Creative Steps

Simply put, your creative allies are people who want to see you become more yourself; they want to  help you on your path towards increasing creativity. These are people who recognise, acknowledge and safeguard the potential within you. A rare breed in many ways; their message is simply ‘you are unique and valuable and you have something unique to contribute’. True allies create a context in which you can behave as you’d wish and therefore go on to develop your own abilities and grow and flourish.

Ezra Pound as Creative Ally to T.S. Eliot

In the early part of the last century T.S. Eliot was an unknown poet and author. He had written some poems, most of which were simply lying unread in a drawer like so many unfinished creative manuscripts. Then he met Ezra Pound.

Click here to learn about the weight of unfinished creative plans.

In 1915 Ezra Pound was acting as overseas editor of Poetry magazine; he recommended to Harriet Monroe, the magazine’s founder, that she publish “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock“.

It was clear to Pound that Eliot had talent. Indeed, he was so convinced that Eliot was already a great poet that he refused to let Monroe liaise directly with Eliot unless she ‘insulted’ him by suggesting alterations to his work.

Ezra Pound’s belief in Eliot’s quality was cemented in 1921 when Eliot left the manuscript of The Waste Land with him; he read it and immediately considered it to be a masterpiece.

At this time Eliot was working as a clerk in Lloyd’s Bank of London and the quantity of his creative output had reduced as he was unable to dedicate sufficient time to his writing. Pound recognised this waste and decided to ‘free’ him by attempting to establish a subscription plan called ‘Bel Espirit’, in which up to thirty people would each donate fifty dollars to help support Eliot. Pound himself gave money, as did Hemmingway and Aldington and others.

Despite Pound’s endeavours he was unable to find enough subscribers to allow Eliot to quit his job and dedicate himself to poetry. However, the publicity may have helped raise Eliot’s profile and, indeed, in 1922 Eliot was awarded the $2,000 Dial prize.

All or Nothing Thinking

Eliot did not leave employment to dedicate himself wholly to poetry, but he did continue to write. In 1925, he left Lloyds to join the publishing firm Faber and Gwyer (later Faber and Faber) where he remained for the rest of his career, eventually becoming a director.

Eliot avoided the common ‘all or nothing thinking’ trap by framing success as a poet in his own way:

“My reputation in London is built upon one small volume of verse, and is kept up by printing two or three more poems in a year. The only thing that matters is that these should be perfect in their kind, so that each should be an event.”

(Eliot, T. S. “Letter to J. H. Woods, April 21 1919.” The Letters of T. S. Eliot, vol. I. Valerie Eliot, ed. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1988, p. 285.)

Your Creative Allies

On your creative journey you will meet various types of travelling companion, some of them are allies and some of them turn out to be destructive to your creativity, the most subversive of these negative characters are the shadows and the most destructive are the shape-shifters.

Recognising the allies and guides, shape shifters and shadows can be difficult, but they define your journey. Are you aware of how the people in your life are shaping your creative destiny?

Learn more about how to recognise these people and how to interact with them to help your progress your own creative journey.

Sign up for the Information-Packed, Multi-Media, Online Creativity Coaching Course

Further Instances of Pound as Creative Ally

Pound was a tireless ally to many of the creative heavyweights of his day. When W.B. Yeats introduced Ezra Pound to the early writing of James Joyce, Pound became arranged for The Egoist to print A Portrait of the Artist, both serially and in book form.

Later when Joyce was writing Ulysses, Pound attempted to give the young artist more time to dedicate to his work by sending him money and clothing at his own expense (and anonymously) and also persuading other patrons of the arts to do the same. For instance, at Pound’s persuasion, Yates successfully lobbied the Royal Literary Fund for substantial grant. Pound also got the Society of Authors to send Joyce a bursary covering at least three months of expenses.

Your Creative Allies

You may think it was easy for Ezra Pound to see that Eliot was ‘unique and valuable’ and ‘had something unique to contribute’, after all he is one of the greats, but would you be able to recognise world class?

