are having a hard time showing up, I ask them at first to commit to writing ten minutes a day. This helps you cross the threshold of resistance and move past the associated voice that tells you that you don't have enough time. Once you have established the habit of showing up you will find things flowing with greater ease.

The Power of Creating in the Moment

Be Here Now - Ram Dass

Boredom is a sign that you are not being present. - Eckhart Tolle

I find myself, more and more, really called on a deep level to live in the moment; letting go of all worry about the future or regret about the past and to trust. Mystics have long encouraged us to be present to each moment, each breath. And now quantum physics tells us that in the moment exists all of time: past, present and future. This explains why the moment or the Now is the only place we are able to create anything, a book, a painting, a solar panel, our life. This is where are are able to create a new world for ourselves on both a personal and global level.

The more you practice being in the moment the easier it is to create. Our breath is a greatest tool since it calms our mind and relaxes our body which makes it easier to be present to what is. If we are worried about the future we can take a deep breath and ask is everything okay in the Now. The answer almost always is yes. When we calm our mind we have greater access to the guidance and wisdom of our own deeper knowing and inspiration can flow in.

My two greatest teacher for living in the moment have been creativity and Nature. What I have always loved about being creative is that it automatically makes you present to the moment and something greater than your everyday self. Whether I am dancing, doing photography, singing or writing there is a joy and satisfaction that arises out of showing up and being present to what wants to happen. When you hit the zone or the flow it feels so good. It feels Divine. I have a similar feeling in Nature where everything, rock, plant and animal is clearly in the Now being the essence of what they are meant to be. This helps me to just be.

Like many of you I've have done a lot of personal growth and healing work seeking to transform old patterns into new more satisfying and abundant ways of being with myself and the world. Recently I've felt a real shift in this and have come to the realization that there is nothing to fix. That nothing is wrong. If I embrace and accept everything in the moment free of judgment then things naturally shift and I am more open to new possibilities. Experiences that I deemed challenging are from the vantage point of the moment the experiences my soul needed in order to reach this point of understanding. When we live in the moment we have access to the wisdom and intuition that comes from our hearts.

A few days ago when my mind started to run away with me and the tools I usually use to calm the flame of worry didn't seem to be working I was guided to simply stop, take a few deep breathes, drop into my heart, and claim being in the moment. Peace immediately washed over me and clear sense of the next right action to take came to me.

We think we have to think through problems, that we have to figure everything out with our minds. Instead if we connect to our own inspiration and guidance in the moment we allow solutions to come intuitively and we experience synchronicities and miracles, little and big. In truth, the moment is the only place we can connect to higher wisdom and knowing. This is true for our creative projects as well as the course of our lives where we find ourselves living in the flow. This can help us be more actively creative on a daily basis.

How Surrender is Critical to Being Creative

We can’t force creativity. We know this intuitively. If we told a painter that we wanted a masterpiece by five o’clock tomorrow, they would look at us like we were crazy, that we clearly didn’t understand what being creative was all about.

An important part of being creative is learning to surrender to the flow of the universe, allowing something greater than our everyday self to move through us. It’s not something we can figure out with our linear mind.

Of course, if we want to paint we need to learn how to work with our chosen medium and studying the work of the masters can help. If we want to write it’s really valuable to read widely and deeply, to show up daily to put pen to paper and perhaps take a workshop on the form we want to work with.

Yet at the heart of being creative is letting go and allowing the ideas, the inspiration to move through us. This is where practice comes in. As Flannery O’Connor said of her writing experience, “I show up at my office everyday between 8 am and noon. I’m not sure that anything is going to happen but I want to be there if it does.”

I recently sat next to a young man in the park who had a set of watercolors laid out on a table and quickly produced a couple of small paintings that were quite lovely. We spoke of creativity and how so many people think you either have it or you don’t. “Yeah,” he said, “really it’s a muscle, you’ve got to use.” He went on to say “No mater how lousy I feel, if I do even a couple of little paintings I instantly feel better."

I feel the same way about writing, even if it’s just a page of free writing where I let the words flow out of the pen. Being creative feels good and lightens our mood because we become more present to the moment, quiet our chattering minds, and allow for the awareness of our heart and knowing to do the work. In the surrender we find ourselves in an expanded state of consciousness were we can do things we didn’t think we could.

