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Shae Hadden

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Creative Resistance (aka Procrastination)

January 25, 2014 By Shae Hadden

I’m going to write my book. I think I’ll just start tomorrow.

I find it intriguing how we can excel at transforming our creative urges into creative resistance. It takes imagination to turn fear and self-doubt into rationalizations for why we can’t or shouldn’t start creating. This ability isn’t exclusive to artists. Most human beings can come up with at least one or two variations on the resistance theme. (The variations are endless—which actually proves our innate creative abilities.)

For example, we can have lots of troubles that we have to deal with first—before we get to that creative project.

We can distract ourselves with self-medications or obsessions with someone or something else.

We can convert everything that’s happening in our life—or the lives of those closest to us—into a big drama.

We can focus on others and criticize them for what they have or haven’t done.

Or we can quite simply fall victim to the “busyness syndrome”.

Creative resistance is an art form.

The reasons why we don’t create don’t really matter.

What really matters is how we switch art forms.

 

Creative Commons License

This blog post by Shae Hadden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Image by Rizal Deathrasher from Pixabay

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: creativity, resistance, writing

Finding Your Voice

February 1, 2013 By Shae Hadden

Every once in a while, someone will ask me about how to find their voice. That elusive quality in their communications that would have people say, “Now that sounds like you!”. My short answer: “The voice is the soul in motion.”

That usually pulls them up short. Then I share more.

As a baby, I discovered my voice by just opening my mouth and letting loose with whatever sounds emerged. No searching required. My voice was as natural as breathing. But as an adult, my mind complicates everything. I can so easily disconnect from any organic impulse to express myself in my attempts to be responsible, to take everything into account, to look good when I communicate.

Finding my voice as an adult hasn’t been easy.

Consciously putting my self out there. In the world. For everyone to see. It feels like the most intimate and vulnerable thing I may do in this life. My personal ongoing test of courage.

When I studied singing as a young adult, I’d get hung up with breathing and wanting to master the physiological processes involved with making sound. I wanted to understand what’s happening. All that thinking got in the way of connecting with the natural rhythm and ease of my baby self. I didn’t find my ‘sound’ in my first year of studying singing. Or the second, or the fifth. I eventually gave up the idea of having a professional career as a singer. Throwing caution to the winds recently, I tried singing gospel…and discovered once again how easy it is to just breathe, open up and let sound flow through me.

When I first started writing this book, I would sit with my thoughts for long periods of time, thinking and rethinking what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. I wanted to be clear and thorough. I wanted to see myself as a brilliant thinking being. I’d grade myself on how well I captured my thinking in writing. All that thinking about my thinking got in the way of the natural flow of my thoughts. I choked on my writing. Until I shifted my focus onto just breathing and allowing the thoughts that wanted to flow through me to show up on the page.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it feels so much easier now to speak my truth in conversations than even a few months ago.

So be patient with yourself. And steadfast in your commitment to express yourself—straight up.

“The voice is the muscle of the soul.”
Roy Hart

In the end, your soul will have it no other way.

Creative Commons License

This blog post by Shae Hadden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Photo credit: Flickr, Steve Alexander.

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: creativity, learning, persistence, self-awareness, writing

Chrysalis: Getting Out of the Way

October 27, 2012 By Shae Hadden

Writers often talk of needing to retreat to write at some point in their creative process. Of a need to let things gestate and emerge in their own way, in their own time—almost as if writing is a chrysalis process. All my research, my writing, my life has plodded along this past year. Slow caterpillar movements shifted to a sudden breakdown in the last few weeks. And now the creation of something entirely new from all that has gone before.

San Francisco’s glorious sun feeds my smiles today. I love life enough to want to create many, many more days here—or somewhere very much like it (if such a place exists). For here I feel at home. The very air of conversations among my colleagues here generates me as a powerful creator.

In chrysalis, the speed at which imaginal cells
Coalesce and form themselves into lines and clusters
My ego cannot keep up with.

I feel my wings forming, the sun on my back.
This life is for me.
It’s not the life I expected.
And I’m grateful.

I’ve given up trying to control what’s happening. I’m curious to see what is emerging. Curious also to see who else will show up in the days ahead. 

All my focus now is on being an opportunity for infinite game players, as James Carse defines them. People who play with boundaries, rather than within them. Whose purpose is to keep the game going as long as possible. Who see me as an opportunity to realize what they envision is possible, and whom I see as an opportunity to contribute to as a co-creative ally.

Wanna play?

Creative Commons License

This blog post by Shae Hadden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: creativity, opportunity, transformation, writing

Focus on Creating

September 30, 2012 By Shae Hadden

I love creating. Actually, I love creating what matters to me in the moment. Each completed creation becomes a foundation for new creations. The more I exercise my creating, the more creations I complete, the easier it is to conceive of something I couldn’t see before.

I’ve found it difficult in the last while to let go of some of my old creations. Ones that mattered to me very much when I was making them. But now, if I’m really honest with myself, they do not resonate with what matters most to me in this moment. Hanging on to them out of fondness or obligation or responsibility has me stuck. Hanging on to them feels egocentric, like a painter attached to their canvas, unwilling to sell their creation when millions of art appreciators could be enjoying it. Not that I’ve done anything wrong in owning my creations. It’s just time to let go and focus again on creating.

“When you are creating, where is the focus?
In the real creative process, it is on the creation and not on one’s self.”
Robert Fritz, Creating

A new era in my life beckons.

This week I brought a list of what I want to create next in my life to my coach. After seeing the number of items, he reminded me that I don’t have to create them all simultaneously, and that there is wisdom in choosing which ones to focus on first. And so, I selected my top 4 picks. I don’t have reasons for why these particular 4, and why not 4 others. Or even why I want any of what I want. These things matter to me simply because they matter to me.

No justification required.

What are you consciously choosing to create in your life today?

Creative Commons License

This blog post by Shae Hadden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Filed Under: Choice Tagged With: coach, creativity, responsibility, time, writing

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