We’re all creative. But each of us chooses a different canvas.
What does your creative canvas look like?
Perhaps your creative canvas is entrepreneurship, writing, leadership, business, science, the arts, sports, parenting and family life, or the execution of some skill or craft.
If you’re like most people, you’d like to improve your creativity so that your chosen canvas becomes more vibrant, exciting, and a damn sight better to look at too. In this week’s Tip, I’m sharing a little secret you should know.
In my study and practice of a wide variety of techniques for enhancing creativity I have come to this simple, powerful conclusion:
Each of us uses different skills and tools in our creative endeavors but the process we go through is the same.
For example, an entrepreneur might use his skill of anticipating change and programming technologies to create a new software application. This is just as creative as an artist who uses her skill of communicating emotion and a paintbrush to create a compelling work of art. Their results are different because they’re each working on a different canvas, but both the entrepreneur and the artist went through the same creative process or steps to achieve their respective outcomes.
And guess what? When you become more aware of the creative steps, then you can really amp up your creative power and produce more dynamic, satisfying “canvases” in your area of expertise. I’ve also discovered that there are common traps that sap creativity; knowing what these are is as important as knowing each step.
Read on to learn about the Steward Process – The 7 Steps and 7 Traps of Creativity. It’s a process I created because I love to create, I love system design, and I love helping people get more out of life. Let me know how you like it!
The Steward Process
“Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free.” – Gurdjieff
You are a steward of creativity. A steward is in charge of resources, and guides, oversees, and directs the deployment of these resources. This is exactly what you do during the creative process. You are highly creative and you have many resources at your disposal. You have the natural ability to create new outcomes in every aspect of your life. Recognizing your own stewardship of your creatvity is where the fun begins.
So you’re the steward, and here’s the process for attaining more success in creating whatever you want. STEWARD is also a simple acronym that makes is easier for you to remember the steps you take in the process.
Steward – (S)ource (T)hought (E)motion (W)ord (A)ction (R)espond (D)etach
The Steward steps are like a map – a creativity map — to help guide you to successful outcomes in any area of your life.
But be warned, at each step, there are also Creativity Traps to avoid. Creativity Traps can trap you, slow you, and derail you from achieving your desired outcome. They’re like roadblocks on your way. If you know how to get around them, or blow them out of the way, then you can get unstuck and get moving again.
Let’s take a brief look at each step, along with its corresponding trap, with some coaching tips on how to get the most out of your creative endeavors.
Source
“Reality cannot be found except in One single source.” – Leibniz, 1670
The creative process begins with source. What is source? Consider it the elemental stuff from which everything is made — including you.
For example, look at your hand. Now feel it. Seems solid, doesn’t it? Now imagine your eyes perceive like a high-powered microscope. What do you see? You’d see that your hand isn’t really a hand at all. It’s a dynamic energy field, moving and oscillating at tremendous speed.
The entire universe is made up of highly complex, infinitely varied, orchestrated energy fields. You, your car, your house, your office, your spouse, your cat, the earth, the sun, the stars. Everything.
But what if you had the perception of a super duper high-powered microscope that could see even beyond these energy fields. What would you see then? You’d see that beyond the physical world and beyond the energy fields comprising the physical world — everything comes from ONE thing. Everything is an aspect of the same stuff, called Source or Spirit.
At this ultimate level, there is
- no time
- no space
- no end
- no differentiation
All is literally one. As the quote from the legendary physicist and contemporary of Einstein David Bohm put it, “Individuality is only possible if it unfolds from wholeness.”
Because it is the source of everything, Everything that could exist already exists as Source energy. It has to or it couldn’t exist!
So the creative process is simply a series of steps to unfold what already exists as Source energy into the physical realm so that it can be experienced. Essentially, whatever you want to create already exists at some level of Source!
Source speaks to you through the feeling of inspiration (in-spirit). When you follow your inspiration, you align with Source and bring tremendous power to your endeavors.
The Creativity Trap at Source
At each step of the creative process, there are also creativity traps to avoid. Creativity traps can trap you, slow you, or derail you from achieving your goal. The creativity trap at Source can occur when you hold a narrow perspective, are feeling burnt out and overspent, or act out of fear rather than inspiration.
How to Escape this Trap
To get out of the creativity trap at source, align with your Source. Give yourself the space and freedom to just be and feel free and expansive. What works for you? Maybe it’s a walk in nature, a workout, play a game, meditation, or reflection… just taking a break from the pressure of your current reality and allowing yourself to just be. It’s those times when you’re not directly thinking about the task at hand that you get messages from Source in the form of inspiration.
