March 28, 2022
It’s OK to be OK
As global events impact us, the pandemic heads toward its third surge in three years, and climate change continues unabated, I have good news!! The world is still beautiful and filled with mystery, acts of loving kindness, and creative impulses (check out the German pianist who traveled to the Polish-Ukraine border in order to welcome refugees with music!). In fact, we need more than ever to tap into our creative possibilities for restoring ourselves and the world to sanity.
I once heard a spiritual teacher say that if we compare ourselves to others (for better or for worse), we will always need others to be “less than” in order for us to feel better about our own situation. Think about how we all do that as a way of showing gratitude: “Well at least I’m not in a war zone,” you might think. Rather than, how can I express my Creativity to commemorate and honor peace in the world? Grow and expand the possibility.
So, just for today: How are you shining your Creative Light into dark places? Those places can be in your own heart (grief or sadness), or your head (fear and anxiety), or can show up in the aches and ailments of the body. As an antidote, what constitutes your creative act of courage today? Maybe it’s simply deciding to create something that wasn’t there before: a poem, a line drawing, a loaf of bread. Or connect with a loved one or your community through a creative conversation or act of generosity.
Acknowledge the places where you are already “Ok,” and grow them into greatness by connecting to others through your creative gifts.
If you’re having trouble connecting to your own creativity, or knowing your next steps on your creative journey — or maybe you feel blocked by something in your creative way? — I’d love to speak with you in a Creative Support Call.
In creative connection,
Tressa
February 15, 2022
Your Creative Nightmare
Has your Creative Dream become your creative nightmare? Do you lie awake at night wishing you could get to it? Do you hear its siren’s call and turn your attention back to other things? Do you feel like no matter how hard you work, you don’t seem to get closer to a feeling of freedom? Or maybe you’ve been living your passion for years, but it’s starting to feel stale, or you don’t know how to move to the next level, or a new platform altogether?
Have you ever felt like you *know* what you want to Write? Paint? Dance? Launch? Create? If only you had more time, more money, a more supportive partner, a less demanding job? The list of saboteurs is endless! (See my website for a sampling from my own life!) I’m here to tell you — after years of telling myself the same “reasons” — that these are not the things holding you back. Really. I’m also not saying you are to blame. Self-blame, it turns out, causes shame and self-doubt. And these all get bundled into what some spiritual traditions call “the hindrances,” and what I like to call “mind garbage.”
The time for excuses that stand between you and your Creativity is over. It’s the Lunar Year of the Tiger! Time to grab it by the tail and unleash your confident Creative!
In creative connection,
Tressa
February 14, 2022
Why You Are A Creative
Have you ever heard yourself say, “..but I’m not a creative.” Or if you do consider yourself a creative, an artist, a writer, or performer, have you every caught yourself thinking or saying “I don’t know what to do next.” Or “I’ve run out of ideas!”
In a lifetime as an art professor, curator and arts organizer working with creatives of all stripes, I want to personally assure you you are a Creative, and, your are a creative *causer* with Purpose. That’s right, you have the creative power to *cause* things to happen. Things like your dreams, your goals, your Inspired Vision for a more fully-expressed creative life!
The good news is that creative life is not somewhere in the future, it is happening right here, right now. You *cause* it when you harness your own power to create it. Because the source of your creativity is the same source of all things you can see, smell, hear, taste, touch, and feel, it is also in you! I want to help you to connect with your creative power. Whether it’s to start something new, or finish something that’s been simmering on the back burner for years, you can do this! Most of us, however, cannot do it alone. The other good news is you don’t have to!
The myth of the lone (usually male) creative genius is busted. A lie. Not true.
We all need support and accountability. I would add expert guidance to the mix.
In creative connection,
Tressa
January 27, 2022
Creative Resilience
Let’s face it. 2022 hasn’t quite started out as we had hoped for — with the Omicron surge and the global events of social and climate upheavals, you may feel less than inspired. If you’re feeling like you’ve already started the new year off behind, you’re not alone, and you’re not actually behind. You are just in sync with this moment in time. We know in our creative and spiritual practices that what we put our attention on grows. That is not the same as being Aware of what is happening in our world, and staying the course as a Creative Warrior nonetheless. Sowing seeds of possibility with your creative vision.
With the passing this month of beloved and renowned Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, it is more important than ever to remember his teachings on Inter-Being. A primary expression of our inter-connectedness is to re-member that what we do does matter, and impacts the world around us. So I want to encourage you to foster and grow your creative resilience — by staying aligned with your Inspired Vision, taking micro-steps to bring it into focus, and moving with momentum into seamless leaps to realize what you know you are called to do and Inter-Be.
Transformational Creative Coaching can help you to connect these dots, and fill in the outline of your own creative purpose.
In creative connection,
Tressa
November 8, 2021
Harvest What You Sow
Dear Creatives,
As we turn our attention and energy into November and the end of the year, it is time now to harvest the seeds you’ve planted. Harvest the seeds you planted in silence, now a song. Harvest the seeds set down with all of your effort and might in what seemed like a desert, now a garden grown by your attention and faith. Believe in those seedlings of your dream. They are like the unstoppable green growing up through cracked sidewalks. Your dreams are blossoms of your ancient prayers. Thank your ancestors for their struggles and courage. Harvest the potential they could not realize in their own lifetimes. It is your birthright. Your gift. Your calling.
