The Greatest Natural Law: Actions Speak Louder Than Words

All of us deal with difficult people, heck, we may be one of those difficult people other folks have to deal with. In all cases, actions speak louder than words when coming to terms with what kind of person we have been in the relationship and what kind of person the "difficult" person has been. I have had a particularly trying relationship with someone for over a year now and when I look back, I don't think either of us have been particularly good at being action-oriented. Action-oriented in this case means clear and honest communication. The words have been many, the silence has been deafening! Coming to terms with how I have been as responsible as the person to whom I wish I could assign all the blame is a difficult process yet it is worth it. Once we realize our responsibility, we have freedom to start fresh and make better, empowering choices. An important part of life is also realizing that there will be some folks that we ultimately won't connect or even stay in touch with anymore, even if all signs at one time looked good.

Here are some thoughts on how to assess whether a difficult relationship is worth seeing all the way home:

1. What has been my role in this relationship -- for better and uh, for worse? It **always takes two**. How am I responsible for what has happened and why is that so hard to admit? Now that I know my responsibility in the situation what choices can I make to resolve, solve or move on?
2. Have I been a clear and honest communicator or have I expected the "difficult" person to be a mind reader?
3. Do I feel good around this person? Do I feel good when I am away from them?
4. Have I invested fully in this person and have they invested in me? Have we invested in our team?

Actions speak louder than words -- communicate clearly from the get go!

Thunderstorm and Cycles/Breakthroughs

Thunderstorms the door wide open violent wash then cool wind gives way to a calm sky, the birds at last feel safe as distant thunder echoes somewhere many waves away

Today I was the opener for the Neighborhood Leadership Academy retreat of Leadership Anne Arundel. It is said the best way to learn is to teach and that's one of the reasons (but not the main) that I enjoy teaching. Each time I speak on Crossing Thresholds, Breakthroughs and Zones of Satisfaction -- concepts I developed for myself many years ago, I am always stunned at how I still love them! I love sharing and hope you find them useful.

Threshold -- each event in our life, even the smallest, is an opportunity to begin fresh, so as we cross a threshold from one moment to the next we can either build on the positive energy of the previous moment or start fresh. It's kind of like "personal grace." Why don't we offer ourselves and most certainly others a fresh new moment, each and every moment -- as we cross the threshold?

Breakthrough -- a related concept. Each moment, each event large and small offers the opportunity for an epiphany, an understanding, a way to connect people, ideas. When we cross the threshold we can say "As I enter this space (physical/mental) where/how is there an opportunity for a breakthrough? The breakthroughs are always there but we have to look for and expect them. A breakthrough is a tiny miracle

Zones of Satisfaction -- Where do we spend most of our time? I used to spend most of my time pretty miserable, that was my zone of satisfaction. My breakthrough? Lord, allow me to be the person I am when I perform music off the bandstand. The same abandon, joy and focus I have as an artist -- that deep place -- I want to share that feeling, love and energy in relationships not just on the bandstand. We want to be deeply satisfied yet how are we creating the possibility for this to exist? It takes self-reflection and then action: to bring deep satisfaction to many areas of our lives, not just one or two.

An Acronym For Aloha -- 5 Hawaiian Words To Live BY

From The Washington Post:

But for the BlackBerry
clipped to his left hip, Obama appeared to be channeling the aloha
spirit of his native Hawaii. Far more than a greeting, Hawaiians' aloha
-- which has many meanings -- often connotes a certain laid-back
live-and-let-live attitude. Translated literally, it means the breath
of life. But aloha is also sometimes interpreted as an acronym for five words meaning kindness (akahai), unity (lokahi), agreeability
(olu'olu), humility (ha'aha'a) and patience (ahonui).

Video from December 10, 2008 Rob's Maryland Hall Holiday Show

Cultivating Creativity, interview with Rob by Sharon Willocks

Notes on Cultivating Creativity in Your Life

What is improvisation?

Improvisation is a seemingly spontaneous creative reaction to environmental stimuli. However, this form of creativity is much less spontaneous than it may appear. The ability to improvise is rooted in preparation; in the assembly of skills, knowledge, and confidence that allows one to effectively respond creatively to unexpected situations. It is preparedness that breeds the confidence and openness that is necessary to improvise.