Rather than worry or wonder who your creative allies are, why not try and be an ally to someone else? Are you able to ‘recognise, acknowledge and safeguard the potential’ within someone else? Could you be a creative coach to somebody?

It seems to me that seeing the potential in others enables you to acknowledge the potential within yourself, too.

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We are all looking for ways to silence the inner critic. Some of us never manage this and we abandon our creative journeys far too soon, committing ourselves to an almost certain future of drudgery, boredom and dissatisfaction.

Whether you are an amateur attempting to cross a creative project off your life list, a more seasoned artist, writer or musician faced with a creative block, or a creative entrepreneur attempting to bring your ideas to life, if you evaluate your ideas and creative output too early you might be prevented from finishing at all.

Allen Ginsberg, who often seems to act as the creative spokesmen for a generation of beat artists, advocated continuous ’stream of consciousness’ writing as a way to silence the critic:

“The parts that embarrass you the most are usually the most interesting poetically, are usually the most naked of all, the rawest, the goofiest, the strangest and most eccentric and at the same time, the most representative, most universal…That was something I learned from Kerouac, which was spontaneous writing could be embarrassing…The cure for that is to write things down which you know will not be published and you won’t show people. To write secretly….so you can actually be free to say anything you want…

It means abandoning being a poet, abandoning your careerism, abandoning even the idea of writing poetry, really abandoning, giving up as hopeless, – abandoning the possibility of really expressing yourself to the nations of the world. Abandoning the  idea of being a prophet with honour and dignity, and abandoning the glory of poetry and just settling down in the muck of your own mind…You really have to make a resolution just to write for yourself, but just writing what your self is saying.”

In her book The Artists Way, Julia Cameron recommends a practice of writing three (A4) pages of longhand stream of consciousness writing each morning before doing anything else. This writing is not intended to be creative output; it is not profound, or artistic or even coherent. It is probably just nonsense, but it gives you the opportunity to clear all the internal dialogue that is silencing the real you.

As Julia Cameron says, “It is impossible to write morning pages for any extended period of time without coming into contact with an unexpected inner power… the pages are a pathway to a strong sense of self. They are a trail we follow into our own interior…“

In the online creativity coaching course, Creative Steps, How to Coach yourself to Increasing Creativity, I encourage you to engage in daily, ’stream of consciousness’ writing – it is a great a way to silence the inner critic and has worked for countless creative people struggling to overcome creative block.

Is your inner critic dominating you?

Recently the course has been free in return for feedback.  This has not only given me the chance to refine the training course and evaluate what is working and what is not, but also I have got to work with interesting people from around the world, including an Australian musician, two American painters, an Indian entrepreneur and a number of other creative people from the UK.  This has been a stimulating and rewarding experience for me and for this reason I am extending the offer:

In return for feedback on the site you get free access to the site and 5 free, 45 minute coaching coaching sessions.

Contact me if this is of interest and I will forward a coaching intake pack that give more details of this service. I am particularly interested in hearing from writers or creative entrepreneurs who are looking to take their work to the next level.

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Can you learn how to do something by studying what other people have done?

Surely the answer to this question is yes. How else do we learn; from trial and error and always starting at first principals? This is just not possible; we are always building on what has gone before. As American Astronomer and Writer Dr. Carl Sagan points out “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.”

So how do we learn from other people? If I wanted to write songs like Bob Dylan should I learn my craft by studying his albums, which is precisely what so many people try and do?

Hear what Bob Dylan, himself, says:

“No, no, no. It is only natural to pattern yourself after someone. If I wanted to be a painter, I might think about trying to be like Van Gogh, or if I was an actor, act like Laurence Olivier. If I was an architect, there’s Frank Gehry. But you can’t just copy someone. If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to. Anyone who wants to be a songwriter should listen to as much folk music as they can, study the form and structure of stuff that has been around for 100 years. I go back to Stephen Foster.”

(taken from an Interview with Robert Hilburn in The LA Times, April 2004).

Learning from others is sometimes called modelling behaviour. It is described as the “process of discerning the relevant states, behaviours and their sequencing and the thinking that enable someone to accomplish a task or to be a certain way.”

