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Creative Emergence Newsletter
| October 2014
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Hi there! It's been just over a year living in Charlottesville and I'm enjoying this artsy town and have felt welcomed. I'm taking dance classes and found an improv group with whom to play on occasion. And the hiking and mountain views are incredible! Moving gives you a chance to be in Beginner Mind all the time and it's been fun finding new things, warm people, and stunning scenery to discover. Been busy since the last newsletter. Quick update: Presented Improv for Creative Thinking at The Market Research Event in Nashville, Storytelling for Business to groups here, Improv for Mediation at the New Jersey Association of Professional Mediators conf., Improv for Leading from the Inside Out at the Front End of Innovation Conf. in Boston, Improv for Interviews for NetImpact at UVA, Creating What's Next at the Cville Creativity Network I just started here last month (another CCN!), and did my first keynote presentation (audience-interactive of course) on Whole Brain Creativity at the Imagination Toolbox Conf. in Baltimore. Also enjoyed 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. Next month I will present Improv for Thinking and Speaking on Your Feet at the D29 Toastmasters Conference in Chantilly, VA. I was interviewed on Creative Emergence & Play on the Heart of it All radio station and Unleashing Creativity on Holistic Fashionista radio, and will be interviewed next month on the Conscious Software Development Telesummit (see details below - open to anyone - and free!). Was also on the What Wize Women Want local television show panel talking about Creativity and Intelligence. Continuing to work regularly with the Federal Executive Institute, Panasonic, and other ongoing clients, and welcomed Persuadable Research Corporation, MD Dept of Education, UVA, Dept of Interior, USAID, and Culture Blueprint as new clients, along with more individual coaching clients. Grateful to have had such a full plate, but that left less time for working on my Pattern Breaks book and I am still plugging away at it. It continues to be a big learning of discipline for me to give it enough time, but still excited to do it. Just taking longer than I had anticipated. :-) Was honored to be quoted and referenced in Michael Gelb's latest book, Creativity on Demand: http://amzn.to/1r5cO8D.
Scroll down for articles, musings, links, and more! And have a fun Halloween! ~ Michelle
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Resistance Gets a Bad Rap in the Creative Process
Resistance gets a bad rap. It can be a natural, healthy part of the creative process, and
| The chick feels the natural resistance of the shell during its birth |
serve generative purposes. As the the unknown of what is emerging meets and the desire to maintain the known status quo, a dynamic tension surfaces and resistance happens. It's not about avoiding resistance, but learning to move through it. This can serve, among other things, to strengthen what actually is emerging. It's part of the expansion and contraction that comes with any creative new birth. Instead of judging, avoiding, or denying our own or others resistances, we can learn to recognize them and move with them in the creative process. For more on this and ways to move through it, see my article on natural resistance and learning from nature's creativity here.
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Looking forward to being one of the presenters at this awesome FREE telesummit Nov. 10-21! I'll be talking about using principles and practices from improv and other creative modalities in product development based on my experiences facilitating product development teams. "The Conscious Software Development means you apply Awareness and Choice to all areas of application creation." ~ Michael Smith, telesummit founder and President of Teratech. Information and registration: http://conscioussoftwaredevelopment.com |
How we perceive the unknown determines how available we make it to ourselves as a resource in the creative process. The unknown, or fertile void, is the place of pure creative potential, waiting to be formed and shaped into being. The void is there, always waiting to co-create with us. By learning how to befriend it, it can become your most trusted, generative, generous, co-creative partner in any endeavor. You can access deep, novel, and surprising levels of your own unique creative brilliance. To befriend the unknown: Read the rest of the post here |
Just formed the Cville Creativity Network (the new CCN) last month. I led the first session on Creating What's Next using your Whole Brain. This month's presenter, Hobby Parent, is facilitating a session Creating a Vision Board to Enhance and Achieve your Business Goals. If near Charlottesville, come join us the 4th Wednesday of every month. Details are on the Meetup web page here. |
CreativiTweet Links & Quotes
Every issue I include some of my recently tweeted links - articles, videos, and other creativity-related links of interest. Join me there at @CreatvEmergence.
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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. My philosophy for using improv as a training and transformation tool: Commit first. Experience second. Make sense third.
2. The present moment is the place where movement and non-movement meet. #creativealiveness
4. Paradox of presencing - leave the moment to get in the habit of being able to really BE in the moment. #improv#herenow
5. Thinking today about the paradox of being accepting and non-judgmental...AND discerning, not settling and having/aspiring to high standards.
6. Designing for creative breakthroughs includes the willingness for the unpredictable messiness of emergence.
7. Most ORs are ANDs-in-waiting at the next level of thinking.
8. Paradox is creativity's welcome wagon.
9. Sometimes choice is active or proactive. Sometimes it's receptive or acceptance. There always is choice.
10. Creative breakthroughs emerge from a group when participants aren't boxed into facilitator's comfort zone. Design for your own surprise and edges. #facilitatingcreativity
11. When facilitating creativity, allow yourself to be in your own unknown so u don't limit what emerges to what you expect.
12. We busy ourselves with activity, which perpetuates maintenance, when what we really crave is real movement, which allows for growth & transformation.
13. Difference between relevant and 'woo woo' when facilitating creative activities is context - container creating and meaning-making - before, during and after. #facilitatingcreativity
14. Once we make discoveries and own them, no one can take that away from us. We move from outside validation to our own inner authority.
15. When we slow down we become present to the creative rhythm of life. Things become more purposeful and juicy. There is creative wisdom in slowing down. #emergencespace
16. Anyone who ever told you in any way that were not creative was wrong. Period.
17. Your creative uniqueness is greatest gift to the world, however you express it - the thing that without you the world wouldn't get to experience.
18. Where our known meets the unknown is we're called to expand our ideas, frameworks, and our Selves...messy, uncomfortable, juicy & fully alive.
19. Designing for creativity means designing for the known to meet the unknown & surprises can emerge...where we, not just our ideas, are transformed. #faciliatingcreativity
20. Creativity techniques aren't meant to be recipes to be followed, but ingredients to be played with, modified & made one's own. #facilitatingcreativity
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Is Creative Emergence Coaching for You?
It is a unique, whole-brain coaching process for structuring your purpose, passion and aliveness into an income-generating business or work...or creating anything new: your signature approach/model/process/methodology, workshop, product, service. Call or email me about a FREE 30-minute no obligation consultation to see if this immersive creativity-centered - and still practical! - approach is right for you. Limited coaching spots available.
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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, NetImpact UVA, 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
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