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Tone Floreal: Hi EveryOne, this is Tone Floreal and Welcome to the Wholy Shift! Glow with da Flow Show.

On today’s show, we have an amazing guest that took me a whole year to hunt down. (laughs).

His name is Scott Jeffrey.

Scott is a strategic advisor and professional coach to chief executives, best-selling authors, and speakers. He’s the managing partner at The Cult Branding Company, a brand research firm that works with clients like Kohl’s Department Stores, Scheels, and Turner Classic Movies. He is also the author of numerous books, including Creativity Revealed: Discovering the Source of Inspiration. The topic of today’s interview…is none other than:

CREATIVITY.

Let’s let it flow.

The Source of Creativity

So, in your book, Creativity Revealed: Discovering the Source of Inspiration, you dedicate your book “To the Eternal Student from whom creativity is sure to flow.” What do you mean by that opening statement?

Scott Jeffrey: Well, one of the archetypes discussed in the creative process is The Student. The Eternal Student is epitomized by Socrates, who was always asking questions, always coming place of willingness, a place of humility. For him, creativity was always there as he never came from the place of “I know it all”—he was always open to looking for some form of Higher Truth and so, the book is dedicated to all those souls who are looking for deeper answers.

TF: Incredible. So, when those talk about being open…Where is Creativity actually coming from?

SJ: Right, Right…That in itself takes more than half the book to answer. (laughter) Briefly, the answer we come to is that: Creativity arises from Consciousness itself. Let see what does that mean when we say, “Consciousness?” Most of time when we think of creativity, we think of creative people and their creative minds or creative brains that operate differently. There’s a level of truth to that. But, ultimately when you study creativity and creative geniuses of the past, one thing you find is that many of the greatest minds all looked at the source of creativity coming from something beyond themselves. They all had different names for it, some called it a Higher Power, Daemon, God, or what ever you like to call it. What we’re calling it here is the Field of Consciousness itself, sort of a more modern phrase for that same concept. Instead of looking at creativity coming from our heads—as something that we’re doing or creating—it’s coming from this aspect that we all share. You might say that creativity is coming from a collective pool or a field of being—however you want to phrase it.

Creative Archetypes

TF: Right, Right. In your book, you also describe or detail the Four Creative Archetypes. What do you mean or could you give a quick summary of each archetype and how they all tie together with the creative process?

SJ: Sure, psychologist Graham Wallas, in the 20s, wrote a book called “The Art of Thought.” He’s the first person I’m aware of that classified the stages of the creative process. He said there’s essentially four stages: Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, and Verification. So, any creative endeavors goes through these four phases. First, preparing, doing your studies, doing your thought process, doing the work needed to accumulate the information in whatever way, shape or form that might be. Then, the Incubation phase is when you allow the idea to percolate within your mind. The Illumination phase arises when you reach a moment where it sort of comes to you, the answer becomes obvious. And then, Verification: “Was that really a stroke of genius or was that some idea that doesn’t hold any water?”

Then, we took Wallas’s four stages and instead of looking at it as a linear process, we said, “What are the archetypes that are arising within each stages?” Instead of saying we’re going to follow a step-by-step procedure to be more creative, we’re going to align with certain fields, certain ways of being that are consistent with each of those stages. For example, with Preparation: what signifies the Preparation stage but The Student? There you have the qualities of willingness, study and devotion. Then we move from the Student or Preparation, to the Incubation stage. That one we called the Wanderer from which the image comes to mind of a poet sitting in a coffee shop or someone walking aimlessly through the woods. Here, people often come to ideas in the shower or driving on the highway. The mind is aimless and unfocused.

Then, we go from the Wanderer to the Illumination stage, which is most cleanly classified as The Light. What do I mean by the Light in the context of how we just described Creativity? It’s the Light of Consciousness itself. In the Illumination of that Light—from the field of consciousness—the answer just presents itself. Instead of saying we brought it forth, we say it presents itself.

