Calling for a creativity revolution

Saturday, the V&A re-opened their Museum of Childhood (now called the Young V&A) after a 3-year closure and £13m renovation. 

We eagerly anticipated the unveiling because we live just down the street. And it didn’t disappoint. 

It’s hard to describe how dramatic the transformation was. The old museum I can only describe as a bit…stale. Lots of Victorian toys trapped behind panes of glass. Creativity was contained. Cordoned off. Controlled.

The pre-renovation Museum of Childhood: I find particularly depressing the photo of a girl riding a rocking horse. It's like telling the child visitor, 'Look how much fun you could be having if this were an interactive museum, but it's not'.

Now the space is vibrant. A constant hum of excited voices echoes throughout. There is a buzz, an aliveness which was completely absent before. It feels impossible that anyone would shush a child here. Whereas that would’ve been inevitable in its previous incarnation.

It feels like the museum has reclaimed its creativity in a way that mirrors a need we have, as a species, to reclaim our collective creativity. 

Watching the children, including my 2-year-old daughter Laila, run around and enjoy this space is incredibly inspiring. It makes me wonder what would become possible if an entire generation of children everywhere had access to creatively-nourishing spaces like this. If this level of creative stimulation and creative freedom were simply a new baseline, what would become possible for our world?

If this transformation represents part of the vanguard of a global creativity revolution, what would the revolution consist of? 

Taking inspiration from this museum’s transformation, I see at least three major shifts we need to revolutionize our relationship with creativity.

1. From creativity for a select few to creativity for everyone.

The old museum catered to the typical museum-going population. Older white privileged people. But the new museum is for everyone. "Free for all."

For example, curators worked with local children from a diverse range of backgrounds to help redesign the museum and ensure it felt accessible and engaging for them.

Portraits of local children expressing themselves.

Given the scale and complexity of the challenges we're facing, we can no longer afford to delegate creativity to a select subset of society. We must activate our collective creativity if we are to survive and thrive.

So the creativity revolution requires disrupting, democratizing, and diversifying institutions that support creativity in our society whether in the performing arts, in creative industries like advertising or publishing, or in venture capital.

2. From engaging with creativity as a spectator to engaging as a participant.

We often treat creativity as something to marvel at in museums, theatres, exhibitions or concert halls. The old museum placed visitors firmly in the position of spectator. The objects were safely behind glass, available to admire from a distance. 

Now, even if an object needs to be protected behind glass, it is integrated in the space so visitors can still participate.

A marble statue sits on a marble bench, while the wooden purse is perched on a wooden bench.

Currently, we tend to consume others' creativity either passively or critically. When we're taught creative subjects, it's often with an evaluative lens. We analyze and critique the book/film/painting and it positions us as a spectator, outside the creative process.

The creativity revolution requires that we adopt a more relational, experiential and interactive approach to creativity. As audience members do we realize we're co-creating the experience with the musicians or performers? Even in asynchronous creativity we can be actively engaged in a way that says, 'I'm willing to be changed by this experience'. It reminds me of a thought-provoking book chapter I read by Steven Pritzker, a TV writer turned psychology professor, where he argues we can watch TV either as a passive viewer, mindlessly tuning out, or as an active viewer, gaining "creative inspiration and growth".

3. From creativity as monolithic to creativity as multidimensional.  

One of the main reasons people claim they’re not creative is they hold a hyper-narrow definition of creativity. Either creativity means being artistic, exceptionally talented at drawing or painting, or creativity means being an innovative visionary like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. When creativity becomes such a tiny box it’s hard to see that we could be creative too.

In my PhD research I asked people what creativity meant to them. When they said they wanted to be more creative, what exactly did they mean by that? From hundreds of definitions and examples, I distilled 5 distinct dimensions of creativity. And I was pleased to see these 5 dimensions reflected in how the museum conceptualizes creativity.

1. Ideation and imagination. This is the creativity of coming up with new and useful ideas. It is the creativity of brainstorming, problem solving, daydreaming and storytelling.

2. Making. Creating something out of nothing. This is the creativity of baking a cake, organizing a wedding, sculpting a pot out of clay, or launching a startup.

The museum has a studio space for visitors to make their own creative projects.

3. Originality. This is the creativity of self-expression and self-exploration. Wearing clothes or making choices that reflect your unique personality and point of view.

A selection of self-portraits.

Including this one.

4. Spontaneity. This is the creativity of play, of improvisation, of intuition and feelings of flow.

The museum includes a stage for impromptu performances like this one ;)

And a dress-up closet for inspiration.

5. Disruption. This is the creativity of change agents, activists, and advocates. It is the creativity of seeing problems where others have become comatose with complacency. The creativity of challenging the status quo and bringing a brighter future into being.

Poster designed by Suffrage Atelier, 1913

Broadening the definition of creativity makes it more inclusive. It means that more people can see themselves as creative and can find a creative outlet that satisfies that creative itch. It means we can appreciate that different people may have different dimensions of creativity that are more or less important to them and we don't have to agree on one monolithic definition.

Are you convinced we need a creativity revolution? What transformations do you want to see in the ways we collectively relate to creativity?

P.S. If I've managed to convince you to come visit the Young V&A why not message me and maybe I'll see you there!

Poster by Danish artist Asger Jorn created to support the 1968 youth uprising in France (not at the V&A).

A little bit more beautiful

Last week I was in Portugal for work. Senior leaders of major companies from across the world came together for a transformational experience led by the fearless and fabulous Erica Ariel Fox. 

I am in awe of her creative and emergent approach but my commitment to confidentiality means I can’t share about it here.

