Invite Creativity

Posted on May 3, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

785. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

To invite creativity it is necessary to first coax curiosity to open the door. I know that is an odd statement. Why would curiosity close and lock the door?

It is impossible for a human being to not be creative. We are in our nature creative. Every moment of our lives we are creating.

However, it is possible a human being to experience him or her self as not creative. Many people above the age of 5 years old define themselves as not creative.

If you have defined yourself as “not creative” it is a good bet that at some point in your life you got slammed for being curious. Your endless stream of questions was not welcome, your scribbling outside of the lines was not appreciated, and opening doors to see what might happen was not convenient. You might have stuck your finger in a light socket and it hurt. Your great capacity to ask “what if…” was curbed. You got into trouble. You put a lock on it.

It is possible to shackle your curiosity. It is possible to bottle your imagination. It is possible to restrict your voice. It is possible to define yourself too small. We are free to reduce ourselves to the lowest common denominator and we do that from the fear of what might happen. “What if…” can cut both ways (note: either way is a process of imagination).

The story goes something like this: curiosity called us out to play and we answered the call! Answering the call exposed us, made us vulnerable, and when we were completely immersed in play and unprotected, singing loud or dancing without bounds, someone laughed at us or criticized us or shook us or told us in front of the whole class that we were no good. BAM! The curiosity door slammed closed. We installed locks and began looking at the world through a peephole.

We develop an overzealous control mechanism to reign in our curiosity and strangle our creative range. We begin this process by dulling our curiosity. We sit still. We color between the lines. We learn to raise our hands if we want to speak. We play a game called “search for the correct answer” and do not ask too many questions. We develop and profound commitment to finding a right way. We make profound control commitments called trying to be perfect. We show up but not too much. We decide we need to know BEFORE we step.

To have the full human experience of wild creativity, curiosity needs an open door. Curiosity needs to run free. Creativity follows. Creativity ensues.

Learning is creativity and creativity is learning. Mastery in any discipline requires unbridled experimentation and play. This is curiosity.

Filed under: Creativity, Edges, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

Start A Fire

Posted on March 17, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

738. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Dale was my seatmate on the flight from Minneapolis to Seattle. He’s a firefighter and had donated some time to the nature conservancy to do a controlled burn in northern Nebraska. We started talking before he’d stowed his backpack in the overhead bin and didn’t stop talking until we landed in Seattle almost 4 hours later. It was as if we were picking up a conversation that we started yesterday and continued today on our plane ride.

Dale is like an artist who has mastered the technical skills and now wants to transcend his technique to fulfill his artistry. He knows fire. He knows how fire behaves in a variety of circumstance and in the face of shifting forces – in a windy canyon or in a warehouse filled with chemicals. Fire has been his life’s pursuit. To hear him talk about his work is like listening to a painter whose canvas is combustion and whose brush extinguishes. Fire meets water. He has the utmost respect for his medium.

What baffles him is people. He can talk to fire easier than he can communicate with his fellow firefighters. They don’t get him and he is at a loss to understand them. People behave unpredictably in the face of shifting forces. Of course, the person that baffles him the most is himself. He asked, “Why do we put so many limits on ourselves?” He knew the answer even before he asked the question, so I sat still and kept quiet. After a moment he said, “I don’t hesitate to run into burning buildings but it terrifies me to show up as I am. All of those limits keep me safe in my comfort zone.”

I asked him if he granted himself as much respect as he granted to fire. He knit his brow. “What if you are your medium? Could you study yourself with the same passion and respect as you study fire?” I asked, followed by, “What would you need to let go to show up?” He eyed me for a long moment and then said, “I’d need to let go of my belief in all of these limits.” After another moment he added, “I’d need to give up my dedication to staying in my comfort zone.” When I smiled he said, “Sometimes it is so simple. Easy to say, hard to do.”

