Creative Emergence Newsletter
October 2013
In This Issue
Masterpiece Energy
Chipping Away
Future as Guide
Emergence Coaching
C in B Telesummit
CreativiTweet Links
CreativiTweet Musings
Our Services
Hello from my new digs! As many of you know, I recently moved from the DC area to Charlottesville, VA. Only 2 hours away, I'm back in the DC area every other week, and still seeing clients/doing workshops there.

I love it here...and...there are adjustments that come from moving from a city where I knew and worked with hundreds of people, and had built a network and a business for 17 years, to a town where I knew 3 people when I moved. Staying present to both the excitement and discomfort of that change. :-)

Thankfully this is a welcoming town where people take time to meet with you, and connections and some local gigs have been emerging. I've been contracted to lead monthly Improv for Leaders programs for the Federal Executive Institute here in C'ville, and will be doing Creativity for Entrepreneurs workshops at the UVA iLab (Innovation Lab) Incubator next spring. Also been starting to do some public presentations here for local business and other special interest groups...and was invited to do something (I get to create what that is!) at next year's local TomTom Festival.

Other news: Just got back from presenting an Improv for Creative Thinking session at The Market Research Event in Nashville and a Storytelling for Business Resonance session to a group here. Getting ready to lead 150 Mediators in Improv for Mediation at the New Jersey Assn. of Professional Mediators conference. Also had fun in my 3rd year in the Adopt-a-Creativity-Practitioner annual program where I was "adopted" by a grad student at the Buffalo State Center for Creative Studies.

I recently was interviewed on Creating Your Emerging Story on the Stories Sell telesummit. You can listen to the interview here. And was a contributor to the Sparks of Genius ebook, talking about Making the Unknown Your BFF. You can read it here. Still working on my own Pattern Breaks book...slow going, but going. :-)

Scroll down for articles, musings, links, and more!

  

Happy Halloween!

Michelle

Masterpiece Energy - An Exploration of Generative Creativity 
2 colleague friends and I were talking about what differentiates great works of creativity - what constitutes a true Masterpiece. We stated reflecting on what we called Masterpiece Energy. We then decided to explore it further by having a 3-way written dialogue in which we all shared out thoughts, and then after reflecting on what each other had written, evolved and expanded them more until we got into the essence.
For that exploration, go the
full blog post here
Creativity Contains Chipping Away at What's Not Relevant
Michelangelo, when asked about his sculpture David, said he just chipped away all the parts that weren't David. I see that as a great model for living the Creative Life - chipping away all the irrelevancies while shaping and forming what is most alive for us into being.

It requires self knowledge, introspection, presence, conscious attention to what we are spending our time doing, consciously choosing what we want to engage and create, and letting go of the things, beliefs, ideas, commitments, and choices which don't support that. Sounds easier that it is, but it IS there for us...in our ability to have self awareness and make choices, no matter what our current circumstances.

As the new within us is emerging, the old sometimes fights
back with a vengeance to maintain its status quo. It can become an epic battle between the habituated, outdated familiar and the emergent, life-giving unfamiliar. During the transition, being neither here nor there can be quite unnerving - and sometimes problem-causing. It brings up fears, doubts, insecurities...feelings of not being on solid ground. It also brings up the most amazing creative, generative opportunities if we choose to find and cultivate them, even amidst total discomfort. Click here to read the rest of this post.

Is Creative Emergence Coaching for You?
I do my coaching sessions via Skype so distance is not a factor if you are interested in creative emergence coaching. It is a unique, whole-brain coaching process for structuring your purpose, passion and aliveness into an income-generating business/work...or creating anything new: your unique signature approach/model/process/methodology, workshop, product, service...any kind of offering. I can help you create it out into the world! :-) Call or email me about a FREE 30-minute no obligation consultation to see if our creativity-centered - and still practical! - approach is right for you.
Creativity in Business Telesummit
Still
available on MP3s! 
16 creativity thought leaders and practitioners, pioneering entrepreneurs, authors, and business innovators explored discovery and applied creativity in work and business!
     
To learn more or order your own MP3 Package
- a 16-hour applied creativity immersion course from people living it and facilitating it in the real world - go to: http://www.BizcreativitySummit.com  

CreativiTweet Links & Quotes    

Every issue I include some of my recently tweeted links - articles, videos, and other creativity-related links of interest. I hope you find something of value within them. Come join me on Twitter anytime at @CreatvEmergence  

     
1.  IDEO creators talk how to unleash your creativity
     http://zite.to/GSCMpZ
2.  Beyond Learning Styles--focus on universal learning style of human mind:
     (1) info in multiple forms (2) novelty, variety - http://bit.ly/1bWDUqX
3.  7 Shifts In The Age Of Opportunity: From Silos To Meshing  http://ut.co/ivs
4.  Mind-Wandering and "Positive Constructive Daydreaming" Enhance Creativity | Brain 
     Pickings  http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013
5.  The More Complex Our Brains, the More Different They Get http://shar.es/ECCZ5
6.  Business Improvisation Research Paper - why improv skills are so important in business:
     http://www.e-roleplay.com/business-improvisation-research-paper
7.  Through the Looking Glass - beyond conventional IQ -  http://shar.es/iND6M
8.  A crash course in creativity: Tina Seelig at TEDxStanford: http://youtu.be/gyM6rx69iqg
9.  The Habits of Supremely Happy People  http://huff.to/1ehU66b
10. Unlocking the Passion of the Explorer - http://bit.ly/1aKwkeX
11. On Empowerment and Creativity - http://buff.ly/1ePysHB
12. What Drives Creativity?  http://psych.ly/16EHJYC
13. How developing a Taste for Uncertainty can Create Opportunities -
      http://bit.ly/1cMgG3s
14. How To Lead From A Place Of Gratitude: 6 Lessons - Forbes - http://onforb.es/15PHXQC
15. Design Thinking: Creating A Better Understanding Of Today To Get To A Better
      Tomorrow - Forbes  http://onforb.es/1dTfdtu