Coaching Tip
The best method I know to get out of any Creativity Trap is by working with a personal coach. And when it comes to the Creativity Trap at Source, a personal coach can help you broaden your perspective, tap into your higher creative potential, and consider more options and possibilities.
Thoughts
“Prepare your mind to receive the best that life has to offer.” – Ernest Holmes
Thought is the next step in the creative process. Specifically, consistent thought. Your consistent thoughts, both conscious and unconscious, establish a connection or bridge with Source.
Inconsistent thoughts, such as
-Always changing your mind
-Being easily influenced by others
-Not knowing what you really want
…just can’t establish much of a connection. Without consistent thought, you’ll never establish a strong link to Source and you won’t begin to realize your goal.
The Creativity Trap at Thoughts
The creativity trap at Thoughts is this: Source doesn’t edit the thoughts you send it. Whatever consistent thoughts you have, conscious or not, it will send back to you with a match. You can choose a negative thought like “I am incapable” and you’ll get results that show you are incapable or a positive thought like “I am capable” and get results that show you are capable. It doesn’t matter to Source. It just responds.
How to Esacpe this Trap
To get out of the creativity trap at Thoughts, you need to choose consistent positive thoughts. Positive thoughts such as “I am capable” “I can do this” are effective. They lead you toward your desire. Negative thoughts, “I am incapable” “I can’t do this” and the like, are ineffective. They keep you from your desired outcome. Why? Source gives you back what you send it. The average person has over 50,000 thoughts in a day. That’s almost 2 thoughts a second, which means that most of us are only slightly aware of all our thoughts. To be an effective creator you need to be able to slow down your thought process and become more aware of both your conscious and unconscious thoughts and then choose thoughts that are more effective and positive for your creation. You can become more aware of your thoughts through meditation, reflection, journaling, and self-inquiry.
Coaching Tip
A personal coach is a great resource to help you identify and select more effective positive thoughts to create what you really want.
Emotions
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
So it’s consistent thought that establishes a connection with Source. But it’s your emotions that give power to those thoughts. Emotions are energy in motion. You need that energy to power your creativity.
This is why emotions such as passion, desire, enthusiasm, love, appreciation, and commitment are so important to the creative process. Thoughts establish a connection to Source but emotions power those thoughts.
The power of positive thinking is well known and positive, consistent thought is essential to the creative process. Without it, you never even get started and you’ll never sustain it.
But positive emotions that support your creation are just as important as positive thinking. For example, imagine someone in front of a mirror thinking,
“I am rich and beautiful.
I am rich and beautiful.
I am rich and beautiful.”
Now, imagine that while they are thinking, “I am rich and beautiful,” this person actually feels poor and ugly. Their mind recognizes the mismatch and creates even more inner discord. “Yeah right, I’m rich and beautiful. Who am I kidding?”
You need both consistent positive thinking and positive emotion to realize your creation.
The Creativity Trap at Emotions
If you ever find yourself going through the motions, feeling a lack of passion, conviction, desire, or hope for your creation, you know you’re in the creativity trap at Emotions.
Another big trap is to feel strong negative emotions in your life such as stress, anxiety, resentment, guilt, anger, etc. Just like with thought, Source doesn’t judge what you give it. So if you have little or no emotion, there’s not much power behind your connection to Source. And if you have strong negative emotions then you power up negative results – mentally, physically, and creatively.
Mo<
(Quick Aside: the negative emotion of fear doesn't seem to apply here. Fear, when mixed with other powerful positive emotions can really motivate -- but not inspire -- you to get your ass moving and keep it moving. In fact, every “successful” person I know -- myself included -- first attained success because of their fear of not being successful/worthy/accepted, etc. combined with the positive desire to do something about it. However, fear based success ultimately collapses on itself. This is too big of a subject for me to tackle here but if you're interested, I can cover it in another post.)
How to Escape this Trap
To get out of the creativity trap at Emotions, learn to activate powerful positive emotions that support and power your positive thoughts.
Coaching Tip
A personal coach can help you activate powerful positive emotions that will power you towards your creation and your creation towards you.
Words
“The words ‘I am…’ are potent words; be careful what you hitch them to. The thing you’re claiming has a way of reaching back and claiming you.” – A. L. Kitselman
First – inspiration from Source
Second – consistent Thoughts
Next – positive Emotions
Now — you begin to talk about it using Words.