And then once again, is that really an insight or is it just an opinion that came to mind? In the Verification stage we have the Scientist that objectifies the answer and validates whether or not it is indeed so. Those are creative archetypes that go along with the creative process.

TF: Very interesting because a lot of people would try to take credit for their ideas…What impersonal phenomenon or qualities are revealed when creative people are inspired?

SJ: That, right there, is the main distinction. The quality is humility: they’re not taking credit for their work. In that light, they might be waking up from a dream and all the sudden the answers present itself. Or they could be hard at work on a subject and all the sudden it presents itself. But instead of thinking in terms “I came to this conclusion,” there is this quality of “something has been brought forth and I am merely the carrier of it.” Again, the word (humility) that keeps coming up—and you get this sense of throughout any kind of biographical study of creative geniuses—is a profound level of humility that transcends any ego tendency to claim credit for what’s been created.

TF: Interesting. Interesting. How is one able to know at that moment that it happens? How can they able to decipher the difference between appearance vs. essence?

SJ: Right. Well, it’s hard. That’s a good question. I think it’s hard. In the beginning, there is probably a lot of doubt but when someone reaches a high level of maturity in their creative self and creative identity, you begin to trust the intuition that presents itself and ultimately, you begin to focus more on the overall field instead of trying to get really specific. When you have an idea come to you, there’s this sense of knowing that you are onto something. There are physiologic indicators. But ultimately, you just kinda know. How you know is something that’s more of an oncological discussion, I suppose. But there is a knowing. This is a sense, “Hey, this is right. This is something really meaningful that just came forth.”

But when you do question it, maybe the best thing to do is capture these ideas in a journal or something, and sit with it and see what comes next. Let the Scientist evaluate it.

The Blocks to Creativity

TF: This is interesting because you also talk about in your book, “To get out of our own way” to describe the ego and its sneaky way of squashing the creative flow. For people who are just trusting their intuition, how is one able to mature into that knowingness where they’re not squashing their creative flow because of doubt?

SJ: To get out of your own way, first you have to become a student of the ego, of the mechanism of defense that are intrinsic of the mind itself that keep us from realizing our creative nature. In the book, we go into the four primary ones that are most pervasive. For example, judgement. We all have that inner critic that speaks to the doubt that you just mentioned. And that judgement is always there. We get ingrained from childhood as soon as we enter school, when that one kid raises his hand to answer a question and the teacher squashes the answer. We get programmed right away, to say “Alright, let’s not think creatively. Let’s just try to be as sure as we can and play it safe.” From that point on, we learn that it’s easier to be a critic then it is to be creative.

Edward de Bono has a great concept called, The Six Thinking Hats. An excellent book. Very simple way of brainstorming where there are six different colored hats, each one relating to a different perspective. For example, there’s the Black Hat which is the cautionary perspective, which everyone, especially in our western world, is really good at. People are great at shooting down ideas, seeing what’s wrong with ideas.

But the opposite of the Black Hat is the Yellow Hat, which is value sensitivity, where we look to see what’s the positive of an idea. That one is, for most of us, fairly weak—especially in the corporate world. So, one thing I think we all can do to increase our creative potential, is to foster value sensitivity. Ask questions like, “What’s the value of this idea? What’s the benefit of it? Where can this idea take me?”… As opposed to saying right away, “What’s wrong with it,” which activates the inner critic.

Now, one of the problems is once the inner critic gets activated, it’s impossible to get any creative work done. Sit down in front of a blank screen, and if you’re saying to yourself, “Oh, this isn’t going to be any good” before you start it, how would you even write anything? You would be completely stagnant.

There’s a number of things we do to get in our own way besides judging. We cling to certain belief systems, we have opinions about things that get in our way; we have limiting positions about how we see the world.

