Chandra Unplugged - No nonsense, Straight-up blogging from a Life Coach

How To Tap Into Your Creativity

An artist I know tells me that when he sits to paint he has no idea what he is going to paint or what the final product will look like. He says that if you know what you want to paint you should not even bother. His way is the process and he surrenders himself to that. He shows up, he picks up the brush, he paints, he begins. He has no idea what colors he will use, what the finished work will look like. Every day he paints, no matter what.

Being disciplined, committing to the process, means letting go of the drama, the rackets each one of us embraces as our own. It means sitting down to paint every day whether we feel like it or not. It means no excuses, no matter how noble, how intellectual, or how many people we can get to agree with us. We don’t have time to think about all the reasons it can’t be done – we are too busy doing it.

Slowly, the constant mind chatter stops. The inner critic becomes quiet and we can begin to listen to the inner voice, the voice of intuition, the source that knows it all. The other voices we have heard our whole life become quieter - our father telling us we were never good enough, our mother telling us our dreams are childish, our teacher saying we aren’t bright enough and society telling us to be more practical. Once the commitment to the process has been made, the discipline becomes a pathway to release creativity and expand consciousness.

Even if this moment we are lucky enough to be doing something that makes us feel alive and creative, nothing stays the same forever. Eventually we get to a point where the old stuff just does not do it anymore. This is the critical juncture. We know we are blocked creatively because we make excuses -- “It’s too late for me.” - “When I make enough money I’ll do what I like.” - “It’s just my ego talking.” - “My family and friends will think I’m crazy.” - “Creativity is a luxury, I should be happy with what I’ve got.”. If we are telling ourselves any of these things, we can be sure we are not being all that we can be.

In The Artist’s Way, Cameron talks about a real yet amazing way to get in touch with our creativity. She calls this discipline “the morning pages” and considers it the most basic of all the tools in the creative recovery and discovery process. She says that in order to retrieve your creativity, first you must find it.

The morning pages are three pages of longhand stream of consciousness. They are non-negotiable. Just like the artist who paints every day, we show up every morning and write. There is no wrong way to do the morning pages. These pages are not meant to be art or poetry. They have nothing to do with thinking, grammar or punctuation. Sometimes something wonderful comes out of them and sometimes not. Sometimes they are silly, self-pitying, and sometimes angry -- it does not matter because no one is going to read them, not even us for the first eight weeks.

What is most important is that all that angry, whining petty stuff that is finding its way to the morning pages is what stands between our creativity and us. That’s the stuff that is swirling around in our minds, the internal censor making comments -- “You can’t even spell.” “You call that writing.” We need to remember there is no right or wrong way to write the morning pages -- our censor’s opinion doesn’t count.

The more we write, the less self-consciousness we become. We need to constantly ask ourselves, “How do I feel?” - Remembering that the path to creativity is through the heart not through the head. As we begin to trust the process, the discipline of writing this way reveals feelings, longings, and dreams we did not know we had. They are not about anyone else. They are just about us. The pages have a silent whisper -- “To thine own self be true.”

In this quiet place, we meet ourselves. It is there that we contact the creative self. Until we experience the freedom of solitude, we cannot connect authentically. Cameron says, “Art lies in the moment of encounter, we meet our truth and we meet ourselves, we meet ourselves and we meet our self-expression, we become original -- an origin from which work flows."

Sometimes we will hear ourselves saying, “I don’t know who I am. I don’t recognize myself." Sometimes we just start getting rid of things, throwing things away. All this is okay. This is our new sense of identity saying the old stuff won’t work anymore. If we want to do and be something new, we cannot keep doing the same old stuff. There is a strange feeling that something wonderful is happening and yet everything is still simmering, still under the surface.

By staying with the discipline, we navigate this critical juncture -- the old way does not work anymore but we are not quite sure what the new way is. This place in limbo will unnerve us if we focus on goals rather than process. As the artist who paints, writes or sculpts, we must surrender to the process and know that the process will reveal our next step.

Connecting with the artist inside is like a jolt of spiritual consciousness. There is nothing that makes us feel more alive and connected then when we are doing what we are meant to do. We are in the moment (and at least for the moment) we are no longer one step away from the action.

