THE WHEEL OF CREATIVITY®

For the past four weeks, I’ve been running a tele-course about the creative heart. What is the creative heart? It’s your passion for something. It’s what you love. It’s what gets you out of bed in the morning. It’s what you long for and can’t live without.

It’s Not the Goals

Just a couple of months ago, we started another new year. Seems to me that with each passing year, the sense of longing for what I’ve still not managed to achieve grows stronger. A lot of people set resolutions, make new goals, commit to themselves that this will be the year. And more often than not, by the end of February, it’s becoming clear that this may not be the year either. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

In my experience, most of us hit points in our lives where we just stall. And this occurs more frequently around the thing we really want. What we said we were were committed to doing doesn’t get done again. We run out of fuel. And the fuel is not better goals, less distractions, better time management (though all those things are part of the equation).

It’s the Passion

The fuel the fuel is passion. It’s love. It’s excitement. It’s being in love with your life (at least one aspect of your life) in a way that keeps you showing up not because you have to, but because you just can’t stay away. And the truth is that what we call creativity and what we call art it has this quality. It’s the kind of thing that we just absolutely love and we can’t really live without it.

Passion’s Close Companions

But stuff comes up and gets in the way. Fears. Judgments. Self-censorship. Self-judgment. “I’m not good enough.” ” I don’t have what it takes.” “Who do you think you are?” When we get close to the thing we value the most, these are the voices we hear. I hear them all the time from the people I work with; and yes, I have them too.

Sometimes the voices are internal and sometimes external. They are what I call mind fields. The mind is a nuclear device, whose power is at our disposal if we can learn to manage it. It is also perhaps the most defended place on the human landscape. It arms itself against what it does not know, what it cannot explain or predict, what it fears. It buries its mines deep on the very path to our deepest desires. The more precious the treasure, the more treacherous the path. But it doesn’t need rigid control. It needs love.

Disarming Behavior

So what do you do with a mine field? You have to go in there, locate the mines and disarm them. This is not an easy path and a lot of people would rather just avoid it completely. Where your treasure is, there lies danger also. That which you love the most is the place where you are most vulnerable, the place where you’ll feel pain, the place where you’ll come up against all the reasons your dream is still undone. I can speak from personal experience and say the road is hard and there are mines in the way. But you can disarm them. Your passion, your desire and your commitment to get to the other side will see you through.

Whether it’s a piece of art, a new business, a new wardrobe, a fitter body, or a more loving relationship, you will come out the other side having created what you long for. And the journey to it will have created you. My work is to help you find yourself on the journey, to keep moving and to reach your goal transformed.

Sound like a feasible plan? Then let me invite you to join me this coming Sunday, March 3rd, for a free half-hour teleconference:

Back on Track, Here and Now: Creating Your Best Year Ever

which will introduce my next four week course, starting March 5th:

Love the Life you Live: Romancing the Mind

Click here to learn more.

Share on Facebook

This Thursday, February 21st, I’ll be waiting for you at The Nomad Chef Secret Restaurant in Central London for the UK launch of my book:

The Wheel of Creativity: Taking Your Place in the Adventure of Life

Will you be There?

This party celebrates more than the launch of my book.

It is also a celebration of all your dreams still being dreamt and all your plans waiting to be laid down. It is a celebration of what you are here on Earth to do.

The Adventure Starts Here

Come join me and a select group of creative spirits — from artists to entrepreneurs — as we share an evening of solace for body and soul. This evening offer you safe harbour from life’s creative storms, just for a little while. Come get inspired to embark on the adventure of your lifetime.

Canapés and bubbly will be provided by The Nomad Chef.

Register Now

Click here to register and get directions to the secret restaurant.

liveCREATIVE!

Katherine

Share on Facebook

What are you pulling?

Today I’m going to try something, and I’d love to know your thoughts about it. Today I begin a creative experiment by recording a video journal a few times each week. In each journal, I will invite you into my private world, behind the photos, quotes and status updates I create on the Internet. What’s really going on for me today? What am I pulling?

How can this help you?

For many years of my life, I made my living writing and producing TV/film projects. I still appreciate the candid, in-your-face kind of filmmaking that captures the authentic moments of real life. The more eccentric the people, the more interesting they are to watch.

Well, somehow in the intense process required to write, publish and promote my book, I’ve found myself getting caught up in a lot of should’s lately. I have focused on the things I thought I had to do for people to discover my book and benefit from it. Somehow I lost touch along the way with what I most love doing. And that, as I well know, is a sure-fire way to disappear into the oblivion of my own mind.

