My Philosophy
There are SO many reasons to nourish your inner Creator! Here are some of my favorite “arguments” for why this work is amazing and endlessly valuable.
- Life can be better than it is — if we know how to dance with it.
- Life can actually be exciting. Energizing. Like you’re on a mission. Like you are building something. In fact, you can be building something! And when you’re alive, flowing and connecting often with your Creator self, life begins to take on a quality of… well, aliveness. Why would we ever settle for less?
- Creativity is meaningful. It doesn’t need to be a “retreat” from the difficulty of life. It can be a powerful method for engaging with life’s difficulties without getting derailed, depressed, guilt-ridden, etc.
- Your creative life is meaningful because it can have actual benefits for other people (and for yourself, of course). You can bring joy, healing, connection, and inspiration to others. It's amazing.
- It is an actual service to people to awaken them to their dormant sense of joy.
- Creativity and authentic self-expression represent a victory over the mistakes that our species has made over time.
- Many of the societal problems we face today stem from decisions that powerful people have made out of self-interest. Out of disconnection from their genuine, creative, loving selves.
- Embracing your Creator self inevitably leads you down a path of becoming more loving, less burdened, and ultimately more generous with your time and energy. While logical brain may question the “legitimacy” of creativity in a world of horrible suffering, the truth is that reconnecting with your Creator self is probably as good of a strategy for reducing overall suffering in the world than any other tactic you may have thought of.
- Creativity is not a modern privilege, nor is it confined to certain classes, races or demographics. It’s our birthright.
- All children are born creative. All animals play (and a huge part of the day, at that!).
- Human societies have expressed creative and “unnecessary” tendencies since the dawn of time. Cave paintings on the walls. Decorative figures carved from stone and wood. Oral histories passed down for centuries.
- The technological growth that defines modern life is, ultimately, a product of creativity. Edison’s experiments, Da Vinci’s ideations, the Wright Brothers, Tesla, the Panama Canal… Creativity is an ever-present reality of human existence.
- Nowhere is this illustrated more beautifully than Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, in which Frankl describes concentration camp prisoners who would choose to listen to poetry or music, even when it meant skipping the one meal they were allotted that day.
- Creativity is physically and psychologically healing.
- Creative expression, play, joy and other “soft” (bleh) forms of engagement have been shown — time and time again — to be profoundly healing on a physiological and psychological level.
- Play produces many of the neurochemical results that the pharmaceutical industry spends billions trying to engineer. Movement stimulates the release of endorphins, which are natural mood-boosters and pain relievers. Deep social connection helps regulate the sympathetic nervous system, providing much-needed buffers against the waves of chronic stress that have overcome us (and keep coming).
- There is no real debate as to whether creativity is a powerful (and measurable) tool for healing. It simply is.
- You don’t know your full self yet.
- There’s a weirdness in you that wants to awaken. It might be audible already, or maybe it's tucked away under the covers. Either way, you’ll be glad that you decided to give it some breathing room.
- You’re not fully free yet.
- You’re still trapped. We’re all trapped, to varying degrees. We’re caught in stimulus-response loops — based on past conditioning — that cause us to repeat painful patterns all over the place. We react angrily, then feel overcome with regret. We overeat, then feel guilty for our lack of control. We smother our Creator self, then feel fiery envy when we see others perform and share themselves. This is the human trap!
- Liberation, for many, is the ultimate goal of life. The ability to have a joyful experience, despite inevitably painful circumstances. Creativity is a wonderful muscle to build if we want to make this a reality.
- You have something to offer the world.
- Every week, month and year, you’ve learned important lessons about life. About yourself. About right and wrong, beauty, and more. These are lessons that you’ve absorbed from the fabric of the world, and there are no doubt thousands — perhaps millions — of people who are in desperate need of hearing one of these lessons at this very moment in time. You have beautiful and essential messages to share, and one of the best ways to tap into — and transmit — them is through creative expression.
- Creativity is an incredible way to connect with people.
- Do you feel stifled by your social setting? Do you feel like your friends don’t lift you up, your family keeps you in the same childhood box, or your colleagues don’t inspire you to expand? Building out your own Tribe of Creators is like wrapping your soul in a fuzzy, heated blanket. It’s awesome.
- The truth is, the people we spend our time with play a massive role in shaping our lives. And the more difficult truth is, if these people aren’t lifting you up, they’re bringing you down. There is no neutral. Your social support network can — and I believe, should — be a source of inspiration. Of wind at your wings. Of co-pilots on a journey to the planet that’s truly calling your name.
- The barriers to creativity that you perceive are probably fragile beliefs that crumble upon closer inspection.
- Too old? Let’s google “composers in their 90s.” Too boring? You’ve just never had a container or guide that created the environment you needed. That's like saying you can never learn to cook because of the one time you burnt that pesto panini.
- Too anything else? Let’s work together for an hour. I’ll buy you lunch if I can’t show you how to change your own mind.
- Creativity can become the central theme that ties the threads of your life together.
- Your career can be a form self expression. In your social life, you explore creativity with others. Health becomes a matter of maintaining your creative temple so you can delight in your process. Money becomes a channel for buying time and joyful experiences. Community service takes on a life of its own — you discover ways to connect your soul’s desires with the tangible needs of the world (hello, this website!).
- Creativity is a profound resource for dealing with pain, change and hardship.
- Many beautiful pieces of art have been created out of the smoldering ashes of deep pain. Many a human has found creation to be the universe’s natural remedy to the worst forms of suffering they’ve encountered. The impulse to rebuild from the rubble is a reflection of the cycle of death and rebirth that we’re all a part of. Creation-as-a-response puts suffering into a broader context, helping you transition from the overwhelm of the situation into a sense of connection with rejuvenation and life energy.
- Creativity is amazing, but delicate and easily destroyed.
- People in your life have probably crushed your Creator self in the past. Intentionally or otherwise. Casual comments, criticism, comparisons, questions and other reactions by others can lead would-be Creators to snuff out their expressive flame and throw their manuscripts in a box under the bed. Creativity scars can linger for years and deter the artist from enjoying any further exploration.
- You need a safe nesting environment for your Creativity Eggs. By joining forces with those who know how to encourage and support you in the way you find helpful, you can recover a sense of creative safety.
My Experience
I have dabbled and delved into a wide variety of creative modalities, including: music (piano, guitar, bass, drums, singing, saxophone, ukulele), music composition, dance (salsa, hip hop, conscious dance), spoken word / poetry, creative writing, improv comedy, stand up comedy, musical theater, busking, psychodrama, cooking, group facilitation, public speaking… and so on.
I’ve had the wonderfully good fortune of facilitating workshops, presentations, games, jams and coaching sessions for more than 1,000 people in my career. From all walks of life. In my personal life, I’m an active writer, musician, dancer and creative wanderer. I see my expressive life not only as a service in itself — in that I get to inspire others and give them the gift of creative encouragement — but also as an essential tool for filling my own spiritual well. Connecting with this sense of creative flow then gives me the energy I need to meet life’s daily challenges, do the dishes, be politically and socially active, have joyful relationships and the like. It's a win-win. |