The key point is that we can’t just focus on output; we need to understand process – for Bob Dylan this included the things that a person has been exposed to.

In understanding another’s process it might be necessary to understand all aspects of their approach, for example:

• their behaviours and the environments in which they work;
• their capabilities;
• their values;
• their beliefs;
• and their sense of self.

The art of modelling is to know what the key pieces are – the difference that makes the difference.

What else does that interview teach us about Bob Dylan’s process?

There is certainly something in it about his sense of self and beliefs. Take this excerpt:

“I always admired true artists who were dedicated, so I learned from them. Popular culture usually comes to an end very quickly. It gets thrown into a grave. I wanted to do something that stood alongside Rembrandt’s paintings.”

Similarly, here, he talks about the spiritual dimension.

“It is like a ghost is writing a song like that. It gives you the song and it goes away, it goes away. You don’t know what it means. Except the ghost picked me to write the song.”

In the interview Dylan also talks about noticing the creative stimulation in the everyday. How he learnt to Pay Attention

“Chuck Berry wrote amazing songs that spun words together in a remarkably complex way. Buddy Holly’s songs were much more simplified, but what I got out of Buddy was that you can take influences from anywhere. Like his ‘That’ll Be the Day.’ I read somewhere that it was a line he heard in a movie, and I started realizing you can take things from everyday life that you hear people say. That I still find true. You can go anywhere in daily life and have your ears open and hear something, either something someone says to you or something you hear across the room. If it has resonance, you can use it in a song.”

Finally, we learn that Bob Dylan is not afraid to ‘Stand on the Shoulders of Giants’:

“Well you have to understand that I’m not a melodist. My songs are either based on old Protestant hymns or Carter Family songs or variations of the blues form. What happens is, I’ll take a song and simply start playing it in my head. That’s the way I meditate.”

“I wrote ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ in 10 minutes, just put words to an old spiritual, probably something I learned from Carter Family records. That’s the folk music tradition – you use what has been handed down. ‘The Times They Are A-Changing’ is probably from an old Scottish folk Song.”

When asked about ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ he says, “It’s from Chuck Berry, a bit of ‘Too Much Monkey Business” and some of the scat songs of the ‘40s’“

Creative Steps is dedicated to helping people become more creative and more fully self-expressed. It is your online creativity coach, mentor and guide; a single practical resource to help you take your creative project from concept to completion.

Creative Steps combines a course in creativity with online coaching. It is intended to instruct, inspire and motivate. It is designed to provide you with the tools you need to coach yourself on your creative journey.

One of our rules of the road is about learning from others:

Rule 8: You can improve your own performance by learning how others achieve.

Learn the other rules of the road for your Creative Journey here.

Posted in Case Studies, Creative Steps Coaching Course, Increasing Creativity, Module 3, Module 5 | 1 Comment »

I received a response to my recent post What would you choose, money or Creative fulfillment? It simply read: ‘Other variant is possible also.’

Although this looks like a spam post to me, it is a valid point and has some lessons for coaching, especially if we are looking to coach ourselves to increasing creativity.

The question, as I posed it in the post, is a classic example of a bogus dilemma; that is a logical fallacy in which the range of choices is much greater than we are making out and we indulge in the drama of dilemma when none really exists. For example;

“You could be an actor or get yourself a real job and be happy.”

“If you are not the best you are just another wannabe.”

“Art is for the lazy.”

This type of thinking is discussed in Module 5 of the multimedia training course Creative Steps; How to coach yourself to increasing creativity. In the course we call it All or Nothing Thinking.

All or Nothing Thinking is a classic creative block and a major barrier to fulfilling our creative potential. It:

• Obscures choices
• Focuses our attention on the ultimate output and takes away our enthusiasm for practice.
• Overlooks the fact that a first draft may not be great but it might be the seed of something great.
• Makes the achievements of others appear overwhelming.
• Overlooks the vagaries of taste and opinion.

