by Heather Plett | Feb 22, 2012 | Creativity, mandala
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I will meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about
language, ideas, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make any sense. – Rumi
“You know what your problem is? You’re too good at seeing both the pros and cons of every situation.” Those words came from a former boss of mine who was somewhat frustrated with me at the time (fifteen years ago) for failing to take sides on an issues. (More specifically, I was failing to take his side.)
Although they were spoken in frustration and were meant as more of an insult than a complement, I have always been grateful for those words. They’ve been some of the most clarifying and helpful words spoken to me in my own self-discovery journey. (Incidentally, that wasn’t the last time I heard similar words from a male boss.)
At the time, though I may have blushed a little at his annoyance, I had a wonderful a-ha moment about a quality I possess that is both a strength and a weakness.
I can sit comfortably in the grey zone.
I don’t need a world painted black and white, true or false, right or wrong, good or bad. Most of the time, I am more comfortable in the centre line between the yin and the yang. I like to probe the depths of both the black and the white and find the grey buried underneath.
In the past, when I’ve been in leadership positions that have required decisiveness and clear direction, this quality has been a bit of a stumbling block. Staff would sometimes get frustrated with me when I’d show up at meetings with more questions than answers. On the other hand, when I invited them into the grey zone with me, there was usually rich and deep conversation that wouldn’t have happened with a more black and white leader.
This is why I am so thoroughly enjoying the work I’m currently doing. When I teach or host conversations or work one-on-one with clients, I invite people into spaces of exploration and questions. Together we explore the beautiful shades of grey in the field beyond “wrongdoing and rightdoing”. I get to ask good questions – the kinds of questions that don’t have immediate answers and require us to practice sitting with them. In classrooms where there are strong-minded, dualistic thinkers, I invite them into the common spaces and help them find shades of truth in the other’s line of thinking. I am happiest when I have helped people poke holes through the boxes in which they’ve placed themselves and they can begin to see that there is light outside the box.
I take Jesus as my model for how to live in the grey zone and still serve as an effective leader. His greatest frustration was with the church leaders who got so lost in rules and doctrine that they didn’t leave room for grace and compassion. Jesus lead as a storyteller whose strength lay in relationships, conversation, and deep and meaningful questions. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that what we now most commonly associate with Christianity today is narrow-mindedness, when Jesus was one of the most radically open-minded leaders in history?
I’ve always found it interesting that Jesus chose to never write anything down. I’m sure he knew that writing things down would give people throughout history the excuse to turn his words into black and white proclamations.
Instead of doctrine and laws, Jesus left us with stories full of grey areas. He invited us into that field beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing.
I am sure that many of the people who resisted Jesus were just like some of my students, who express frustration that there are no clearer rules for right and wrong in the subjects I teach (eg. writing, facilitation, creativity). It’s easier to live in a world of black and white because then we know what’s expected of us and we know when we’ve crossed the lines.
But, unless you’re a police officer enforcing the law, most of the world doesn’t function that way.
We all have to live in the grey zone.
My mandala practice is one of the most beautiful ways I’ve found for living comfortably in the grey zone. Mandalas invite us out into the field that Rumi speaks of, where “the world is too full to talk about language, ideas,” and “even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.”
Mandalas invite us out past our linear, problem-fixing mindsets, into a circular world, where truth leads us down spiral pathways instead of straight lines. They help us shift out of the space where language and logic box us in, and into a space where colour, shapes, intuition, prayer, circle, and meditation open the sky above that field.
When I invite people into mandala conversations, we explore the shades of grey that were missing when they first looked at the issue through a black and white lens. After our conversation, they are invited to bring their questions to the mandala where the questions and the ambiguity become things of beauty rather than obstacles to be wrestled with.
I often struggle a bit when I’m describing my mandala practice for people, partly because it’s hard to describe something that engages primarily our right brains with words that reside primarily in our left brain. The grey zone doesn’t translate well in a black and white world.
But the more I do it, and the more I coach people in the process, the more I recognize its value.
We need tools that will help us find meaning in ambiguous spaces.
The mandala is such a tool. I invite you to learn more.
by Heather Plett | Feb 10, 2012 | change, Creativity
Last night I asked my Creative Discovery students to consider the word chaos.
“What does the word mean to you? What does it conjure up?”
One woman groaned. Her job feels like chaos right now. “It’s being imposed upon me,” she said, “and I HATE it!”
Another woman (the scientist in the circle) spoke of the chaos theory and how random things are always happening. She said that helped her see chaos as a positive thing.