If you’ve ever wondered how it would feel to be supported, have guidance, community, and accountability without pressure—and at a commitment level you can easily make even as we prepare for holidays, family, alone time or travel.
Can you imagine how it will *feel* to have done something for *you* in response to your creative calling or project, no matter how seemingly large or small? Answer: It will feel great!
I look forward to hearing from you!
In creative connection,
Tressa
September 29, 2021
You Belong Here
Dear Creatives,
Happy Equinox and beautiful autumn to my friends in the northern hemisphere, and welcome to the spring in the southern globe. Throughout the world, we welcome new beginnings. This turning of seasons allows us to contemplate where we are in space and time, evolving and revolving around our sun, our guiding star. Without such guidance, directional cycling, and the interplay of shadow and light, we would not be where we are, standing on whatever ground finds you. This is our inherent Belonging.
I recently heard the Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams speak about “belonging to ourselves.” This struck a resonant chord with me in relation to this work of transformational creativity, and an opportunity to invite you to reply to the call from within you. It is the core of your belonging. Whenever we block that calling — like a cloud temporarily blocking the light of the sun — we are standing in a space that tells us with our “talking mind” that we have lost our connection to our creative work, that we are stalled, or lost in the dark, bumping into things we can not see. Yet we know they are there. Just as your creative work is right here. At the core of your belonging. The work of transformation involves becoming friends with the shadow spaces, let them lead you to a deeper place of knowing. Can it feel scary? Yes. Do we have to go there alone. Yes and No. Your journey is singular, but it is not without connections, and doesn’t have to be solitary.
If you are reading this, then you know you are already part of a larger creative community, a calling toward a sense of belonging to that which you long to express as your “true self.” A student recently shared how her true self is her creative self. How is that expressed in your own life? In your creative work? In your sense of belonging?
Let me know. I would love to hear from you. You belong here. Just where you are.
Email me. Or request an Exploration Call where we can discover together, with belonging and support, how you can step away from what blocks you to move into the light of your own creative self.
In creative connection,
Tressa
July 8, 2021
Gathering
Dear Creatives,
I’m back in the blogosphere after the last month of launches and workshops – and glad to see some of you there!
As we enter this new moment of transitioning, shifting, and communing, we get to create new ceremonies of recognition. Coming off the screen into our multitudes, stepping once again into new currents of space and time, what has been left in our wake? We bring with us our stories of the last year, ongoing trials and losses, global and social upheavals — some necessary, some the predicted effects of our human inter-actions with the natural world.
You may be feeling a bit unsteady. Our balance is still seeking itself, within, and in the world. On the edge of your own creative and artistic joinings, how are you re-making connections now?
We circle in gathering to our own belonging.
As you connect to your work in the world, can you name it? What is called into being?
As you re-connect to the world around you. How can you, as a creative change-maker, be — as nature writer Terry Tempest Williams writes — an “enlightened anthropocene”?
What is your new emergent language? What have we learned from our separations about the renewed power of gathering?
If you feel like you could benefit from more connection — to your work, to each other, to support— let’s find ways to grow our creative community together.
I’d love to hear your ideas!
Send me an email. Book an Exploration Call with me. Connect.
In creative connection,
Tressa
April 7, 2021
Subtle Shifts
Dear Creatives,
As we enter the bloom of this seasonal shift, and as prelude to our global shift, how will you step into your creative work? More to the point, who will you commit to being as you move with this shift? As Creatives, we are always stretching and growing to expand our artistic horizons – and in this time of re-emergence, you have the opportunity to expand your identity beyond what has perviously held you back from expressing your full creative self. Yes, that’s right – how you create your identity can be a limiting or expanding frame for self-expression! I never thought of it this way, until I “became” the creative guide that I am today. I had to create this identity – not by saying what I used to be (professor, non-profit executive, arts organizer, etc.) – but by saying who I declare myself to be so that I may live it. Simply put, Be it. The surprising thing is that once I claimed this identity, I realized that I already was this person all along. Just un-bloomed. It’s not always easy to change, transform, shape-shift. There will be growing pains. But I’ve learned the hard way that growing pains (which is just pushing past your fear) are far less painful than not naming and expressing your inherent creative gifts to their fullest. This could mean anything from taking the first step to send out one of your “drawer manuscripts,” to getting an agent, a gallery show, or finding that benefactor who believes in your creative genius. Or it could mean believing in your own creative calling enough to pick up the pen, the brush, the guitar, or whatever moves you into creative action.
How will you blossom into your new identity — the one that is already inside of you calling itself into being?
I would love to help you move with awareness and momentum to shape the creative life you were meant to be living – right now. How do you see your emerging identity aligned with what many are saying is the Great Shift?
Book a free Creative Support Call with me to get clarity in your shift.
AND… I can’t wait to share about our upcoming Transformational Creative Coaching online WORKSHOP! The event is Free! But you must register. Details coming… or Contact me for details, and stay tuned to our missives.
In creative connection,
Tressa
March 1, 2021
Anticipation And Illumination
Dear Creatives,
After a year of COVID quarantine, impossible distances, unfathomable loss, lifestyle adjustments and full-on shifts, where are you now? Where are you as together we anticipate the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel? Do you see it in sight? What if the the light shining in the distance were none other than your own reflection? Who are you becoming? What are you creating?