So I will highlight a much smaller moment of creativity that touched me.

A bit of beauty in a public park in Cascais.

Taking care of us all week was a lovely man named Edgar. Edgar was very proactive and attentive, eager to make sure we had everything we needed. Efficient and thoughtful, it's immediately clear when you meet Edgar that he's a gem of a guy.

During a break mid-week, a few of us were grabbing a snack and someone commented about the spread of fruit skewers and cakes, "How beautiful!"

Edgar beamed. Pride radiated from every pore. "I've been working on my presentation" he confessed.

I felt touched that this man, with all his myriad responsibilities, was actively taking time and energy to try to make his work more beautiful.

It reminded me of another moment many years ago when I was living in Pakistan. There was an older Pashtun man, Mir Khan, who would bring us tea. One day, he set my green tea down and next to it he placed a tiny plate with three jasmine blossoms on it. Just because.

I've been exploring "beauty" as my word of the year. And I think my default associations with the word are grand and poetic. But in many ways I feel more touched by these micro-moments of people giving that little extra attention to the aesthetics of a thing.

So I'm left with a question.

What could I do to make my work, my home, my relationships just a little bit more beautiful?

I don't have any immediate ideas that come to mind, but I think the first step is to deepen my appreciation of the beauty that is already around me.

Psychologist Rhett Diessner is one of the leading researchers on the appreciation of beauty, which includes natural beauty, artistic beauty, and moral beauty. He shares a treasured memory from his childhood, a prayer from the Diné people (the Navajo):

---

In beauty happily I walk

With beauty before me I walk

With beauty behind me I walk

With beauty below me I walk

With beauty above me I walk

With beauty all around me I walk

The world is bursting with beauty.

---

The more I can soak it up and let myself be nourished by the beauty of nature, the beauty of creativity, and the beauty of human virtue, I think the more that I will naturally feel moved to contribute my own modest offerings, making micro-moments a little bit more beautiful.

Five flavors of fear

Creativity and fear are intimately connected.

Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome. -- Elizabeth Gilbert

I've recently come to the realization that I need a more nuanced understanding of fear, for myself and for my coaching clients. Because fear isn’t actually one thing. So far, I’ve teased apart five distinct flavors of fear, each one calling for a different approach.

1. False fear

Is the "fear" I'm feeling actually fear, or is it fear-adjacent?

We all know fear's physiological signature. Increased heart rate. Shallow breathing. Sweaty palms.

But, equally, these can be signs of excitement (or over-caffeination).

A cute moment from Disney's Encanto

A fascinating research study asked people to come into the lab and sing in front of strangers -- a typically anxiety-inducing task. Just by saying "I'm excited" before they started singing, people improved both their emotional experience and their overall performance.

As an example, a few months ago, when I was about to get feedback from an agent on my children's book manuscript, my heart was beating fast. But I checked in with myself. Am I actually afraid that something bad is going to happen or am I just excited about the chance to get honest feedback from someone with so much experience? Anchoring in excitement I was more open and positive going into that conversation.

There are other fear-adjacent feelings. The Swedes have the word resfeber to refer to that nervous anticipation we feel before we travel. Or in Hebrew, yirahdescribes the feeling of "inhabiting a larger space than we're used to inhabiting. It is also the feeling we feel when we are on sacred ground." Creativity is often accompanied by that sense of self-expansion which can feel like fear, but ultimately isn't.

So the first question I can ask myself is:

Is fear the best word for what I’m feeling? 

If the answer is no, problem solved!

2. Foreign Fear

Fear is highly contagious. We’re programmed to pick up on cues of danger from our environment. If we see someone is running scared, we run first and ask questions later.

We also pick up on fears from the news, parents, colleagues, and authority figures. For example, when I was on the academic job market there was a Google spreadsheet that PhD candidates in my field contributed to, anonymously sharing information about who had how many interviews, offers, etc. After I looked through it I noticed I was feeling really anxious. But then I had to check in with myself. And I realized the fear wasn't actually mine. I had absorbed it. My truth was that I had very specific conditions under which an academic career would work for me and I was at peace with the possibility that I wouldn't find the right fit.  

So the second question is:

Is this fear mine? 

If not, we can simply wave bye-bye and send the fear back to where it belongs. 

The luminous Lizzo receiving the People's Champion Award at the People's Choice Award ceremony.

3. Frozen Fear

Some fear is the result of past hurt or trauma. We experienced pain and the fear wants to make sure that situation never happens again.

Trauma occurs when we experience more pain than we can process in the moment. I call the fear that results frozen fear, because trauma freezes the experience for us.

This is an essential and life-preserving process that helps us continue to function and survive. But trauma distorts our memory function so, when we get triggered, it feels like the past pain is actually happening again in the present moment. 

A big clue to frozen fear is an overwhelming embodied emotional reaction.

For example, I'm currently traveling for work and have my family along. I was concerned that the hotel might not give us the kind of room we needed, so I had the idea to call the hotel in advance to make the request. Easy enough.

Except I couldn't do it.

Something about that action triggered a huge amount of fear in me. To a debilitating degree. I still don't know what that's all about, but I do know what topic I'm going to be bringing to my next session with my coach ;).

So the third question is:

How much of this fear is in response to the current situation and how much is about things that happened in the past?

Here, we need to find a sufficiently safe and supportive environment to trace the fear back to the past pain that gave birth to it. By creating space to process that pain and grief, the fear can unfreeze and energy can flow again.

Cleo Wade's listening booth where she invites strangers into conversation, starting with "Are You Okay?"