A third woman had a body reaction to the word – said it filled her with dread and angst.
“What I’d like you to consider,” I said, “is that chaos is a necessary step in the journey toward creativity.” And then I presented the change curve.
Before the transforming idea can emerge that will lead us to the new status quo, we have to go through chaos. There are no short cuts. You see it appear in almost every development model – from community development to project management.
CHAOS is a common factor in our lives any time real transformation is about to take place.
Around the circle last night, a few looks of recognition began to appear when they superimposed the change curve on their own lives. Ah yes, they’d been through chaos.
Getting up from my chair, I walked over to a large garbage bag. I picked it up and dumped the contents on the floor. It was full of things I’d collected from my recycling bin and garbage can – cardboard, plastic, styrofoam.
“THIS is chaos,” I said. “Out of this, we’re going to invite creativity to appear.”
“I want you to imagine your life and the space you’d ideally like to live in. What things are of value to you that you want around you? What do you want your community to offer you in order for you to feel comfortable and at home? Work on your own space, but also work as a community to develop a neighbourhood that reflects who you all are and what you value. Go ahead – make something out of chaos.”
The eager ones jumped in right away and started imagining bookstores and coffee shops. The reluctant ones took their time, but before long they too were drawn in.
Out of chaos, beauty started to emerge. A comfy coffee house; a bookstore; a neighbourhood park with a play structure and trees; a farmers’ market with bins full of fresh vegetables; a recycled water bin; an urban garden; a bike rack; a tiny picnic table with a chess board. Given more time, they would have gone on – they were already talking about building art galleries and neighbourhood learning spaces.
When we were done, we all gazed lovingly at our new tiny home. It was clear what we all valued – community, green spaces, books, good food, comfort, and friendship. There were no freeways or big box stores in sight.
At the end of the class, nobody wanted to put their new creation back into the garbage bag. This was no longer garbage – it was art and ideas and little bits of their dreams.
That classroom last night was a tiny microcosm of the world in which we live. It may feel like chaos right now, with a lot of garbage we’ve created cluttering up our lives and making us feel trapped. And yet, out of chaos, creativity emerges. When push comes to shove, and when we give space for our community and our values, something beautiful can come out of this mess.
Last night’s playtime gave me hope.
Now let’s go play with the garbage and make something beautiful.
Notes:
– Photo source for the change curve: Jurgen Appelo
– Inspiration for last night’s activity, my friend Sophia’s photos of cardboard city. Check out Halifax in cardboard!
by Heather Plett | Jan 30, 2012 | Creativity, Passion
On Friday afternoon I took myself out on a play date. I started with a nice lunch in a lovely cafe in my favourite bookstore. After many years of business travel, I grew fond of eating alone in interesting cafes. It’s not something I do very often in my own home town, though, so it felt like a rare treat.
After lunch, I wandered through the bookstore (and yes, I treated myself to a book), and then headed to the conservatory (an indoor tropical garden) with a chai latte, my camera, and my mandala journal. The flower garden at the conservatory was fully of orchids and crocuses, and I soaked in the colour like a hungry addict getting a hit of Spring.
I had to carefully guard my playtime last week. It had been a hard week, with a few too many twelve hour days of marking papers, teaching, and prepping for teaching, and I knew how badly I needed time off. When I got a very good invitation to serve on an interview panel for a women’s leadership program, I almost gave up my Friday afternoon playtime. But I managed to stand firm and say “no”.
It’s how it always is, isn’t it? Playtime falls at the bottom of our priorities. It’s the thing we do “if we have time” after fulfilling all of the duties that fall on our shoulders. First we have to be responsible friends, moms, employees, business owners, homeowners, community members, etc. After all, that’s what a grown-up does, right? Take care of responsibility first?
Whenever I teach creativity classes, I almost always assign some kind of playtime for the weeks between classes. This past week, for example, I told my students that I wanted them to fill a page of their new art journals with colour. “I don’t care what it looks like,” I said, “I just want to see it full of colour.”
I already know what I’ll hear next Thursday, because I hear it all the time. “I didn’t have time. I couldn’t work it into my schedule. My husband made me feel guilty for goofing off while there were dishes to be done. I was too busy driving my kids to all of their activities.” I’ve heard it all before, and it all boils down to the same thing. “I don’t know how to make playtime a priority in my life.”
What we fail to realize, though, when we use those excuses, is that we are not only trivializing playtime, we are trivializing our own self-care and investment in our happiness. We are putting everyone else’s needs ahead of our own and forgetting that the best way to be of service to them is to first find our contentment and self-worth. We are also forgetting that play is a crucial part of growth, even for an adult.