What is this luminous knowing that is your creative gift to the world? Your florescence springs from the deeply seeded, the unknowable desire that pushes through what we think are our obstacles, what we feel are our saboteurs. Yet, they may actually be showing us the way by pointing to what is being blocked. Your creative source is just behind these. Just beyond what you think or feel right now. Your art, your craft, your very being, is the flowering of all you have been waiting for – already here, and waiting to be named.
If the pandemic blues have been affecting your creative energy, direction and momentum, you’re not alone – and there is a cure. The cure is within your own transformative abilities. I’d love to help you uncover them, apply them, and develop them for your artistic practice and healing journey.
Can you feel the heat of your own light burning to create with more vibrancy than ever before? I’d love to hear from you. What are you anticipating that seeks illumination?
In creative connection,
Tressa
February 3, 2021
Would You Like To File A Complaint?
Anything subject to change is suffering.
-Bhante Sutadhara
Dear Creatives,
I don’t know about you, but when I hear myself complain, I think “uh-oh, I fell off my positivity wagon, I must be depressed, who will want to listen to me?” How quickly the mind jumps into judgement, or shut-down, where we don’t even hear ourselves complaining, we just know something feels wrong. In today’s world, with so many of us suffering “in our own boats” beneath the global storms of the pandemic, climate catastrophes, and social injustice, what if it were ok to call out to ourselves what we feel? What if we do sometimes feel sad? What if we do sometimes feel angry or depressed (hint: flip sides of same coin) – and what if we let off a little steam by complaining? Is that so bad? What is it that we’re actually saying when we complain?
I’d like to suggest that we give ourselves permission to listen to what we are complaining about. Is it really true? Is it really that person over there, or this loneliness over here, that is making me unhappy? What if we listen to what the complaint is telling us we really want? A COVID-free world? Social justice? Companionship? Love? What is the driving current beneath your complaint?
What if we could begin to work consciously with our own thoughts and feelings to cultivate an awareness that complaints are signals for deeper knowing, deeper longings – just as the body “complains” with aches or pains to signal us to pay attention to it? If “something’s not right,” what is it? How can we investigate the pain? What do we have the power to change? What can you change right now in order to begin to relate to a world out of balance – whether that world is the planet, your family, or the world of your own thoughts? See what it might feel like to allow yourself “complaining time” without getting stuck in it. Listen to the longing underneath.
The tools of Transformational Creative Coaching can help you to uncover what your complaints are signaling you to do. With support, you can learn to listen more deeply to your inner longings, awaken to their outer cues of change. A complaint is a covering that can help you to reveal your fears, and most importantly, show you where you need to re-align with your creative dreams.
If you want help peeling back to your creative possibilities, projects and goals, book a Creative Support Call with me today! Email me at: [email protected]
In creative connection,
Tressa
December 21, 2020
Step Into Your Light
Dear Creatives,
Whatever this year has been for you, for all of us it has brought unexpected changes. Change has no direction – it is our awareness and intention that help us to shift it in the direction of healing, of inspiration, and of our dreams. Many of us have weathered some terrifying storms this year, while some of us have been called to inner work in the silences and social spaces that our COVID world produced. Others of us have been brought to our knees in sorrow or in gratitude. My own creative journey has intersected with all of these. Through so much, how do we stay aligned to our Creativity? What does it mean to follow your star?
As the Winter Solstice shifts us (in the northern hemisphere) from darkness to light, how will you emerge from the shadows of this season? Wherever you are in the world – and wherever you are with your own creative project and practice – you are no doubt feeling the seasonal and global shifts. It is underlying source energy guiding your possibilities. That is your star. Whatever shape that takes for you in your creative work, you can connect and shift into atunement at any time. Today is the perfect time.
If you want to know more about how these tips can help you to redirect and shift into instant alignment with your creative goals, I’d love to talk with you! How are you preparing to step into the light of your next creative goal? Let’s discuss!
In creative connection,
Tressa
November 24, 2020
How Does Creative Reciprocity Work?
Dear Creatives,
During this time of year, we often think about how to give thanks, ask ourselves “what are we grateful for?”, and consider what we can share with others. These are all good practices of generosity, though not the only ways to enact it. I’d like to suggest a more dynamic way of creating and exchanging our gifts. This principle has to do with Reciprocity. In our commodity culture, we often set up expectations of “return” as transactions. Rewards and awards drive our actions, the behaviorists would tell us. But we are not mice in a maze, even if it feels like it sometimes! What if, instead of immediate gratification, or even acknowledgment, we took an approach that our giving, and therefore our gifts, knows no bounds. What if our Creativity is the gift?
If our creative gifts come from a source greater than our finite understanding, we know as artists, writers, and creatives, that it is our responsibility to ourselves to release our gifts to the world. What if we’re an artist that insists on a certain price for a painting, but no one in our already tried and true fan club is buying. What if, instead, we donate that painting to raise funds for an arts organization or museum, and in doing so, we establish positive relationships with the organization? What if that organization produces an online auction that features our work? Now thousands more people are familiar with it. What if then we receive inquiries for more work from people we didn’t know before? And those inquiries become sales? Or the institution decides to commission a work? In these cases, we call this indirect reciprocity in the first scenario or delayed reciprocity in the latter. When we truly live from a place of inter-connectedness, we start to see “return” in a non-linear way. That is the circle of reciprocity that keeps giving.
