Being an artist of your own life

Yet, there is a part of everyone’s intelligence that can see beyond the horizon. I call it being a “Change Artist”. It is the part of the human psyche that can sense into possibilities before they become manifest. Pablo Picasso once said “Everyone is born an artist, the trick is to recapture that artist as an adult.” When I once asked a group of kindergarten students to raise their hand if they considered themselves an artist, all hands went up. When I asked that same question of a group of adults instead, what do you think happened?
Only about 25% put their hands up. Somehow the older people get the less they seem to frame themselves in terms of artistry. Perhaps it’s how you define artistry. How I like to frame artistry is that it is not about doing something such as drawing, playing music, or writing, it’s about who you are being. For example, you can play music very un-artistically, whereas you could plan your busy day very artistically. To be artistic in conducting your life is to sense into the natural creative flow of life and to get in synch with it, using that energetic flow to manifest just the right outcome in just the right way. It’s an intelligence beyond what we typically call IQ. Let’s call it AQ….your Artistic Quotient.

Symptoms that you may be in The Winter of Change

Using your AQ during The Winter of Change can be very beneficial because it’s usually the time in your life when your outward creative abilities are lying fallow and replenishing themselves. When you feel less outwardly creative, it’s time to tap into a more inward creativity. Few people in our goal oriented culture effectively model this inward creativity and so it’s not as well practiced. The tips below may help you tap into exactly what you need to move forward. Symptoms that you are in a replenishing phase may be:

• Feeling low energy and unmotivated
• Confusion and having little clarity about what’s next
• Grieving the old identity that has fallen away

What’s going on is that the old identity that was tied up with your previous life is breaking down and dying. It’s like what happens in your garden when the cold rain and snow set in. The remains of the last harvest start to disintegrate and the soil begins to compost to get ready for Spring. Humans have an aversion to death and dying, so it’s natural to feel uncomfortable during this phase. But ironically the more you resist it the longer it seems to take. Also, if you try to skip this step, you may find you miss out on the next harvest of your life, or at least miss out on having the best possible harvest. Here are some tips to make it through the Winter with more ease and grace allowing you to get to Spring faster while also replenishing yourself more fully for what’s next:

1. Focus on the breaking down process: If you find yourself wanting to escape the discomfort of the breaking down process, try giving yourself just 10 minutes of being with it. Often people avoid going into those sensations because they are afraid they may end up being consumed by the feelings of loss. However, feelings are like clouds. They come and they go. The focus of your attention on them ironically causes them to evaporate. Just sit quietly in a private place and breathe into the areas of discomfort and see what happens. You may be surprised about how much relief this can bring. If you don’t allow yourself to grieve the old and let go, then you cannot make way for what is next.

2. Time out: People are far more validated in our culture when they are in the Spring and Summer of change than during the Autumn or Winter phases, yet you can’t have one without the other. Giving yourself permission to be less active, less productive, to just rest and muse, will actually make the Winter phase easier and quicker. Different types of “time out” activities work for different people. It may be short, regular activities like walks in nature or meditating, or spending more time doing something you love like a hobbies or a sport. Or it could be a longer activity like a vacation or focusing for a few weeks on your gardening or writing. Be mindful however of doing activities that bring rejuvenation rather than just distraction, for example the difference between watching a soul stirring movie, and watching 10 episodes of The Simpsons.

3. Explore new options: Give your imagination time to explore that is beyond the horizon. Gurdjieff, a Russian thought leader (1866-1949) once suggested that within each person is a committee of voices. Sometimes that committee is in harmony, sometimes not. If you have spent 20 years being a parent some members of your committee may have had to be overruled. For example, if you are recently an “empty nester” chances are those more silent committee members are now voicing their interests. Exploring new options means focusing your attention on areas of your life that may have been ignoring, or welcoming in new inspirations or new committee members who have something valuable to contribute to your next phase of life.

If you would like a process to help you explore new options feel free to check out The Art of Reinvention. It is a 19-page white paper that allows you to explore the next phase of your life from various angles. It only takes about an hour to complete and can be surprisingly rejuvenating, insightful and can help you more quickly usher in the Spring.

I would love to continue this conversation with you. Feel free to post comments, insights, or questions below.

Thank you and best of luck with your reinvention!
In Friendship
Carla

God, grant me the ability to be as good of a person as my dog thinks I am. – Anon

In a previous blog post we explored The 7 Mistakes Change Leaders Make, and how mistakes are necessary to actually develop success habits. Using the metaphor of the growing cycle we explored Mistake #1 which is Planting Your Idea in Barren Soil. Then we looked at mistake #2 which was Choosing the Wrong Kind of Idea Seed. The 3^rd mistake many change leaders make is to not watering or fertilizing your idea enough.