How To Tap Into Your Creativity

How is consciousness expanded? How do we become something more tomorrow than we are today? How do we tap into feelings, thoughts, inspirations, and dreams that previously were unavailable to us?

Every once in a while a book comes along that quietly points the way to a new understanding, opens a door that was previously closed. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron has been around for awhile but it still holds its own. (check it out) This is not a “how to” book, but a book about being, about trusting your inner voice. It is not about being a painter or a sculptor, but about finding the artist inside, that is, connecting with that energy that is pure creativity. When we learn how to listen to our own voice, the process of becoming our own person begins and we move toward the things we love to do and that make us feel whole.

No matter what your age or life path -- whether you are thinking career, hobby or dream -- it is never too late, or too selfish, or too egotistical to work on your creativity.  Each one of us is like a DNA print -- unique -- and when we are doing what we are meant to do we are in the “flow” and our life has meaning.

Being in the flow is effortless. It’s when we forget time. Sometimes in sports, often in sex -- there is a sense of timelessness. We are totally at one with what we are doing, completely at ease in the moment. This is when true creativity comes. It just flows. It is the opposite of effort. Effort is self-conscious, manipulative, forcing our will. When we are in touch with our creativity, things just work.

In “The Artist’s Way," Cameron talks about a spiritual path to higher creativity, the creative discovery and recovery process. Sometimes she uses the word God. What she is talking about here is creative energy -- Mind, Universe, Higher Power, Infinite Source -- it does not matter what we call it. What does matter is that we acknowledge that a form of spiritual energy exists. We may not know how electricity works but we use it. We know it’s out there and available to us -- that’s all we need to know.

Now if this power, this source of creative energy, is available to us all, why aren’t we all functioning at the height of our creativity and doing what we love?

Living a life is synonymous with dealing with the creative blocks -- and we all are blocked to a greater or lesser degree. “The Artist’s Way” confronts these roadblocks by teaching us to accept life as a process and that process as an adventure that takes us deeper and deeper into our true selves. We need to be brave enough to go there. The ever-changing universe will continue to unfold in fits and starts. Rather than lament the inevitable, we should delight in a source that continually reveals new and challenging aspects of ourselves.

The process is not for the faint-hearted. It takes a tremendous amount of discipline to follow your dream and make it real.  (To be continued)

Checklist for Authenticity

Being Authentic
1. You stop partitioning your life. Life is whole and it is all connected. 2. You ask for what you need; you do not make the other person guess. 3. You take responsibility for all of your life – If it happened to you, it belongs to you. 4. You are brave. You do not run from things that scare you and you know what you are most afraid of will set you free. 5. You listen to your own inner voice rather than listening to others. 6. You live in the present moment – rather than in the past or in the future. 7. You stop telling everyone your story. No one cares, and besides, it keeps you a victim. 8. You change what doesn’t work. No whining, complaining or excuses. 9. You have generosity of spirit. You want the same things for others that you want for yourself. 10. You have a quiet mind. The dog needs to be wagging the tail, rather than the tail (the mind) wagging the dog.

How To Teach - For Teachers Everywhere

Regardless of a child’s age, children come to school knowing they have a job to do: they know they are supposed to learn something. But like us, they need to be inspired to learn, to listen, to pay attention. They come into the classroom with the attitude of “Let’s see what you got. Give me your best stuff.” Tell me why I should listen to you?” They are waiting to see who you are. Unless you gain the respect of a classroom of 7 year olds, they will never want to learn from you.

Ask yourself: How can I create an environment that inspires students so that they will want to learn from me? Understand that the onus of a student learning is on you, and not the student. You need to take responsibility for creating a classroom that inspires, motivates and challenges.

Here’s something you have going for you:  Even if maybe you do mess up a bit at first, remember, the wonderful thing about children is their openness. In Sanskrit there is a word to describe the purity of a spirit coming into the world and it’s called “Tabla rasa”, which literally means blank slate.

