
Creativity doesn’t come through control. It comes through relationship and knowing how to relate well.
Have you ever wondered what happens in those moments when you enter into the heart of the unknown?
I’m curious because as a facilitator of business creativity courses, the students I encounter always want to be more creative but at the same time are so well conditioned to control. Truth is, we all are conditioned to control. It seemingly makes life more bearable — even though in reality we don’t have the control we believe we have.
Life is about relationship. Everything is about relationship. Including creativity.
Creativity doesn’t come through control. It comes through relationship and knowing how to relate well.
What goes on here in the heart of the unknown? What is possible here? And how can you be and what can you do to open more fully to this mysterious relationship you (and we all) have with the unknown nature of life?
When you have that AHA moment, that moment of insight, you don’t have it in a vacuum. You have it because something in you is open enough to receive the insight, even if just a tiny bit, even if just for a split-second. Something in you has prepared the ground to receive the seed of insight.
We never know if that moment of insight will come out of the blue as a kind of image or voice in our own awareness, or out of the mouth of someone we’re interacting with, or perhaps even through a sign (physical real world or not) as we go about our day. But notice that each of these instances is by way of relationship — with our own awareness, with others, with the world.
Creativity comes through relationship and knowing how to relate well — openly, vulnerably, and receptively. Receptivity is one of the key traits of someone who is highly creative. A creative person listens well, sees things clearly, feels for what is true, discerns and intuits rather than judging — and then responds to what is received, taking the next step.
When I facilitate creativity courses, I use a map for the creative process that takes you down into the unknown, sort of like into a metaphorical ravine. Using this map, you don’t know how long it will take (ravine width) or how deep you will have to go (ravine depth) into the unknown darkness in order to discover what it is you don’t know. It’s dark simply because you don’t know. Every journey into the creative unknown comes out of a true moment of not-knowing. When we don’t know and we must know in order to take the next step, the only way through is through — going into the heart of the unknown and navigating through to the other side.
We tend to fear the unknown because it represents death. We tend to be afraid of this journey because on some level we know it will change us in that something within us will have to die if we are to truly take in this new thing we don’t yet know, this change in both ourselves and in our world. We are often most afraid when we know the journey will do away with the idea of self that both keeps us the most comfortably hidden and most creatively/expressively bound. Sound familiar? If so, you are not at all alone. In fact, you’re in great company!
In reality, we go through these unknown places many times a day. We navigate this ravine without realizing we’ve even done so because the moment is short and the shift in our identity is small. It’s the bigger moments that can cause us much more anxiety and stress. Those moments when we suddenly discover we have to move, or our partner wants to leave us, or a love one is sick, or we lose our job. Then we are thrust right into the great ravine and how we learn to navigate these moments can help us to live a life that is more adventurous and playful rather than white-knuckled and stressful. This doesn’t mean there are never difficult times, but as we become more aware of how it feels to be in the unknown and how to relate to it, we can soften a bit into this human life.
As with any relationship, we can learn to become more proactive with our parter — the unknown. It requires learning to trust (just like with a new life partner). It requires knowing we are not in control (just like in any relationship). And it requires that we do our part, the footwork necessary to elicit a response from life. For every partner we engage with is an expression of the unknown, an expression of life.
Creativity is life. Life is creativity.
What is really unknown is life itself. The ultimate unmasking is the revealing of you as you go deeper and deeper into life with less and less to hide you.
You will be revealed to yourself as you engage with life, within your human life and all of the billions of expressions of life that exist all around you.
We want to take more risks. We want to be more adventurous. We want to be more creative in how we do things. Yet we struggle with wanting to control and control does not work well to foster creativity, an adventurous spirit, or healthy risk-taking. What works better is to engage with relationships (people, allies) and strategies along the way that focus your attention to and bring about the insights and ideas you’re in pursuit of. Again, it’s engagement, relationship, openness, and listening.
At the base of this ravine, you’ll meet what you need to meet. You’ll come to know what you are searching for. You’ll come to realize more clearly who you are. Through the initiations you encounter, the thresholds you cross, and the obstacles you navigate, you make your way to a clearer sense of yourself and what you’re capable of, and you bring back the jewels of the journey that can and will serve the greater whole.
The journey can be long. The journey can be short. And the journey can be in-between. And all of this can happen within seconds of a great creative moment — the seconds between ‘I wonder’ and ‘AHA!’.
At the heart of the creative unknown is the unknown. Of course it is, but realize this more deeply. At the heart of this not-knowing is the unknown. What is your relationship to it? This is a good thing to explore. Something magical happens when you open to it; something real and alive; something life changing. What happens will serve your relationships in all areas of your life, especially the one you have with yourself, as well as your work in the world.
I offer coaching and courses to help you go deeper into the creative process so you can discover your unique way of engaging with the unknown as well as powerful tools and strategies to use that will help you be more creative, innovative, and resilient.
Registration is currently open for my women’s leadership course, FLOURISH.