I’d love to learn more about your strategies for giving your creative work to the world. What forms does that currently take for you? Is that working for you? What do you have lined up, or would like to line up, to release your creative projects from within you, or from your “working from home” storage? How can I help you?
If you’d like to explore these questions email me: [email protected]
In creative connection,
Tressa
November 4, 2020
Election Uplift: Proposition Cs
Dear Creatives,
As we head into the elections and their aftermath, try to stay calm. Stay true to you. Stay close to your creative calling. It may seem like there is so much noise in the way, but as a wise Zen Master once said: “The obstacle is the way.” How can you use your creativity to create goodwill in the face of divisiveness? This is not a “bypass” of reality. Rather you get to dance with your muse and create the reality of your dreams-come-true. This peaceful principle is no different than Ghandi’s: Be the change.
It takes confidence, clarity and courage – Proposition Cs – to be a stand for the higher good and stay aligned with your greatest calling. Trust yourself, your creative work is exactly what the world needs right now to heal divisions, and to live in what one of my clients calls “radical beauty.”
In creative connection,
Tressa
October 29, 2020
What Haunts You?
Dear Creatives,
Happy Halloween week! According to my trusted Internet sources, the tradition originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people danced around bonfires in regalia of creatures and demons, making noise to ward off ghosts. As the last part of October falls around us, what ghosts still haunt you? Shout or sing them away! Make noise! What is your favorite costume or accessory? My favorite ‘trick-or-treat’ bag is a bolsa with the image of Frida Kahlo – a master artist and cultural icon I would love to meet in the heavenly realms. Her image is also a reminder of the twin celebration of the Mexican Dia de los Muertos, when the veil between worlds becomes thin. When you look at her work, it seems as if she painted from that space of between worlds. If you could peek into other realms, who would you want to meet? If you could embody your favorite artist, writer or creative genius, who would that be? You get to choose your own muse.
Share your muse in the Transformational-Creative-Coaching business page Comments, or private message me. Or better yet, schedule a call with me and I can help you to connect your creative voice to your archetype within.
In creative connection,
Tressa
September 25, 2020
What Can You Let Go Of?
Dear Creatives,
Congratulations! You made it through the summer and are now ready to get ready for autumn’s enchantments and new beginnings. The seasonal call is to Let Go (Allowing), like the tree lets go of its leaves. We are in a collective re-tuning, some call it a Shift. What new perspectives compel you to shift into ways of experiencing what is happening in your life right now? What new insights and tools can you apply (and practice with) to keep you steady in your core, even as the outer world continues to teeter-totter. I don’t know about you, but the summer was a loud wake-up call – sometimes a scream, right? – to re-center, and I was not always at the balance-point of the seesaw. The mindfulness practice of equanimity is not so much about the absence of disruptions, disturbances or distractions, those are inevitable. Rather, it is the cultivation of a moment-to-moment awareness of the changing nature of things, including our own perceptions about them. What perceptions can you ‘shift’? What ideas about yourself, about others, about your creative work, can you let go of?
As artists, writers and creatives, we have the capacity to re-imagine, and then re-inscribe: telling the story (your story) anew or from a different perspective. That is a breakthrough! In many parts of the northern hemisphere right now, we are awash with color and the seasonal change of crisp fall mornings. The metaphors of autumn abound. Try this micro-discipline: Choose an outer object or an image and let it speak to your own inner creative calling. What is your Creative Spirit calling you to do? To be? Let yourself become it.
In creative connection,
Tressa
May 8, 2020
What Is Freedom?
Dear Creatives,
After almost two months of “sheltering-in-place,” some of us might feel a bit like a prisoner to these circumstances of a global pandemic. I know I have had my moments of reflecting on how others made it through traumatic times of life. Maya Angelou put it most poetically in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Nelson Mandela endured more than twenty years in an actual prison and went on to become president of a newly-formed nation and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Even in her extreme confinement hiding from Nazi hunters, Anne Frank left a legacy of hope for all time. What do these amazing spirits have in common that we might need in a time of such sweeping uncertainty? They had freedom. This may seem mocking or antithetical to their harsh realities, or our own current reality, in which our movements are constrained, and where we may also be physically separated from loved ones. How is that freedom? Maybe a different question to ask might be Where does freedom live? Is freedom being able to do exactly what we want whenever we want to do it? That is a certain kind of freedom, a spirit of action and physical movement. While we may be constrained in our movements, we need not be constrained in our minds.
The tools of Transformational-Creative-Coaching emphasize not only “mindset” or “mindfulness,” being present with “what is” (we are all living in the time of coronavirus), but ask: How are we relating to our day-to-day circumstances? What I have discovered is that difficult times can sometimes amplify our conditioned tendencies. So if we tend toward anger as our “go to” reaction, we will experience that anger arising, maybe in the form of impatience, agitation, reactivity, or even blame and depression. If our fears make us feel anxious, we may feel a heightened anxiety. There is nothing wrong with these human responses to uncertainty and isolation; they will arise. The key to freedom is a recognition of what exactly is arising. This is cultivating Awareness. Allowing ourselves to feel whatever comes up with understanding and tenderness, this is Compassion. Meeting ourselves with compassion in times of suffering takes courage. Living “in heart.” When we go to that place of open-heartedness, that is certainty. We can touch in with our greater creative source that is the well-spring of our heartfelt embrace of “what is,” and meet it with imagination – imagining our undeniable inter-connectedness with the elements of Nature and with each other – these forms of connectedness now made so apparent by this global crisis. This knowing is a form of intimacy. And in this intimacy with ourselves and the world we live in, we are choosing our freedom. How will you express your freedom today? In a voice that is your own song? Will you dance around your living room? Cook an amazing meal from whatever is on hand? Draw a self-portrait or an abstract expression, letting go of angst? Or might you post a poem to your Facebook page and circulate it to as many people as possible? In our creative expression, we connect with each other, and in doing so, we choose freedom.
