and dyed her hair. Great! None of these are bad to do, but neither an assessment nor an understanding of her role in the relationship was ever addressed in the process. Almost instantly she was involved with a new man. Although he was not abusive, she discovered early on that she was playing the exact subservient role she had in the abusive relationship. Her new answer was that it must be that there are no good men out there. Not fair. Nothing had changed because she hadn’t looked inside to see where this attraction and behavior was coming from. She was overlooking her role in the situations. She was attracting the same circumstances and relationships over and over again. Behavior patterns are broken only if we look at our own role in perpetuating them. Learn to recognize familiar situations and emotions. Ask yourself how you feel. If it doesn’t feel right at your core, then it isn’t. When we understand where we have focused our emotional energy, consciously and unconsciously, then we can decide to do things differently today, right this minute. And not just decide but know it, and connect to that decision with our hearts and minds and spirits that we want something different. This is the understanding and internalizing step to meaningful change. Life doesn’t just happen to us. We have a role in it. We are conducting the symphony, and wherever we point our baton, that instrument/emotion is emphasized or spotlighted. We forget that we can redirect the emphasis at any time. When the whole orchestra is playing in harmony and rhythm, with lovely solos here and there, is there anything better? Either we allow it to happen and impact us a certain way or we influence and redirect it.
■ LOOK WHAT I MADE! ■
Here we are on this magical journey and we have the chance to change everything about it all day, every day, with every decision we make and thought we think and emotion we attach to each choice—all that we offer into the world. Change involves courage, truth, and faith. Change does not mean instant cure or happiness, because each alteration, however small, brings with it its own set of lessons and challenges. It requires listening to and hearing yourself and others without filters. Let your critical voices fade away, and live more consciously in the realm of all things possible. Change is challenging and happens whether or not we consciously decide to influence it, so we might as well hop on that bad-boy freight train and see if we can fling ourselves off near the stop we want. Remember when you were little and you made some spectacular glittering piece of art and ran through the house to show someone, shouting, “Look what I made!” That is joy. That is this life.
TOOLS FOR THE JOURNEY
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What you are embarking on is really a journey, a journey within the grander one of life. Along the way you may encounter surprises, frustrations, newfound emotions, and, hopefully, great joy. You carry with you at all times a bag of tricks that you may just need reminding of as you set off. The tools are handy and access to them is just a thought away. It is always a good idea to travel with tools and supplies if you are going on a journey—you know, just in case you get stuck in the mud, find yourself lost, or eat bad road food. Three convenient tools when traveling down a path of energy shifts and change are: creativity, faith, and connection. Use these tools throughout your journey, as touchstones or reminders of the spiritual and emotional resources available to you.
■ CREATIVITY ■
Creativity appears like fireflies—blink, the light is there; blink, it is gone. It may only be inklings of new ways of looking at your world, but accessing creative energy is as easy as planning a meal, taking a new route to work, or painting a door in your living space red just because you love the color.
This journey we’re on together is also meant to unlock the creative gifts you were born with. We are all creative, each and every one of us. Sometimes we may just need reminders. Being creative is not necessarily the same as being artistic. Try to let go of any “results-oriented” focus you may hold inside in connection with being creative. Being creative doesn’t mean you have to produce a beautiful picture or sculpture when the bell rings and time is up. Try to let go of the associations with scissors, paint, and paper, if they are lingering nearby in your consciousness. Being creative can quite simply mean looking at a familiar landscape or even a problem in a new way. Some of the most wildly creative folks I know do not make art for a living. They just can’t help being creative. It is just as involuntary as taking a breath. Thinking and acting creatively can be learned. My friend Wendy Walsh gives her students this Abraham Maslow quote: “People who are only good with hammers, see every problem as a nail.” How brilliant is that? This woman met her future husband on an airport bus and fell in love with him after saying yes to his invitation to Nepal. Don’t forget to ask the question and extend the invitation, and don’t forget to say yes. As another friend of mine says, “Instead of a quick no, how about a slow yes?” Try lots of different tools, not just hammers. Use them in combinations, turn them upside down, and use them backwards. You can’t imagine how much fun it is to break the rules.
We are creative all day, every day, in our problem solving and interactions. Creativity is not product- or end-result dependent, as many may have been lead to believe. Every situation we encounter requires some degree of right-brain activity. Organizing your closet is creative. Finding a way to handle a difficult confrontation is creative. Talking to children is creative. Creativity is the process, the experimenting, and the pushing oneself outside of the routine ways of being in the world. Don’t get hung up on the outcome. I am talking to you Type A personalities. So, this quote by Donald Kennedy is for you:
A lot of disappointed people have been left standing on the street corner waiting for the bus marked “perfection.”
Thinking creatively gives us freedom, more room to move around in the universe. Acting creatively means breaking free of rigidity, coloring outside the lines. We may start to see the world differently and be in the world differently. The world becomes bigger, and the possibilities may seem limitless. Creativity has some risk involved, more like a happy challenge. I agree with abstract artist Helen Frankenthaler when she claimed, “I’d rather risk an ugly surprise than rely on things I know I can do.” Try something new, push yourself to feel the good fear, the fear that if you push through, it will make you exponentially stronger and a much more interesting human.
Creative inspiration comes from everywhere and sometimes out of nowhere. The fireflies blink their mighty little lights right outside the window and you can’t help but notice and wonder. You don’t want to catch them and put them in a jar, or they might die. You want to watch them for a while and see what happens. Creative thoughts happen like that. They can appear in your dreams or be inspired by a song on the radio, the colors in a room, or the clouds on the horizon. Mostly you just have to pay attention to the hints and inklings of inspiration all around you.
FREE-RANGE CHICKEN CREATIVITY
My friend Greg is an inspired cinematographer and musician. He most definitely lives a pan-creative life. He is a natural-born creative. Greg felt as if he had no other choice but to live a creative life. It is who he is. It was a burden when he was young to be told constantly, “Oh, Greg, you are so creative,” when he didn’t even know what that meant yet. He told me that later on he came to realize that maybe it meant he saw, heard, or experienced the world differently than other people. His mission became a journey to connect with like-minded folks to work and spend time with. At the risk of sounding born-again, Greg says that his creativity springs from “abandon, risk, and ultimately surrender.” He describes creative people as generally “thoughtfully, presently absent,” their minds drawing on past and future stimulation with influences flying in from everywhere. Greg thinks about it in terms of parameters and what he calls “free-range chicken creativity.” He said that unlike chickens, he needs some boundaries to his roaming in order to be content and at his best. If someone tells him to go shoot a scene the way he wants, for instance, with no clear direction, he feels as if he has too much wide-open space in the creative landscape. If, on the other hand, they tell him to shoot a scene to invoke the bleakest, most rainy day in London using only a gray palette