I know I’m not alone. So my hope is that my little experiment will help you find your creative process in the midst of your day-to-day life. If we can’t sit down over coffee today, this is the next best thing.

Let me know what you think!

• Leave your comments here below.
• Post your own video response on YouTube.
• Join me for that coffee on January 20′s live coaching call to take the next step

Live CREATIVE! Let’s create the best year ever!

Share on Facebook

I just celebrated another birthday last week. I was so touched by all the joyful birthday wishes I received from people I’ve had the privilege to share time with in 2012. And so I begin 2013 feeling rich and inspired to use this year to really go for it in my life!

One of my favorite greetings I received came from an organization I belong to that routinely inspires and challenges me. It was a quote from Kurt Vonnegut.

So I share it with you now, because I can’t think of wiser words to begin this year with than these:

“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow.

• Sing in the shower.
• Dance to the radio.
• Tell stories.
• Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem.

And you will get the enormous reward of having created something.”

- Kurt Vonnegut

What if your life were your greatest work of art?

• Every thought is a creative idea.
• Every feeling is a color, a texture, a line.
• Every action is a brush stroke.
• Every avoidance, a missed opportunity.

Why not make 2013 the year you finally go for it!

• Let go of who you were in 2012.
• Ask yourself what your soul needs most to grow.
• Schedule an hour a week to nourish yourself in that area.
• Try one new thing and do it (however well or badly).
• Discover the kind of life you will create as a result.

I’m so blessed to have another year to share this creative journey with you. Join me in making this year the best year ever! I’m always here to help!

Sign up for blog alerts so you don’t miss a drop of inspiration and encouragement to keep you moving forward on your 2013 creative journey.

Get more in-depth guidance in my monthly Creative Adventure Journal.

And check out my new book, The Wheel of Creativity: Taking Your Place in the Adventure of Life,  on Amazon for a comprehensive compass you can use along the way. (Check the Amazon site in your country to purchase.)

Share on Facebook

What will you create in 2013?

Whatever you want to achieve this year, you’ll go through a creative process to do it. The quality of your life this year depends on how you take that process on. Join me for this sneak musical preview of what that little trip is going to look like.

P.S. It’s the ride of your life!

Now, go live this year CREATIVE!

* The Wheel of Creativity: Taking Your Place in the Adventure of Life is a book by Katherine Robertson-Pilling. Learn more here by subscribing to my monthly Creative Adventure Journal.

Buy the book on Amazon.  Amazon USA: http://amzn.to/UCldyz and Amazon UK/Europe: http://amzn.to/TzFXos.

LYRICS:  12 Days of Creativity: A Musical Tour of The Wheel of Creativity

Station 1 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… a hunger for something more than this.

Station 2 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… an appetite for that… and a hunger for something more than this.

Station 3 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you…  anorexia… an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this.

Station 4 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… a little boat to launch… anorexia, an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this.

Station 5 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… isolation… a little boat to launch, anorexia, an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this.

Station 6 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… crisis-a-brewing… isolation, a little boat to launch, anorexia, an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this.

Station 7 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… conception of a new thing… crisis-a-brewing, isolation, a little boat to launch, anorexia, an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this.

Station 8 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… waiting for gestation… conception of a new thing, crisis-a-brewing, isolation, a little boat to launch, anorexia, an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this.

Station 9 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… finally breakthrough… waiting for gestation, conception of a new thing, crisis-a-brewing, isolation, a little boat to launch, anorexia, an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this.

Station 10 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… a new thing to nurture…  finally breakthrough, waiting for gestation, conception of a new thing, crisis-a-brewing, isolation, a little boat to launch, anorexia, an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this.

Station 11 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… a grown plant for pruning… a new thing to nurture, finally breakthrough, waiting for gestation, conception of a new thing, crisis-a-brewing, isolation, a little boat to launch, anorexia, an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this

Station 12 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… a ripe crop to harvest… a grown plant for pruning, a new thing to nurture, finally breakthrough, waiting for gestation, conception of a new thing, crisis-a-brewing, isolation, a little boat to launch, anorexia, an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this.

Share on Facebook

This post is part of a series of excerpts from my forthcoming book. You can read them all in the Little Pink Spoons category. You can get advance notice of the book by subscribing to my Creative Adventure Journal over there to your right.

The Wheel

Throughout history, the wheel has been generally recognized as humanity’s first great invention. The word wheel is derived from a Proto-Indo-European word that means to revolve or move around. Always circular, often spoked and capable of rotating on an axis, the wheel made it possible for humanity to move across distances, to transport goods and to develop machines for achieving previously impossible tasks. Revolution empowered evolution.