Filed under: Edges, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Leap Or Show Up

Posted on March 13, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

734. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

My inner sociologist shared his notes with me. He tugged on his sweater and pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose before positing that personal edges only come in two varieties. Both varieties, he asserts, fall under the single category of “where the known meets the unknown.” Just as the sea meets the shore, the known meets the unknown in a convergence of elements. He told me that it makes no difference whether you are a sea or shore dweller, the other place, the unknown place, marks the line between comfort and discomfort. It also marks the line between stasis and growth. Stay in the known and stagnation is a certainty. Put your toes in the water or your fins on the shore and you will learn something new. I nodded my head. I agree with his assertion.

He tapped his pen on his yellow pad (my inner sociologist eschews technology) as he knit his brow and told me that stepping across the line into the unknown defines the first variety of edge. He labeled this first variety of edge, “The Leaping Point.” Apparently we visit the leaping point many times before actually leaping. We know what we need to do long before doing it – yet we pretend that we don’t know what we need to do. He explained that the most common mistake we make is to think that the discomfort comes from stepping across the edge; it doesn’t. The discomfort comes before the step. The discomfort is what drives us to finally do the thing we know we need to do. The discomfort comes from delaying the step. The step is liberating. The step transforms the discomfort.

He cleared his throat before telling me the second variety of edge comes from facing the thing we fear the most: being seen (note: fulfilling your potential is a subset of being seen). Being seen is a mirror-action to the first variety of edge. In this variety, the step is not from the known into the unknown; it is a step from the unknown into the known. He explained that the unknown in this case is the accumulated clutter of who we think we “should be;” we reject who we are. And then, one day, when we can no longer sustain the mask, we have to pull the mask off and reveal who we really are. We have to step into who we know ourselves to be. The transformation is from unknown to known.

He smiled, pulling his glasses from his face, and said, “It is really quite elegant if you think about it. Leap or Show Up. Those are our only two edges.”

Filed under: Edges, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Meet At The Edge

Posted on January 3, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

665. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

On the plane today I read a short piece on edges and it reminded me of the power of this simple reality. The place where two elements come together, the place where two currents meet, the place where two cultures intersect, the place where the clearing meets the forest, the place where the world drops off: these places either teem with life or fire the imagination. It is at the edges where we become uncomfortable. It is at the edges where we say, “I don’t know” and thus, learning becomes possible.

There are internal edges as well as external edges. I work with people all the time who tell me they’ve hit a wall, come upon a block, or run into a limit that feels like an abyss. Internal edges are just the same as external edges: they either teem with new life in the form of ideas and pursuit or they evoke discomfort and resistance. Edges are present when we say, “I’m lost,” or “I don’t know what to do,” or “I’m frozen and can’t move.” Edges are present when we shout, “That was incredible!” Edges are supposed to generate instability: movement.

You know you are at an edge when you judge: judge some one or something else and it’s a good bet that you aren’t comfortable. Judge yourself and it’s a good bet that you’ve found an edge. If, in the moment of judgment, you realize that you are at an edge and suspend your judgment, you are instantly capable of learning. If, at the moment of judging, that you invest in the judgment, you’ve shut down the learning. Judgment is merely a way of establishing a location, a false “known” so you can get away from the unknown: it is an oddity human development that it easier to call yourself or others an idiot (thus, locating yourself or them) than it is to say, “I don’t know….”

Edges are everywhere. Kichom Hayashi sends his students out in the world to find as many edges as they can. Try it. You’ll find there are edges everywhere: grass meets concrete, brick meets brick, glass meets steel, earth meets water, sky meets horizon, hand meets hand, idea meets idea: the possibilities are endless. See them and then imagine the edges define connectivity instead of separation. If you reinforce the connectivity, you will walk toward your edges every time; the discomfort will call you and fire your imagination. If you see separations, the edges will frighten you and drive you back into the comfort of judgment. It all depends on what you choose to see.