Words are very powerful. By speaking – silently, out loud, or in writing — you’re further energizing your creative output.
In the early stage of the creative process, you use words to “try on” the prospect of your creation. If you feel your desire and passion increase when you speak about it, you begin to speak with more confidence and conviction. You increase your connection with Source and speed the creative process.
If you feel your desire and certainty wane when you speak about it, you begin to express doubt or lose enthusiasm. You decrease your connection with Source and slow or stop the creative process.
The Creativity Trap at Words
Be aware of who you talk to regarding your dreams and desires and pay attention to your own inner critic. Countless potential creations never get off the ground past this stage because we allow someone to talk us out of it, or we talk our own way out of it. Sometimes we’re grateful we listened to our own inner voice and chose not to proceed. Other times we feel remorse because we listened to advice or admonishment that we shouldn’t have and we miss out on the joy and satisfaction of creating that desired outcome.
How to Escape this Trap
If you feel your passion and certainty wane after talking about it, take some time to get clarity and then talk it through again in a safe environment. Is this something you really want to do? Or, has your inner critic taken over? Will you later regret not fully expressing this creation in your life? These are all key questions to ask and to get in touch with through the process of dialogue.
Coaching Tip
A personal coach can provide you a safe place to dialog and explore the possibilities of your newfound thoughts and emotions. You get to “try it on” and make it real. You get to try it on and see if it’s something you really want.
Action
“One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.” – Goethe
Inspiration from Source. Consistent thoughts. Positive emotions. Confident words. Now, action!
Action is movement towards your desired outcome. It requires action to bring your goal towards you and you towards it. Small steps or big steps are OK… but take action.
Action turns out to be really easy and productive when your thoughts, emotions, and words are in alignment with Source, your inspiration. When you’re in alignment, then your actions tend to flow really easily, you cut through a lot of the noise and indecision and you get a tremendous amount accomplished. You’re working smarter, not necessarily harder because you get much more accomplished with the same or less effort. This is a very smart way to work.
The Creativity Trap at Action
Action is the one of the last steps in the creative process. Many of us put it first without giving adequate time and energy to the first four steps. We fight harder, work longer, dig deeper, etc. The next time you find yourself ‘fighting’ to realize your creative outcome instead of ‘flowing’ ask yourself why? Are you following your inspiration and are your thoughts, emotions, and words in alignment with each other? There’s an old saying to never confuse activity with achievement. This is the creativity trap at Action.
Another creativity trap at Action is inconsistent action. Just as you need to have and maintain consistent and positive thoughts, emotions, and words, you need to have and maintain consistent positive action toward your creation.
How to Escape this Trap
Action is easy when you’re inspired and when your thoughts, emotions, and words are in alignment. When you’re in alignment, everything tends to flow really easily and you get a tremendous amount accomplished.
Coaching Tip
A personal coach can help you align your thoughts, emotions, and words to Source, your inspiration, and craft an action plan. Consistency in action follows from consistency in thoughts, emotions, and words.
Respond
“Desires pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the desire again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.” – Anais Nin
The creative process is a dance. It begins with inspiration. Some idea that really uplifts and inspires you. You then launch into consistent, positive thought, emotions, words, and actions that in turns sends a powerful message back to Source that Yes! This is what I really want.
Source then responds to your thoughts, emotions, words, and actions by sending you signals and resources that assist you in that creation. Signals from source take the form of insights, gut feelings, synchronicities, coincidences, and new inspiration. This is Source’s way of saying, “Yes, you’re on the right path!” or “Hey, look over here, I’ve got something really interesting for you.” Unexpected resources come to your aid too. Resources that you couldn’t even have imagined at the start of the creative process. These take the form of people, money, connections, new ideas, new opportunities and “luck”.
Your job is to respond. To look for and act on these signals and resources, which in turn sends a message back to Source, “Yes, I’m listening, I still want this.” Which in turn causes Source to send more signals, resources, and aid to your disposal. This creative dance continues until your creation is realized or you stop responding.
The Creativity Trap at Respond
The creativity trap at Respond is to stop responding. You can stop responding for a variety of reasons. Perhaps you talk yourself out of it, you don’t really feel up to it, your inner critic takes over, the work seems to long, hard, and daunting, or you face an obstacle or a set back and just give up. Basically, you’ve fallen into a creativity trap at some step along the way and have just stopped responding.