In creative connection,
Tressa
March 17, 2020
Isolation And Connection
Dear Creatives,
I’ve been thinking about you, my creative community, this week, in light of all of the unsettling and discouraging news. It has made me wonder, What do we take for granted? What can we be grateful for right now? And yet, can we also be true to ourselves by acknowledging the impact of a “state of emergency” on our emotional, spiritual and everyday lives? The dictate that we “socially distance” from one another can create separation anxiety as we self-isolate from friends and family. I know this was the case for me, as I cancelled long-made plans to visit my mother on the other side of the country, or can no longer take or teach classes in person, meet with friends in public places that are closed to patrons, or visit elderly relatives for an indeterminate time. How do we, in this new and uncomfortable context, connect? I am resending my blog post from last Fall – Isolation and Connection – because I think there are still parts of it that relate directly to this unusual time of prescribed social separation. This is the opposite of what we seek in our creative practices of community-building. I encourage everyone to stay connected by whatever means is available to you.
I invite you schedule a free call with me if you need support staying true to your creative calling in the midst of this unprecedented time. Don’t let the external define your internal Muse. If nothing else, stay connected to her.
Isolation and Connection
(This is a Re-Post from October, 2019)
I write this missive after a lively day of meetings, calendaring, creative writing, conversations with friends – and all from the solitude of my creative studio. And yet there is an emptiness in the space. Don’t get me wrong, solitude is a highly valuable friend at certain stages of the creative process, and unlike isolation, it is usually elective. When I choose to be alone, it is an empowering point of retreat, and is often needed for the initial stages of a project (Writing Down the Bones, as author Natalie Goldberg wrote), cranking up your own creative juice to get into the “zone.” Where, though, does our creative juice come from? The short answer is: not in isolation.
When working with my clients, many of whom are “solopreneurs” or creative artists whose process requires time alone in the studio or in the chair writing or developing a new invention – the question becomes, Who are we creating for? In Transformational Creative Coaching, the transformational tools are especially relational. The best way to check out whether they work or not is to have a conversation with someone else, put your project in front of a potential investor, take the teacher seat, or stand on a stage and offer your art and gifts up to others. The key is that we need to be creating for a purpose larger than ourselves, a Higher Good, and ultimately, for other people. Even the paintings hidden in caves in Lascaux were done for a purpose, and for a collective, for the benefit of the tribe or maybe even the planet.
So I challenge you to consider your methods and your motives. Who does your work serve? Who are your collaborators? Your audience? Your tribe? Your team? You may not think at this point that you have something you can call a “team,” so think about all the people that already support you, even the unseen ones that have come before you to inspire you, and the future ones who are waiting for your work to be in the world. The antidote to isolation is Connection. Make a coffee date with a friend to talk about your creative project, get out and take a brush up class in your medium – or better yet, teach a class to others! Connect. Get out of the isolation trap by seeking like-minded souls. They are also seeking you.
In creative connection,
Tressa
March 9, 2020
Honoring You For Women’s History Month
Dear Creatives,
In honor of Women’s History Month, I want to honor you.
Are you a woman perched on the edge of your greatness – ready to make your creative mark? Your Herstory? I want to help you to get on track this month, right now, as we collectively recall and re-vision the world from the Divine Feminine, responding to the creative call of Mother Earth.
In case you think the Earth does not need your gifts, think again. Your creative work is needed more than ever – to make a world in which art, music, poetry, and creative imagination are honored and respected as the central forces for social and environmental justice and healing. This is not a far-away dream – this is the result of our creative efforts to make a difference through full-bodied expression.
Please consider what it will take to move your creative projects into the world with greater confidence, visibility and momentum so that we can support one another on this path. I want to support you. That is why I have designed small-group and 1-on-1 T-C-C Tutorials to move you from where you are (Column A), to where you want to be (Column B), and with the transformational tools and synergy to help you into new ways of thinking, being and shifting (Column C).
In honor of you, as part of our collective heritage of women’s history, I am extending my tutorial program sign up through the month of March. So, let’s make history!
Call me for your Discovery Call or to sign up for a Breakthrough Tutorial suite that fits your needs and budget. Remember, these programs are offered through online platforms, so you can be anywhere to join us!
I will support you, guide you, and walk you step-by-step from wherever you feel stuck, uncertain, or simply undone – to the satisfaction and confidence that comes with realizing your creative breakthrough. Let me help you to completion and the sense of healing that comes with living a more fully expressed creative life.
Established Artists and Writers: you too can benefit from taking the next steps on your path. Tutorials with like-minded artists and writers can help you move with momentum and velocity faster and with a more crystallized focus. Call me for details on how to sign up for specialized sessions.
In creative connection,
Tressa
February 4, 2020
What Is Your Creative Impulse?