Those people who make time for play also know how to work hard and how to pour themselves with passion into their lives.
Play isn’t trivial – it’s transformative.
Play helps us get in touch with our deeper selves. It helps open our imagination and gives us a greater creative advantage in all areas of our lives.
Play helps us deal with stress – often more successfully than talk therapy does. It gives us greater balance in life and helps us cope with the times when we must struggle.
Play is also one of the greatest learning tools. I’ve seen it in my classroom when my students’ eyes light up when they’re allowed to play and often don’t realize how much they’re learning from their play.
Play is a community transformation tool. Engage in play with your community, and you invite each other into a new space of possibility, creativity, and connection.
I was once leading a staff planning session where most of the time was spent in play. We tore pictures out of magazines to make vision boards and we got our hands dirty playing with clay. One of the men in the group was clearly stressed out by how trivial the day was and asked more than once “When are we going to get to our action plan?” I didn’t say much, but at some point, while he was holding a clay model of our group’s vision in his hands, he had an a-ha moment and said, “Oh, I get it now! This IS our action plan!” Even strategic planning can be transformed with a little play.
As we grew into adults, we learned to relegate play to a child’s activity. We had more grown-up things to do. And yet, we are missing out on so much if we don’t make play a priority.
What will YOU do this week to make play a priority?
by Heather Plett | Jan 19, 2012 | Creativity, mandala, Uncategorized
Since I began my year long commitment to my mandala practice at the beginning of this year, a number of people have shown curiosity about it, so I thought I’d write a little about why I make them.
The best way to answer that question seemed to be a mandala, so I started with the question “why do I create mandalas?” at the centre of the page. Writing whatever came to mind round and round that circle helped me clarify some of my thoughts on it – and it opened some brand new ideas I hadn’t even considered. And that is the first answer to the question “why do I make mandalas” – because the process helps me get closer to my own truths.
It’s difficult to define the value of a creative process such as mandala-making for one primary reason. The act of creating art of any kind requires me to step out of my analytical meaning-finding left brain into my intuitive, wordless right brain. When I try to analyze and explain what value I’m deriving from it, I have to carry it all back into my left brain. It doesn’t always translate well, which is why I’m often left without words.
But let me give it my best effort…
Here’s the unedited version of what showed up on the page when I made the above mandala. It’s an attempt at integrating my right and left brain thinking. Each ring of the circle represented a unique but intertwined part of the inquiry for me. The lines emerging from the centre represent the way that the three rings are intertwined and support each other (an explanation I only understood after they showed up).
Circle 1 -What do mandalas represent?
It starts with a circle, the shape of our earth, the shape of a tree, the shape of the smallest atom and the largest planet.
It is the shape that nature offers us when a flower blooms or a mother gives birth.
It is a feminine shape, bringing us back to womb and cycles of life.
It is the cycles of the seasons, the returning back to the place we started, bringing with us our baskets full of new stories.
It is the rings of memory we add to our history, like the rings of a tree.
Circle 2 – What is their value for me?
The mandala is my centring practice.
It grounds me in Mother Earth.
It reminds me of where my wisdom comes from.
It gives me a way to access my subconscious and that place too deep for words.
It lets me play and let go of logic and linear thinking.
It shifts me into my right brain, a place where ambiguity and wordless wisdom are welcome.
It brings me closer to Sophia, the feminine nature of the Divine.
It lets me experience Spirit in a kairos space that is outside the order of chronos time.
It is my meditation and my wordless prayer.
It lets me access wisdom I didn’t know was buried in my subconscious.
It asks nothing of me but my presence and my willingness to engage.
It is not based in rules or convention.
I can do it my way.
Circle 3 – What might mandalas represent for community?
Circle is the shape of community.
It is the place where we gather and have meaningful conversations.
Mandala starts with the fire at the centre-point, giving us energy and light.
It ends with us holding the edge of the circle, holding space for each other.
Real change begins when we face each other in community.
Mandala is the shape that brings us back to those essential elements.
It reminds us that there is great capacity for beauty when we are in circle.
Mandala as a community practice has the potential to heal us and to remind us of our birth, our connection with each other, and our grounding in Mother Earth.
Mandala can revive our spirit in community and give us a shared way of accessing those deep stories that our words do not want to touch.
Mandala can be a part of our story circles, giving us a place to paint our journeys to wholeness.
Mandalas can loosen our resistance and can grow our hope.
Mandalas can offer us new ways of framing old stories.