Questions to ask yourself:
• What does it mean to be creative every day?
• Do I have the structures in place to make that happen?

Creativity is not something that only certain "artistic" people have. Everyone has ideas, innovations, and the ability to think creatively. The only difference is how aware people are of their own creativity and how to release it.

An idea is only truly creative if it is put into action (obviously; otherwise, nothing is created at all). Bring ideas out of thought and into action. If your creative ideas are not openly shared, not only are you restricting your own growth and expansion, you're not creating new possibilities for other people to be creative; possibilities that might be realized as a result of their reaction to your creativity. Art and creativity are all about expanding thoughts outward, and sharing with people…

Take any idea and test it. Don't be so quick to judge or dismiss. Don't be afraid to "get work out there". Don't wait for the right time. There's always a temptation to procrastinate, to think that we don't yet have the resources or skills we need to be proactive about creativity. We'll say, "when I have this and that I will be able to accomplish my goal." We must recognize that we already have everything we need right here in this very moment; we must see possibilities in the moment. Always trust that you have the tools and resources to make the right decision about a creative project.

Great art can be created using minimal materials. There is no need to wait.

Mental shift: we absolutely must view creativity as a moment by moment part of life, not a force outside of us that we have to wait for or seek out. It is always there, it's just a matter of self-awareness...

Rob's daily morning routine (must consciously make time for self-reflection):

• Create a relaxing environment (candles, music, spiritual writings, etc)

• Take stock and write down thoughts about how you're feeling physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually.

• The idea: put preparation/effort into maintaining self. It's too often ignored and overshadowed by "priorities" outside of yourself (work, bills, errands, etc). How can you live effectively if you aren't self-aware and in tune with your own life and goals?

Self-criticism and Creativity

Do not judge your creativity before it has been realized. Defer judgment - postpone it or remove it completely. Don't intentionally place stumbling blocks in the way of being creative. Instead of judging, self-reflect. Turn off the editor while making art.

When you remove judgment and criticism, you create a space for your best work; you remove self-consciousness as much as possible and allow yourself to be as open as possible. Do not ask if an idea is right or wrong. Ask instead if you are seeing all possible perspectives. Ask where else you can take an idea. Every little impulse or idea has the potential to grow into something huge, it's just a matter of how you react to it...critically or reflectively. Don't dwell on whether or not an idea might be useful to you or someone else. Don't throw anything away, instead keep creating and reusing.

Everything is fodder for creativity

You don't need a specific, immediate end purpose to be creative.

Be aware of the creative spark inside. Listen and be aware of your ideas and reflect on them. Don't just touch on an idea and quickly move on. Take time to work with each idea, examine its potential and build off of it, see where it goes.

Key qualities of creative people

• Observation: creative people make many (and often different) observations about their environment. Pay attention. Look closer. Learn from everything.
• Ordering: put observations in order. Take ordinary things and place them in a unique, interesting order - the act of creating is simply making new and interesting things from existing tools (words, ideas, colors, etc)
• Openness: continuously open to new observations and not closed off to a particular style of observation or ordering. Always look for new ways to express self.

Ask self: what are the few basic operating structures in your life, what do you live for? (Rob: must be creative and dedicate life to creativity and helping people be creative, must communicate with other human beings)

Do not segment life. Life is one big, organic, unified, continuous thing. Do not think of your life in pieces: work, vacation, etc. Life is all inclusive - don't reserve creativity for any one aspect. Apply creativity to every area of life…

You often see in others what you extend or project in a situation. Instead of projecting judgment, fear, competitiveness, and arrogance, extend love, creativity, joy, and a desire to help others. If you don't project negativity toward others, you are less likely to feel negativity from others when expressing yourself. Replace criticism with encouragement, etc.

Rob's daily habit:

"Check in" 4-5 times a day. Ask what are my intentions/motivations and what are my actions offering in support of them? Make every action intentional...driven by your motivation.
How do you describe the world, using as much appropriate imagery as possible? (Rob: a spiritual quest). Language is one of the easiest ways to be creative - pay attention to how you use words - put effort into making communication colorful and interesting. Describe the world in a way that creatively indicates how you view your role in it...