If your aim is to coach yourself to increasing creativity then you need to learn how to avoid All or Nothing Thinking. Here are some tips:

1) Be alert to all-or-nothing words like ‘always’, ‘never’, ‘everything’, and ‘nothing’, ‘either’, ‘or’.

2) When you hear yourself say these words (or when they are said to you) check to examine if more choices are available to you.

3) Try re-adjusting all or nothing phrases to more realistic words like ‘often’, ‘for now’ or ‘this time’.

For example:

“I’ll have to give up work or I’ll never finish writing my novel” can be adjusted to “I need to find a little more time somehow.”

4) Practice finding the middle ground. List all the options available to you outside of the dilemma presented. How can you find more time? How can you get some feedback on a recording

5) Think of more than one perspective on the issue. What would others think? What would a wise friend, a tutor or a guardian angel say about the issue?

An example:

For example: You might think, “I’m never going to be any good – I might as well give up.”

A wise friend might say, “Do you enjoy the doing?”

A guardian angel might that many people who were ultimately successful had failures at the beginning, too”.

Most important is to be alert to when you are being influenced by all or nothing thinking and know that there are often a myriad of choices available.

I’m going to sell my house and put all the equity on ‘red’, if I loose I can really start to suffer and then I can write my symphony, but if I win I’ll rid myself of worry and knuckle-down and write that symphony.

A Final Thought: If the post was random spam it shows that how ‘random association’ exercises can add sparks to dry tinder and get the ball rolling. Of course, this is a good example of a mixed metaphor……more on that in the members area, too.

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Conventional Wisdom produces a tyranny of what is accepted over what is true. This can be seen in all areas of knowledge, including creativity coaching.

Within a very large range of ideas, we are able to believe what we please. We are able to hold whatever world view that best fits our tastes. This can lead to a tyranny of ‘what is acceptable’ over what is relevant or useful. Perhaps to call it a tyranny is a little strong, but there is certainly a danger associated with ideas constrained by the boundaries of conventional wisdom.

An audience of any kind is likely to applaud most what they like best.

Even the internet is constrained by conventional wisdom. To a certain degree Google defines the ‘markets’ so ideas tend to be organised around Google’s definitions and conventions. In this way, obscurity is guaranteed to people that do not adhere to theses norms; if you want to be found by people interested in your topic then you must use the keywords that these people are using in their searches with the result that even the most original thinker can soon just be ‘giving them what they want.’ Passion for a subject is soon replaced with finding out what people and offering them more of the same.

It happens in politics too. To Fly a Kite means to raise an idea to gauge the reaction to it. Depending on the reaction, the idea may be implemented (if the reaction was positive) or disowned and denied (if negative).

The test of audience approval influences content much more than the test of truth or utility.

Ideas come to be organised around what the audience as a whole finds ‘acceptable’ and the skill of the internet marketer or political svengali is to identify and reproduce what is acceptable.  Never is this more true than in the case of the speaker that opens his address by stating his intention of telling the hard, shocking truth; inevitably these speeches go on to expound want the audience most wants to hear.

It pays to be on the guard for conventional wisdom; it pays to keep looking for what is right and what gets results and not just resonates with what we want to hear.

What is the conventional wisdom in the field of creativity coaching? Here is one way of looking at it: whatever sounds ‘acceptable’ but doesn’t get you results.

Remember this: performance improvement should always be about results. Selling information is often about peddling conventional wisdom.

Know this: www.creative-steps.com, How to coach yourself to increasing creativity is about performance improvement.  Take a look at my guarantee.

About a year ago a client and I parted company because she wanted to spend more time nurturing her creative child. This is a shame, especially as I am a firm believer in the conventional wisdom of ‘refilling the well’ (as Julia Cameron calls it).

We really do need to nurture our creative selves; we need time and space and inspiration for growth. But we need other things too. We need to do the work now and again and any coaching that tells you differently is not doing you any favours. I was calling my client to account. I guarantee results and don’t like time wasters.