4. Flailing Fear

I have to admit that, at times, my fear can be a bit of a drama queen. Those moments when I sit down at the blank page and I feel like I'm going to die. Objectively, there couldn't possibly be less at stake. And yet, a part of me is completely convinced there couldn't me more at stake.

This feels different than frozen fear because it's not about something that happened in the past but more about catastrophizing about what might happen in the future. Flailing fear is the mind's storytelling function spiralling out of control: 'If someone doesn't like what I've written they'll lose all respect for me and I'll be an outcast and then I'll lose everything and be homeless living alone under a bridge'.

Little John in an epic scene from the hilarious Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

So we can ask ourselves:

Is the fear grounded in reality?

If not, we can fact-check the fear. Listen to its chain of reasoning and separate the wheat from the chaff. What's the worst case scenario? What's the likelihood of that happening?

5. Friendly Fear

Finally, we've made it to good old fashioned friendly fear. This is healthy, organic fear. The red blinking warning light that says 'Danger, Will Robinson. Danger! Danger!'

When my husband says, "I'm worried your keys will fall out of the pram" because they're dangling out of the side pocket.

We know this fear because it's actually trying to be helpful.

Big hearted mentor, Tim Gunn, from Project Runway

It's trying to help us stay safe and protect what matters to us. When we can filter out all the other flavors of fear, it gets much easier to actually listen to what our friendly fear has to say. And that's empowering because then we can take action to avoid whatever pitfall it's pointing us towards.

So next time you notice some fear in your system, get curious.

By figuring out what kind of fear we're feeling, we can un-fuse from the fear.

And then we can choose the wisest course of action. Do we need to take a step back and shift strategies? Do we need more information or more time? Do we need some kind of help or support? Or, do we need to just be brave and dive it?

The fear can't answer that, but your centered self can.

And one of the best ways to access that centered self is to write a letter to your fear, as Elizabeth Gilbert does, at the start of any creative project.

May you experience more freedom in your relationship to fear and in your creative pursuits!

Right-sizing the risk of judgement

It's a sunny Sunday morning and I'm on my way to a haircut appointment. The streets by normally busy Brick Lane are deserted. Except for an older woman pulling a trolley walking toward me.

The urban pedestrian’s dilemma: Do I smile at a stranger or look straight ahead? I look at the woman’s headscarf and abaya I think she’s probably judging my sundress as scandalous. I look straight ahead and make my energy small, as if to slip by her. 

But she stops me. 

I think she's going to ask for directions.

She gives me a big smile and says, “What a beautiful dress. Such a nice spring color.” 

I thank her and wish her a good day, and we go our separate ways.

Wow.

My not super scandalous sundress

First, I felt deeply touched by this woman going out of her way to give me a compliment. The kindness of strangers, even in micro-moments like this, helps restore my faith in humanity.

Then, I felt a twinge of guilt about my implicit bias.* She schooled me on what it looks like to meet difference with openness and appreciation rather than judgement and separation. (Something I normally pride myself on but clearly still have a long way to go).

Finally, I reflected. Wow, I’m really quick to assume other people are judging me and then dim my light, FOR LITERALLY NO REASON! I’d like to change that.

What does this have to do with creativity? 

Wanting to avoid the judgement of others is one of the biggest mental barriers to creativity. That voice in our head that says, “But what will people think?”

A page from one of my favorite children's books about creativity, "What Do You Do with an Idea" by Kobi Yamada, illustrated by Mae Besom

Doing something creative (rather than conventional) means risking rejection and, because we're social animals, rejection hurts. 

Also, very practically, acceptance and approval make our lives easier in a whole host of ways so it’s quite rational to want to avoid losing them. 

It’s not that the risk of judgement isn’t real. But we need to right-size the risk of judgement if we want to tip the scales in favor of taking creative action. 

This is where some simple psychology can go a long way.

1. The Spotlight Effect - How much are others really judging me?

We’re afraid of putting something creative out there because we think everyone we’ve ever met will see it and judge us, but the reality is people are busy living their lives and very few will take the time to notice what we do. 

An illustration of The Spotlight Effect by sketchplanation

2. Negativity Bias - How harsh are their judgements, really? 

Our brains weigh negative information more that positive information. This is evolutionarily adaptive and helps keep us safe, but it becomes a handicap for creativity. The reality is that other’s judgements will typically follow a normal distribution.

But our assumptions of their judgements are skewed to the left (with a little blip at the far right for fantasies of Oscar acceptance speeches and NYT bestseller status). 

That means, we have a big blindspot. 

We routinely forget about all the people whose reactions are neutral or positive. Just like I did about that woman on the street.

So the positive thing about negativity bias is that it means people are almost never judging us as harshly as we think they are.

3. Self-authoring mind - How much does the judgement of other people matter? 

Several years ago I took a painting course at the British Library in connection with their amazing Harry Potter exhibit. I don’t have any special skills in painting, but wanted to experiment with a new creative outlet (and also gain after hours access to the exhibit that came as a perk of the course). 

The instructor walked around, checking in with us as we were working. He stopped next to me and said, “Are you happy with it?” 

My first reaction was a clenching in my chest. 

I thought, ‘This is a trick question. This is that part of feedback where you want to criticise me but you’re allowing me the dignity of criticising myself first.’ I looked at my painting-in-progress and tried to decide which of its flaws to highlight. 

But then I looked at the face of my instructor. Kind. Curious. Open. 

This was not a trick question. He genuinely was asking about what I thought about what I was doing. He was prioritising my standard of evaluation over his own.

🤯 

This is the beauty of subjectivity. There wasn’t a “right way” to paint my picture. 

