THE WHEEL OF CREATIVITY®

I just watched a very inspiring video of Michele Obama speaking to a group of influencers in Chicago about young people and gun violence (which is a terrible problem in certain areas of Chicago).

She spoke very personally about her experience growing up there and how the only thing that made the difference for her was opportunity – opportunities created by her parents who made sure she had the chance to be involved in things that stimulated her.

She talked about Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old girl who marched in the parade for Barack’s inauguration, who was shot and killed in the park a week or so later.

She talked about, of course, not only gun control but the need to create alternatives for kids who now spend all their energy watching their backs. I was very moved. At the end she talked about words versus actions, and making a real difference.

I guess it struck me so deeply in part because I woke up this morning feeling very weary of words, still thinking about the film I watched last night: PINA. What a powerful testament to the work of choreographer Pina Bausch, Wim Winders’ love letter to his dear friend.

Pina Bausch is dead now, but the dance company she worked with for more than 20 years is still performing her work. They spoke about how she saw them, and how she called them to go places in themselves they had never gone, or didn’t even know existed.

The film opened with her talking about the limitations of words and the power of dance to say what words can’t. It ended with her inviting one of her dancers simply to “keep on searching” to keep looking for the place in herself she had not found yet. And I was struck with the emptiness of words when they are not inspired with the energy of that personal discovery.

“You can’t take someone where you haven’t been yourself,” it is said. I am up against this every day now, as I must confront my own personal limitations (fears, judgments, insecurities and preferences) if I am to keep evolving and help create a better world. So for me today, my intention is to speak less, act clearly and live from the center of my being. Maybe I’ll succeed; maybe I won’t. But it will be worth a try.

Just for this day, what is your intention?

Experience the Wheel of Creativity’s power to help you discover the undiscovered in yourself with my FREE Daily Centering Meditation. Click here to download the recording.

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Sometimes in the course of the day, I observe my tendency to take hold of my life and try to control my way through it. Whether I’m trying to make something happen that I really believe in or to keep something from happening that I think is bad or wrong, I close my fists around life and try to have my way with it.

Have you ever noticed that the more you try to force your will on life, the more your desired outcome avoids you? This approach breeds a sense of urgency and desperation that drives you farther and farther from your own true place in the creative process of living. It’s a feeling that if you don’t make it happen, nothing will happen. Big lie. And one I tell myself way too many days of my life.

There are two fundamental principles in creating the life you want. One is receptive and the other is active. Yin and yang. One is about being open and receiving the unforeseen gifts there in every day. The other is about taking hold and making the most of what comes. One without the other is an incomplete system, like a hand that closes but won’t open or opens but won’t close. It doesn’t work.

You are not in control of the creative process. You have a responsibility for how you engage with it, but you’re not in control. The more you close your fists, the less you allow life’s creative energy to flow through you. At the same time, if you only open to receive without structure, and nothing remains. Does this mean you don’t have to work at it? Oh, no. That’s the other big lie.

Life flows like water, seeking the openings to give it direction. How would you hold a sip of water in your hand? Squeeze too tight and you squeeze the life out of it. Open too wide and it will all slip away.

To hold what flows, stay open and give it structure. Show up every day. Set your targets. Then set them aside and focus on what’s in front of you. Don’t think about the past or the future. Just do the work. And then go out with your friends in the evening.

To learn more about the active and receptive principles in creating your life, check out The Wheel of Creativity on Amazon or sign up to get my monthly Creative Adventure Journal over there on the right.

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The DHL man has just left. I’ve been waiting for him all day. Today at our house he is Santa Claus, and his truck is the sleigh.

My book has arrived!

(Just had to tell somebody!)

What I feel right now is a strange mix of shock, nerves, wonder and awe. It looks so small in my hand, a beautiful compact product made with heart and soul, love and fear, laughter and tears, and a whole lot of hard work.

I could not be more thrilled. You know, that little girl kind of “You mean that’s for me?” delight. To hold it in my hands after all this time—more than 10 years in the making—is to feel the ecstasy of creation after so much sheer effort.