This client subsequently re-contacted me and we again started worked together. After a period of self-nurture she realised that she was no closer to her goal. Being commended by her support group did not bring her the same satisfaction as actually completing her exhibition. When she was ready she got down to the work.

In any field success is most likely to be driven by doing the work: accountability and follow up are universally useful. You must nurture your creative child but you must also remember that your creative child needs to get off its creative arse now and again.

“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.” Jack Kerouac

Tags: Coach Yourself, Creativity Coaching
Posted in Creative Steps Coaching Course, Creativity Coaching | 1 Comment »

Creative Steps and Creativity Coaching Concepts

Creative Steps is a nine-module, multi-media, creativity course for people who want to learn how to coach themselves to increasing creativity. It is for people who want to more consistently and effectively connect with their creative side.

Creative Steps is an online coaching course for seasoned professionals who want to take the quantity and quality of their creative work to the next level.

It is also a creativity guide for passionate amateurs who have always wanted to accomplish a creative dream and in the process become more fully self-expressed.

Each module is one step on the journey to creativity and each module presents the following:

downloadable tools and techniques to enhance creativity;
coaching material to help you overcome whatever is holding you back move towards increasing creativity;
case studies of famous people and enthusiastic amateurs;
exercises and tasks so you can flex your creative muscles and trial different ways of working;
tricks of the trade and lots of bonus material.

The course is practical; this is because we learn best through doing. You will be asked to take on new behaviours, try new ways of thinking and you will also be encouraged to work on a creative project of your own.

The Role of Coaching

Creativity Coaching was originally conceived to help people achieve more of what they want in their creative lives. It draws on many of the best concepts of life coaching, nlp and other fields of performance improvement to help people move towards increasing creativity.

This course helps you learn to be your own creative coach.

We assume you have no experience of coaching or the tools and techniques employed in this field. That is why everything you need is here.

For those new to coaching, the GROW model is a great starting point. It is one of the basic of coaching concepts introduced on creative steps. It is a framework that helps you unpack a problem and select the appropriate next step without getting into overwhelm. Use the structure whenever you feel a little directionless or when there is ‘a dip in the road’.

Goals - What do you want?
Reality - What’s happening now?
Options - What could you do?
What next? - What will you do?

You will learn more about the GROW model in the download area. You will also learn many other creativity coaching concepts.

If you feel you would benefit from creativity coaching then you might be interested to know that for a limited time my Information-Packed, Multi-Media Online Creativity Coaching Course is offered free of charge!

Unlimited Free Creativity Coaching

FIND OUT MORE

Tags: Coach Yourself, coaching concepts, Creativity Coaching, Increasing Creativity
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Life is better when you can fully about express yourself; and that means accepting yourself for who you are, and believing that this has value.

We can spend our whole lives living by other people’s rules or being dominated by someone else’s beliefs of how we should be.

As Oscar Wilde said “be yourself: everyone else is already taken“

Sometimes we look at what others are doing and our fear or envy knocks us off our own path. We spend far too much time worried about what other people are thinking, not realising that they, too, are absorbed in their own worries and not at all interested in us!

Pursuing our own creativity is a great way to become more ourselves. When we are creating we are living in the present, we exist with purpose and assurance. We experience the world more fully as we are fully engaged and able to be fully present, we see things more clearly and we are seen differently by our friends and families. Our head is acting in concert with what we feel in our hearts and in our guts – that is to say, we become congruent.

Tags: Coach Yourself, Creativity Coaching, express yourself, Increasing Creativity
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The ease of success

Sometimes when things are really working you might feel that there is an element of flow; an ease and effortlessness in which you act naturally and unconsciously. This is the ease of success.

You find this ease when you are acting in your body and not in your head and you will discover a certain lightness and even joy in the moment. This is when we do our best work; as if it is being generated by our ‘other than conscious’ self.

If your creative work has lost that flow, that effortlessness, then don’t throw it all away! You might not necessarily have to change what you are doing, it might be enough to change the how.

‘How’ is always more important than ‘what’. Success is determined by your behaviours, not by your latent ‘talent’ or your best wishes. This is one of the purposes of coaching.