Linda wanted to help address exhaustion and tension at work. There was a bad “vibe” ever since the latest project went overtime and over budget. While a problem solving meeting had helped, she knew people needed something that buoyed their spirits but that didn’t take much time or money.

She had heard about the simple idea of creating fun contests that would run in the organization’s online newsletter. She went to her boss and shared stories of other companies that did a baby picture contest and a cartoon caption contest and how it improved the mood at work, enhanced relationships between people, and sparked creative thinking. Her boss reluctantly agreed as long as it didn’t pull too much focus from their deadlines.

The pilot project included asking people to send Linda a photo of their pet for a contest in which everyone was then invited to guess who the owner was. Within half an hour Linda was inundated with photos of Portuguese Water Dogs, Persian cats, and love birds. One staff member complained that she wanted to participate in the contest but didn’t own a pet due to allergies. They decided instead that she would send a photo of her favourite Boston fern.

The next week the photos went out to all the staff with a deadline. By Friday, you had to guess the owner. The person with the most correct answers would receive a $75 gift certificate to a nearby restaurant. The restaurant owner had gladly donated the prize. The contest entries came through in droves and one man in accounting got all but four answers correct. He took his two colleagues out for lunch the next week.

Linda’s boss was thrilled with the results of the contest because he saw people laughing again while they tried to trick people into divulging the type of pet they owned. He noticed two people who barely talked to each other were now comparing notes on the idiosyncrasies of Portuguese Water Dogs. Meetings had a more light-hearted atmosphere, ideas about dealing with the project seemed more innovative than before, and less people seemed to be showing up late or calling in sick.

Linda got the green light to do a new contest each month. The only problem was that sometimes people attracted to leading change are not the same type of people who like to maintain the change. Change Artists are those who can do both or at least delegate to and steward those who will maintain it. Linda was enthused about the pilot project, but lost enthusiasm when it came to the on-going “watering and fertilizing” of her change initiative. The next month’s contest was to name the organization’s mascot (a wind up pig that grunted), which was successful, but not as successful as the first one. She skipped the third one because her idea ended up seeming too complicated. The fourth contest didn’t seem to appeal to people, and so by the fifth month she dropped the project.

Linda overhead one day, though, that people were disappointed that there were no longer any contests. She realized that she needed to delegate the on-going maintenance of this idea to someone who liked maintenance. She asked four people with that personality style and one of them agreed to take it on for the next 3 months. Walter in IT made the whole project take off again because he was already handling the “news” section of the organization’s web site, so it was easy for him to do. He elicited suggestions from staff and searched the web for new contests ideas. He made sure others helped him during busy months. And generally, he enjoyed the monthly attention to detail and the joy it seemed to bring people. After five years this organization still does about 10 contests a year. The role of contest maintenance has been passed along gleefully several times to people who enjoy this kind of task, and thus the spirit and purpose of the original idea stays well nourished.

Why the Gallup Q12 may now be an exercise in futility
For the key to employee engagement, all you need to do these days is to look to the Gallup Organization, right? They conducted hundreds of focus groups and thousands of interviews with employees in a variety of industries, and came up with the Q12. This is a 12-question survey that identifies strong feelings of employee engagement.

You can see a list of the 12 questions here.

But what if you can’t live up to standards of the Q12? Certainly managers who care about you, encourage you, mark your progress, value your opinions and allow you to learn and grow—all contribute to employee engagement. But, for many that is a radical new approach to management. What if you can’t find or train those kinds of people overnight? Plus, many people don’t know what is expected of them at work because the economy keeps changing, or the industry keeps changing. Employees may not have the materials and equipment they need for the same reasons. Maybe you can’t do “what you do best” at work every day, because “what you do best” has now become obsolete. Or, you can’t do quality work, because the market turn around time has significantly decreased. In short, trying to keep up with the Q 12 may now be an exercise in futility.

So you can’t feel engaged until the rate of change slows down?
If so, you might as well drop out of the rat race now and live in a cave. The only way out of this dilemma is to adopt new habits to deal with change. Due to profound economic, sociological, and demographic changes, we must evolve at a core level. In Seth Godin’s bestseller, “Survival Is Not Enough”, he states that “Most of us view change as a threat, and survival as the goal. The first step to help yourself and your organization thrive in the coming economy is to eliminate the anti-change reflex that’s genetically coded into all of us. Once a company learns to zoom (embrace change without pain), it’s much more likely to evolve.”

