A Research Paper By Kait Gallagher, Creativity Coach, UNITES STATES
Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want, and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics. Albert Einstein
When we hear the word creativity, we often think of brooding writers like Hemmingway, great sculptors like Rodin, or painters like Monet. We equate creativity with artistic expression, but creativity is so much more than that. Every human being is innately creative, and that creative expression takes so many forms – fashion, gardening, cooking, etc. But people create blocks to their creativity, they label themselves as “not creative.” They throw up walls to this vital and integral part of who we are. Not only that, but the demands of modern society often obliterate our connection to the universal truth of being human: we are all creative.As Julia Cameron says in The Artists Way, “many of us find that we have squandered our creative energies by investing disproportionately in the lives, hopes, dreams, and plans of others.” I could not agree more.
Relationship to Energy Creativity
My interest in our relationship to creativity began six years ago when I got sober. My connection to self and creativity was in desperate need of work, and I’ve spent the last six-plus years completely rebuilding that relationship. We all have a relationship between self and our creativity. But what I’ve noticed in these years is a majority of people don’t understand the power and force of our natural given creative self. The pace of modern life, the demands of the day, the judgment of others, fear, and the ideas of what creativity is block us daily from thriving in our natural, creative state. We often quantify and qualify a person’s level of creativity based on the outward product they create. And if they create something well, we ask they create that same thing over and over, often at a faster rate. We try to mechanize and factorize human creativity and productivity, but this approach isn’t working. Attempting to work most often from a results-based perspective is leading to dissatisfaction, loneliness, burnout, depression and so much more. Why? We aren’t giving the time, space, nurturing, and diversity of experiences to ourselves and our bodies anymore, thus cutting ourselves off from our true, innate source of creativity: our energy.
During my journey at ICA, I’ve become ever more aware of how much my energy impacts my creativity; thus, I decided I wanted to focus my research paper on this: energy and creativity. Nature, when left alone, self-corrects towards homeostasis. Our bodies do the same…and so does our connection to energy and creativity. Thus, I’ve decided to look at the topic of creativity and energy to show that finding our way back to energetic homeostasis will help heal our creativity.
The Root of Everything = Energy
During my studies with ICA, I’ve become very aware of the cognitive triangle from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
[1]
But at the core of all of this is our brain…and our energy. We need the energy to form thoughts, to take action, to feel feelings…and our brain uses the most energy of any organ in our body: 20%.[2]So, if energy fuels the brain, how does the brain relate to creativity? Our brain is what allows us to keep up with the world: “only one thing allows us to face these accelerating changes: cognitive flexibility. We absorb the raw materials of experience and manipulate them to form something new…[3]” And we are born with creativity installed: “the software for creativity comes preinstalled on the human hard drive, ready to bend, break and blend the world around us. The brain spits out a stream of new possibilities, most of which won’t work, but some of which do.”[4]
We are born to be creative; so, if we aren’t feeling this way, it’s about energetics and neuroscience, not whether or not we are “good enough” or “unique enough” to be creative (as culture makes it seem). It’s all about energy.
Everything takes energy. “Every movement of your body, every emotion you have, and every thought that passes through your mind is an expenditure of energy…Creating thoughts, holding onto thoughts, recalling thoughts, generating emotions, controlling emotions, and disciplining inner drives, all require a tremendous expenditure of energy…the only reason you don’t feel this energy all the time is that you block it. You block it by closing your heart, by closing your mind, and by pulling yourself into a restrictive space inside. This closes you off from all the energy. When you close your heart or close your mind, you hide in the darkness within you, There is no light There is no energy. Nothing is flowing. The energy is still there but it can’t get in. ”[5]In our ever-moving world, there are so many blocks to energy but it is our body’s and brain’s desire to have balance. “Brains seek a balance between exploiting previously-learned knowledge and exploring new possibilities. This is always a tricky trade-off…Across the animal kingdom, creatures set their trade-off point somewhere in the middle.” [6]But as humans, we often lose our sense of the middle, leaving our brains and bodies in constant overdrive and burnout; thus, obliterating our sense of creativity. But if we reach a place of homeostasis in mind, body, and soul, creativity will naturally flow.
As Michael Singer explains, “once you sit deeply enough inside to stop fighting the stored energy patterns, they’ll come up constantly and pass right through you.” And along with free-flowing energy comes free-flowing creativity. If we aren’t achieving that, it’s because we are not in balance.
The Coaches Role When It Comes to Energy and Creativity
The process of unlocking one’s energy to allow more creativity is not easy. The constant demands of life and societal expectations leave little room to observe oneself, one’s energy, and understand how it is blocked. Not only that, but we often need, once awareness comes, to shift to another way of working and living to respect our energy. It is an ever-evolving process that will kick up a lot of emotion and thought-work. This is where coaching around energy and creativity comes in.
If a client feels creatively blocked in some way, my coaching model and the process will allow the client to slow down and determine how they are using their energy. We have money budgets, why not an energy budget? What is an energy budget? Example below:
| Action/Thought Using Energy |
Do I Like This Use of Energy? |
Why or Why Not? |
Replace With? |
|
I am not creative |
No |
This limiting belief keeps me stuck |
One action step per week focused on creative |
Such an energy budget will help us observe where energy is going and how the client would like to re-direct it. We will use our sessions to talk through the process of re-directing and what the client can change in their daily patterns to create a sustainable system for their creativity vs. the churn and burn model we know so well. Energy is our most valuable resource and most of us likely have no idea how we are expending it. I will work with clients to track their behavior, thoughts, and feelings for a period and then determine which are using the most energy, how they feel about it, which thoughts they are feeding that no longer serve them, etc., and we can break through the patterns keeping them burnt out, stuck and creatively uninspired by focusing on their energy.
We use energy to do things, we use energy to feed the limiting beliefs, we use energy to feel our feelings and we rarely slow down enough to simply sit with ourselves to see what is and isn’t working. Not only that but making this a regular part of our routine takes practice and requires support. I want to support clients on this journey because if we can achieve such an energetic cleanse and re-programming creativity will be waiting. It is always there waiting to be found much like the sun is always shining behind the cloudy sky.
My goal is to help clients find their way back to their unique energy and use that as their guiding force and supply on their creative journey. I believe even more so after all of my research and reading this year while studying with ICA that it all boils down to energy and we do have a choice over how, when, and where we use our energy – even within our minds. We are all a part of nature and thus we are energy. But how we choose to use it is the greatest gateway to creative freedom there is.
References
Cognitive Triangle Action Cake
Why Does the Brain Need So Much Power?
8, The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World, by Anthony Brandt & David Eagleman
184, The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World, by Anthony Brandt & David Eagleman
Pages 62-page 65, The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer
The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World, by Anthony Brandt & David Eagleman