Filed under: Edges, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Value Your Growth

Posted on December 9, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

640. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

When we were 12 years old my cousin Randal and I ran away from home. We’d had it with the parental suppression and too many rules! We wanted adventure and revolution. One morning in a fit of discontent we took a can opener and 6 dollars and started walking. We didn’t know where we were walking. We’d not identified a direction or made a plan. Along the way we stopped at a 7-Eleven and bought some candy and Coke to fuel our discontent. We walked from Arvada to Golden, approximately twenty miles before we got tired and called home for a ride. Dinner and a soft bed suddenly seemed more important than freedom and adventure. I have always felt fortunate that our very angry mothers were willing to come fetch us from our adventure. Our walkabout revealed the benefits that come with rules; it also made apparent to me how comfort is often the roadblock to rebellion. My only regret was that we never got to use our can opener.

Discontent fuels movement. I remember thinking as we walked that we were walking for the sake of walking. We were walking because we needed to do something, but the something we chose to do was not action – it was reaction. We were not walking toward anything; we were walking away from our problems. We didn’t know what else to do. It seemed important and necessary when we started and confusing and ridiculous by the time we stopped. We’d defined our actions according to what we didn’t want, not according to the creation of what we imagined. Discontent fuels movement but does not give it direction.

When we got to our respective homes that night, the people that loved us yelled at us, grounded us, fed us really good food, hugged us, made sure we were clean and without injury and tucked us in. It was a full spectrum of loving acts! I slept really well that night. The next day I awoke a different person. I knew that running away wasn’t immediately useful and yet, it created movement within me. It was assertive. It helped me run into more than a few boundaries. It initiated conversations that I needed to have. It helped me recognize that love has many faces and that this business of being a human is messy. It helped me distinguish between action and action with purpose. It helped me recognize that Coke and candy are not good fuel for walking long distances. And, it helped me recognize that if I wanted to make significant change in my life or in the world, I needed to value my growth over my comfort. In fact, growth is always through a path of discomfort.

Lora once told me a story of a Buddhist teacher who took cold showers everyday. I shivered and replied that I couldn’t do it. I like hot showers too much. She smiled and said, “That’s exactly what I told him and you know what he said? ‘I’d rather be fully alive than comfortable.”

Filed under: Awakening, Edges, The Direction of Intention, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

Stop Pushing

Posted on December 2, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

633. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I love when lessons come in clusters. Sometimes it seems the week has a theme that will keep coming until I pay attention.

This morning, Saul-The-Chi-Lantern gave us an article from a magazine about yoga injuries. “It’s never good to push too far, to try and be a super person,” he said. He asked us to face the mirrors in the room and guided us though a series of minimal movement exercises. “Find the edge of your movement and learn that edge.” As we moved through the exercises he told stories of dancers and martial artists that left their center, that strained their bodies beyond what was natural and sustained career ending injuries. He told us of a doctor he once knew that treated joint and spinal injuries with the minimal movement exercises we were doing in class. “The edge moves. You gain flexibility by finding the edge, working with it, and not by forcing yourself past it.”

“Power comes from relaxation, not through resistance,” he said as he demonstrated a martial arts move. “If someone punches, I am most effective with the least amount of energy,” he said, showing a simple twist of his arm to deflect a blow. To meet the force with force will knock me off center. It will hurt!” he laughed. Power is not resistance. Power is relaxation.

Earlier this week I worked with a class of entrepreneur’s preparing for their investor pitches; they were working really hard to be memorable. They were tense, pushing. I told them that in a past life I used to audition actors, sometimes I’d see dozens of people in a single day. I told the class that I’d never remember the actors who worked hard, who tried to get me to remember them; the actors I remembered where simple, honest, centered, and clear. The actors I remembered were relaxed. Minimal effort. Easy. Powerful. The actors I remembered were honest.

Yesterday, Judy-Who-I-Revere, after listening to my tale of woe said, “You don’t need to work so hard. You already have everything you need. Relax; you can stop pushing.”

When Saul started his lesson this morning I smiled, thinking, “Alright already! I hear it! I’ll stop pushing. I will relax.” I am a slow study and sometimes it tickles me that I make the universe work so hard to teach me….