How to Escape this Trap
To get out of the creativity trap at Respond, the key is to keep responding. Just keep on keeping on as the saying goes. What often happens in the creative process is that you start out on one path and you run into some obstacles or setbacks. Things that can really throw you for a loop sometimes. But if you look closely at those experiences, you’ll eventually see that each one provides a valuable learning experience as well as some new opportunity. So if you just keep on keeping on… follow that inspiration and back it up with consistent positive thoughts, emotions, words, and actions you’ll soon have all kinds of marvelous creations in all aspects of your life.
Coaching Tip
A personal coach can help you bounce back from obstacles, spot the learning opportunities, and keep on keeping on.
Detach
“You can ask for whatever you want but also be willing for the universe to give you something better.” – Joe Vitale
Detach is to let go and trust. Detach is to allow Source to do it’s thing. To orchestrate the details of how and when your creation will materialize. This is the final step in Steward. It wraps the process back around to Source, where all creativity begins.
Why should you let go and trust? Because Source is ultimate creativity and intelligence, it’s the stuff that puts everything else together. Remember that Source doesn’t edit or evaluate, it just responds. So your consistent positive thoughts, emotions, words, and actions, cause Source to begin to orchestrate the details of your creation, to bring it into being.
Source works in infinite, marvelous and mysterious ways. Ways that we can’t even begin to comprehend. When you try to dictate how and when your creation should materialize your telling Source, the ultimate creative force in the universe that it can’t work in infinite ways. Remember, Source doesn’t judge, it just responds. So by trying to control the how and when of your creation, you are simply slowing down the creative process because your causing Source to work in a limited capacity rather than an infinite capacity. You may still get exactly what you asked for but you could have had something much, much better by detaching and allowing Source to orchestrate the details.
The Creativity Trap at Detach
The creativity trap at Detach occurs when you try to control how and when. You can tell you’re in this trap when you feel like you’re doing everything else right. You have the right consistent thought, emotions, words, and actions but nothing seems to be moving. It feels like you’re stuck and nothing you do gets things in motion. If you find yourself in this situation, ask yourself if you are attached to a specific outcome, if you’re trying to dictate exactly how and when your creation should materialize. This is the creativity trap at Detach.
How to Escape this Trap
To get out of the creativity trap at Detach, the key is to go back to Source and get in touch with why you want this creative expression in the first place? What would you experience if you already had it? Then ask yourself if you are too closely tied to seeing that creation take a particular form or timeline? What conditions have you placed on this creation? And are there other possibilities to realize it?
Coaching Tip
A personal coach can help you spot limiting conditions and become more open to all possibilities.
Steward Summary
You are a Steward of creativity. A steward guides, oversees, and directs. Exactly what you do during the creative process. The creative process follows the STEWARD sequence:
Steward – (S)ource (T)hought (E)motion (W)ord (A)ction (R)espond (D)etach
When you know the Steward steps then it’s like you’ve been given a map – a creativity map — to help guide you to successful outcomes in any area of your life.
There are also Creativity Traps to avoid. Creativity Traps can trap you, slow you, and derail you from achieving your desired outcome.
A qualified personal coach can help you get out of the Creativity Traps and amp up your creative excellence.
Some Famous Examples
To assist your learning, here are two famous creations, the airplane and the Internet, broken down into their Steward steps.
The Airplane
Before their was airline travel, if you asked most of the world population about flying through the air at hundreds of miles an hour they would have looked at you like you were crazy. But the potential for air travel already existed in the field of (S)ource and the inspiration to create it struck the Wright brothers. Orville and Wilbur Wright had a consistent (T)hought, powered by (E)motion, that they could create a flying machine. They worked on it together, planned and talked about it between themselves and others with (W)ords. They took (A)ction to try different models of flying machines. They (R)esponded to signs and signals from the environment creating wind tunnels, model planes, and testing different methods and they ultimately (D)etached from the outcome allowing the design of the flying machine that eventually worked to come from inspiration in a dream1. This led to the physical creation of the first powered flight. Once Orville and Wilbur showed it could be done, other minds improved upon and expanded the concept until in short order; we now have a global air travel system!