Creativity as the key to employee engagement
What Seth Godin is referring to when he says “zooming” is a form of creative thinking that is available to everyone. It is bundled with our bio-computer hard drive. We just need to learn how to use it more often. The problem with the Q12 is that the burden of employee engagement mostly lies on the shoulders of management. The truth is, many managers are even less engaged than their employees. How are they possibly going to inspire their workforce? The antidote to almost all Q12 is to teach people how to zoom, at all levels of an organization. The lowest level of creativity inspires far more vitality in a person than the highest level of consuming. In other words, if you can create a workplace full of creative thinkers who share enough of the same core values, the engagement happens all on its own.

Dissolving negativity at work
Countless times, we have seen office politics dissolve; complainers become supportive; toxic emotions unexpectedly evaporate, and unethical people suddenly have integrity when an organization gets back in the creative flow. In other words, it learns how to zoom. Yet, we’d like to take it one step further. It needs to be creativity tied in to core organizational values; otherwise you can end up like Enron (innovation run amok because it lacks integrity). What we’re talking about here is zooming with integrity, or what I call being a Change Artist. To build a Change Artist organization is to create clear values and then teach enough people key habits that naturally unlock the creative thinking necessary to live those values. Once there is a high enough “vibe” of creativity, the permission for it, and the responsible demonstration of it, the Change Artist virus spreads. Others can pick it up by osmosis.

Do you have a comment?
Feel free to add your opinion to this post. For more tips, or to learn about Carla Rieger’s organizational programs, consulting and other resources go to www.artistryofchange.com.

If you would like to explore your creative potential in a highly inspiring, safe and beautiful environment, come to our annual Artistry of Change retreat at Hollyhock Oct. 1-4, 2009

In this program you will discover:

* habits that will allow you to continually re-invent yourself and keep your creative fire alive
* a 10-step self-coaching process you can use the rest of your life
* how to see past limited beliefs to find your real truth
* how to create a results-based action plan to manifest this next phase of your life

Watch this video of Carla talking about how to overcome the obstacles to embodying your vision or life purpose

Carla Rieger’s Artistry of Change® model allows you to burn away the dross and find the gold that’s been waiting for you. Through interactive, creative, playful, fun activities, Carla shows you the steps necessary to inspire your best creative work while effectively handling resistance, uncertainty and self-doubt. This approach blends the best of the world of artistry with the human potential movement in exciting new ways.

Benefits of taking this program include:

* tools to overcome your natural resistance to change
* how to harness negativity in your life for creativity
* getting crystal clear on what you want to manifest
* a specific action plan that you can implement immediately
* on-going support and accountability to take action in the world

Modalities for working will be:

* interactive creativity exercises
* slide show and entertaining videos
* group work and debriefing
* solo work

Come with a specific outcome you’d like to manifest such as a career, health, relationship or personal goal. This workshop is for people who have sensed that they are stuck in life and that the “stuckness” is costly them.

Carla Rieger is a creativity and innovation catalyst. As an author, educator, coach and entertainer, she works with individuals and organizations internationally to help them stay on their creative edge. Her books on innovation, communication and change plus her novels and plays are all designed to ignite people’s creative fire.

The Artistry of Change Retreat is coming up October 1-4, 2009, at Hollyhock on beautiful Cortes Island. Join us for a rare opportunity to get clear on what is next in your life. There are still some scholarships available. Check out the Hollyhock website for more info on scholarships or email Scholarship for application information.

To register click here.

Having fun at one of Carla’s retreat:

1. Because creativity often means burning down the existing status quo or your old way of being. Humans are genetically programmed to resist change, even if the change looks like it will be good for you. It’s a default mechanism to ensure stability and it’s there for good reason. But eventually all things need to be reinvented, upgraded, or let go of whether it’s an idea, a piece of clothing, a business or a way of being. Knowing when and how to bring about the change can seem like a daunting task.

2. There are other more nefarious reasons, as well, why creativity gets a bad rap. Sometimes people use creativity or innovation for low integrity ends, as we witnessed in the story or Enron or the Nazi regime. History is full of stories of innovative ideas that caused untold amounts of grief and destruction.

3. A third reason creativity has a bad rap is that some people use creativity for creativity’s sake. They choose to do something different without thinking about its’ relevancy in the bigger picture. This, too, can cause destruction, loss of productivity and frustration

Learning when and where to use creativity and innovation takes wisdom and courage.