Dear Creatives,
May the New Year find you well as you review your personal inventories of the last year and reset your Intentions. In doing these exercises, I started to consider some of the distinctions in what drives our actions and aspirations. I started to think about Life Force, and the energetic qualities that guide us, reside in us, and also encourage us to act in our own best interest. Yet, we all have experienced the counter-forces – negative self-talk, limitation stories, procrastination, compulsive habits – and the endless list of saboteurs that prevent us from seeing with clarity and moving with flow and momentum. So how do we know which is which, “good impulse” or “bad impulse,” to know which one to feed? These discernments come with practicing our mind-set shifts and learning how to tune in to the vibrational noiselessness of “pulse,” and its energetic beat of “impulse.”
The way I’ve been thinking about these phenomena in relation to Creativity is to first recognize pulse as that constant, unconscious flow of our life force, as real and as present as the blood that flows through our veins. We don’t usually think about it, yet it is always happening. We tend to only notice the “blockages,” those things that startle us into awareness through pain, or worse yet, total collapse! Unless we tend to our flow by bringing conscious awareness to our breath, to our body, to our health, the body will signal us. In a similar way, our creativity is a force that is always present and flowing through our mind/body – our thoughts become the impulses that guide us. An impulse, by definition, can be either a sudden strong and unreflective urge to act, or a driving and motivating force. We don’t want to feed the former before we have investigated it. In other words, if it’s important, it’s probably not urgent. We want to notice it, reflect on the urge, and discern: Is this a motivating force that supports my creative work? Or is this a habitual response that will cause a block, like an arterial blockage, to my pulse (creative unconscious flow)? These distinctions help us to stay attuned to the heartbeat of our creativity so that we become masters of transforming unreflective impulse into conscious action.
Impulses are not inherently negative. They are energetic overlays to our pulse. The key to transformational creativity is to unlock the distinctions between the helpful ‘“good” and the unhelpful “bad” – the mindful vs. the reckless – so that we can move equally with the impulses of grace, goodness, and being in creative momentum with our mind/body connective flow.
In creative connection,
Tressa
November 29, 2019
Gratitude And Grace
Dear Creatives,
I love that the Spanish word for “thank you” also encapsulates “grace” – gracias.
In French, we acknowledge the mercy that inheres in generosity – merci. And pilamaye in Lakota can simply be an expression of gratitude for all living beings. Other languages, verbal and non-verbal, all express “thanks” in some way, in fact, probably thousands of cultural forms extend this universal gesture. In reciprocal terms, the giver and the receiver create more than two. The gift is the bridge, and Gratitude itself a gift. In these ways, our words and deeds align and the circle of life is created anew. Each time a new baby is born to a family (like my adorable nephews!), each time we wake up to a new day, or each moment that we choose to stop our habitual thinking and worrying to gently shift our mindset into being thankful for just one small thing, or one small moment.
From Hafiz’s The Gift to the Buddhist and Hindu teachings on dana, or generosity, the exchange of oneself for another is the ultimate act of giving. Remembering to give to yourself is part of this process of creating stability in your own offerings. In the coming weeks, as the pressures and delights, memories, families, friends and solitudes, of the holidays swirl around and within you, do take care to give yourself what you need to replenish and nourish your energy. It is from this place of self-centering that Gratitude can be cultivated with a full and giving heart.
May you stay connected to that which creates, and the source of your own creativity.
In creative connection,
Tressa
October 9, 2019
To Vow The Impossible Vow
Dear Creatives,
I write this week from my mother’s town on the west coast of Florida – a continent away from my California perch, and a good reminder of how we take ourselves with us wherever we go. When my mother’s health took a downward turn, I got scared. She got scared. Fear does not bring out the best in us. In my Buddhist practice, we vow to “save sentient beings” and to apply the wisdom teachings of the Buddha through right speech, right action and right thought, among many other aspects of ethical conduct that support living with compassion and kindness. I know I am not alone in coming up short of my vows, especially in times of crisis, be it family, financial, romantic or the many opportunities Life gives us to practice being our best self. I know because I have many times fallen down. And then got up in the place I fell down. The key to returning to higher self (getting up where we fall down) begins with Awareness, and then the willingness to forgive ourselves and others for our human imperfections. Poet, author and Zen Buddhist priest, Norman Fischer, writes in his latest book, The World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path, about how the strive for perfection is not as misguided as we might believe – that in fact, to visualize beyond our imperfections takes a great act of imagination, and dare I say, courage. Our courage lies in our vows. Our vows inform our deeds – however imperfect or inconsistent. When we vow, we commit.
I invite you to consider, how do you commit to yourself? What do you vow to do or to become in order to realize your creative dream? How does your Creativity show up to remind you that you can apply your inherent and human capacity to imagine, and thereby achieve your aspirations? While you may be encouraged to reach for the stars, you need only be willing to come back to where you stand or where you have fallen on the sometimes awkward and always winding road that is your path, your purpose, your vow.
In creative connection,
Tressa
September 4, 2019
The Creativity Hypothesis
Dear Creatives,
I’ve been thinking a lot about this notion of “creativity,” – a word that is applied to so many endeavors and things. What does it mean to be creative? Or more to the point, what does it mean to be a creative? As it turns out, scientists have been pondering the subject for decades, and increasingly test the results of creativity – no not on humans, not other apes or monkeys, but with artificial intelligence! It may come as no surprise (as sci fi fantasy and the field of robotics demonstrate) that our fascination with computers, robots and other non-human life forms engaging in creative thought and activities causes us to wonder: What makes our creative impulses uniquely human? One of the main accomplishments of creativity is the ability to transform the conceptual space in order to shift expected outcomes. That’s right, transformation is the key to creativity. In her groundbreaking book, The Creative Mind, M.A. Boden suggests that changing the existing rules to create a new conceptual space leads to higher forms of creativity. I would go so far as to link these to “consciousness.” While the word creative is sometimes applied to a person or an object (a painting, a poem, a musical composition), Boden argues that thought itself can be creative, especially when directed at exploring “radical changes to space.”