In whatever way creativity calls to you, make a habit of showing up up to play with it. Let you self be guidance by what excites you. Surrender to what brings you alive.

Finding Joy and Creativity in Difficult Times

I’ve been reading a book titled The Book of Joy, conversations between HIs Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. These talks, at the the Dalai Lama’s home in Dharamsala, India on the occasion of the Dalai Lama’s 80th birthday, were intended to create a gift for the world. Their main focus was the question: How do we find joy in the face of suffering?

I thought this topic quite timely as we have all had our worlds turned upside down by the pandemic, triggering a lot of uncertainty and fear. How can we find moments of joy even now? One of the ways they were able to cultivate joy in their lives was to change their perspective on the difficulties they had experienced. The Daiai Lama explained that while felt sorrow at having been in exile from his beloved Tibet for more that 50 years he is aware that it has allowed to live a much more expanded and enriched life than had he remained sequestered in the Royal Palace in Lhasa. He is grateful for that.

So how can we gain a new perspective around all the changes that are going on in our lives and the world. Our fears for the future have us wobbling all over the map. Yet what if all the changes are offering us new opportunities to create lives that are more satisfying and to create a world that works for everyone. A world where we live in our hearts and create from the force of love. That’s where I have been trying to keep my attention.

Being creative helps. It brings us into the present moment where we forget about our worries. It helps us learn to work with the unknown. The artist faces the blank canvas trusting she will know what to do, the writer walks day after day down a path he can barely see. We discover that by taking one small step after another we can make the journey and find joy in the experience as we go.

Getting creative expands our possibilities and allows us to see what’s right about our situation. We see new ways of moving forward. During World War II many Americans planted gardens in their yards. By the end of the war these victory gardens, as they were called, account for half the produce grown in the entire country. We can do things like that. Small efforts done together that can make a big impact.

I know lots of people all over the world are doing all sorts of creative things during this time of crisis. Isolated at home we are finding new ways to connect, we are figuring out ways to help each other and the essential workers keeping things going, we are getting really creative without even thinking about it. I am grateful for that and for each of you, bringing your beautiful gifts to our world at this time. 

Cultivating Your Creativity

The ability to live in the question long enough for genius to emerge is a touchstone of creative success. - Jonathan Fields

Think of your creativity as if it were your garden. If you want it to flourish what needs to be done? How would you tend it? What do you need to do to gets things growing? What would it look like to reap the harvest? To start the soil needs tilling, fertilizing and the seeds need to be planted and watered. You may need to read some gardening books or take a gardening class. You need to put in the time and some care.

What does this metaphor for our creativity look like in practice. To begin know that you are creative; that is a gift inherent to all human beings. Know that creativity is something you can grow. As John Updike so beautifully as "Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better." And in the words of Ken Robinson in his book Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative "When people find their medium, they discover their real creative strengths and come into their own.

As a creativity coach, I have seen this over and over again in the workshops and individual work I do. People's creativity is lying just below the surface just waiting for a bit of encouragement to burst to the surface, often to their surprise and delight. So to start cultivating your creativity accept that in your own unique way you are already creative and your job is to be open to what that looks like and explore the possibilities.

How can you nurture your creative self? Understand that your creative self is a tender, vulnerable authentic part of you that likely wasn't encouraged at home or in school. She needs a safe and sacred space in which to emerge. Cultivate radical self acceptance for the part of you that is original and able to think outside the box. Entertain new ideas and possibilities. Experiment. Play. Let go of judging the new ideas, just be open and curious. Start asking questions. What are my creative gifts? What creative endeavors would bring me most alive? What do I need to do to awaken my creativity?

Practice, patience, faith and a willingness to be surprised are important elements. Once you have begun to take action there is also the element of allowing that needs to be considered. And understand that like a garden creativity moves through different phases and trying to produce a finished product in one step is usually impossible.

You start, you plant the seed and you don't keep pulling up the seed to see if it's growing. Know that in the fertile darkness of the subconscious that your creative ideas and project is incubating. Even when you are not consciously working on the problem that your creative mind is, so that when you return consciously to whatever you are working on, new ideas and solutions will rise to the surface. Understand that as John Cleese so eloquently said, "creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating." Consider all the ways your are already creative.