Here an interview with Carla Rieger on the Fanny Kiefer show talking about her latest novel, The Change Artist, in which she explores the themes of creativity, change and integrity in a compelling story form.

Carla Rieger will be doing a free event open to the public on Tuesday, September 8, 2009 (7:30 pm) at the Vancouver Public Library. It is an author reading on her new book, The Change Artist.

1. Our work is very serious

2. There are too many overly serious people who work here

3. The management won’t allow us to have fun

4. We have too much work to do, there is no time for fun

5. If people had fun all hell would break loose

6. The public or customers would think we are not doing our jobs properly

Yet, here are the Top 7 Benefits I hear about why having fun at work is so crucial these days:

1. It is a low cost, easy way to build morale.

2. It enhances communication and builds social bonds that help people through the tough times.

3. It makes people want to perform well at work and be a contributing member of their team.

4. It re-vitalizes people so they are healthier and have more energy.

5. It opens up creative thinking which helps people be more resourceful with problems.

6. It helps staff build rapport amongst themselves and with clients and customers.

7. It creates a positive atmosphere that makes customers more likely to want to do business with you.

contributed by Ruth Payne of Cultural Affairs within the District of West Vancouver

Ruth writes, “Here’s what I did to motivate and inspire the District of West Vancouver staff.  It works like hotcakes!

We are just finishing the run of an exhibition entitled ‘I Am More Than My Day Job’.  It is for all Municipal staff, including Fire, Police, Transit, Library. The Mayor even has a piece of art in it!    Over 3000 visitors have been through it.I virtually go dept to dept to drag out of employees just what they do with their creativity in their ‘other life’.  The results is amazing!  This is probably one of the best exhibitions ever, and who would guess?

We have a big opening reception and the staff that are musicians performed.

The results:

1. the public love seeing staff that they normally associate with i.e. a Finance Clerk, now being exhibited as a textile artist, a wood carver, an accomplished photographer,  a jeweller, a mixed media painter…the list goes on.

2. the staff morale is on the ceiling…peel them off…they are so darned chuffed at being featured and perceived as artists.

THE BEST STORY YET:   The Director of Finance, very shyly showed me some photographs he took through the windscreen as he does the long daily drive home to Maple Ridge. He had no idea they were even worth showing to anyone. They are of the traffic when it is raining. They are very fresh, immediate and appealing. I took him by the hand to a frame shop, where he learned how they needed to be framed, then he did it himself to save money, and they have been the rave of the exhibit. All three sold, AND a gallery in W. Vancouver now wants to carry his work. He now has a whole new life. He just can’t get over himself!

I love this example of the arts helps people reinvent themselves. And the best part is that other employees now perceive this quiet finance guy in a whole new light.”

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The judges for the Workplace Creativity Contest were:

• Carla Rieger, The Creativity Catalyst
• Marisa Cohen,Creative Writer and Blogger
• Phyllis Harber-Murphy,Creative Virtual Assistant
• Carol Ann Fried, Fun at Work Expert–Training, Speaking and Coaching
• David Gouthro, Creativity and Innovation Expert–Training, Speaking and Facilitation

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Click here to see the 2nd, 3rd and 4th place winners

Several prizes are being given out and the top place winner receives a free spot in our 4 day Artistry of Change retreat at Hollyhock!

The judges were:

• Carla Rieger, The Creativity Catalyst
• Marisa Cohen,Creative Writer and Blogger
• Phyllis Harber-Murphy,Creative Virtual Assistant
• Carol Ann Fried, Fun at Work expert–Training, Speaking and Coaching
• David Gouthro, Creativity and Innovation expert–Training, Speaking and Facilitation

To be informed about our next contest, feel free to subscribe to our email list and this blog’s RSS feed.

Here are the 4th, 3rd, and 2nd place winners for the Workplace Creativity Contest:

Fourth Place – Having fun with lack of storage space

from Lorian Markin of the Justice Institute of BC in New Westminster BC, Canada

Lorian writes, “We are very short of storage space at the Justice Institute and often the only place to store boxes of classroom materials is literally under our desks. I always joke about someday making a little fort out of them, and one morning I came in and my co-workers had built one for me!”

Third Place – Olympics at the Beach

from Bliss at Symantec in Bellingham

Bliss writes, “A few years ago when working with Symantec, we took two teams of folks who worked in different groups–but needed to communicate flawlessly–to the beach.  Once there, we mixed them up in newly formed teams and conducted Symantec Olympics on the Beach.

