Ten Steps To Release Your Creative Spirit
Author: Caroline Flexman & Alice Mallorie

Everybody has an inbuilt ‘blueprint’ for creativity.

Inspired by creative thinkers from the past and present, and by their own success whilst coaching and training creativity across the board (from grandmothers to management consultants) NLP trainers, Alice and Caroline, have developed strategies which have been successful in different contexts including health, business, learning, coaching and the arts. They have come up with ten basic tenets, which they consider are powerful and practical regenerators for Creativity

1) Remember that to be alive is to create. We are all born with an innate creative potential. Creativity is not something we are born with, or not. It is something, which can be practiced, modelled and developed in all areas of your life – if you can breathe, you are performing a creative act. As the composer John Cage said ‘if you’ve got a heart beat, you are a musician’.

Carl Rodgers wrote in his book ‘On Becoming a Person’: ‘The action of the child inventing a new game with his playmates; Einstein formulating a theory of relativity; the house wife devising a new sauce for the meat; a young author writing his first novel; all of these are in terms of definition, Creative, and there is no attempt to set them in some order of more or less Creative.’

2) Fully imagine ‘what you want to create’ using all your senses. Build a clear representation. Focus on what you want rather than what you don’t want. Truly creative spirits imagine their outcomes and then ‘act as if’ they are real. Once you have practised something in your neurology, it becomes much easier to create it in reality.

‘If you can dream it you can do it.’ Walt Disney.

‘If you play at genius you can become genius’ Salvador Dali

3) Be silly and embrace your eccentricity! Silliness is a must for getting loosened up and recognising possibility.

As Einstein once said ‘If an idea is not at first absurd, there is no hope for it.’

Wittgenstein proffered these wise words ‘Do not stay in the barren heights of cleverness but descend into the green valleys of silliness.’

Eccentricity is often complementary to creativity. A book by Dr. David Joseph Weeks (a clinical neuro-psychologist from the Royal Edinburgh Hospital) and Jamie James entitled ‘Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness’ concludes that eccentrics live five to ten years longer than average, and that they are usually healthier, happier, and more intelligent than the rest of us.

According to Dr. Weeks an eccentric is "nonconforming; creative; strongly motivated by curiosity; idealistic – he (or she) wants to make the world a better place and the people in it happier ….. ”.

4) Practice ‘not knowing’. Affect a childlike curiosity about the world. If you don't know something it allows for a lot more creative possibility.

Creative Spirits don’t have the ‘right’ answer because they recognise this limits solutions, especially when they are in changeable or unstable circumstances. In fact Creative Spirits avoid ‘right or wrong’ thinking. They prefer to ask themselves ‘is this useful or adding to what I want to create for myself or in the world?’ If it’s not useful now it may be useful later or in another context.

5) Use peripheral vision and flow states. It’s not so much what Creative Spirits do but how they do it. Creativity can be considered a ‘state of being’. The Creative Spirit knows how to relax into it! Athletes call this the ‘Zone’. It’s a very focussed and yet relaxed state where ‘anything is possible’. Generally the eyes are in wide vision. Literally expanding horizons! And exhale - inspiration is a reflex!

6) Develop a healthy respect for your ‘unconscious mind’. Creative Spirits practice being in the moment and being spontaneous. They trust their intuition and those ideas that seem to come from nowhere. They put themselves in touch with their dreams and fantasies and revel in metaphors, connection-making, synchronicity and the world of symbols.

7) Be flexible. Do something different. Experiment with new ways of doing things. When Creative Spirits get stuck they do something different, in fact anything different. They have an attitude of experimentation. Sometimes just changing their posture helps. They help themselves by thinking metaphorically. What else is this like? If I were a teapot how would I respond? They connect one idea to another to create solutions. And they have fun doing it. If it’s not fun they recognise ‘The grit in the oyster’. They are happy knowing that the problem is often part of the solution. They get curious about their own stuckness - wondering what handy pearl may just be hidden within it.

‘In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.’ Einstein.

And as the conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt recognised ‘Much that is brilliant, magnificent and really crazy occurs when we are on the verge of catastrophe. And if we dare to go this far, we can experience things that are unbelievably beautiful’.

8) Reframe mistakes as opportunities and failure as feedback. Think of a mistake as an opportunity for something else or as a possibility to learn. 3M almost discarded a glue that wasn’t strong enough for its intended purpose – however, when Art Fry wished he had a sticky bookmark for his hymn book, the glue was used to create the ‘Post-It’. Penicillin was a mould that everyone was trying to get rid of! Creative Spirits have a ‘Drive into the skid’ mentality. They take the risk to go where it initially seems unfamiliar in order to innovate or make breakthroughs.

When Thomas Edison was experimenting with designs for light bulbs he had approximately 1800 attempts before he invented the design that worked and in addition tested over 6,000 Vegetable growths as filament material before he found one that would burn for long enough.

However Edison did not look upon them as failures but as 1800 ways not to build a light bulb or avenues he didn’t need to explore any more. Historian, Paul Israel, who is compiling his biography said of him: ‘He saw every failure as a success, because it channelled his thinking in a more fruitful direction.’

9) Practice getting different perspectives. ‘Rise above a situation; step into the shoes of your project or the thing you want to create. Then return to your own perspective.’ Creative Spirits like to share their ideas and to make connections with others’ points of view. They recognise that two or three minds together make for creative synergy. And they’re not afraid to go out on a limb.

Albert Einstein put himself on the end of a light beam: “If one were to run after a beam of light or ride on one, what then would be the nature of the situation with respect to the velocity of light? If you could run fast enough after a beam of light, would you reach a point where it would not move at all? The same light ray for another man would have another velocity.”

10) Transform your inner critic into a wise mentor or advisor. Don’t get critical of your dreams, projects or creations before you’ve allowed them to develop. Once you’ve fully ‘dreamed your dream’, make friends with your inner critic or actual critics, considering them as wise advisors who can help you manifest your dream. And remember truly Creative Spirits are also realists. They know how to make a ‘dream’ manifest itself in reality.








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Caroline & Alice run workshops in the field of NLP, creativity, archetypes, mythology, metaphor, symbolism and "The Hero's Journey". If you want to get an in depth understanding of how to put their 10 steps into action they invite you to attend their exciting and unique workshop entitled ‘The Spirit of Creativity’ taking place at Digby Stuart College, The University of Surrey on Roehampton Lane, London SW15 running for a full five days 22 – 26 June 2002. The purpose of the workshop is to give people the opportunity to uncover their true potential in any field, to release blocks around creativity and to allow a state of creative resourcefulness to grow and develop during the week.

The normal cost for the five day workshop is £500 + VAT + £587.50. SPECIAL OFFER – “Two participants for the price of one” (Please quote SIO OFFER when requesting a brochure and booking form). Very reasonably priced accomodation is also available on the univeristy campus for visitors from overseas or outside London.

For more information and copy of their fun colour brochure you can contact them on + 44 (0) 20 8741 1937 or info@visionintoaction.co.uk or visit their website http://www.visionintoaction.co.uk

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