There are a lot things we need to become students of, to learn about and become aware of—so that we can get out of our way. That’s really the work. There’s a lot books on techniques of creativity. I am not really a big believer in them. I found in creativity, like so many aspects of life, it’s not about doing something, it’s about removing the obstacles to that natural source of creativity.

TF: In the case of approval-seeking behaviors, or fear, how can one overcome that, in regard to being creative, and not worry about how people are gonna perceive their work?

SJ: How do you get over the fear? Of being in fear?

TF: Yes.

SJ: That again, is part of the work. First thing one needs to do is become fully conscious of that fear and that drive to be fearful. That’s a big step that most of us don’t fully accept; we don’t fully accept that fear. We repress it to a certain level and we think we’re stuck. What’s writer’s block other than a resistance to the process of writing which generally comes from fear?

There are techniques out there that are helpful in the removal or the processing through of negative emotions like energy tapping and different forms of emotional releasing. Here’s one of the simplest ways: let’s say you’re sitting down to write or to paint, you feel that wave of fear come up or that negative programming. Just sit with it. Go into it completely. It doesn’t have to take long. We think these emotions, like fear, are going to stay with us forever and it’s going to haunt us while we’re doing our work. But instead, we actually allow ourselves to just kinda sit with the emotions and be with them fully. Even schedule time to be afraid (laughs). Put it on your calendar, from three to four today, I’m gonna just stay with fear. I’m just gonna be with fear.

TF: That’s pretty cool.

SJ: That technique could yield results fairly quickly. We’re just used to distracting ourselves in so many different ways it’s so easy nowadays to distract ourselves that we don’t actually fully experience those negative emotions that are blocking the creative flow.

TF: On the next topic, in your book, you describe the “Old World” — the dominant perception or paradigm of causality. Can you explain to the listeners what you mean by “Old World” and “causality” and how is that a hindrance to the Creative Flow?

SJ: Sure. So, we contrast the Old World with the New World. The Old World you might define as the mechanistic world, the scientific paradigm, often called the Newtonian paradigm. It arose in the 1700s primarily with Descartes and Newton. And it’s a very useful world, it’s not a function of trying to refute it and attack the Old World but we need to understand that mechanistic view is purely linear where everything is observable: if it’s observable, if it’s measurable, it’s real. If it’s not measurable, it’s not real. So, that’s probably the easiest way to classify the Old World.

When we say New World, even though it’s not new, it represents what the theoretical sciences are pointing to in the form of quantum theory and chaos theory, where the world isn’t exactly that simple. It’s not so black and white. There’s a world beyond what we can observe and measure where human consciousness itself influences what we are observing. In the New World, the observer becomes intricately linked to that which is being observed.

In the Old World, there’s the paradigm of causality, which is a “This causing a that.” That’s causality. Let’s make sure we’re defining all the terms for everybody. In causality,  there’s a “this” causing a “that.” So you drop a pencil, you cause the pencil to drop. You get sick, there’s a cause to that illness. You sell a product, there’s a cause for that sale. So, that’s the Old World mechanistic view of causality.

Now, what we begin to see in the New World is that instead of one thing causing the next, which is again a linear, sequential reality that we are perceiving, we begin to see a nonlinear reality, where instead of linear sequence, we see an emergence from moment to moment.

The biggest challenge with the New World is that languaging is always limited. Scientists put words and concepts to things that, by definition, are not definable. It cannot be described very accurately but we can do our best to communicate these concepts.

TF: So, it’s more or less, a knowingness that you can’t really describe with words, but you attempt to.

SJ: You do what you can to approximate an understanding so we can have a discussion about it. The reason why we say causality is a hindrance is because of this notion that “I caused a creative idea.” That, itself, is an error and that’s going to block our creative flow. Remember that the creative genius is coming from a place of humility. They are not stuck in that mindset; instead of looking at causes, they’re looking at conditions.