The children you teach everyday have simply not been on this planet as long as you have. They don’t have a lot of nonsense in their heads. They haven’t concocted a bunch of excuses and rationalizations for why they don’t want to learn and what’s wrong with you. They’re pretty pure and very open and very present oriented. In other words, the moment you inspire them, they will want to learn from you.

Remember: your classroom is a reflection of you.   If in the past you have found yourself complaining about your students, I would never do that again. Nothing makes us powerless fastest than feeling victimized by a class of 10 year olds. This is your classroom. Metaphorically, you are the king and this is your kingdom. If you don’t like what is happening in your kingdom, the place to look is to the King. This is the place to do the fine-tuning, turn inward, not out there.

Another way to create an environment that inspires learning is to set up a teacher-student relationship that is based on dignity and respect.

One of the ways you do that is by being accountable.

Remember children learn by modeling; that is, by watching you. Being accountable literally means you do what you say you are going to do.

My very good friend was a teacher for twenty-five years. She told me about the day she was teaching and the class was particularly routy and she knew that there were four boys in the classroom that were causing all the trouble. So she said, “OK, the next person who talks, without being called-on, will be sent to the principal’s office.” Well, the next person who talked was the best student in the class, a girl who never did anything wrong. My friend felt terrible, but she sent the girl to the principal’s office. After that, everyone paid attention.

Remember, what you set up in the beginning is what you have in the end. If you begin your relationship with your students, by saying you are going to do things and then not do them, you lose their respect. Children have an uncanny sense of justice and remember these things. They may not remember the times table but how often do you hear “You said….” If they don’t respect you, they will not learn from you.

Children test boundaries; that is their nature. That is how they learn about themselves and the world, what is possible, what is not possible?

They just automatically keep stretching until someone says stop. They are actually waiting for an adult to step in and give some direction. That stopping point keeps them safe lets them be children because they know someone else is in charge. The minute that they know you are in charge, you automatically get their respect.

Accountability, respect, boundaries: all of these help create a safe environment, and children learn when they feel safe. Creating a safe environment is the foundation of all learning. For children to learn they must be open to learning, and to be open, they must first feel safe.

What about mistakes? Do you celebrate failure in your classroom as well as success? Do your students know that failure is as much of part of life as success and that we learn by our mistakes?

It’s not just teaching students to accept failure and keep moving forward; that really misses the point. We need to change the paradigm of failure from being something bad to perhaps something that signals a new beginning. Every time we get up after a failure, we have increased self –esteem and self-respect, and the stronger we get.

How we feel about success and failure and how we treat our students is really a result of how we feel about ourselves.

If we are ashamed when we make mistakes or have trouble admitting when we are wrong, we will pass that same feeling along to our students, and our students will not feel safe in our classroom. Children need to be encouraged to stretch and grow and not be afraid of not being perfect. They need to feel supported in the journey of learning and know that making mistakes is part of the process.

Another way to create a safe environment is to motivate children from the inside rather than the outside. Pitting students against one another is never a good motivator. Grades motivate students from the outside and although they may be necessary to quantify a student’s ranking, they will never go the distance and they will never create a love of learning.

Instead of encouraging competition with one another, encourage competition with the Self. Encourage students to be the best that they can be and support them to keep stretching and growing. Teach them that:

• They have the ability to create their world by the choices that they make and that the only thing worse than making lots of mistakes is doing nothing at all.
• Only they know what makes them tick and to trust that inner voice. When you teach children to be self-referring, rather than other-referring, what this means is that, they determine their sense of self-worth rather than letting it be determined by others. This allows them to be self-accepting, that is, they accept their failures and successes as part of the process and just keep moving along. In a very organic way, they have a natural love of learning and are open to what you have to share with them.

Lastly, if you want your students to connect with you, you need to take the time to connect with them.

The connection that you make with your students is what will create your learning environment. I encourage you to take the time to connect to each and every one of your students. Sometimes it takes only three minutes to make that connection, but once you do, you have a friend for life.

Your classroom will be a cross section of the easiest to the most difficult. If I am honest, sometimes I get a client I don’t like that much. I actually use this client as a barometer for what I need to work on. I know my job is to teach and unless I can connect, to each and every one, I cannot do my work.