The wheel is thought to have originated in ancient Sumer (modern Iraq) around 5000 BC, when it was created for throwing pots. Over the next several thousand years, it showed up in India and Pakistan on burial carts, in southern Poland on four-wheeled wagons, in China on chariots, and in Europe. The appearance of spoked wheels around 2000 BC made vehicles lighter and faster. As time went on, wheels were adapted to create new technologies, such as the water wheel for milling, the spinning wheel and ancient instruments of astronomy.

The Wheel as Metaphor

With its revolutionary impact on humanity through the millennia, it is not surprising that the wheel also took on strong cultural and spiritual significance. Across cultures and epochs, it became a metaphor for the cycles of life and the processes of growth and change. It still has deep symbolic meaning in most religions today.

The Wheel of Fortune.

For the Romans, the wheel was associated with the sun (as the wheel of a chariot that moved across the sky) and thus with life. The goddess Fortuna held the Wheel of Fortune in her hand, causing lives to change as she spun it, some for the better, some for the worse. Consequently the wheel endured for centuries as a symbol of the capricious nature of fate.

Ezekiel’s Wheel.

In Judaism, the wheel is associated with Ezekiel’s vision (Ezekiel 1:15–22), in which he sees four creatures descend from heaven. Twice, he says of these creatures, “the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.” “Wherever the spirit would go, they went, and the wheels rose along with them; for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.”

The Rose Window.

In Christianity, the wheel motif appears in almost every major cathedral in the world, in the jewel-toned emblem of the rose window. From the Roman oculus, a round skylight, the rose window developed in the French Gothic period, when geometry played a symbolic role in cathedral design. Every angle carried meaning.

The Mandala.

The wheel is also a central feature of dharmic religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, in the mandala—a representational sacred space of concentric circles from its outer edge to its ornately decorated central square. For thousands of years, Tibetan Buddhist monks have painstakingly created mandalas in intricate patterns of colored sand as metaphysical symbols of the cosmos, a microcosm of the Universe from the human perspective. Many Tibetans also pray using a prayer wheel, a cylinder on a stick with a strip of paper prayers wound inside, which they turn back and forth to release the prayers into the world.

The Medicine Wheel.

One of the most sacred traditions of the indigenous people of North America is the medicine wheel, symbolized by a configuration of 36 stones on the earth—a circle with a cross inside. The circle itself, also known as the sacred hoop, represents different stages of physical life and the influence of the nonphysical world as well. According to Jamie Sams, author of Sacred Path Cards, “This symbol of all of life’s cycles has given the People of Native America an evolutionary blueprint for centuries. Each cycle of life is honored in a sacred way, giving us a way to see the value of each step of our pathway and a new understanding of our growth patterns.”

And you?

Q:  What area of your life could you honor by recognizing it as part of the cycle of life?

Start where you are. Share your story with other readers. Leave a comment.

Continued next Monday…

To be sure you don’t miss an installment, sign up for Blog Alerts. Just fill in the top box over to the right there to get email updates. In the meantime…

Live CREATIVE!

Share on Facebook

What has Life given you today to create with?

Last week, as I left the sushi takeaway near my flat, I stepped out onto the sidewalk and turned toward home. Suddenly I realized, out of the corner of my eye I had glimpsed something extraordinary. I turned back to see a tiny bird’s nest in the middle of the sidewalk. No bird in sight. I had almost missed it.

Instead I turned back, picked it up, and held it carefully between two fingers. The walk home, with this tiny treasure in my hand, was an impromptu lesson in how precious life can be, and how easily we can miss it.

I found a nest once before, on the driveway of our house in England, where it now sits on our living room bookcase. This is a very different place. Trees – aside from the stereotypical scattered palms – are less common here. The raw materials available to birds here are different.

Today’s nest is smaller. Both nests are uniquely beautiful. But this one is made almost entirely of feathers, with only a small internal structure of twigs to hold them in place.

As I walked home, I couldn’t help thinking that while the twigs provide a delicate structure for the nest, the bird who built this nest then plucked her own soft feathers to complete it. That spoke to me. What she created had her in it. And the words rose spontaneously within me, “Feather your nest.”

Birds must use the materials at hand to make their nests. They use what’s around them and weave it all together with elements of themselves. It’s their nature. They migrate. They settle. They nest. They create a family. They let it go. And then they do the same thing again, year after year.

I am fond of saying, when speaking with people about the Wheel of Creativity, that our circumstances are the raw materials with which we create our lives. My circumstances are different than yours. They are different than they were a year ago. And we all have our preferences.