Shifting the standards of evaluation from external to internal was a big theme in my research. At Escape the City, where I did my PhD field research, they had people write two definitions of success: first the one they were raised with and then their own personal definition of success at this point in their lives. 

This is an example of what psychologist Dr. Robert Kegan calls a shift from “socialized mind” to “self-authoring mind”. In socialized mind we’re focused on gaining others’ approval and playing by their rules. We take society’s definition of success as a given. 

In self-authoring mind, you are the one who decides what matters to you. You are the one whose opinion matters most. 

So if you notice yourself focusing a lot about what others might think, try to shift int your self-authoring mind by getting clear on what matters to you. 

So there you have it.

Next time you notice the risk of judgement inhibiting your creativity ask yourself three questions:

1. How much are others really judging me? 

2. How harsh are their judgements, really? 

3. How much does the judgement of other people matter?

By right-sizing the risk of judgement you'll feel more free to jump into your next creative project. 

*I was surprised at my implicit bias, but the reality is that nobody is immune. For me, even after living in predominantly-Muslim countries for 5+ years, being blessed with lots of lovely Muslim friends and colleagues, not to mention being married to a Muslim (with loving and supportive Muslim in-laws) and raising a Muslim daughter, I still have biased thoughts running around in my head. So I showed myself some compassion and reminded myself that we absorb bias from our environments and it’s part of being human and having a human brain. And that un-biasing ourselves is an ongoing process (and commitment).

Rethinking resistance

I started working with a personal trainer a few weeks ago and it's got me rethinking my relationship to resistance.

I've also been re-reading The Artist's Journey by Steven Pressfield, a sequel of sorts to his more famous The War of Art. I highly recommend both if you feel like you need a kick in the butt to get back in the creative saddle. 

Pressfield coined the term “Resistance with a capital R” to refer to that repelling force we inevitably encounter when trying to do anything creative. He advocates an unapologetically antagonistic approach to Resistance. A few examples:

The War of Art starts by defining Resistance as the enemy

Perhaps "antagonistic" is an understatement...

In the past, I found this bellicose approach invigorating and motivating. And still, at times, it's the pep talk I need. But, in many areas of my life, I’m increasingly experiencing the truth that “what you resist persists.” Paradoxically, by pushing against something we often strengthen and reinforce it.

And so, for a while now, I’ve been wondering if there isn’t another way of relating to Resistance.

But I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. What I love about the concept of Resistance is that it depersonalizes the struggle we experience when trying to put creative work out into the world. This was captured beautifully in a conversation (lightly edited below) that Steven Pressfield had with Oprah about the Resistance she encountered while writing her Harvard commencement speech. 

Steven: The key thing about Resistance is that it comes second. What happens first is the dream. Resistance is the shadow. Like this tree that we’re sitting under casts a shadow. 

Oprah: Is that like yin and yang? You can’t have the dream without the shadow?

Steven: In my experience you absolutely can’t. Resistance to me is like a force of nature.

Oprah - That’s a comforting thing. Just hearing you say that I got a little bit of relief. Because I don’t have to blame myself so much. To know that that’s a principle. For every dream there is automatically going to be resistance.

Interestingly, Pressfield says that the more Resistance we feel, the more important the dream is to our purpose, to our soul’s evolution. So we can actually use Resistance as a compass to find our calling. I see this as a seed of a more supportive relationship with Resistance.

So, how does this connect with my personal trainer?

I have never been someone who "works out", but as my daughter is getting bigger, and heavier, I wanted to get stronger so I can keep up. With a women-only strength training gym just a block away my excuses were evaporating. Except the stereotype of a personal trainer I had in my head was like a drill sergeant on speed. So I was relieved when I found this friendly face. Melissa Halbritter is every bit as lovely and positive as she looks.

My amazing trainer, Mel

What if this was the face of Resistance?

Hear me out.

Working with Mel for just a few weeks, it's become very obvious to me is that there is no strength without resistance to push against.

It reminds me of the beautiful metaphor from Buddhist teacher Tara Brach. She often talks about the Biosphere experiment where scientists tried to replicate Earth’s ecosystem inside a massive glass dome. One of the problems they discovered was that the trees wouldn’t grow taller than a few feet. Without the resistance of the wind to push against, the heartwood of the tree couldn't become strong enough to support the full height. 

A photo I took off the coast of Marseille. No doubt that tree got plenty of wind.

So what if the relationship we have with Resistance isn’t antagonistic but symbiotic. What if when we have a creative dream, it comes prepackaged with a personal trainer whose only job is to give us the exact resistance we need to develop the strengths required to turn our dream into reality.  

What if fear is just how we strengthen our courage muscle?

What if rejection is just how we strengthen our muscles of self-evaluation and self-validation?

What if boredom is just how we strengthen our curiosity muscle?

What if distraction is just how we strengthen our focus muscle?

I tell Mel that I want to get stronger so I can carry Laila in a backpack on a long hike when my dad comes to visit next month. She wants to help me achieve that goal. She helps me by using her expertise to choose the exact forms of resistance that will strengthen the muscles I need to make my goal a reality. I couldn't do it without her.

If I were to treat her as an enemy, our work together would be clumsy rather than collaborative. It would be harder for her to calibrate the weights and repetitions required to meet me at the edge of my current comfort level, stretching me without risking injury. 

So what if Resistance is not the enemy. What if Resistance is our personal trainer? A sparring partner of sorts. What if the discomfort of resistance isn’t a red-light "retreat" message as we’ve been taught by our convenience-obsessed consumerist culture? What if it’s more of a yellow-light "proceed with caution". Breathe. Focus on your alignment. Feel the burn. Get the reps in. And enjoy the feeling of strength that ensues. 