*****
The following quote resonated for me when I heard it yesterday.
I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity. – Oliver Wendell Holmes
I believe that mandalas serve a purpose in helping us find the “simplicity on the other side of complexity”.
As you can tell, I’m very excited about this process and believe that it can have significant implications for my work, both in helping individuals with their self-discovery work and in helping communities get to the heart of whatever is emerging.
Something new is growing out of this for me. I’ll be doing some one-on-one mandala coaching sessions with people in which I coach them in developing a personal mandala for whatever is emerging in their lives. This offering is in the development stage right now – once it’s ready, I’ll let you all know.
In my one-on-one sessions I will:
– help clients explore something that is present for them right now – a problem, a birthing, an inquiry, a fear, etc.
– based on whatever emerges for them, I will coach them in developing a personal mandala, based on a number of mandala-processes I have designed.
I will also be developing a course or group coaching program based on this work. If you’re interested, I’d love to hear what would appeal to you most.
If you want to book a one-on-one session, please contact me. I anticipate that the price will be approximately $100 for a half hour session, with options for follow-up calls.
by Heather Plett | Jan 13, 2012 | Creativity, criticism, faith, Giving, growth, journey, Joy, mandala, Passion, Wisdom
Recently I was asked to reflect on the greatest learning that I took away from 2011. “Patience and trust are the biggest lessons that showed up,” I said. “They’re lessons I’ve had to relearn a few times in my life.”
It takes a lot of patience to build a creative business, especially if you prefer to follow intuitive pathways and ask a lot of deep questions instead of crafting foolproof business plans. And it takes a lot of trust to believe that the path you’re following is the right one when there are lots of bumps and curves and the destination continues to looks so blurry.
Last year’s word was “joy“, but sometimes, when I’m being honest with myself, I wonder if the word that best defines it might instead be “worry“. I tried to follow joy, but in the process I did a lot of worrying. Did I do the right thing quitting my job? Is this dream really going to pan out? Do people value my work? Are any of my efforts going to pan out? Am I ever going to make enough money?
Recently, a question has popped up in my mind repeatedly when I’ve started to take the worry path.
What if the outcome is not my responsibility?
What if I am only responsible for sharing my gift and not how people respond to that gift?
What if my only duty is to follow my muse and I don’t have to worry about whether or not people like what I produce?
What if the only thing I need to do is be faithful to my calling, show up and do the work, and then trust God to look after the rest?
What if all the striving I do to be a “success” is wasted effort and I should instead invest that effort into being as faithful as I can be to the wisdom and creativity that has been given me to share?
When I take that question seriously, it gives me a great deal of peace. When I let go of the outcome or the sales or the response of other people and focus instead on being faithful to the process and my own commitment to excellency, the knots stop forming in my stomach and I can breathe more deeply.
My mandala practice is helping me learn this lesson. I make mandalas for nobody but myself (even though I’m willing to share them). For me, they are about the process. I show up on the page, pick up the pencils or markers that I feel drawn to, and let whatever needs to emerge on the page. What shows up is almost always about something I need to learn or be reminded of or discover. It’s not about the art. The outcome is not my responsibility.
A few months ago, I was supposed to do a community-building workshop for a leadership learning institute in my city. Only three people registered for it, so they decided to cancel it. I was able to let it go at the time because I was already overbooked and needed the breathing space. They were still interested in the content, though, so they rescheduled it for January 23rd. This time, there are already 14 people registered, ten days before the event. I had to let go of the outcome and trust that, if I was faithful to what I felt called to share, and did my best to let people know, the right people would show up who need to hear what I have to say. The outcome is not my responsibility.
So far, my Creative Discovery class only has 3 registrants, even though I’ve promoted it more broadly than the last class that had much better registration. It doesn’t matter. I feel called to do this class and I know that it will be what those three people (and I) need even if nobody else shows up. The outcome is not my responsibility.
I’m putting the finishing touches on my book and writing a proposal to try to get it into the hands of agents. When I start reading books about how to write a proposal and how to land an agent, I can get my stomach tied in knots over whether I’m doing things the right way, whether I’ll ever be successful, etc., etc. But then I have to pause, take a deep breath, and make a mandala like the one above. It doesn’t matter if I’m a “success”. I feel called to share this book with the world and I will do so even if I have to self-publish it. The outcome is not my responsibility.
Letting go of the outcome doesn’t mean that we should get lazy about the product, or that we shouldn’t work hard to let people know about what we’re doing. But once we’ve worked hard to follow the muse and been diligent in offering the gift to the world, we need to let it go and trust that the people who need to find it will.