Then come the tears. The exhaustion. The humility. The wonder that something like this could come through me and I could deliver it in to the world.

Then the sense of responsibility: to live up to the possibility, to give it its place in the world, to let it do its work now.

And finally, comes the deep let-go. It will be what it is. I cannot control the process. It will reach those it’s meant to reach and no one else. Will it touch you? I do not know. Time for a new vision with which to begin the next creative process… getting the word out.

One thing is certain: this book is on its way to you. The rest is in your hands.

The Wheel of Creativity: Taking Your Place in the Adventure of Life will be available as a Kindle eBook on December 25, and in print in early 2013. Get one! Fill in that little box for my Creative Adventure Journal for more details.

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I am having trouble with my downstairs neighbor. He would say he is having trouble with me. He has complained that I am too noisy, primarily that he can’t take my walking back and forth in my apartment (which I do a lot, as I work at home). For the past few days, I have been unable to take a step without thinking of him, and wondering if…. My emotions vacillate between anger, worry and catastrophizing. But this morning I had a new thought.

The irony of all this is that I have been aware lately that I have been more nervous that usual, more anxious, more tense. I am aware that the disruption, destabilization and disasters around our world are disturbing me. What can I do? And I am left with a bundle of emotions inside, and very little sense of power to change anything.

So I have been working with my breath, trying to remember to keep breathing as I do other things. When I think… keep breathing. When I move my arm… keep breathing. When I read an email, keep breathing. It is amazing me how often I catch myself holding my breath.

In a way, it is not surprising, as I believe we are all doing a little breath-holding these days, waiting to see what transpires in the many vulnerable places in the world. But when it becomes a habit, as it has in me, the entire body is affected. My movements become less fluid, more abrupt. My thoughts and emotions get stuck. And I would imagine that my steps become heavier. So today, as I watch my breath throughout the day, I am watching my steps as well.

As individuals we may feel powerless, but we are not. To begin to perceive myself as powerful in the world begins with the simple reminder that my natural relationship to life is as a creator. This changes everything. It also shifts our perceptions of right and wrong, good and bad.

The process of dissolution is essential to the process of creation, because old forms must die to release the energy for new forms to be created. Then even those whose role in the world is destruction play a creative role. Even the neighbor downstairs, who has caused me to examine my everyday life, is part of my evolution.

Our relationship to the earth teaches us so much about ourselves. Just as other people offer us the opportunity to look at and amend things in ourselves that hold us back, so the world today is offering us this as a species.

Today I can see the plan and all our parts in it. And today, it makes me grateful. In losing touch with my breath, I had lost touch with body and with myself. I had fallen out of love with my life. And life is too sacred to not appreciate it. One day I will not be here. One day perhaps, this planet may too be gone, or may return to some dormant state that will not support life. Will we have regrets?

In the last months of my mother’s life, she was very ill. I knew that I wanted to do whatever was necessary not to have regrets when she was gone. So I left my home and my work and went to live with her. Her dying process lasted six months. It was difficult. She suffered a lot. But our relationship evolved farther in those six months than all the 40 years before. She needed me, and I was there. And through that experience she gave me her final gift; she showed me the kind of love I was capable of. That love is the most creative force in the world. We hold its power in our breath and in how we walk through our lives.

Every one of us, great and small, plays a part in creating this world. Just for today, let us take responsibility for our part. Let us breathe deeply to connect with the creative force of life in us. And let us, just for today, walk a little more softly on the Earth.

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I am writing in haste this morning, as we are preparing to get on a plane for Sri Lanka, the small island country south of India, once called Ceylon. I am going to Sri Lanka at the invitation of my husband, who was there a decade ago and has always wanted me to see it.

Usually, when I make a trip like this, I have done a great deal of research, and have an idea of the culture and history, with someone else’s guidance about what is worth seeing there. This time I have done very little research (have not even looked at the site in the link above). I am actually happy about that.

What I do know is that there are things there I have never seen: baby elephants, tea plantations, spotted leopards, lemur monkeys, Buddhist temples, and ritual dances, to name a few. I look forward to experiencing all these things, and to discovering all the things I do not know there. I like surprises when I travel. In truth, I like surprises in life.