Filed under: Awakening, Edges, Power, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , | 3 Comments »

Take A Walk With Me

Posted on November 24, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

625. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

It is late and I am in my studio. There is a train blowing its whistle somewhere in the distance. The building is quiet at this hour. Mark, the building caretaker, tells me there is a ghost and that he wouldn’t be caught dead in the building this late at night. I’ve been here deep into the night on several occasions and I have yet to encounter the ghost. I want to meet it – her, so Mark tells me. She usually hangs out in the attic but will wander the halls if she gets restless. I suppose a restless ghost is less appealing to meet than a non-restless ghost. In my mind, however, every ghost is restless; being a ghost implies that you are stuck in an “in-between” state, a limbo, like being perpetually in an airport and even the most even-tempered ghost must get tired of the long flight delay. When I am a ghost I will tap my foot and ask, “Where’s my plane?”

I have been in a limbo the past few years and, consequently, a kind of ghost. I think this evening I was compelled to come late to the studio to seek advice. Do you know you are wandering the halls or is there a world of illusion that we, the living, cannot see? Assuming that you see it, is there an obvious way out or do you simply step into the sun? And, if you step into the sun, do you disappear? Is that what keeps you in the attic, the fear of disappearing? Is limbo really better than commitment to action?

I am not a very good ghost. Restlessness is fun for a while but sooner or later every ghost must ask, “I wonder what is out there?” I’m not good at wandering halls though I seem to have lots of practice at it. I need the sun. The sun needs me.

As I sit here waiting for my ghost to appear I’ve decided that I no longer need her advice. If she came in the door, instead of saying, “I have a few questions for you,” I’d hold out my hand and say, “Take a walk with me. Don’t you think it is time?”

Filed under: Edges, Emergence, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

Step Toward The Wolf

Posted on November 14, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

615. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

It’s an analogy I use often with groups: In the story of Little Red Riding Hood, which character is necessary to move the story forward? The wolf. Without the wolf, there is no story. Without the wolf there is no conflict. In story terms, conflict is the motor that drives a story forward. In personal and organizational growth terms, conflict serves the same function; remove the conflict and you will impede your growth. Conflict, obstacle, hurdle, challenge,…chose your word; it is the wolf, the trial that serves as midwife for the opportunity to emerge. New perspectives become available and necessary when old perspectives snarl and howl.

Processes of change in an organization are exactly the same as processes of change in an individual. The mistake we make in both cases is to attempt to eliminate the wolf from our story. We’ve confused good process with comfort. Discomfort, not comfort, is the hallmark of a vital change process.

Teams that always agree are inert. Teams that know how to disagree are dynamic. The greatest artistic collaborations I have ever experienced were comprised of people with opposing points of view and no investment in being right. They were artists dedicated to bringing their best ideas to a team, knowing that there would emerge from the group a vision greater than any single member could imagine. Collaboration is a cauldron that requires heat. It also requires an understanding that agendas like “needing to be right” or “have things my way” will sully the gold. Great collaborators step into heat unguarded; they do not attempt to eliminate the heat because they are in service to a vision and not a scorecard.

Collaboration is a group of people evoking the best from all involved; they are invested in the success of the whole, they are actively creating power with their team. The fear of conflict is a sure sign of power-over games; it is the sign of individuals pretending to be a group, seeking their worth from their peers instead of bringing their worth to the collaboration. When a group attempts to eliminate conflict it is a sure sign they are afraid and, therefore, necessarily invested in control.

If you or your team feel stuck, it is a good bet that you’ve eliminated the wolf from your story. Like all good growth steps, the thing you need to do often feels counterintuitive; rather than play nice, play honest. Bring your best offer and don’t forget to invite the wolf to your party.

Filed under: Creativity, Edges, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »

“When You Are Falling, Dive!”