Rob's 21 challenge:

Take a week and try to reach 21 different people creatively - from random people to good friends. Unlock creative experiences, don’t hold them in, extend self and creativity to others.

***

Martha Graham:

"There is a vitality, a life-force, a quickening that is translated through you into action; and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares to other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open... No artist is pleased...There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching - and makes us more alive than the others."

Maya Angelou:

"Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure. We leave our homes for work, acting and even believing that we will reach our destinations with no unusual event startling us out of our set expectations. The truth is we know nothing, not where our cars will fail or when our buses will stall, whether our places of employment will be there when we arrive, or whether, in fact, we ourselves will arrive whole and alive at the end of our journeys. Life is pure adventure and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to notice and admit when we expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed."

Tom Robbins:

"Listen, it's really pretty simple. If there's a thing, a scene, maybe, an image that you want to see real bad, that you need to see but it doesn't exist in the world around you, at least not in the form that you envision, then you create it so that you can look at it and have it around, or show it to other people who wouldn't have imagined it because they perceive reality in a more narrow, predictable way. And that's it. That's all an artist does."

Be an observation hog!

Be An Observation Hog

Be an observation hog – endeavor to let nothing escape your purview.

Many people keep a journal or diary, and if you think about it, all they are is a collection of observations, from the perspective of the writer. Having a journal is an important step in capturing and corralling your observations. However, it is equally important to make sure that your creative journal is free of judgment of what you observe. For me, my diary and journal has always been about capturing impressions and experiences rather than analysis and judgment of those impressions and experiences. Any time I have use my journal as an analysis tool, I have always been amused at far off reality my perspective was from what actually happened, so in that sense, my old journals serve as great comic relief and a reminder that my reality from that time wasn’t necessarily the truth.

So, simply list as many observations as you can, whenever you write in your creative journal. Don’t try to make connections among them, that will come soon enough. The main thing is just get them down – observations on clothes, nature, food, music, facial expressions, art, conversation, moods, etc. – any topic is a great topic and any observation is a good one!

Creativity Love and Healing -- Some Thoughts

Creativity, Love, and Healing

The answer to any problem or difficulty is always the extension of love into the world via your creativity. That is, any time you extend the possibility for insight, expression, and/or renewal to another person through your creative work, no matter how small, then you have created love in its highest expression – peace.

You have an inkling but no real idea of the infinite and everlasting ripples of your creative extension of love into the world and after all, why should you? The excitement of pure creation for the sake of love and peace, without any agenda, generates energy in your daily life that can become a driving force to last your lifetime. Not knowing the final destination of your creative work creates anticipation and a craving to do even more –

Where in the world will the effects of our creation be felt and who will feel it?

It can be fun to anticipate it and then be amazed at how far off the mark we were. Creation is always a story with a surprise ending where the ending becomes the beginning or the beginning at first seemed like an ending. If you look back at your life and its best and worst moments, you can see the pattern of how things ended up – never as expected! In fact, the residue or unintended outcomes of your creative work may be the very thing that brings peace and healing to a situation. So, your only responsibility and is to create and share it in the most direct and pure way you can muster. Once you do that, then you are on your way to creating a masterpiece, that on a spiritual level, everyone will experience, whether you realize it or not.

Part of the fun of life includes surprise and not knowing every little detail and outcome. Uncertainty is not on most people’s list of desirable states of being. There is a difference between Not Knowing and Uncertainty. If we are uncertain, we lack trust. Sometimes, we lack trust in the core process of why we create. Not knowing simply means we don’t know the specific answer according to our specific vision and needs. I think that’s good news! Life is a process – paradoxically, when we commit to the process and not the outcome, we get the best results – results that are far bigger and long-lasting then what our perceptions and reasoning will allow. To be creative, create a beautiful process and the outcome will have no choice but to be beautiful as well.

This is evident and obvious in the arts and yet is no different from every action that people engage in. Did Van Gogh know that his paintings would reach every corner of the globe and be studied in every art classroom as masterpieces? Did Mozart anticipate his music being on silver little discs and played for babies and children to foster their intelligence? Perhaps, but I doubt it! Even though the results of creation are obvious, it is usually with 20/20 hindsight. But right now, we have the opportunity to have 20/20 foresight –

Our creativity, down to our most minute actions, will have an infinite impact on everyone that follows us. How must we act now that we know this?

