Creativity Calling
The Newsletter of the Creativity Coaching Association

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the April issue of Creativity Calling! These monthly newsletters are designed to inspire and support your creative work. This month's newsletter discusses some obstacles that can stand in the way of our becoming the creators that we are meant to be. Have Perfectionism or Idea Overload stopped you in your tracks, dulling your enjoyment of the creative process? Read on!

All the Best,

Beverly Down, New President & CEO

 

New Leadership and Direction for the Creativity Coaching Association (CCA)

Last month, Rick Benzel, CCA's founder and former Executive Director turned over the leadership reins to Beverly Down. CCA is extremely appreciative to Rick for the energy and talents he poured into birthing this association two years ago.

Beverly is a CCA certified creativity coach who is already eagerly at work developing new programs and ideas that will benefit all areas of the organization.

Currently CCA offers creativity coaching certification and 6 certified coaches have completed the program with another 16 coaches in the process of becoming certified. There are 125 coaches in the association and from this tremendous pool of knowledge, skills and creativity we draw our monthly Creativity Calling articles! You'll find a directory of CCA coaches listed on our website at www.creativitycoachingassociation.com. Enjoy browsing through the member profiles at Find a Coach where you will find a wealth of diversity in creative expression and specialties.

New CCA projects in progress for 2007:

1. A Creativity Expo
2. A Creativity Coaches' radio show for the public
3. A second book, another anthology, from CCA Press. The anthology will be jam-packed with insights and practical ideas from CCA creativity coaches, brimming with information to enhance and expand your creativity!

Stay tuned!

We welcome your questions and feedback. Do you have areas you would like to see addressed by our coaching members in a future newsletter? Write us!

Ideas, Ideas, Ideas
Curse or Blessing?

By Gloria Nelson

"May you live in interesting times" is a statement that has been attributed to ancient Chinese wisdom. It can be considered a curse or a blessing depending on one's perspective. Creative ideas can come in such abundance that sometimes we wonder if they are a curse or a blessing. It becomes difficult to make choices, find time, and stay focused when inspiration and ideas come rapidly. The following steps will help you turn this situation into the blessing it truly is.

1. Ask yourself if the idea holds heart and meaning for you. Following an idea that holds heart and meaning will align your heart and authentic voice to produce powerful creative content. Your energy will increase. Your creative activities will carry your exclusive personal creative signature. Ideas approached in this manner will resonate with yourself and with others.



2. Gauge your willingness to make mistakes and your ability to remain flexible and open to new ways of seeing. Start with a beginner's mind. Past experience, knowledge, and success can and do inform creative work. However, flexibility in new ways of seeing and the ability to grow through mistakes are important elements for continued creative development.



3. Pay attention to internal questioning about reputation and perceived expectations of your creativity. This may be a signal you are at a threshold of creative growth. Your willingness to persist without needing to be right or rigid can open your creative capabilities to new potential.



4. Identify a step-by-step process you can follow to bring an idea to realization. This will enable you to maintain a consistent level of energy to attain tangible creative output. Ideas operate at a higher energy frequency than physical acts. Bridging the gap between these frequencies requires significant focused energy.

Filtering ideas first through a process that checks in with both your heart and head will free you of energy draining external considerations. There is a time for external reckoning later in the creative process. Staying connected with your internal guidance provides you with creative energy to take whatever steps are necessary to complete the developmental process. Then you will enthusiastically embrace new ideas as valued blessings.

Gloria Nelson is a Certified Creativity Coach. A life-long pursuit of creative expression in her personal life and work experience enable her to bring creative break-through thinking skills to creativity coaching. Visit Gloria's website at http://creativeplaydate.com or email her at creativeplaydate@yahoo.com.

Better than perfect
Creativity flows from embracing life's mistakes

By Liz Massey

I've told people since the end of high school that I'm a recovering perfectionist. Years ago, it seemed like I actually had quite a bit to recover from: I was a thin, athletic, straight-A student with 20/20 vision and good credit. Now that I'm a pudgy, near-sighted person with so-so credit and a career that took me years to get off the ground, my claim to recovery may sound more like an excuse than anything else. But resisting the allure of perfectionism is something everyone should consider, especially creative folk.