Pay attention to whatever is happening in the present moment; concentrate on the ‘doing’ and surrender the control of what you want to achieve. This is tricky because it means you have to accept the present circumstance you find yourself in – you have to accept what is! You cannot pay attention to the present and resist it at the same time.

It is possible that the flow you are looking for can be found by simply letting go of your concerns about the future. The ease of success comes from the action of doing not from achieving.

Steinbeck was a great writer because the pencil was at times an ‘extension of his arm’, a direct link to his ‘greater creativity’ – he was a writer because he was able to write in the present and avoid turning to the future for salvation. He was a writer before being a successful writer. Neither success or failure could change that. There was no need to be anything other than what he already was.

It is important to know that the ease of success doesn’t come with success. It comes from knowing you are already complete and that you can already behave with playfulness and vitality. You will still have goals, but you don’t need to pursue those goals with fear or resentment or bitter determination. You do not need to become someone else. It is not a future situation or condition that you are relying on to make you happy – you have the ease of success in that moment.

The need for presence in creative work is discussed in module 3 of Creative Steps, the online creativity coaching course. Module 3 is all about presence: the course pdf, the case studies and the coaching materials are all dedicated to helping you pay attention to the present moment and achieve the ease of success. Take a look at the rest of the contents.

Tags: Creativity Coaching, Module 3
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What is Creativity Coaching?

This post gives a very high level insight into the purpose of Creativity Coaching…

In creating anything, two things are important:

• To have a goal
• To stick to the process

Let’s start with goals: one benefit of working with a creativity coach is that the coach will help you explore what is important to you and work with you to set meaningful, worthwhile goals.  For some thoughts on Achieving Your Goals follow this link.

However, that is the easy one! Lots of people have goals and there is lots of information on how to set goal, but know this:

It is through following a process that you ultimately reach your goals.

The process isn’t always easy, and that’s perhaps the real reason to work with a coach; the coach will give you instruction, encouragement and help keep you accountable to the commitments you have made to yourself and your creativity i.e. they will help you stick to the process.

Here is a list of some common issues that need to be faced on a creative journey (they are all explored in more depth in the Creative Steps Members’ Area.):

• Getting the right reinforcing beliefs, presuppositions and behaviours (module 1)
• Finding the time and the place for your work (module 2)
• Learning how to be present and pay attention (module 3)
• Keeping motivated (module 4)
• Standing on the shoulders of giants (module 5)
• Knowing what to do if things aren’t working (module 6)
• Building positive beliefs (module 7)

All of these dilemmas need to be overcome on the process to increasing creativity.

Know this:
Without following the right process you are less likely to achieve your goals – that’s why some say that the process is more important than the goal

Remember this:
The role of the coach is to keep you moving along the process so that you achieve your goals.

In this way, the creativity coach is a guide on your journey to becoming a creative person.

More about Creativity Coaching

Tags: Creative Steps Coaching Course, Creativity Coaching
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I love my job. I’m a creativity coach and I get to work with so many interesting people.

I received an email from one of them today. I followed the live music scene while living in London and became a fan of a young and raw reggae artist. He played alone, or with a single percussionist, and put so much of himself into his performance that you had to pay attention. He got signed up, as I said he would, and life seemed good.

Next thing he knew he had made a video in which he was portrayed as a sort of hybrid gansta rapper / reggae star. He was shown in driving along in a suped up car that somehow bounced in time with the beat! It made the charts (top 20 in the UK) and he was temporarily in demand, the latest flash in the pan aimed at the 13 year old market.

But he looked and sounded lame and he knew it. The power of his live music had gone. The acoustic sound had been replaced with a baseline that was as inauthentic as his media image.

We started to work together again and started to re-engage with his passion. He felt he had sold out; I knew he was still on a creative journey and as long as he kept moving he would get where he needed to go.

He played an acoustic set in London last night. I got an email from him today, “Thanks for the coaching. I can now be myself!”

But it was nothing to do with me, he did all the work.

Tags: case studies, Creativity Coaching
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