Sometimes I find myself wishing my resistance away. Ugh! Couldn’t the fear just disappear? But with this new framing I can ask myself a different question.

Do I want to be weak?

Do I only want to putz about on the periphery, just dabbling in lightweight fare? Or do I want to be able to create meaningful things with weight and substance, to make things that require creative strength?

If I want to be creatively strong, I need to relax my resistance to Resistance.

Sharpening our symbolic sense

I spent Saturday evening sitting around a fire singing songs to the trees. 

Tree Choir hosted by the talented Jack Durtnall

My daughter spends three mornings a week at a local “forest school”-inspired nursery. Once a season or so they host a Tree Choir where we sing songs that were written for the trees by an inspiring organization called Children's Forest. We sang songs to the Apple tree and to the Elder, and they were lovely. But then came the song to the Birch and it felt different.

Something about the birch activated my symbolic sense. I felt a tingling, an effervescence rising in my center. As if an inner antenna perked up and leaned forward. A magnetic hum started to gently invite deeper layers of meaning to reveal themselves. And I was not disappointed.

Our host, Jack, shared that the birch is a "pioneer tree." Its winged seeds came to Britain after the end of the last ice age. As the birch seeds started to take root, they softened the compacted earth. As the birch forests grew their leaves fell and nourished the soil, making the conditions more hospitable for other species. And 11,000 years later, here we are!

I was deeply moved by this image.

It felt like a metaphor for the process of reclaiming my creativity. I suppose I could call the chapter of my life when I faced inhospitable conditions for my creativity my own personal “ice age”. Sending my soul down to hibernate in some subterranean lair. Over time, as I made choice after choice that started slowly thawing the surface, small seeds of creative inspiration from far off lands finally had a chance to land and take root. Years later I now feel like I have a diverse maturing forest and can send out my own winged seeds.

This symbolic image felt deeply satisfying. And yet, my symbolic sense said there was still more to uncover. So when I got home I consulted some of my books about trees. 

I was excited to discover that, as it turns out, the birch is basically the tree mascot for creativity. 

In the Wisdom of Trees, Max Adams remarks that, “What we learn from the modest birch is that someone has to put the hard work in first before all the glory is reaped. But also that being good at a few small things is just as important as bing the showstopper on the big stage.” Wisdom that is clearly applicable to the creative process where we get sold so many stories of "overnight success" and can easily fall prey to "Picasso pressure".

The birch tree also takes the cake in terms of "alternate uses". A common measure of creativity is called the Alternate Uses Task where people write down as many uses as they can think of for common objects like a brick or a paperclip. Birch wood is tough yet flexible and, as such, has an awe-inspiring range of uses: beautifully crafted canoes, all kinds of furniture, tools, baskets, bowls, spoons, fences and brooms. The Finns use birch branches to beat themselves in the sauna. And sadly sadistic schoolmasters used to use them to punish their students (a process actually called "birching"). In Ancient Rome birch branches were bundled together with an axe blade to form a fasces, a symbol of power (and the source of the word fascism). Birch bark is valuable kindling, burning quick and hot and it can also make a charcoal used for metalworking. The bark has also been shredded to make string and twisted into rope. The Swedes have used birch bark for insulating and waterproofing their houses. Birch tar oil is used for proofing leather. Birch leaves can be used as insect repellant or to make a green dye. And, perhaps most impressive of all, birch sap has evidently saved stranded armies from starvation on multiple occasions (General Garnett's regiment in the US Civil War and Russian soldiers besieging Hamburg in 1814 according to Fiona Stafford in The Long, Long Life of Trees). An impressive, and not nearly exhaustive, list of the creative uses humans have found for the birch tree.

The birch has also been a muse, serving as the source of creative inspiration. Poet John Clare used white birch bark to write on when he found paper prohibitively expensive. Robert Frost wrote a beautiful poem called Birches. Birch trees have inspired architectural achievements like restaurant Tusen at Ramundberget in Sweden and painters like Carl Larsson and Gustav Klimt.

Birch Trees by Carl Larsson (1910)

Birch Forest 1 by Gustav Klimt (1902)

The birch has also served more mystical uses connected to beginnings and boundaries between the worlds (again not unlike creativity itself). The birch tree, one of the first to flower in spring, is the first letter in the Irish Ogham tree alphabet and is associated with Bloddeuwedd, the Welsh goddess of flowers and springtime. Siberian shamans climb the birch to enter the world of the gods and return with divine wisdom. Birch twigs in witches' brooms are used for ritual cleansing, clearing out the old to make way for the new. And I found a beautiful Russian fairy tale called The Wonderful Birch Tree where a Cinderella-esque protagonist's mother is killed by an evil witch. The daughter buries the bones "by the edge of the field in the woods" and "from the bones of her mother a beautiful birch tree grew." I was deeply moved by this story and can still feel it's medicine working in me.

By exploring the meaning of the birch tree I have expanded my symbolic vocabulary. A few days ago I knew nothing about the birch except that it had white bark. Now, the next time I see a birch I have layers of meaning accessible to me. I can relate to the tree in a whole new way. It may serve as a reminder to find strength in flexibility. Or to root into my resourcefulness. Or as an invitation to let myself be inspired by its beauty like the artists. Or as an omen of new beginnings, a threshold between the known and the unknown.

If you feel drawn to strengthen your symbolic sense, the best resource I can recommend is ARAS, the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism. They have a treasure trove of resources including a helpful curriculum for individuals and groups, a gorgeous reference book I love to leaf through during coffee breaks, insightful in-depth webinars, and videos like this one unpacking the symbolism of "taking a knee" in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. And this recent podcast interview with the head of ARAS gives a good overview.