One of the conditions that might be in place is allowing the ideas to come forth. You look at different sets of qualities that come into play. There might be external conditions, as well, but primarily, what you see is that the majority of conditions are internal. They’re subjective, meaning coming from the inner subject, as opposed to the outer, objective world. It’s the internal as opposed to the external.

Right Brain versus Left Brain, Linear versus Nonlinear

TF: WOW, WOW! From that place then, what roadblocks, hazards or pitfalls could one encounter living the Creative Glow with da Flow Lifestyle? What would happen to somebody’s life if they became totally right-brain creatively dominant?

SJ: You mean if someone was just right-brain—like if they were just coming from that nonlinear?

TF: Exactly.

SJ: Well, their life would probably be in chaos, I would imagine.

TF: (laughter)

SJ: You know, there’s a balance between the two (the linear and the nonlinear). It would be hard to come forth with creative work if someone was strictly right-brain oriented. There are a lot of examples in history of artistic geniuses that went mad because they were so right-brain oriented that they couldn’t manifest what was arose in the right brain. They couldn’t express it in any format. They went mad trying to do so. There is a need for balance (between the two hemispheres) in coming forth in producing the creative work and allowing that Light to shine.

TF: Yes, that’s very interesting because I’ve noticed that in most spiritual works, the focus is primarily on the nonlinear or right-brain dominance. How would one be able to integrate the creative aspect of the right brain into a society while simultaneously using their left brain in a linear way?

SJ: That’s a great question. I think again it comes back to the Creative Archetypes that we talked about earlier. I think you see a really good balancing between the right and left brain. The Student is more left-brain orientated, coming from a place of study that puts forth the question and seeks the answers. That can be a very linear process. The Wanderer allows everything to be, lets go, and comes from a place of allowing. That’s more in the nonlinear realm. The Light itself is, of course, nonlinear. The Scientist (Verification stage) comes back to this linear concept of checking and using left brain tools to say, “Hey look, there’s legitimacy to this nonlinear realization.”

I think in a practical standpoint,you have to keep in mind, too, how long creativity can take…

Howard Gardner, creator of the Multiple Intelligences concept, wrote a book called, “Creative Minds”, where he profiles 7 different creative geniuses. One of the consistent things he found was that with each creative genius, it was at least a decade of study and work before anything of substance was produced. It wasn’t just an immediate occurrence. Creativity researcher Howard Gruber found that a similar 10 year period was necessary for creativity. A lot of people just want to forgo that 10 year period of work. (laughter)

TF: We want it instantaneous, like a flash of genius. Like immediately, yeah?

SJ: Exactly! We just want to be, or identify ourselves as creative, and just live that creative lifestyle, but ultimately, any artist you can think of, worked hard at their craft. Michael Jordan, you might say is one of the most creative basketball players that ever played the game, and he worked harder in practice than any other player too.

TF: That’s right, that’s right.

SJ: Musicians, the same thing. They might be really relaxed and laid back on stage and that’s the identity we may have of them, but we don’t see them spending hours every single day at their craft so that they can have that level of competency. To get to that level, in performance terminology, of unconscious competence, it takes a lot of left-brain effort. It’s a melding of the yin and the yang. The yang energy is the “doing” of it, putting forth effort and the yin is that “allowing.” So you do your study and then you let go and allow it to percolate and become part of you.

TF: Wow! Many have this perception that those who have that “glow with da flow” attitude, who just go with the flow, are people wandering and blowing in the wind with no sense of direction. That can be true. But in essence, to be in harmony creatively, one must learn to channel their creative intention, by first setting their sail and then, flow from there. It’s balanced.

SJ: Yeah, many creative types out there don’t like goal-setting because it’s too rigid, too linear. But we all need structure. Creativity works well under a deadline. Like writing, for example. If you don’t have a deadline, chances are that work is not getting completed. (laughter). There are left-brain tools that are very useful for right-brain oriented people.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this interview next week…Meanwhile, check out ScottJeffrey.com

Click Scott’s book below if you’d like to order it ASAP!