Some circumstances may produce more comfortable nests than others. But each year, each day, each moment, it is in your human nature to create something new… to feel the longing, to build the nest, to give birth to something new, to set it free, and then to move on to the next thing. This is the natural creative cycle of life.

All we have to do is look to Nature to know that we are creative, and to understand how to live creatively. To my knowledge, birds do not argue with Nature. They do not wait for perfection. They feel the calling. They start the family. They build the nest. They do the work. They set their children free. And they sing.

Life wants you to create. Life is constantly seeking to perpetuate itself through you. You may prefer to wait until things are just so before you act. But in the end, if you are to have a nest in your life, you will create it.

What a privilege, this experience of being alive. What materials has life given you to make your nest today? What will you add of yourself to make the world a more beautiful place?

Share on Facebook

Marketing guru Seth Godin is talking about Tribes. And so were we, yesterday at the professional women’s networking meeting I attended, where the topic was Co-creation.

According to Seth, “A tribe is a group of people, connected to each other, connected to a leader and connected to an idea.” His book, and the topic. came up at our table.

I got to thinking. And my thoughts formed around three main ideas:

1. Belonging.

My concept of a tribe, developed through my life, has been that it was something one was born into, something you were part of without doing anything, just because of who you were. It gave context to the individual, the couple, the family and the community. It gave a sense of security and belonging.

Having been a student of Latin in my younger years, I like to know the origins of words. The origins of this word, to my surprise, indicate that it was used to distinguish and separate one group of people from another.

The English word tribe comes from the old French tribu, which comes from the Latin tribus. And tribus refers to the original three-part division of ethnic groups within the Roman State: the Latins, the Sabines and the Etruscans.

Thus, the tribe that joins us with some must also separate us from others. We belong with one group because we are unlike another. I question that.

2. Technology.

My father was born in 1910. He saw the introduction of the automobile in the small Virginia town where he grew up. He went to school sitting on the back of his father’s delivery cart, which was drawn by a horse. When I was a child, he used to say to me, “Our greatest problem as a society is that we are too mobile.”

As cars became buses and trucks and airplanes, my father watched the glue that once held his society together drying up and flaking away. The social structures it had held – family, worship, local communities – started to come apart at the seams. People moved for better opportunities and left their tribes behind them.

It’s perhaps just as well that he didn’t live to see the World Wide Web, the Internet, email or social media. The expansion continues. And, as Nobel prize-winning scientists are proving, the expansion of the universe is not slowing down; it is speeding up.

The physical and geographical walls that separated us are coming down. Unlike my father, I don’t think this is a bad thing. But the expansion of the world we live in is destabilizing, and learning to cope with it requires consciousness and creativity. This is where Seth’s subtitle rings so true, “We need you to lead us.”

3. The Global Tribe.

This weekend, I met an international high school teacher. He spoke of some of his students, young men addicted to video war games. Without the skills to express themselves in the world, “They are,” he observed, “angry.” And who can blame them? Expression – an essential part of the creative process – is not about art; it is about living. When life energy – especially powerful in young men and women – has no creative outlet, it becomes destructive.

My tribe, I recognized as a teenager, built a box to keep us “safe.” That box was an ideological (religious) viewpoint that separated us from all those who did not believe what we did. People were classified as either X or nonX. That was how my tribe saw the world, so it’s what I learned too. After enough attempts to see outside that box, I eventually caught a glimpse of a world where boxes could be broken down and ideas expressed with respect and compassion. And that has moved me through life ever since.

Many people never leave their tribe, so perhaps they don’t feel the vacancy I have. Yet technology is breaking down barriers, so that even those who never leave – from the backwoods of Texas to the deserts of Libya – see different ways to live. But without a common idea, these differences too often breed animosity and hate. It’s time to ride the tide of our expanding universe, and expand our thinking as well.

Hollywood said it first in 1938:  “You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.” I will always have my history. But I don’t have to continue to create my life from it. Especially as I see the splendor of life’s diversity throughout the world, I realize what a poverty that would be. For me, having come from where I did, I prefer to find the lowest common denominator of tribal belonging.

Webster defines tribe as “a group of persons having a common character, occupation, or interest.” Of all the biological life forms on Earth today, there is none more like a woman than a man, none more like a Republican than a Democrat, none more like Muslim than a Christian. Can we open up to rediscover our human heritage outside our tribes of origin? What if we could co-create a global tribe based on common character rather than intolerable differences? What kind of future might our young men (and young women) inherit then?

Share on Facebook

Last week, while I was in London for the London Book Fair, I had the joy of a rare evening with my lovely step-daughter over sushi in Notting Hill. We talked about a lot of things, but what I want to share here is the point at which our conversation turned toward education.