By sharpening our symbolic sense we can start to build a relationship with symbols and let them lead us into a deeper understanding of ourselves, each other and of life in general. And let us not forget that, at least according to Jung, symbols are the language of the soul.

Die empty

n the past few weeks, death has popped up at different points along the periphery of my life. A coach I know found out her client died suddenly, in his 40s. A member of my extended family is facing a potentially terminal diagnosis. And a colleague’s husband fell ill and died in a matter of weeks. But, in the midst of her grief, she asserted, “Do not say that he was taken too soon. He lived a full life.”

A full life.

I’m sitting with what that means. To live a full life. For me, there’s something about a robust flow of giving and receiving. Giving freely what is ours to give and opening to receive life in all its bounty. Embodying a profound "yes" to both the blessings and burdens (because they aren’t always so easily distinguishable anyway). 

It also reminds me of an inspiring art installation.

In 2011 Artist Candy Chang was grieving the death of a loved one. She covered an abandoned house with chalkboard paint and wrote the following prompt: 

Before I die I want to _______.

Any passerby could pick up a piece of chalk and share their aspirations. The next day, the wall was entirely full.

The first Before I Die wall in New Orleans in 2011.

Over the past dozen years, communities have created over 5,000 Before I Die walls in over 75 countries. 

While the responses cover many themes— resolving rifts in relationships, making a difference, finding inner peace— the ones that stood out to me are about unfulfilled creative dreams. 

In Die Empty, Todd Henry tells of the conversation that sparked the idea for the title of his book. A friend posed a strange question: "What is the most valuable land in the world?" He dismissed all guesses, and replied:

"The most valuable land in the world is the graveyard. In the graveyard are buried all the unwritten novels, never-launched businesses, unreconciled relationships, and all of the other things that people thought, 'I'll get around to that tomorrow.' One day, however, their tomorrows ran out."  

We don’t like to think about our mortality. I know I don’t. It makes me feel squirmy and awkward. And yet, ancient wisdom from many traditions reaffirms that when we include our death in our awareness it actually makes us more alive. The stoics called it memento mori, Latin for remember death. We see it in traditions like the Japanese Obon festival or the Mexican celebration of Día de los Muertos.

Hundreds of lanterns set adrift as part of the Obon festival to honor the ancestors. (image source: Jordan McCaw)

Pixar's Coco vividly portrays Día de los Muertos.

As part of my coaching training with Third Space.wearethirdspace.org/, we did a memento mori exercise adapted from the Buddhist practice of the five remembrances. 

A version of the five remembrances found in the late Thich Nhat Hanh's book Fear.

We stood in a line and took turns speaking the words to each other. Then we went outside for a walk in silence and I remember feeling so alive, like all my senses were fully switched on, and also deeply centered. 

I felt a similar feeling this past week when I came across a meditative short story called "The Guest" in a fascinating book on systemic psychotherapy by Bert Hellinger called Love's Hidden Symmetry (sadly out of print). 

I wanted to share a partly summarized version of the story below. (If you want to read it in its entirety I've scanned a copy here).

Are you ready for a story?

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A stranger walked across lonely country. He grew thirsty and planned to stop at the farmhouse he spied on the horizon to ask for a drink. But when he got closer, he saw the farmer busy in the garden and he changed his mind, not wanting to disturb him. He simply waved and walked on.

What he didn't know was that the farmer ws also lonely and was hoping the stranger would stop and chat for a while. He had gone out into the garden to be visible to him. Too bad.

The stranger continued on, growing thirstier to the point that he determined he would approach the next farmer he saw even if it was a nuisance. This farmer was annoyed. "Just what I don't need when I have so much to do. I can't take care of anyone else right now." But when the stranger asked for a drink, the farmer couldn't refuse.

The stranger complimented the farmer on his garden. "It's clear that someone has worked here who understands gardening and loves plants." The farmer invited him to sit down. They talked for many hours and he invited the stranger to stay the night.

"As evening came they sat on the porch and watched the vastness of the western sky transfigured in the evening light. In the darkness, the stranger talked about how his world had changed when he had begun to feel that someone was accompanying him step by step. At first, he said, he had refused to believe that another was always there, and that when he stopped, the other stopped, and when he went on, the other went on as well. And it had taken a while before he understood who his companion was.

'My constant companion is my death,' he said. 'I have grown so accustomed to his presence that I would miss him now if he weren't there. He is my truest and best friend. When I don't know what's right or what to do, I stop a while and wait for his answer. I have abandoned myself to him, and I know he's there and I am here. Without hanging on to my own desires, I wait for his message to come to me. When I am centered and have courage, a word comes from him to me, and, like a lightening flash, illuminates the dark and I become clear.'

The farmer found this talk strange, and gazed silently into the night. After a long time, he saw his own death as his companion. And he bowed his head to him. And as he paid his respects to his own death, it was as if the rest of his life were changed. It became precious as the love that anticipates a parting, and like such love, filled to overflowing.

In the morning, they broke their fast together, and the farmer said, 'Even though you are leaving, my friend remains.' They went outside, shook hands, and said goodbye. The stranger went on his way and the farmer returned to his field"

---

What would life look like if we took our death as a constant companion?

How might it impact our commitment to our creative pursuits?

Do you have a creative project that’s been on the back burner for a while (perhaps decades even)? Why not stop waiting and just give it a go? 

What would it take for you to die empty?