The Internet
In 1990, before the advent of the Internet, if you asked most of the world population about sending text messages, watching the news, shopping, and communicating with other people and businesses around the globe “online” they would have thought you were nuts. But the potential for the Internet already existed in the field of (S)ource and the inspiration to create a new simple form of computer-to-computer communication struck Tim Berners-Lee2. Then it existed as consistent (T)hought, backed by powerful (E)motion in the mind of Tim and his fellows at CERN. They talked about the concept with (W)ords and took (A)ction to program early prototypes. They (R)esponded to signals from the environment creating improved prototypes and new programming languages. And they (D)eatched from the outcome, building a decentralized global communications infrastructure that enabled disparate computer systems to talk to one another with no plan as to how it would really unfold. Tim showed it could be done, other minds improved upon and expanded the concept and now hundreds of millions of people use the web around the globe to send messages, communicate, and get their news and shop!
Your Blast from the Past
One of the best ways to solidify your understanding of the Steward steps, and to give your next creation a big boost, is to recall a favorite creation from your past. Using the Steward steps as a model, you will increase your awareness of what you did then, and apply those lessons to your current desired creation now.
Ready? Let’s begin.
Close your eyes and remember a time when you created something very meaningful and rewarding in your life. What was something you created, or helped to create, that is most memorable and deeply satisfying?
Here are some examples:
- your dream job
- performing supremely in an athletic event
- overcoming great adversity
- inventing a new product or business
- a family
You might want to select something you weren’t sure you could accomplish. It could be anything as long as it is deeply meaningful to you. Take yourself back to that time. No matter when it was.
All right. Open your eyes. What did you create?
In the past, I created something very meaningful to me. I created ________________________________________
________________________________________.
Remember that whatever you created already existed at some level of Source. By following the creative process, you made it “real” in the physical world.
Source speaks to you through the feeling of inspiration. Recall the feeling of inspiration you felt at the beginning of your creation. Did it hit you like a bolt of lighting or did it build gradually?
(S) I felt inspired by the prospect of my creation when ______________________________________
_____________________________________.
Consistent thought establishes a connection to Source. Positive thoughts lead you toward your desire. Negative thoughts do not. Positive thinking is effective. Negative thinking is not. Some examples of positive thoughts might be something like “I can do this! This is going to be so amazing once it’s done.” Or, “I’m not sure I can really do this but it’s worth it to just try my best.” Or, “I’m dedicating my life to this cause and I’m not going to quit.”
Recall what positive thoughts you consistently held during the creative process. Write them in the space provided.
(T) I held consistent positive thoughts of _____________________________________
____________________________________.
Emotions power your thoughts. Recall what positive emotions you felt during the creative process. Write them here. It may have been feelings of passion, enthusiasm, commitment, confidence, success, joy, appreciation, etc.
(E) I felt positive emotions of ______________
____________________________________.
Recall a conversation you had when you were “trying on” the idea of your creation. What was the conversation? Who was it with? Was it positive or negative? What happened afterwards? Now compare that conversation to one later in the creative process either just before or just after it was made real. Notice how your words and thoughts and feelings changed as you could see more and more of your creation becoming real?
(W) An early conversation I had when I was “trying on” my creation was with
This led me to _________________________.
Later on in the creative process, my words, thoughts, and emotions became more
_____________________________________.
_____________________________________.
Recall the feelings you had when you stepped out of your comfort zone and took action. How did it feel? It may have felt terrifying or it may have felt liberating but you did it!
(A) I took decisive action by _______________
and it felt ____________________________.
Creation is a dance. Source responds to your thoughts, emotions, words, and actions. You sense and respond to signals from Source. Think back to your creation and recall the insights, gut feelings, and unexpected resources that came to your aid during the process of this creation. They may have been in the form of people, money, ideas, connections, or synchronicities.
(R) Some of my more memorable insights, gut feelings, serendipitous occurrences, and unexpected resources that came to my aid were ________________________________________
_______________________________________.
Some of the big obstacles and setbacks I overcame were ______________________________________
______________________________________.
Detach is to let go and let the universe do its thing. This is the final step in Steward. It wraps the process back around to Source, the ultimate creative and intelligent force in the universe. Source works in infinite and miraculous ways. How did you allow it to work for you then?
(D) In the example of creation you’ve been using, in what ways was the final outcome different or better than your original desire? _______________________________________
_______________________________________.
There. You see? You are already a powerful creative force.
Now that you’re reminded about the great thing you created in the past, and you know the Steward steps, Creativity Traps, and how to avoid them or get out, you should have a serious advantage for your next creation.
So what inspiring idea are you going to create next?
Whatever it is you’re creating next, make sure that it’s aligned with your authentic core. Take the “7 Days to Align Your Life for Success” free email course now and align your life for success:
