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Practice
Creativity by Maria Grace, Ph.D. Imagine someone asking you
“How many hours a week do you spend working?” or “What do you do?” you
are likely to answer something like, “I am a full-time student and I
work part-time at a department store,” or “I am a full-time mom of
three boys,” or I am a professor,” or “I am a computer analyst”, etc. However rewarding, very often
a job includes duties, tasks and requirements that we are obliged to
perform, whether we like them or not. Our freedom to do only what we
like in our job is almost always limited. This is a main reason why so
many people suffer from job-related dissatisfaction and see their work
as the necessary evil they must endure in exchange for a monthly
paycheck. Think of your answer: you may
take
a little longer to give a reply and, when you do, you may say something
like: “Hmm, you know, I’d like to be creative but, truth is, I’m too
tired”, or “Well, I’d love to have some time for creativity, but I’m
too busy with other things,” or “It would be awesome to have a creative
habit but that’s a luxury for the rich and I have bills to pay” or “Me,
creative? But I’m not an artist, I am an office manager!” The truth is that we are all
born with the ability to be creative, just as we are born with the
ability to think, dream and imagine. But, while some of us continue
to
honor creativity throughout our lives and enjoy the benefits of a
creative habit, many others betray our creativity as we seek joy in
habits that are not only non-creative but, oftentimes, self-destructive. Over the years, I have helped
a number of people reconnect with their natural ability to create,
watching them enjoy the benefits of their creativity: a recovered
self-confidence, an improved ability to handle life’s daily stress,
freedom from depression, and a sense of fulfillment that no medical
treatment alone can ever catalyze. As you are working through the
fourth phase of this method, it is essential that you experience the
joy of developing and maintaining creative habits. Reconnecting with your
creativity will allow you to be spontaneous and daring as you suspend
judgment about the outcomes of your creative efforts. Your benefits
from becoming creative will be a sense of sustained pleasure, inner
freedom and independence from other people’s approval. The more you
allow yourself to be creative, the more self-confident you will be and
the better you will like yourself. In this context, a creative
person is not only prolific in
ideas but also active in materializing creative ideas in the real
world. This creative input enriches not only the individual life of the
creator, but also the world at large. Age, level of education and
socio-economic status do not matter: a creative person can be a child,
an adolescent, an adult, or a senior. He or she can be single or
married, divorced or widowed, childless or with children. Individual
differences may be unlimited. But there are three characteristics,
listed below, that all creative people share in common, which you must
also develop as you work with this method: They also honor their
creativity by protecting and nurturing their ideas and by following a
discipline that involves hard work, concentration, isolation, unusual
decisions, sacrifices, dedication to the creative purpose, and trust in
their inner voice. Nevertheless, in spite of the
demands of the creative process, staying loyal to their creative
pursuit is never a burden for creative people. The joy from seeing
their completed creation is so pure, that it redeems all the strenuous
efforts exerted during the process. These characters represent
simple people yearning for the joy of creating, much as we all do. As
you watch the films, let them inspire you to reconnect with your own
creativity and feel the joy that you see them experience in the films. Working
Girl is the story of a young woman’s determination to bring her
creative ideas into fruition, having to protect them from being
appropriated by her boss. Tess McGill, the main character, is a
thirty-year old administrative assistant who lives in Staten Island and
commutes every day to her work in the Manhattan financial district. On the ferry, she reads and,
in the evenings, she takes classes. Tess wants to become something more
than a secretary. She is bright, talented, informed, and, most
importantly, she has creative ideas about mergers and acquisitions that
she presents to her new boss, Katharine Parker, hoping to be
appreciated and offered a better position in the company. But Katharine has different
intentions: when Tess offers her a brilliant idea that will save a
large company from a foreign takeover, Katharine steals it and presents
it to her clients as her own, advising Tess to not mention it anywhere
else. While Katharine is away
recovering from a skiing accident, Tess assumes Katharine’s identity
and follows through with her plan, fighting to see her idea become
reality until the very end, even after her true identity is discovered
and she is exposed as an imposter. But, thanks to her persistence
and willingness to take risks for her own creative idea, Tess does not
give up. Exposing Katharine minutes before she signs the deal with the
clients, she proves that the idea was originally hers, and wins. When
Oren Trask, the client, asks Tess why she had to do this and risk her
reputation, her answer is: But, just as an artist who
fights to protect her work from being appropriated, she fights to have
her idea recognized as being her own. She is diligent, thorough, brave,
and she loves what she does. She does not rest until she sees it take
form in reality. And, considering her limited means, she thinks and
acts creatively throughout her ordeal against all odds, until the truth
surfaces and she fulfills her dream. Rose is a hundred and one
years old and she is still creating pottery. Surrounded by her works,
she recalls her fateful travel and introduces Jack Dawson, a young
artist and the love of her life, who died during the tragic voyage. She
spent only hours with him, but their love became immortal. “I couldn’t stop shaking” old