Postscript: In between drafting this yesterday and posting it now, incredibly, I found out that my uncle -- the one facing a potentially terminal diagnosis -- just passed away. We were not very close, but he was a beautiful soul. Deeply caring and charmingly carefree. His grounded, humble, inclusive and nonjudgemental presence made you feel instantly relaxed and welcome just as you are. He will be remembered for his wonderful sense of humor and that sparkle in his eye. Uncle Jere, you will be missed and your memory lives on.

A well-storied soul

Something I've been thinking about is how story-starved we are as a society. 

For most of human history we were born, lived and died encircled in an amniotic sac of stories. This shared story structure helped us make sense of our world and know our place in it. 

The modern mind often dismisses myths as misguided attempts to understand the material world. This happens because we've stopped exercising our symbolic sense, our mythic imagination. 

But these ancient stories contain soul medicine. A metaphorical diagnosis of inner dis-ease and a prescription for how to heal. Myths are maps that show us how we’ve lost our way and help us plot a path that can return us to wholeness.

I’ve been on a journey to re-story myself since traveling to a small storytelling festival in Ireland with my dad in 2016.

Cape Clear Island, Ireland

For me, re-storying looks like participating in storytelling workshops at the School of Storytelling, traveling to storytelling festivals like this upcoming one in Wales (see you there?), attending storytelling performances, and growing my storytelling library by gathering little gems I find in bookstores and on my travels.

A selection of my storytelling books

Last week, while browsing Oxfam’s used books — a great way to feed my book addiction while supporting a worthy cause — I stumbled upon this treasure.

Echoes of the Dreamtime by Ainslie Roberts. Published in 1988.

I confess I’d never heard of Ainslie Roberts or seen any of his artwork before. He's an Australian artist who only found his creative calling later in life. He had a successful career in advertising but eventually, as he approached his 40th birthday, he collapsed with serious burnout.

His wife bought him a one-way ticket to Alice Springs.

Alice Springs (image source: Audley Travel)

As part of his creative recovery, he devoted time to a childhood passion of sketching and painting in nature. He and his anthropologist friend visited many Aboriginal communities, photographing the landscapes and learning about their stories and traditions. Ainslie found his creative calling in painting Aboriginal myths and had his first gallery show at 52. Through his art, he tried "to bridge this gap between the two cultures" in a way that might restore the dignity and respect white Australians have for the Aborigines.

It’s important to note that there are some problematic power dynamics involved in trying to portray (and profit from) the cultural richness a culture other than one’s own. And there is a certain romanticised primitivism in Roberts’ portrayals of Aborigines. But it’s undeniable that he had a deep reverence for the beauty of Aboriginal culture and was able to expand access to and appreciation of Aboriginal wisdom for a much wider audience, including me.

Flipping through the pages of this book feels like entering a cave of wonders.

One of the myths/images that is resonating for me is the “Birthplace of the Moons.”

Birthplace of the Moons by Ainslie Roberts

Are you ready for a story? 

“There was a place known as the Valley of the Moons, where the soil was richest on earth, and in it grew the Moons. When each Moon had grown large enough to leave the valley and venture up into the night sky, it would break free of its mother plant and float about in the valley until its turn came to take its place in the sky … When each Moon rose out of the valley each month, the Sun—huge, hot and powerful—would … reach out with its fiery fingers to tear pieces off the Moon until it was all gone. The tiny pieces that broke free when this happened became the stars.”

A superficial interpretation of this story would see it as a simple pre-scientific explanation of how the moon grows smaller and disappears each month. 

But, if I employ my mythic imagination and allow the image to work its magic on me, deeper layers of meaning and medicine reveal themselves. 

For me, there is a message about creativity embedded in this myth. I see the moons as creative projects. I love this image of the Valley of the Moons, all the creative ideas I have nestled safe inside me, at various stages of development, all receiving nurturing, tapped into my natural life force. 

At some point it becomes time for each creation to be released out into the world. I love the image of it detaching from me, the “mother plant”, and floating up into the sky. This is a powerful reminder to release any attachment to my creative work once I "ship it".

Just as no plan survives contact with reality, no creative vision remains intact when it makes contact with others. Each person who interacts with the creation will take a piece of it, reinterpret it and make it their own.

And just like the moon, the creation eventually disappears in the sense that it no longer occupies my attention or energy.

But I love that the pieces of the moon become stars scattered across the sky. It feels like how each person who comes in contact with your creation carries a little spark of it with them. 

This reminds me of an enchanting children’s book I highly recommend called “What Do You Do With an Idea”. Spoiler alert.

The final pages…

Making the connection to this children’s book starts to restore my hope that we can once again become well-storied souls. It’s not the same as the tapestry of shared stories our ancestors were born into, but we can, each of us, re-story ourselves by curating a customised canon of the stories that resonate with us and our individual journey through life.  

Fire

What are your first associations with fire?

I’m part of a women’s circle co-led by creativity author Anna Lovind. We’re exploring, among other things, the cycle of the seasons and the Celtic wheel of the year. 

The month of May begins with Beltane, a festival of fire, to welcome the peak of spring and the beginning of summer.  

A burning wicker man at Beltane festival 2019. Photograph: Eleanor Sopwith.

So it’s got me thinking about the ways fire energy is connected to creativity.

My first association with fire energy is anger. 

Anger can be a powerful catalyst for creativity. Frustration at the status quo can fuel entrepreneurs to birth trailblazing innovations that burn down the old to make way for the new. A process Schumpeter called creative destruction.

Anger at injustice has sparked ideas that have inspired millions through the voices of James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and Greta Thunberg to name just a few. 

But we also experience fire energy when we’re bursting with passion and enthusiasm. 