No creation made from love is unnoticed by God. In essence, creating from love means you are speaking God’s language. You are already fluent in this language; it’s just a matter of realizing that it’s already there, already remembered in the core of your being.

How do you extend love through creativity? By sharing your gifts to their fullest expression. If you sing, allow yourself to sing to others. If you paint, let others see it so that they may share your joy, pain, sorrow, or triumph. You don’t have to be an artist to extend love – your work may be done through listening, speaking, eye contact, gesture, or writing. Prayer is essential but then so is action – “pray to God and ply the hammer.” Creativity is the active part of your prayer and meditation. Creativity is the harnessing of your internal spiritual energy and manifesting it in the world and sharing it despite the perceived cost. If you have something to share, you must share it! True solutions based on love do not involve a cost/benefit analysis, leveraging, or positioning oneself.

If a problem or difficulty persists in your life, then you have not extended your love into the world enough. This has nothing to do with faultfinding, placing blame, or trying harder. It means doing less of what you think is best or appropriate, because how well has that worked? It means doing more listening and less talking and thinking. There is a level of knowing above thought – it is easily tapped into by stopping what you are doing and eliminating the electric buzz that surrounds all of your thoughts and activities. For a minute, stop trying to control everything. Relinquishing control is often a frightening proposition but often the key to the healing and resolution of a difficult situation. This means giving the problem over, not trying to rationalize, objectify, or explain it. Only you will know when you reach the point where explanations don’t work anymore. When you arrive at that point, allow your creativity to take over and heal the problem or difficulty of its own accord. This takes trust.

If the trust doesn’t exist for this to happen, then you are blocking the path for creative expression to do its work. How do you get out of your way? There is great power in not asking for an answer. In a world of instant gratification, we expect answers to be immediate and complete. In a world of prayer, creativity, and love those answers are already complete just not always according to our desire. In that regard, part of creativity is absolute trust –

You are on the right path, no mater what you are doing and what your current circumstances are – it’s just up to you to recognize it and be with it.

You have always been on the right path. To live or think any other way implies that you have wasted your time, and of course you haven’t. You can be on the right path and just not know it!

One of the most powerful and creative things you can say to yourself or to another person to create solutions is “I don’t know.” Far from looking like a fool or a liar, you allow a fresh and flowing path to be cleared by these simple words. The other three words that you can add to this statement to enhance the ability for creative solutions to present themselves is “Can you help me?”

Vulnerability and honesty are often mistaken as weakness. In reality, they are the very definitions of strength. By stating, “I don’t know. Can you help me?” you are creating a path for communication both on the personal level and spiritual level. You send a powerful message to the person you are interacting with that you are not going to foist your vision of the world upon them and in turn, you stop blocking your own personal spiritual insight into a situation.

In short, create your work and share it without conditions in each and every moment. When this becomes a habit and a way of life, when you realize that “giving up” is the way of true gain.

Grieving Alone

I often feel concerned about those that grieve alone. The main reason is that it seems that many folks seem to be missing the "empathy gene" -- they can't see folks right in front of them who could use a lift. That lift really could just be a hug, a hand, a smile. Sometimes the last thing someone needs is advice or commentary. People can feel your empathy and compassion very easily. It's nice when you can feel that "silent support." Recently I knew a friend was suffering, I could just feel it. The last thing I wanted to do was to offer advice. I did my best just to be there. My "empathy gene" told me that there was no way I could experience what they were going through. Sometimes I just want to send the message "I care, I am here . . ."

One of those days when it felt like I could crash . . .

. . . until I gave the day back to God. I ignored Spirit all day but there was God waiting patiently and lovingly for me to show up, that's grace and I am so thankful for it! We are all loved so very much, despite the insecurities and frailties -- I have them, not afraid to admit it. I can celebrate my humanity because of the spiritual that dwells in us all. Thankful you are reading this.

It's a rough time for us all -- don't give up! Keep going. You are loved. Don't give up, let's make it together, all of us. Lord, clear away the barriers to what I think others are; Lord, clear away the barriers to what others think I am.

ROB