CreativiTweet Musings   

Every issue I also include some of my own musings in 140 characters or less. These are some of my recently tweeted explorations about creativity and emergence....tweets for thought: 


1.  Creative magic emerges from the spaces in between.
2.  The same rules that applied for a static, conformity-based workplace
     don't work as foundations for a dynamic, alive, creative workplace.
3.  When we leave our socialized beliefs and enter the juicy, messy
     territory of our inner resourcefulness, we discover our true voice.
4.  Creative Leaders facilitate meaning, creativity, and contribution of those they serve. 
5.  Old paradigm: "failure" as binary end (pass/fail, right/wrong).
     New: an iteration - an invitation to learn, modify, evolve.
6.  Creative Leaders welcome, inspire, and awaken the Creative Leadership in those
     they lead/serve.
7.  Creativity contains the dynamic tension of seeming opposites -
     sometimes working harmoniously through us, sometimes in struggle.
8.  Living an expressed creative life contains the balance between structure & flow,
     action & reflection, focused activity & emergence.
9.  The more we consciously engage our innate creativity the more connections
     we make & the more opportunities we cultivate.
10. Our creative core is larger than our training or beliefs, & is accessible anytime.
      When we create we're more connected to the flow of life.
11. Best thing about living the Creative Life - you get to define what that means
      for yourself!
12. Our paradoxical relationship to the unknown: Reptilian brain fears it, protects
      from threats. Frontal lobe of neocortex thrives on it, and creates with it.
13. In the creative process, mistakes are awareness lessons. They strengthen
      knowledge & resolve, & become invitations to create something new.
14. It takes time to hear the subtleties of the language of our creative voice.
      Once we learn its language, we begin to trust it.
15. Noticing patterns you've discovered as a result of working your purpose gives you
      an inner authority that's not dependent on what others think.
16. Serving something larger than ourselves is naturally embedded in our purpose,
      often requiring us to expand our mental framework to see it.
17. Living our unique purpose includes being conscious of to what we say YES and to
      what we say NO on a daily basis.
18. Purpose + your unique creativity + serving a greater good = aligned purposefulness,
      generative for your self, others & the whole.
19. Through presence, any conversation can become a creative conversation.
20. People resist change that happens to them. They embrace change that happens
      by them. Create conditions that inspire change.
21. Be gentle with yourself in the places expectation does not meet reality...
     there is often unseen wisdom in that #emergence.
22. No one knows more about how to live YOUR life than you. The more you know the real
      YOU, the more power you have to craft/unfold your unique, thriving life.
23. A gift of being present is it reduces efforting. To live from presence, however,
      takes some work.
24. In presence, choices and options expand. In planning, they narrow.#bothand
      By being present, planning becomes purposeful.
25. divergence, emergence, convergence, breaking patterns (not necessarily in that order)
     #creativeprocess

Our Services 

The Center for Creative Emergence is a creativity consulting, facilitating and coaching company dedicated to integrating inspired creativity, meaning, organizational culture and business for a happier and more productive work life and a richer bottom line. We cultivate breakthroughs and emergence with entrepreneurs, teams, and organizations. CEO Michelle James has a mission to engage people into their full humanness via whole-brain (and somatic) creative process for innovative work, positive social change and consciously creating a generative, life-giving future.

Our Services include creativity and emergence coaching and facilitating, whole-brain corporate and public workshops, conference presentations, creativity events and Quantum Leap Business Improv

Creative Emergence Coaching
clients include Entrepreneurs who want to discover their calling, develop their signature approach, products and services, or create their new future story; Leaders who want to draw out and focus the creativity of their work force; Pioneers who are forging new territory or creating new models; Facilitators who want to create new programs or workshops; Business Partners and Teams who want to co-create or establish a creative work culture. 

Organizational Clients
have included Dominos, John Deere, Panasonic, Deloitte, Microsoft, GEICO, RAPP, Kaiser Permanente, Federal Executive Institute, Inova Health System, Teach for America, Hands On Network, National Institutes of Health, The World Bank, Invest Northern Ireland, Service Employee International Union, Clean Currents, Center for Nonprofit Advancement, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration among many others.

Blog: is The Fertile Unknown at www.creativeemergence.typepad.com.
Web:  www.creativeemergence.com  
Creativity in Business Conference
: www.creativity-conference.com 
Creativity in Business Telesummit:
www.bizcreativitysummit.com
Twitter:
CreatvEmergence 

Email: michelle_@_creativeemergence.com 
Phone:
434-995-5077