I recently noticed I have a ceiling on how much enthusiasm I allow myself to express. When a conversation turns to a topic that ignites a passion of mine, at first I can let the fire flare up and it feels like freedom and flow. Aliveness coursing through my veins. But at a certain moment, when the fire that begins in my belly is about to reach my shoulders, it’s as if I’ve tripped a failsafe wire and the whole thing gets shut down. Like a bucket of water extinguishing a campfire. 

I’m sure this wasn’t always the case. My 2-year-old daughter, like all small children, has no limitations on her expressions of ebullience. It is such a joy to watch her whole body light up when we approach the special big slide she loves, when we blow dandelion seeds together or when we visit the little lambs at the local farm.

I’m not sure where my “ceiling” comes from. Perhaps the first time I got really excited about something random and another kid said, “It’s not that special.” Perhaps when I reached that age of starting to care what others think. When I started trying (and failing) to be “cool” - the very word suggesting an absence of fire. Perhaps it was reinforced by subtle signals in academic and work environments that exuberance is incompatible with professionalism.

But the beauty of somatic work is that I don’t need to know where it comes from to start to work with it. Bringing embodied awareness to this “ceiling” I noticed it is a living thing, not the metallic sheet I had presumed it to be. This is good news. I can have a relationship with a living thing. I can get curious and experiment gently with small stretch movements and see what response I get back. 

During our circle session we were led through an embodiment practice. A question arose. How might I allow fire to exist above the “ceiling”? The response came in an image of tiny tea lights appearing all along my arms, then across my shoulders, and finally forming a crown of candles on my head. 

As we came out of the meditative state the facilitator invited us to look around our environment and see if we noticed anything that felt connected to the experience we had. Turning to look out the window, my eyes alighted on our neighbor’s beautiful apple tree in bloom. 

I sensed a parallel. The energy of a blossom is up and out and unfolding, like a fire. Yet a blossom is contained, like a candle flame. And like the flame, the blossom will wither and die when it is no longer fed.

I'm not sure what it means, but I'm left with an image of myself as a tree full of tiny fire blossoms and I like it.

So as we enter this season of Fire, how does fire show up in your creative life? Could you harness the fuel of your anger to overcome inertia or creative blocks? Could you experiment with expressing more enthusiasm for small things?

Or perhaps you may want to join me in a short qi gong practice to simply make more space for fire energy in your body and see what happens...

It's never too late

There’s a quote from poet Mary Oliver that has always stayed with me:

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” 

One of the many reasons people shelve their creative aspirations is the belief that they’re too old, or their time has passed. But I really believe it’s never too late to reclaim your creativity. 

That’s one of the main messages I hope to convey at an event I’m running next week with Brave Starts - an amazing non-profit community that supports people 45+ to have thriving work lives. 

So I thought I'd share a preview of several inspiring examples of people who found or followed their creative passions after 40.

One of the most extreme examples is artist Grandma Moses. After picking up a paintbrush at 76. Moses painted more than 1,500 pieces before her death in 1961 at age 101. Her art now hangs in the Smithsonian.

Grandma Moses, Grandma Moses Goes to the Big City, 1946, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Another folk artist, Clementine Hunter only started painting in her 50s. The granddaughter of slaves and self-taught, she was the first black woman to have a solo show at the New Orleans Museum of Art. 

Clementine Hunter on the front porch of her home at Melrose, Louisiana, circa 1975. Photograph by Thomas Whitehead. Detail: Clementine Hunter (1887-1988), Funeral at St. Augustine, early 1970s.

A few more recent examples.

Previously an editor at Vogue, Vera Wang only started designing dresses at 40, inspired by her own search for a wedding dress at 39. In an HBR interview she said, “I didn’t feel very qualified or secure. I never thought I deserved to found a company.” She credits her father with helping her overcome her impostor syndrome and encouraging her to start her own business.

Michelle Williams wearing a stunning Vera Wang gown to the 2007 Oscars where she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Brokeback Mountain

Martha Stewart, previously a model and stockbroker, started a small catering business out of her basement at 36 and only published her first cookbook at 41. In the subsequent four decades her creativity expanded to include television shows, a magazine, a line of home furnishings, a podcast (and some "creative" investment choices which we don't need to go into here), becoming America's first female self-made billionaire in the process.

But only looking at famous or exceptionally successful creatives can reinforce the pressure many people feel to professionalize their creativity at a high level. So I want to share a few more accessible examples.

After a video of him demonstrating his son’s perfect pitch went viral, Rick Beato started his YouTube channel at the age of 54. Seven years later he now has 3.5 million subscribers!

I found my final example on an episode of the Second Act Stories podcast. Russell Brent's mother taught him how to knit as a child, but he set it aside after being told “boys don’t knit.” He picked up knitting again as a hobby in his thirties, and at 51, he opened a yarn shop in New Jersey.

When asked if it was scary to make the jump he said:

"No. It was one of those things where, I've landed. This is where I belong in this moment in this time...I get home at the end of the day and I'm tired, I'm physically tired. And at the same time I'm also like, "Ooh, we had a good day." I work in a yarn shop. How can you not be happy working in a yarn shop! You get to touch cashmere and alpaca and silk and marino all day long. You are surrounded by the most beautiful colors on the planet. How can you not be happy working in a space that you have created, an environment you have created, with people you respect and admire. Surrounded by really pretty things."

(cue mic drop)

I hope you feel inspired that your most creative days are ahead of you! And I'd love to hear in the comments if you have other examples of people connecting with their creativity later in life.

PS: If you'd like to attend my workshop on Boosting Your Creative Confidence, Wednesday May 10, 5-6pm UK, but are not a Brave Starts member, send me a message and I'll share the zoom details.