What, you may ask, could possibly be wrong with wanting things to be perfect? Well, for starters, most definitions of what is considered perfect are based on a rigid, control-oriented outlook that assumes that there's one right way to think, behave, and be. Not exactly a prescription for nuanced self-expression!

Paint-by-the-numbers is perfectionism. Children happily hurling crayons across the page, lost in the mélange of colors and textures, is not.

Even those who are relatively successful at achieving "perfection" lose out. Art, friendship, food, music, creativity, nature and love-these things all get messy at times. And most of them respond negatively to excessive planning and control. Excellence and mastery are great qualities to install in your heart once you de-throne perfection as your creativity "god." Art is enhanced by aiming for being what you are truly capable of as an artist, not by judging yourself solely against an external and possibly unrealistic standard.

So throw away those notions of "perfecting your art." Think instead about that new painting technique you want to experiment with, that dance step you need to play with a little more to master, or that screenplay idea that keeps playing hide-and-seek with your subconscious. The one thing better than artistic "perfection" is art made with self-acceptance, because it allows one to learn from, and even prosper from, mistakes made along the way.

Liz Massey is a professional editor and creativity coach whose coaching practice, Creative Liberty, is located in the Phoenix metropolitan area. For more information, see her business profile.

Tap into Our Database of Creativity Coaches

"Twenty years from now you will be more dissapointed by the things you didn't do than the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. " --Mark Twain

Are you:

-- just starting out in exploring your creative desires?
-- a working artist who is stuck on a creative project?
-- looking for something new to juice up your creative work?
-- going into midlife and feeling that now is finally the time to do the art you always wanted to do?
-- already a known artist but interested in taking your success to the next level?

For any of these situations, why not hire a creativity coach? Check out our database of nearly 50 coaches who are ready to work with you to propel you forward. CCA-member coaches specialize in nearly 100 different specialties.

Congratulations to our newest Certified Creativity Coach: Jill Jones

Jill Jones is a creativity coach, visual artist and writer passionate about the creative process. She teaches art and creativity courses and is a supportive partner for her clients in her coaching practice, Coach the Arts, (www.coachthearts.com). She provides encouragement and gentle direction beneficial to clients because she understands and relates to the challenges visual artists and writers face while living the creative life.

She advocates practical, attainable methods to get and stay in touch with creative motivations. Several of her essays and illustrations appear in Kaleidoscope: Ideas and Projects to Spark Your Creativity, a North Light Book published in February 2007. Jill also writes and illustrates her column, ARTsparks, which appears in each issue of ARTitude.

Jill completed her coaching certification program through the Creativity Coaching Association and has taken additional course work from noted creativity coach Eric Maisel, Ph. D. She completed more than 200 client coaching hours and has worked with clients continuously since 2005.

A mixed media artist , Jill exhibits her work in Southern California. Her work has appeared in art shows and galleries in Florida and California, as well as in books, magazines, zines and internet forums. She is a member of several art associations and actively serves on the board at her local art association in addition to writing for the association's newsletter.

Jill Jones resides in sunny Southern California with her encouraging husband, Bill, and an enthusiastically eclectic collection of art. You may reach Jill in the following ways: by e-mail: JillKJones@sbcglobal.net or at her websites: www.coachthearts.com and www.brainwavesart.com

Special Book Offer

If you have not yet purchased your own copy of Inspiring Creativity, why not take advantage of this special offer today? An anthology of 22 powerful essays by professional creativity coaches, the book will get your creative juices flowing and make you feel more confident, excited, and ready to tackle your creative work.

Special Offer: $12.75 + $4.00 Shipping = $16.75

 

Click here to purchase a copy now.

Hope You Enjoyed Our Newsletter!

Send us an email and let us know your thoughts and suggestions.

Note: If you are a life coach, executive coach, literary agent, therapist or any other profession involved with creative people, and you are interested in joining the Creativity Coaching Association, please drop us a note at join@creativitycoachingassociation.com for information.