The student-teacher connection gives you feedback and it nourishes your soul. When we have a student who “gets it” something inside us comes alive, we get energized. When we know we have made a connection, something inside of us feels complete.

How We Learn - For Teachers Everywhere

I grew up with a great love of learning. My father was a teacher. When he died in 1999, at his bedside, along with my family, was his favorite student from 30 years ago. The teacher/student relationship was as strong then as it was in 1969. My father had made a difference in his student’s life that outlasted the classroom; a difference that had spanned more than 30 years!

As a little girl, I thought my father knew everything. My brothers and I had a game: we would always try to stump my father by asking him hard questions, things we had learned about at school or projects we were working on. My father was pretty smart but there were some things even he didn’t know. These sessions were always fun, either with my father teaching us something we didn’t know or all of us looking up new information and learning together. I don’t remember any of the subject matter per sec, but I remember the feeling, the connection, how excited I was learning something new, and how much I was enjoying the relationship with my father.

How we learn is always in the context of a relationship; so you are responsible for creating a relationship that inspires learning. We so often go right to the subject matter, the reading, the writing, the math, and it goes without saying you have a responsibility to teach these things, but unless you are able to deliver your subject matter in a way that is accessible and exciting, AND unless you are able to connect to each and every one of your students, you will never really feel satisfied.

One thing for sure that I’ve figured out, and because I’m a Life Coach I consider myself a teacher as well: Students learn because they want to learn. And when they want to learn it is because you have inspired them in some way; and they want to learn from you.

Ultimately, regardless of what you do, if at some point you do not connect with your students and succeed in passing on a love of learning, you will always be frustrated in the classroom. When you are able to develop a real relationship with your students, they want to learn and they pay attention; they want to hear what you have to say.

You’ve heard it said: people do business with people they like. Well, children learn from people they like and respect. It’s that simple.

I see children as “minnie-me’s”. They’re us, only smaller. I don’t know about you but when I go to hear someone speak, I’m like a kid. I am waiting for someone to grab my attention. The last thing I want to do is sit there and be bored, but there is nothing I can do unless the person talking is interesting and in some way inspires me. I’m not saying you have to entertain your students, but I am saying you need to be authentic and connect.

When I talk about feeling safe what I mean is that students can make mistakes without feeling foolish.

To learn something new implies that we enter unknown territory and unknown territory always produces a sense of anxiety. If children do not feel the classroom is a safe and loving place, they will never get excited about learning, never be willing to participate in the discovery process. To be creative, to use your imagination, to problem-solve outside the box, children must be willing to share things that, up until this point have just existed in their heads.

As educators, you need to ask yourself: Do you create a non-judgmental classroom that actually celebrates individuality and diversity?

Do you set ground rules to make sure students treat one another with dignity and respect and step in when you see one child diminishing or hurting another?

Kindness goes a long way and the way you treat your students is the way they will treat you and one another. Remember: What they are going to get in your classroom has the potential to set their course for the rest of their lives. (To be continued)

Quieting The Mind, Opening The Heart

Aside from showing-up, the only other thing I ask my clients to do is meditate: 10 min in the am and 10 min in the PM, for unless the mind is quiet we can never access feelings and be present.

In order to slow the mind, we need to understand its nature. Everything has a nature: Water is wet, a leopard has spots, phones ring and the mind has thoughts. But rather than allowing the mind to have thoughts the same way we accept that water is wet, we think we are those thoughts and that we have to do something about them. We identify with those thoughts and chase after them. The more we chase them, the more they run, until we are plagued by a mind that will not stop, a mind that never rests.

To access feeling, we need slow the mind. When the mind is quiet, the heart opens. In true meditation, we do not attempt to lasso the mind or corral thoughts; that only makes it more unruly. What happens when we say don’t think of an elephant, that’s all we think of. True meditation is not soft music, visualizations or astral traveling, or pushing thoughts away. Real meditation takes place in a state of witness consciousness, i.e., we watch the thoughts all the while knowing we are not the thoughts, as though we were watching a movie. Regardless of what we see, good or bad, we watch like we are watching a movie.