Creativity: Being Part of Creation

Well, you're right in the work, you lose your sense of time, you're completely enraptured, you're completely caught up in what you're doing, and you're sort of swayed by the possibilities you see in this work. . . .The idea is to be. . .so saturated with it that there's no future or past, it"s just an extended present in which you're making meaning. - Mark Strand, poet

The thoughts that come to you are more valuable than the ones you seek. - Joubert

Some years ago I read a wonderful book by Matthew Fox, titled, Creativity: Where the Divine and Human Meet. In this book Fox, a former Catholic priest who had been censured by the Church for putting forth a doctrine of original blessing as opposed to original sin, suggests that when we are creative we become co-creators with creation.

I had been involved with creativity for a long time by the time I read his book; first with dance and photography and then a couple of decades spent writing so I knew immediately the truth of what he was saying. I remember the first time I really got on a roll with my writing and I knew that something good was coming out of my pen, I actually stopped and looked around the room to see where it was coming from because I knew it wasn't exactly coming from me. Since then I've come to the sense that it's Spirit or my Higher Self working through me and I've been able to integrate working with these mysterious forces as I write.

The word Muse has its origins in being intiated into the mysteries. And its important to understand that this connection is available to everyone not just a select few who are somehow born with this special gift. It is also not restricted to the arts.

The gift of creativity is woven deep into our being. Everytime we solve a problem we didn't "think" we could solve we are drawing on this invisible resource. We experience it in cooking, gardening, decorating our homes, raising our children, healing, teaching and business when we get the inspiration to do something in a new and expanded way. When we tap into this ability it feels great, it feels divine.

Regardless of where this creative inspiration comes from I've found that the more I show up to the practice of writing or anything else, the more I have a feel for working with this creative flow. It's like a muscle that gets stronger with use.

Joan King, a neuroscientist who has studied brain activity describes in her book Cellular Wisdom, "While such brainstorming [found in creative flow] is occurring, more and more neurons and neural pathways are being activated in the neural net. Consciousness acts like a spotlight, shining here and there, making connections, illuminating thought and memories, trying out possible solutions. As the process continues, more and more neurons are recruited, activating more of the great intermediate [neural] net." The key here is to stop thinking with your linear mind and let the creative imagination really run. Our linear mind has to get out of the way to let our big mind make its leaps and forge its connections.

Consider all the ways you are already being creative and what it feels like. Is there a sense of excitement and expansion when you exercise your creativity?. What would it takes for you to build more muscle in this area? I think the changes and challenges in the world today are actually calling forth this ability in each of us. They are asking us to embody our creativity in every area of our lives and in our contributions to the world. The beauty is that creation is waiting to help. We just need to show up, let go and step into the flow of being a co-creator. Our willingess is our invitation.

Why Does Being Creative Feel So Good?

Why should we use all our creative power? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate. - Brenda Ueland

Why does really engaging our creative power feel so good? It brings us into the moment. It brings more of our heart, soul and spirit into play. We are allowing the forces of creation to move through so we feel uplifted and inspired. We find we can do more that we thought we could. This isn’t just about creating art but creative action and problem solving in all its myriad forms.

We have all had the experience of being a work trying to solve a problem with the limited capacities of our mind. Finally we give up in frustration, get in the car, drive home, and as we pull into our driveway the solution pops into our head. We have a sense of ah…ha. The uplifting feeling that bit of magic was at work. Where did that come from we might stop to ask if we weren’t so happy to have an answer. That’s how creative inspiration works. We need to allow for it, rather than try to force it.

When we experience this flow of creativity, whether for a moment or for hours we feel as if we have touched the heart of the universe, something bigger than our everyday selves. There aren’t really words to describe it. We just know if feels good and expanded. This applies whether we are writing a poem or designing our garden, cooking without a recipe or anything where we are doing something in a new way.

You can begin to play with expanding your creative capacities by looking for ways you already feel creative or things you feel drawn to and play more with those. Let go of thinking you aren’t creative or that you have to good at it. Better yet, ask your creative spirit what she would like, let the question go, watch what pops in and follow that lead.

See if the act of bringing more of your creative power to your everyday life doesn’t help you feel better about yourself and the world.