I invite you to consider that these “radical changes” apply not only to the computational space measured in AI experimentation. By extension, the transformational process of shifting our Mindset, moving with Intention and Momentum (as I’ve written about in previous postings), and bringing Awareness and Attention to stepping out of our habitual ways of being, doing and thinking in order to breakthrough to completion and satisfaction in our creative work – these are the “computational” steps that can shift the the ways in which we work in order to achieve the highest forms of creative self-expression. The question of whether AI will be capable of these feats addresses only a partial understanding of human creativity, as we program (i.e., redirect) the future through our own creative genius.
In creative connection,
Tressa
July 16, 2019
The Real Costs Of Not Finishing Projects
Dear Creatives,
How many times have you set out with best intentions, or set resolutions, that you are finally, at long last, going to finish an amazing project or idea that has been vying for your attention for so long? And no matter how much you love this project and it wants to come to fruition, it just gets delayed or back-burnered again? I know how this feels, as a writer that used to “write for the drawer” – meaning that all my magnificent prose never saw the light of day, could never touch another soul, connect or make a difference in the world. It is painful.
Not only that, but if you’re like a lot of other Creatives that suffer from the plague of “too many ideas,” it can feel overwhelming or impossible to focus on one thing to bring to completion. How can I choose among my children?? And yet, these creative “children” need to have a life of their own. It is not only the emotional harm we bring upon ourselves if we let creative projects languish, sometimes it’s also financial. If you’re an artist, and trying to make your living through your art, not finishing can cost you a commission, or an exhibition, or an opportunity you might not even know exists because you’re “stuck” or overwhelmed with “too many things,” “not enough time,” or the need to give time to a “day job” at the expense of your passion that could be just the ticket to financial freedom! How will I know if my book will be a best seller if I don’t finish it?
I want to help you to complete and catalyze your creative ideas and support you to finally finish your creative project – not in 6 months, not next year, but right now!
There are two kinds of creatives out there – those who complete their project, release it and allow it to become all that it can be … and those who don’t complete it and instead struggle and hope and see their potential fade because they never express it and follow through.
I don’t want you to be the second, unfulfilled creative!
I look forward to helping you take your amazing project to the finish line!
Don’t hesitate – commit now!
In creative connection,
Tressa
July 11, 2019
Do You Have An A-List?
Dear Creatives,
I’ve been thinking about the ways in which our creative process can move us into action – especially when we find ourselves at a seeming standstill. I’d like to suggest that our “standstills” are just that: an opportunity to be still while we scan our accomplishments (“ta das!”) and goals (“to dos”). By taking stock of our personal inventory in this way, our standstill becomes something more like a crossroads. And then we get to make a choice.
First, we need to bring our choices into Awareness. From this point, we can better clarify our vision, and recall our Aspiration. What is it that you want to create?
From Awareness, we can Allow for our accomplishments and goals – and include the gaps that need our Attention. By including everything, we allow. Allowing lets us move forward with intention and Attention, and also to let go of the saboteurs of self-criticism, procrastination or anxiety about the future. Allowing helps to re-set clarity and calm from within so we can begin to see and just take the “next right step” outward. We need not leap off the deep end or freeze in our tracks. Take the opportunity of the gap to move into Action with creative purpose.
By cultivating a mind-set of Awareness, Attention, Allowing, and Action, we embody our Aspirations (and our purpose) mindfully. We build trust that we are moving in the direction of our goals, our dreams, even if the road sometimes veers, or we wobble while standing still. Even in standing still, there is movement. Allow it to move through you and guide your next steps.
In creative connection,
Tressa
June 11, 2019
Walk Into Your Breakthrough
Dear Creatives,
For most of us Creatives, we sometimes find ourselves going along in Flow, and then suddenly (seemingly out of nowhere) Blam! We hit the proverbial wall. Nothing comes. We stare blankly into the screen staring back at us, look at the taunting canvas with no idea of what to add or subtract from our masterpiece in the making, we fumble for just the right word, the right stitch, key stroke or brush mark, but it just won’t come. There are many suggestions for how to move through these perceived “blocks,” so allow me to suggest that they are not blocks at all. Rather, your creative outpour is telling you it needs to be refilled. Take a walk.
Many artists and creatives have written about the value of walking as a way to clear the mind of its held opinions about things – including our negative self-talk about why we are “stuck,” how we will never “finish,” or if we do, our work will not compare to others on the market, on the bestseller lists, or on the walls of the Louvre. One of the many benefits of taking a walk is that it reconnects you to your body, which is the physical space of your inner wisdom. Walking frees up circulatory knots, oxygenates the brain, and minimizes negative thinking based on fears that are lodged in the primitive part of our brain (cerebellum and limbic system). The brain, however, is not the mind. The mind, as a student of Zen master Dogen learned when instructed to take it out and show it to him, is not locatable. And yet, our dislocated thoughts can cause us a heap of trouble if we do not watch them with Awareness and direct them into appropriate responses – which sometimes can be to remind ourselves without harshness not to listen to every thought that pops or does not pop into our head. Most of all, try to refrain from “comparative mind” – not good enough, better than, or the way it used to be. One of the best ways to clear the comparative mind is to take a walk.