Seeing each other slipping as they raced, and limbo-ing on the sand and passing eggs on spoons had everyone laughing together in no time.  As I bet you would agree, if you laugh together, you can work together.  I was the one with the stopwatch and whistle, and can attest to that fact. As for other companies, you don’t have to go to the beach to have your own “Olympic” events.  You can be anywhere, from the park to the office hallways, just being willing to get silly together does wonders.”

Second Place – Re-inventing a child’s play area at Salmon Arm Credit Union

Contributed by Louise Delaney, Salmon Arm Savings and Credit Union

I work as the Manager, Marketing for the Salmon Arm Savings and Credit Union. Our main branch had an old run down kids “play” area which featured hand me down books, a painting on the wall and a wooden rocking horse from the 1950;s. We called him “Horsey”.  Horsey entertained generations of children who waited for their folks while they did their banking.

As cute as he was, Horsey seemed dangerous to me. He slid along a metal contraption which could easily slice off little fingers. He was rickety so tended to buck off excited children. And worst of all, he stood in front of a plate glass window.  I couldn’t stand the potential risks we could incur and so I turned a hazard into a creative opportunity.

I lassoed Horsey one night and took him to my office pasture, much to the complaints of the kids, parents (now really, would they allow Horsey to live in THEIR playroom – safely?), and from staff who had to deal with disappointed kids and aggravated parents.

I needed to bring “Horsey” back in a way that didn’t pose any hazards, that enabled staff to work without too much noise, and that would satisfy parents and their kids. I thought about how to design something using local imagery, local design talent and local business to produce it. I put our Ad agency on the case (Mediability Communications and Creatability Design).

After many design drafts: here is the interactive, magnetic board which lines the walls of our kids area. It is 10 feet wide by 5 feet high and surrounds two corner walls. The elements in the design can easily be taken off and can be moved wherever the spirit takes those who dare to play (kids and adults alike). It features local bird life, it is close to the ground for little kids and it corrals little folk into a manageable area.

The kids love it, the parents love it, the staff love it and Horsey remains peaceful in the pasture but reincarnated in the new design. The design is now being custom produced for in home use thereby increasing business for those involved.

See the next blog post for The Grand Prize Winner of The Workplace Creative Contest

The one-minute commercial features black and white video footage of significant historical Change Artists of the past, including (in order):

1.     Albert Einstein

2.     Bob Dylan

3.     Martin Luther King, Jr.

4.     Richard Branson

5.     John Lennon (with Yoko Ono)

6.     R. Buckminster Fuller

7.     Thomas Edison

8.     Muhammad Ali

9.     Ted Turner

10.  Maria Callas

11.  Mahatma Gandhi

12.  Amelia Earhart

13.  Alfred Hitchcock

14.  Martha Graham

15.  Jim Henson (with Kermit the Frog)

16.  Frank Lloyd Wright

17.  Pablo Picasso

The commercial ends with an image of a young girl, Shaan Sahota, opening her closed eyes, as if to see the possibilities before her.

We need more creativity and less consuming

This “always busy” mode partly comes from an underlying cultural belief that our economy cannot grow unless we are always consuming. Yet, it’s becoming clear that the financial crisis is being caused by the over-consumption of things we can’t afford such as cheap mortgages. The environmental crisis is being caused by the over-consumption of things we can’t afford such as the earth’s resources. The health crisis is being caused by the over-consumption of things we can’t afford, such as calories. It seems as if the whole underlying belief of endless consumption is the problem.

Maybe what we really need are some new ideas. More creativity and less consuming.

What would it take to give yourself some “down time”?

A great way to kill creative inspiration is to have no “down time”. If your whole life is about rushing from one obligation to the next, there is no chance for greater wisdom to enter your consciousness. Even if you only take 10 minutes at the beginning of every day to sit quietly uninterrupted, it can make all the difference. Walking silently by the ocean or in nature is another great way to reconnect to your creativity. Be warned however, that you may first need to pay heed to the shadows of your life before you can find peace. Peace sometimes needs to be earned. You may need to allow the negative voices to die away first, and sometimes those voices will fight to hold on.

Breathe through it, hold the hand of the part of you that needs to die away. All things must eventually die to make room for the next. Make a habit of quiet time and you will create space for inspiration and for what’s the next best step.

Sometimes having guidance, a supportive community, a natural setting and a break from your regular life—to REALLY reinvent your life. If so, join us for our Artistry of Change 4-day retreat at Hollyhock on Cortes Island, BC, Canada, October 1-4, 2009.