All thoughts are neutral. We give them energy by thinking we are those thoughts. When we watch without reacting in any way, we acknowledge the nature of the mind by becoming one with it. This is when the mind begins to slow down; this is the beginning of peace.

As the mind begins to slow, we begin to connect to what makes up tick, to our own inner core and by connecting to what is real in us, at that very same moment we also connect to what is real in us all. This is what it is all about - the connection - and the connection is about being human. Our stories may be different but the underpinning of those stories, the soul of those stories, is the same. That soulfulness, that essence is the inner voice. Call it your true Self; call it consciousness, God, whatever you are comfortable with, but that energy is the same in us all.  The more that we can feel that, the more we are able to accept our own humanness, all of it: the good, the bad and the ugly, and the more connected we feel to the rest of humanity. This is what makes us whole.

Now many people feel that vulnerability is a sign of weakness but that’s not my experience. I feel vulnerability is strength. Real bravery and courage is the result of both fear and vulnerability. We feel afraid, but we reach out anyway. Can we really be brave when there is no fear and nothing worth protecting? When we are brave and vulnerable we connect to being human, all of it, and when we accept and touch the pain, even though it scares us, that vulnerability instantly connects us to others and breaks down the walls of isolation. Our vulnerability breaks the illusion of invincibility and the feelings of isolation.  Touching our soft underbelly connects us to one another, and for the moment, we stop feeling separate. This is the divine paradox. What we are most afraid of sets us free. It is about loving and being loved because of our humanness, not in spite of it. This ultimately the only thing that heals.

Remember, we come to this earth in a human form for a purpose, it is not a fluke. We are in this form because we have human lessons to learn. No matter how much we study philosophy or practice spiritual disciplines, if these things take us away from our humanity, they are doing us a disservice.

To truly connect to reality and have a life that works, we need to accept our human existence and all that it entails. Only then are we rewarded with a deep solid feeling of joy that is more than a momentary high. This is how reality works.

Asking for Help? Leave the Agenda Home!

So…if we know we need to be present to experience reality, and the only way to do that is to feel, how do we learn to feel? We have been so conditioned to think our way through life, we are so hard-wired, that we naturally go through the world believing we can use our thinking mind to make it work.

Now I’ve been coaching clients for many years now and when they come and see me they always ask me what tools I use and what they have to do. They are always surprised when I tell them “no tools”. They invariably want to tape our sessions, take notes, have homework, journal, do something. Now these tools may seem noble, but in reality they are just another distraction, a way to stay in your head. Tools may point the way but they are not the way and any tool that’s picked up at some point has to be put down. I tell them I will ask only two things:

1. They need to show-up and 2. I am going to teach them to meditate and that they need to sit for me 10 minutes in the AM and 10 min in the PM. We are going to learn to quiet the mind.

When you show up it means just that and nothing else. And when you show-up with no agenda, there is an openness that invites in what needs to be looked at and felt. In other words, there is no set way to do things. That doesn’t mean we don’t address pressing problems, but rather that we trust the process and pay attention to what comes to the surface. The presenting problem is simply a point of entry, not an agenda to be rigidly adhered to. So…when you have no agenda, you are open to opportunities and realizations that you would not normally be open to.

When you show up with no agenda, you are ready to receive. I understand that oftentimes there are very pressing problems, but trust me when I tell you there is no particular subject that will enlighten you, no particular topic of conversation that is any better than any other one. Any place is a good place to open and enter; life is whole and what had energy will rise to the surface. Trust this process and that this is what needs to be looked at. This is the real stuff, based on the sub-text; what we really feel, not what we think.

For example, many of you would like to be in a relationship and quite naturally hold a certain physical image in your mind of what you want that person to look like. Now the problem with that is that if your ideal man is a tall, with blond hair and blue eyes you will miss the short man with dark hair standing next to him, even if that’s your guy. I mean do we really care what someone looks like if we feel love and cherished? After all, we get attached to certain forms because we think they will give us happiness, but do they? What is instead of holding the thought or image, we held the feeling; we felt what it was like to be loved and cherished. Now by letting go of our agenda, we have just increased our chances for happiness.