Rose confesses, alluding to the erotic intensity of the experience that
stayed with her forever. Jack’s art captured a lifetime of love that
survived his death. For Rose, his art did not only create her drawing;
it created Jack’s immortality. As the other orchestra members
hear him play, they stop, return and join him in the piece. Amidst a
crowd of screaming passengers running in vain to save their lives,
these musicians peacefully accept their imminent death and choose to
celebrate life with their music, until the dark ocean swallows them
playing their last note. Defying death by remaining creative till one’s
last breath is one of the most powerful messages in this epic, which is
also a tribute to inner freedom, immortal love, and the inexorable
right to honor one’s truth. Creativity is their only
weapon against the afflictions of depression, boredom or loneliness and
the source of strength, courage and hope. Creative people do not allow
the burdens of life to discourage them. They create in spite of the
daily pressures and dramas to conquer pain, fear, poverty, illness and,
even death. Through dancing, his essence
becomes one with The
Creator as he, little Billy, disappears. The joy of dancing heals his
grief for his diseased mom, his worry for his ill Grandma, his sadness
for being mistreated by his brother, and his sorrow for being rejected
by his father. Billy’s wholeness is in his dance. That is when his
daily life becomes secondary and he feels truly alive. And, once the creation is
accomplished, there is no joy deeper for the creator than the joy of
sharing it with the world. A modern myth describing how the creative
process brings wholeness not only the creative agent but also to those
who commune with the creative outcome is Babette’s Feast. The villagers are
fundamentalists adhering to a rigid puritanical dogma. Their life is
dedicated to religious observance, reciting of the scripture, material
poverty, and avoidance of all temptations of spirit and body. Their Spartan homes and
churches are devoid of embellishments or furniture that might provide
the slightest comfort. Their manners are restrained; wordy interactions
are restricted as silence is enforced to maintain the spiritual tone of
relationships; indulging in simple pleasures such as food or other,
more complex, physical desires is simply unfathomable. For this
community, joy is a sin. During his life, father Kern
managed to forbid his daughters to have
any relationship with the outside world, forcing them to abandon all
prospects of marriage or career. Due to his intervention,
Martina’s ended her love for a young officer wanting to marry her,
while Philippa ended on her own accord her friendship with a Parisian
opera singer, afraid of the joy she experienced during their singing
lessons. Years later, the same opera
singer sends Babette to their
home, who agrees to be their servant and work without wages. For
fourteen years she does so, following diligently the community’s rules,
cooking simple meals, observing the silence, and helping the two
sisters with their community service. Babette offers to
pay for the entire feast, with the money she won in the Paris lottery.
The sisters hesitate but finally agree, on the condition that the
guests observe the vow of silence throughout the meal, so as not to
indulge in pleasure. Babette orders the food from France and sets out
to prepare the feast. Soon the ingredients arrive:
live turtles for soup, game and meats for the main courses, a
wheelbarrow full of offal, bottles of champagne and fine wine, and
trunks with fine china, silver, crystal glasses, lace linen, and fancy
candles. For days Babette works at the kitchen, creating a feast of
love, a true art masterpiece that will forever change the life of the
community. As they raise their glasses to
drink Veuve
Clicquot, superb champagne, they cannot help it: moved by the spirit of
the food and enveloped in the delight of its taste, they break the vow
of silence and begin interacting. For the first time they
realize that spiritual prosperity can be enjoyed through material
abundance. As the joy of tasting Babette’s food is lifting everyone off
the ground into higher spheres, the retired General, Marina’s
discouraged suitor from the past, suddenly raises a glass to declare
that nothing is impossible. Babette’s abundance has
brought to everyone joy beyond words, empowering their spirit with the
hope that no opportunity in life is truly missed, as long as one wants
to achieve a dream wholeheartedly. Her feast, creating such
spiritual
and emotional abundance for that deprived community also proved that
the one who creates is never poor. We all have “abandoned
efforts” hiding somewhere at home, in our drawers, in our computer’s
hard drive, even in our mind: a screenplay that is twenty-five pages
before completion; an incomplete needlecraft, quilt or knitting
project; a bookcase we built in the garage but never varnished or
placed in our son’s bedroom; an antique car that we have been
rebuilding for the last ten years; a foreign language that we never
learned to speak fluently; a dance that we never learned to dance
without stepping on our partner or causing public embarrassment; a
recipe for the special cookware we purchased but never unpackaged; an
idea to expand our business that we never pursued beyond writing it in
our notepad; and so on. A usual explanation is that we
stop the creative process because we give into “fear of criticism” or
“fear of failure”. This is only partially true considering that, in
reality, we engage in many self-destructive endeavors, ignoring
criticism and inviting failure in our health, finances, as well as
personal and professional life: we indulge in junk food knowing that
our cholesterol count will go up; we watch countless hours of
television, neglecting to communicate with friends, family, and loved
ones; we spend money compulsively, knowing that we are damaging our
credit; we cut corners at work, knowing that we will eventually be
discovered and called accountable; and so on. The truth is that the reason
for abandoning creative projects is not our fear of criticism but our
fear of commitment to a challenging process, period. It is in our