In the Shambala Buddhist tradition of meditation, the Tiger is the symbol for groundedness, sure-footedness. I offer the image of the tiger as a pose of connectivity. If we walk mindful of the world around us, noting our thoughts without chasing them down every rabbit hole, then we maintain the dignity of the Tiger in purpose and poised for the next right step. We are readying ourselves for action by creating connection to our creativity, simply by putting one step in front of another with purpose.
In her best-selling book, Walking in This World, creativity guru Julia Cameron advises that walking is a powerful creative tool for allowing ideas and insights to arise. This is the power of walking meditation. You need not climb Mount Everest or take a ten mile trek. Sometimes just a brisk walk around the block can bring us back to our senses, to the body/mind where the union of creativity and creator of works resides. If it’s raining or snowing, or if walking is a challenge for you, simply moving with intention, and with no destination, can reset your creative pace. The Beat poet, Frank O’Hara, famously walked the length of Manhattan from the Village to the upper West Side. I don’t know if he took a subway back, but if the words came to him by 59th street, he may have had the whole poem worked out by the time he got to Lincoln Center. Find your muse in the world around you and in the rhythm of your own steps. You are warming up for your next action in the creative process as you feel yourself grounded and in step by “just walking.” This “going nowhere” is the pathway to breaking through.
In creative connection,
Tressa
April 30, 2019
Don’t Tell Your Dream To Dream Killers
Dear Creatives,
It’s good to be back in touch. I look forward to learning how your creative projects are going. In order to further you along your own path, I’d like to offer a few “tips from the field” that you might find useful to your own project goals. First, I want to share with you a brief page from my own experience.
When I was studying with Jack Grapes, a master writing teacher based in Los Angeles (the reason I moved to LA the second time around!), one writer in our Thursday afternoon group got up to read, and during the group feedback defended one of her choices by stating that her sister liked it. Jack asked, “Is your sister an artist?” The point I think he was trying to make is that if you share your work-in-progress with people who do not speak the same language, are not in your community, do not have the same values, then it is possible that you are getting bad advice, or worse yet, you could get triggered for a systems breakdown. A breakdown is not necessarily a visible or even extreme event. In fact, some breakdowns are slow processes of chipping away at our creative confidence, micro-aggressions that reflect our own feelings of self-doubt or whatever saboteurs du jour we have allowed to falsely capture our imaginations.
When you share your raw creative output with people who are not trained to give you the proper constructive feedback you deserve, you could be potentially setting yourself up for a setback. I don’t know where I first heard it, but the slogan I want to emphasize for you is please: Do not share your dreams with dream killers.
As a creative coach, I want to support you and offer you the tools and tactics you need to set the directional course for your work, mirror back your Art, your Creativity, your Innovation and Confidence, with recognition and guidance. It is possible to breakthrough creative blocks, recognize saboteurs when they arise – whether they are the silencing voices inside your head, or the unsupportive friend, parent, partner, colleague or child who does not realize that though they may care for you, they are not necessarily qualified to give you the right kind of guidance on all of the things that are important to you. This does not make them wrong or unloving; it just means that we sometimes need to be selective about who we tell what.
My tip from the field of growing creativity is to first ask yourself: what do I want from sharing my work with this person with whom you choose to share your precious vision? Are they the appropriate person to give the response that I want and need?
The right kind of feedback may not always be what you expect to hear, but you will know whether it is aimed toward supporting you in your creative work by helping to make it better, more connected to others, your own heart, and your own purpose in doing it.
In creative connection,
Tressa
April 17, 2019
Transformational Creative Coaching
Dear Creatives,
It may be a while since I’ve last connected with you. First, I’d like to share some news! At the beginning of this year, I moved back from the East Coast to California. I look forward to continuing to teach, write, and energize creative work under the care of the San Padre Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. To my California friends, thank you for welcoming me back! For those of you that I met in my travels and other stops on our shared journey, I thank you for your contributions to our creative exchanges. I hope that you continue to benefit and thrive in your own creative practice.
Because we are so committed to our work, I know that we all suffer at one time or another from a long list of saboteurs: anxiety, procrastination, too many ideas, lack of focus, and the list goes on. I am not immune from these joy killers myself. I too need support and guidance to move me to my own breakthroughs – beyond fear, beyond “reasons” that too often become excuses for not doing what we love. With more than thirty years of experience in the arts, culture and writing professions, I would like to share with you what I’ve learned to help you to transform perceived obstacles into tools that work for you.
Create a shift in your habitual “stuck” points.
Schedule a call with me to talk them through!
I want to help you to create the breakthrough that will leave you feeling energized and inspired to do the work you are meant to do. Contact me to set up a free coaching call!
Within the next month, I will be sending out a series of email updates and offerings, and would love to include you in my circle of recipients. If you would like to receive these missives, you don’t need to do anything. If you do not want to receive my emails, no worries, simply click the link that says “unsubscribe” at the bottom of the email.
I look forward to sharing upcoming news, offerings and gifts with you!
In creative connection,
Tressa