Читать книгу The Way of Nowhere: Eight Questions to Release Our Creative Potential - Nick Udall - Страница 10
ОглавлениеHow am I playing a creative role in society…?
This question has been important to us as we have sought to find meaning and purpose in our lives and find our place in the world.
We are all happier and more nourished when we live life as a creative pursuit or adventure. We are motivated and energized when others inspire us or when they feel inspired by us. We are enthusiastic when we see each challenge that life throws at us as another opportunity to learn and to grow.
We also tend to feel most miserable and ‘at sea’ when we are disconnected from those aspects of ourselves that are inherently creative and purposeful, when life consumes us and when there is not enough time in the day or break in the routine to do something different. Then we find ourselves trapped in the way things are. We become victims of circumstance, judging life and the people around us in a way that keeps us stuck, burdened and adrift.
Interestingly, it is both what we think and the way in which we think that can get in the way of our natural creativity and growth. Our thoughts are incredibly powerful. They are the way that we co-create with one another and with the world. They co-arise with emotions that are felt throughout our bodies, and these emotions are translated into actions, behaviour and beliefs.1
Thoughts (and their accompanying emotions) are types of energy, and over time they make themselves manifest in form. The thoughts of our grandparents and parents have created our world. Our thoughts, and the way we think them and make meaning of them, are creating the world in which we live now as well as the world our children will inherit. So it may be wise for us to exercise some care and learn more about the power of our thoughts.
Over time our habitual modes of thinking become calcified within the neural networks of our brains. Like water flowing over rock for thousands of years, they carve ruts in our neural networks, ruts from which we find it difficult to escape. They become our paths of least resistance, our way of thinking, feeling, creating and learning. No wonder we find it hard to change!
This book has been designed to help individuals and organizations to overcome these ingrained patterns, to step onto new ground and find new ways of moving forward through life.
You will of course be aware that you can start this book from one of two directions. Whilst this half is based on releasing the creative potential of the individual, the individual and the organizational are two sides of the same coin. We cannot rise to the challenges that face us in our families, our organizations, our communities and our environment unless we unlock the creative potential within ourselves and between ourselves. Therefore each side of the book helps us to look into personal, inter-personal and organizational dilemmas… Here are some of them:
Working in the week and living for the weekends
We spend 60–70 per cent of our lives at work or preparing for work. It would be heartbreaking to look back from our deathbeds and feel that the majority of our time had been spent working on things that hadn't nourished us or enabled us to grow and realize our highest potential.2 So how can we make our life's work more creative and meaningful…?
Arguing for our limitations
Our beliefs about who we are and what we can do are tied into our early experiences of childhood and family. Some of them are self-limiting – ‘I can't sing’, ‘I am not creative’ – and they tend to persist. What would happen if we could break free from our self-limiting beliefs…? 3
Not accessing our highest potential
We access our highest potential when we use our creativity, our emotions, our intuition, our intellect and our physical capacity. Few of us use these innate capabilities to the full. No matter what the challenge, we tend to use the same ways of thinking and behaving to meet it. Most of us are one- or two-club golfers or one- or two-stroke swimmers. What could we achieve if we could access all of our capabilities…?
This is a book of practice. It maps out ways of helping individuals and organizations play a more creative role in society and simultaneously nurture their growth. It contains a collection of questions designed to help us all move into the unknown and transcend our limitations. It enables us to access our natural capabilities and release our unique gifts. And ultimately it reveals a systemic design that helps us to live in greater harmony with each other and with the planet.
It is about how each and every one of us can find our place – a place where we can connect with our own creative life force and weave it together with that of the people around us.
1 Antonio Demasio, The Feeling of What Happens, Vintage, 2000
2 As stated in a paper by Paul H. Ray, ‘The rise of integral culture’, Noetic Sciences Review 37, 4–15, 1996.
3 Inspired by Richard Bach's Illuminations, Pan, 1978.