nature to abandon a creative habit when arising difficulties cause
discomfort and to indulge in destructive habits just because they are
easy and immediately gratifying. Every creative project
presents challenges, obstacles, difficulties and problems that suspend
pleasure until we resolve them. This is why the joy of creativity is
ten percent in starting a project, zero percent in persevering through
its challenges, and ninety percent in accomplishing it. But, once the creation is
completed, the experience of the creator from sharing it with the world
is filled with pure delight. In western religious teachings, the
Creator’s profound, restful enjoyment from having completed the
universe is described as the Seventh Day of Creation. Creative people seek this joy
and, therefore, do not abandon their efforts as unwanted children;
instead, they treat their creative projects as children needing to be
parented until they become self-sufficient through consistent love and
dedication despite challenges and rough spots. In 1981, as a 21-year-old
senior architecture major at Yale, Maya Lin won first prize in the
contest to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the northwest corner
of the Mall in Washington D.C. She had proposed a simple,
graceful, and
abstract design of two 247-foot-long walls of polished black granite,
set below grade and connected at a 125-degree angle, on which the names
of all the more than 58,000 American dead and missing from the war
would be carved in letters a little over half an inch high and arranged
chronologically, according to the year of death or disappearance. A few conservative politicians
supported the opposition until a compromise was reached. Following a
number of highly publicized meetings, in which Maya Lin was personally
attacked and repeatedly forced to defend her project, it was finally
agreed to add to the monument an American flag on a 60-foot pole and a
group of three realistically-modeled, seven-foot bronze figures of
Vietnam-era American soldiers by another artist. Fortunately, these
additions were placed far enough away from the wall so that its
artistic integrity was not seriously affected. Lin’s perseverance resulted in
the phenomenal success of her project, once it was completed. The
monument was dedicated and officially opened to the public on November
11, 1982, Veteran's Day. Since that day, more than ten
thousand people
per day visit the Wall; amongst them are Vietnam veterans, families of
the fallen, and the public at large who experience profound healing as
the names of the dead or missing, which seem to float on a transparent
black plane, exert their power evoking strong emotion. Additionally, as the visitors
can see their own face dimly reflected on the polished black granite,
they are invited to enter a dimension in which life and death are two
facets of one continuous experience. The monument, in silence, speaks
to each visitor in a very personal yet universal way about life and
death, grief and loss, and embracing what one cannot change. Based on the Roberta’s real
life, the film tells the story of a schoolteacher's struggle to teach
violin to underprivileged children in East Harlem. After her
devastating divorce, Roberta finds herself with two children and in
need of work. A music teacher facing few opportunities for work, she
becomes aware of an opening at an East Harlem public school. After convincing the school
principal about the value of teaching music in her school, she is
hired. Roberta begins her work in a problem-ridden environment, filled
with burned-out, underpaid teachers, accustomed to expect very little
of themselves and the school system. In addition the children, most
from troubled families, have little support at home for academic
achievement let alone learning the violin. Showing determination, amazing
inner strength and genuine interest in the children, she eventually
wins their trust and connects them to the violin. As her students learn
to play, their improving self-confidence has a positive influence on
other aspects of their lives. Their parents, formerly
skeptical about Roberta’s function in their school, notice their
children blossom and begin to respect and admire Roberta. She has
earned everyone’s trust. For ten years Roberta’s program flourishes,
earning great reputation in the City until, in 1991, the school board
seizes the funding. Roberta will not allow this to happen. Determined to give the biggest
fight of her life, she summons the help of the parents, a journalist,
and a number of the world’s best violinists, and organizes an amazing
concert at Carnegie Hall to raise funds and save her program. The
concert, in which she and her students share the stage with artists
such as Isaac Stern, Arnold Steinhardt, Itzhac Perlman, and Sandra
Park, is a phenomenal success and raises funds that ensure the survival
of her program for several more years. She brought her gift to
inner-city schools and
shared it generously with the children, empowering them to honor their
creativity and always pursue their dreams. The following films portray
different characters with one thing in common: their lives are
determined by their willingness to be creative. Choose a film and watch
it alone or with your groups. Answer the questions at the end of the
list in writing and discuss your answers with your group. Repeat the
same with more films of the list, as your time permits: ~ ~ ~ ~ About the author:
Maria Grace, Ph.D., is an expert at teaching people how to learn lessons from popular movies to find the job, home, relationship, and healthy body and mind they want. She is a Fulbright scholar, licensed psychotherapist, sought-after public speaker and coach, and the author of “Reel Fulfillment: A 12-Step Plan for Transforming Your Life through Movies” (McGraw-Hill, 2005). “Reel Fulfillment” was praised by Publisher’s Weekly as one of the top “self help books out of the self-help box” for 2005-2006. For more information visit http://www.mariagrace.com and http://www.reelfulfillment.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Maria_Grace ~ ~ ~ |
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