I love the principles of Open Space, an Art of Hosting methodology for hosting meaningful conversations.
* Whoever comes are the right people
* Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened.
* When it starts is the right time
* When it’s over it’s over
In other words, the outcome is NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY!
And now it’s your turn… what do you need to let go of?
by Heather Plett | Jan 9, 2012 | Creativity, mandala
This past week, I have been mired in discouragement.
It’s not uncommon for this time of year. The holidays are over and the dull days of winter are settling in.
It hit me hard this time – right after the excitement of the labyrinth at New Year’s Eve. Add to the seasonal blues a few pieces of bad news, some dreams that didn’t pan out the way I’d hoped, an argument or two, some money stress, and a little rejection I hadn’t anticipated, and I was stuck in the middle of a serious case of the doldrums.
There was a big ugly cloud hanging over my head and I wasn’t pleasant to be with. It’s not completely gone yet, but it’s getting better.
A silver lining to that black cloud turned out to be the mandala practice I’ve committed to for 2012. Despite my lack of energy or enthusiasm, I was committed to making a mandala every day. When I made that commitment, only a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t anticipate how much I’d need it so soon. It turned out to be my saving grace.
Yesterday, in the middle of one of my darkest moments, when I was questioning my worth because of the rejection I was taking way too seriously, I snuck away from my family, put my head on my desk and cried.
After the tears dried up, I picked up my mandala journal. And then I did something I’ve never done before – I made a mandala completely void of colour. If you’ve seen my other mandalas, you know that colour is important part of me, so this felt like a significant departure – and yet it was one of the best things I could have done.
I made a lament mandala. Lament is one of those old words that we should reclaim in our vocabulary. According to dictionary.com, a lament is “a formal expression of sorrow or mourning, especially in verse or song: an elegy or dirge”. Laments feel too depressing to celebrate or honour, and so we mostly ignore them or hide them in our own private journals. Unlike the writers of the Old Testament, we rarely publish our laments for the world to see. Our discouragement is kept in the closet.
And yet, because I know that many of you suffer from the same kind of discouragement that attacks me now and then (we’re all wonderful flawed humans), I’m going to share my lament mandala. I love the process and I love the result. I think it’s a powerful tool for anyone who needs to find a path through their discouragement.
I started with the word LAMENT in the centre, grey on grey, and then drew a winding path, representing my journey through discouragement, loss, sadness, pain, etc.
After my lament mandala was complete, something significant happened. I fell in love with it. I fell in love with it as a piece of art, but more than that, I fell in love with the big ball of humanity that is my discouragement, my sadness, and my rejection. I felt like a mother, nurturing her own child through the dark places.
And then I wanted to make another mandala. It felt like an unfinished process. My lament child was urging me to birth something else.
I opened another page and drew a circle. Inside the circle, I started writing my thoughts in random colours all over the page. At first, the things that were coming out were quite dark. “Why so much pain?” “Why so many road blocks?” “How do I deal with rejection?” and “Do I need to find a job again?”
But then, almost like magic, the words started shifting. The mandala-making was shifting my mood. I started to write more hopeful things, starting with the things I need, like “I need a miracle, Sophia”, and then moving on to a recognition of the importance of what I’m doing, “my work is important” and “I need to keep doing this work” and “I want to teach creative people.”
When it felt like there were enough words, I picked up the pencil crayon that felt the best at the moment. Surprisingly, it was orange – bright, cheery, hopeful orange. And in the centre, a glowing circle of yellow.
While I finished it, my observer-self showed up, looking on as if from above, witnessing myself doing my creative practice, recognizing the shift, and knowing how incredibly important it is and how much I need to continue to share it.
Like I said in my last post, THIS is important – this doodling, this mandala-making, this creative practice. THIS is my gift to share with the world. This isn’t just something I’m doing for fun – it changes people. It changes communities. It changes paradigms. It helps people enter the chaos, disappointment and lament, follow the paths where they lead us, and eventually emerge into new light.
This is too important not to share.
And so I will do my best to share it, starting with my upcoming workshop, Creative Discovery. (This one is an in-person class in Winnipeg, but I’ll create future online versions.)
If you want to learn more about mandala-making, laments, and other forms of creative practice, let me know in the comments. I want to hear what you need. I want to know how I can serve you in this work. I want to offer things that will help people work through whatever they need to work through.
Because THIS is my “original medicine” (in the words of Gail Larsen).
If you want to join me in this journey, please sign up for my newsletter (on the right side of the screen) to stay informed about future offerings.