I grew up in a culture where it was very important to know… important to be right… important to have the answers. Somehow it often feels safer to rest within the boundaries of what we know and understand. But this safety is an illusion, and will eventually be shattered when what we don’t know pierces our safety net. It always does. That day usually comes as a shock… and a blessing.

When I travel, I often think of Lawrence Kasdan’s film, “The Accidental Tourist,” in which travel writer Macon Leary always attempts to travel without leaving home, eating at McDonald’s and minimizing his contact with the unfamiliar. It seems ridiculous to us, but this is how many of us live. I did.

As we set off today on our 10-hour flight from Heathrow to Colombo, I have completed the basics. I have had shots for tetanus, typhoid and Hep-A. I have my daily pills for malaria and tropical zone mosquito lotion. We have booked our hotel and transport for a week. We know it is risky to travel north, for security reasons. We have taken precautions.

But today I am delighted to be leaving the world I know for a world I have never experienced, knowing there will be ecstasies and agonies along the way. I will see things, eat things, hear languages, meet people for the first time. There is so much diversity of life out there to discover and be enriched by, but only if we are willing to leave home.

The Wheel of Creativity describes the experience of life as a creative journey. The first step in that journey, from my experience and others’, is to listen to what you long for, to follow what attracts you, and then to let go. Getting on a plane is not required. The journey begins within your mind and heart. Whatever you’re doing today, this day can be an adventure or the same-ol’-same’ol’.  You can travel through your life accidentally or deliberately. Which would you prefer?

More from me in Sri Lanka in a week or so, whenever I can get online…

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In every project there comes a moment when you have to be willing to let it go. It is a vulnerable time, like the first time a young bird tries its wings. But it is crucial step in the life of any project, to test its ability to make it in the world.

Last night was such a moment for me, and The Wheel of Creativity.

Last night in Nice, I let my baby bird fly in a room of more than 30 people, who were there to participate in the first WHEEL OF CREATIVITY QuickStart. After more than 10 years’ work developing my concepts—talking to people from all over the world in all walks of life about their experience of creativity, and revealing it in small controlled steps (from a year-long workshop program to a TV pilot)—I had finally reached the point to release it into the hands and hearts of this group. Ready or not, perfect or imperfect, it was time to make the leap.

The view from my window here is a landscape of red tile roofs atop centuries-old villas. Right now, three of these rooftops are nests for families of seagulls nurturing babies to the point where they can fly. On three rooftops, I can see three developmental stages in a baby seagull’s life:  the baby birds who vulnerably await their parent’s return with breakfast; the demanding young birds who can’t yet fish for themselves; and the joyful adolescents who test their wings on brief but ecstatic excursions.

Flying lessons are not easy for seagulls.  Parents perch on distant points and call; babies cry in response, “No, I’m not ready.” Parents try a little something different; still fear in response.  But, eventually, a leap must be made. And therein lies the joy: “Yes, I can!” Perhaps there is a misstep or a fall. Perhaps a crisis of confidence. But there is flight. There is, I have also observed, an optimum moment for the maiden voyage. And if it is not taken, as the bird gets bigger and heavier that voyage becomes more and more difficult.

As a map of the creative journey, The Wheel of Creativity stops in 12 stations from Hunger to Harvest.  Each station is a necessary part of the journey, as it moves us full circle from a sense of longing, through isolation and crisis to breakthrough, and finally to the satisfaction of creating what we longed for at the start. I have experienced these stations myself throughout my life, and I have heard person after person recognize themselves within them

Last night’s QuickStart was an experience, designed not only to explain my concepts and ideas, but also to put the power of the principles into people’s hands. Knowing a process intellectually and taking your place in it are as different as knowing the aerodynamics of flying and jumping off the rooftop. There is a time to sit at your computer analyzing possibilities and perfecting techniques, and there is a time to let it fly and make its best contribution in the world. And there is no way to know if it will fly until you let it go.

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