Regi teaches young people. She has always been interested in the Wheel of Creativity; but through teaching, her interest has taken on a professional slant. She sees the Wheel as a tool for young people to make life make a little more sense. And that, as you can imagine, delights me.

The next day at the book fair I met with a senior manager of a creative social network for young people. Movellas is an online community where (mostly) young people publish stories they’ve written, read each others’ stories, and give and receive feedback. Thousands of young people from different countries show up there; and from what I’ve seen, they are highly engaged.

The same theme came up in both meetings. In order to succeed in the contemporary world, young people need more than knowledge. They need understanding – about how life works – and wisdom – about how to get through it in one piece. While schools are organized and standardized to teach the former, they aren’t necessarily set up to teach the latter two.

So I was intrigued to come across an article this month in the New York Times about Manhattan’s Blue School, where students from pre-school through third grade learn differently, where openness to new ideas is a top priority. According to journalist Jenny Anderson, “Periods of reflection are built into the day for students and teachers alike, because reflection helps executive function — the ability to process information in an orderly way, focus on tasks and exhibit self-control.”

It’s not really their fault. Schools have traditionally existed to teach the three R’s:  reading, writing and arithmetic. Students must pass tests to progress, and the passing of those tests now organizes the curricula. Anderson’s article quotes neuropsychiatrist and advisor to the school Daniel J. Siegel, who believes that schools should also be teaching “the three other R’s:  reflection, relationships and resilience.”

Education today is intensely active; but activity is only half the equation; receptivity is the other half. According to the Wheel of Creativity, the creative process is the marriage of the two.

Personally, I wonder if school is really the best place for the other three R’s, which sound to me a lot more social than institutional. First, there’s the cost. Parents of Blue School students pay close to $32,000 a year for tuition. Second, there is the growing pressure to educate children to be able to compete in an increasingly competitive job market. And third, well maybe there are other, more inspiring ways to learn them.

A chasm has developed in learning, and understanding and wisdom have fallen in. To fill the gap, young people turn primarily to each other, occasionally to their parents, and rarely to a trusted advisor. They need to learn to think and feel and navigate life for themselves. And they need clear, inspiring and creative tools to do so. Maybe Blue School gives them a head start. Maybe Movellas gives them a place to learn from each others’ stories. Maybe the Wheel of Creativity gives them a compass they can use for life.

What are you teaching your children to prepare them for life? Share your secrets here.

Share on Facebook

Five years before the release of Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Eat Pray Love, I left the USA on a journey of my own, a six-week solo tour of Europe. It was Autumn 2001. In the aftermath of September 11, the world had stopped in its tracks. And so did I, in the South of France. I swam in the Mediterranean, made friends with strangers, sketched and wrote. The soothing sensuality of the French Riviera began to loosen the grip of my American ambition. My life as I knew it was transformed.

As weeks turned to years, I made a dramatic discovery, at the intersection of The Hero’s Journey and The Artist’s Way. It was a new application of an ancient invention, used throughout history to describe the journey of life. It was the Wheel of Creativity. In Helen Keller’s famous words, “Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” The Wheel of Creativity®:  Taking Your Place in the Adventure of Life offers readers a map for the adventure.

What began for me in 2001 as a six-week European “walkabout” led me to a new life in three countries, a quantum leap in my business, and a magical first marriage at 52. I am living the adventure. Everyone can. While it need not be geographical, it is always transformational.

The ultimate creative adventure is being alive. Far deeper than the work of a professional elite or the amateur pastime of the masses, creativity is a force as natural as breathing. Either we learn to allow it to flow, or it costs us our lives.

The Wheel of Creativity® identifies 12 stages of the creative process in the form of a wheel, revealing the unique experience of each stage, and the task required to reap its reward. This book unveils an ancient roadmap, rooted in world traditions, tribal wisdom and natural law, and grounded in the contemporary life experiences of people in all walks of life, as well as my own. With tools to clear blocks, capitalize on strengths and take effective action, readers learn how to create the lives they love from the lives they have today.

These principles are universal. Each time I share them, I see people recognize themselves in the Wheel, learn to trust the process again, and retake the wheel of their lives. That is why I have written this book.

Right now I am in London at the 2012 London Book Fair. The message so far that struck me the most was that the center of creativity is no longer centralized, but now sits at the edge of society. People are doing it for themselves. So, if you think you need an authority to validate what you dream to do, forget about it. Just do it.

Why stop with the Eat Pray Love fantasy when you can create your own real-life adventure?

Share on Facebook