Posted on October 16, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

586. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Today the dragonfly is once again on my mind. Earlier this summer I wrote about dragonflies and they have been hanging around in my thoughts since a hot day in August when I waded into a lake in New Hampshire and a cobalt and purple dragonfly landed on my shoulder. I was going to take a swim but recognized that I was having a sweet visitation so I thought I’d wait until the dragonfly left me. And the dragonfly stayed. For a long time it rode on my shoulder. I slowly waded parallel to the shore and for almost a mile the dragonfly sat on my shoulder. A few weeks ago I kneeled on the grass of Jill’s front yard and saw fiery orange dragonflies skitter just above the green; those playful amorous dragonflies were invisible from human height. When I kneeled and put my ear on the grass I saw an entire festival of dragonfly play.

I love symbol and metaphor so later I researched (again) the dragonfly as a symbol and what it portends. I learned that dragonflies come to you to help you break the illusions that prevent growth and maturity. They bring visions of power; they are swift fliers so are symbols of whirlwinds of activity. Dragonflies also foretell a time of change. In other words, when a dragonfly lands on your shoulder it is a good idea to put on your seatbelt. When an invisible community of dragonflies becomes visible, put on your hard helmet.

This summer was definitely a time for breaking my illusions, challenging my patterns and looking at my assumptions. The breaking continues: if my life came with a windshield I would have already gone through it. Airbags were not an option when my model came into the world and the seatbelt was less than useful. I read that dragonfly medicine works in a two-year cycle so the games have just begun. Since I am already in flight I will keep my helmet on for a while. I am investing in some large safety goggles. I am learning to keep my arms at my side for less wind resistance. Soon I expect that I will develop a cool set of wings. I wonder what color I will be when I have fully become a dragonfly? I prefer the cobalt and purple but the fiery orange was hot and might better serve my new style.

As an older artist friend once told me, the edges never stop coming; if we are alive we just get better and better at running toward them. We develop an unwavering faith in the leap, the fall, and the landing. I am going to like life as a dragonfly and will not spend much of my time reminiscing about my human shape. And, I am certain that I will spend much of my time seeking shoulders upon which to land. I will delight in being a colorful symbol for imminent change.

Filed under: Edges, The Direction of Intention, Transcendence | 1 Comment »

Put Ego Against The Wall

Posted on September 18, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

558. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Ana-the-Wise and I had a conversation this morning about ego. We were talking about a wide range of things: “cleaning house,” ridding ourselves of limiting patterns, when people think they are operating out of love but in reality are reinforcing limits (co-dependence), when she spoke this terrific phrase, she said, “That’s the moment you put the ego against the wall!” I loved the image: my ego with his back against the wall; my ego having to face the truth of the moment instead of the horrible fear story.

I asked her to talk more about that. She said, “Ego likes to make things look bigger than they are. For instance, if your ego can convince you that approaching a gallery to sell your paintings is very scary, you will delay the action. Ego likes to make things look too big so you will avoid taking action.” It’s so simple. How many times have I talked myself out of doing something because I feared the response or assumed I knew the answer; a recent client said it best when she said, “I fear the “no.”

When I coach people I often ask questions like, “What do you get if you don’t act?” The answer is inevitably something like “safety” or “comfort” or “I get to be invisible.” This is what Ana is talking about. Ego will have you create stagnation and call it safety. Ego will have you bar the door against non-existent wolves. Ego will keep your light safely under the bushel; after all, who are you to shine? Don’t you know that your light hurts other people’s eyes; tone it down! Keep your voice to yourself. Sit in your desk and raise your hand; don’t you know how to stand in line? And so on.

Often the mountain we need to climb is never as steep as it seems. I’ve found that when I put down my ego-fear-story (…is my work really not good enough, do I really not deserve it, etc.?) there is no mountain, just me stepping toward what I want.

Filed under: Awakening, Edges, Truly Powerful People | 4 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »
  • buy us a coffee :-) Thank you!

  • visit the studio melange at kerrianddavid.com

  • The Seer available on Amazon.com

  • Lucy & The Waterfox is also available on Amazon.com