Why Creators Will Lead Us Into The Future
And Why the Old Ways Won’t Work
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” ~ Albert Einstein
I shouldn’t read the news first thing in the morning. I’ve been breaking myself of the habit so I can freely enjoy my coffee, listening to the birds waking up in song and the soft roar of the waves coming onto the beach.
However, the consistency of looking at the news every few days, without getting sucked into it every morning, has given me some objectivity and through that objectivity I’ve noticed something.
Most articles are written from the perspective of someone who was living pre-COVID and accustomed to life B.C. Yes, I know that’s obvious but bear with me.
The authors of these articles are standing in the past (figuratively and emotionally) and looking at what’s happening now in comparison to what life was like in the past.
I have read very little written by someone who is standing in the present and looking into the future without the attachment to a past that keeps their assumptions and beliefs anchored in limited possibilities.
Where is imagination?
Where is curiosity?
Where is true creation?
I see people trying to reiterate what has existed, to do a 2.0 of something, to recycle ideas and attempt to apply them as bandages to our worst problems.
It’s obvious if you pay attention to language. I notice that racism is spoken of as something to eliminate. But I have not yet seen substantial discourse about creating a society based on completely new norms and values of equality and the inquiry into these.
I read about the comparisons made between women leaders and men leaders, the pluses and minuses to gender-based leadership, but I have yet to see much around competencies of global leadership where men and women or leadership cultures are not compared against one another. To compare men and women keeps us all anchored to an old standard of measurement which women will never achieve because, well, because we’re not men and that is the standard of measurement.
How about we talk about what kind of leadership is essential in a world that is changed, not simply changing. What kind of future do we choose to commit to — not a recycling of what has worked in the past but starting with a blank page and designing our best version of life on earth.
Our rules and laws are based on punishment and the avoidance of trespassing those laws because it’s important to rein in chaos. They are made to avoid chaos. They are not designed to tap what is inherently good, kind and valuable in humankind and amplify those traits.
If we agree that our planet and environment is important and that all life on earth should be valued, then there would be no conflict around climate change or environmental protection. Our current policies are reactions to what doesn’t work. They are not actions designed around a sustainable future for everyone and everything.
If we believe that every child inherently deserves a safe, healthy environment and the opportunity to contribute their best to society then our health systems, our education systems, our social systems and our economic systems would be in support of that. They would be designed to achieve a high quality of life, as opposed to the current design which limits education to the monied, a health system that is illness based and banking systems designed to enrich the already rich at the expense of those who hold less power in our economies.
We keep reacting to our current circumstances. We are not at all creating our future. To create is to give rise to something that never existed before.
We are still designing our systems, our businesses, our lives as a reaction to what exists, out of fear, as a way to avoid unpleasant outcomes. We are not creating from a place of vision, purpose and an enlightened level of consciousness.
Why Is Creating So Difficult?
Simply, because we are more comfortable with what we know and what we don’t know scares us. We default to the past because it is known (which is why predictions are made based on historical data) but it’s not what we need now nor can history apply to our future because what’s arriving on our doorstep is a stranger we’ve never encountered.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about”. ~ RUMI
To truly create we must surrender our ideas of what’s right and the way we have always thought it should be. Our identity as individuals and as collective communities is attached to what has been. To step into the unknown as a possibility may feel like a condemnation of who and what we were in the past. It requires we let go of familiar ways, that we release our attachments to our ideas of right and wrong. This is not easy, not as individuals nor as a collective.
We need to get comfortable in this unknown, this chaos, this uncertainty and start there to create a new future.
Everything new starts in the unknown. True creation only happens in the unknown.
If you consider every masterpiece in the world of art notice that each painter started with a blank canvas, each musician started with a song ringing in her ears, each writer began with a blank page, each sculptor began with a chunk of stone.
It’s messy. There are no rules or guidelines. It’s not a linear process, it’s iterative. It conflicts with the default we have towards action before reflection. This new way harnesses the receptive energy of listening deeply to what wants to be created before it is even birthed. Wisdom comes from intuition. Vision comes from imagination.
And we are not used to nor learned in this way of creating.
But the creators and the artists are.
Why aren’t we engaging them more to create our future? Why aren’t we valuing this new way to create where everything holds the seed of possibility and creation is truly something new that is organic and emergent?
Western culture is prone to powering through, following targets and deadlines, creating strategies and assessments. There’s nothing wrong with this. But it’s putting the cart before the horse. It’s not how you create. It’s how you implement and that comes AFTER vision and the creative process.
What’s needed is a new paradigm of creation, one based on intuition, imagination and the ability to harness subtle energy to move from imagination to manifestation.
Asking The Radical And Beautiful Questions
“I want to beg you…be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions … Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” ~ Rilke
There are those — the artists, the poets, the healers, the teachers, the philosophers — who are standing in the present and looking towards the future and they are asking themselves different questions. They are asking what could be possible given that our lives are dramatically different than only a few months ago?
They are accepting this difference. They are not resisting our current reality of navigating life on earth now. Instead of polarizing possibilities they are engaging the paradoxes that require we hold things that are in opposition to one another in the same space. Our life now is a koan, and as with any koan, cannot be solved with thinking but requires co-sensing and intuition to bridge the gap between the question and the answer.
These new innovators are not judging our circumstances as “bad” which would keep them tethered to our old ways of being and to the desire to return back to “normal”, a normal that actually wasn’t normal at all. They’re simply saying it’s different, without judgment, and asking themselves what they might want to create that aligns with what they value and can exist in our current reality.
The way we create our future will not be the way it’s been created in the past. It can’t be or we will recreate everything that brought us to this moment.
We’re not going to be able to use the old tools, the old frameworks, the old thinking models for this kind of future that that we’re entering into.
Everything starts with the questions. We must ask new questions, unusual questions, beautiful questions, radical questions.
“One radical question is worth more than a thousand uninspired answers.” #aliciaisms
Here are a few unusual questions, koans and beautiful questions that I encourage you to engage. (Some mine, some from others)
What is it that I want to embody and how will I do that?
What would keep me anchored in Love?
What about this is life sustaining?
If I knew the answer, what would it be?
What would Love do?
What story is no longer serving me?
What is significant and what is noise?
What do we have in common that we have failed to see before?
What does this decision say about me/us/ and is it aligned with my/our values?
What can this teach me?
How can I become more curious about….?
How am I wrong?
What fragilities and strengths are being uncovered now?
What do I resist and what is the real reason for the resistance?
How are we similar?
Is it true?
What am I blind to?
If there were no limitations what would I decide?
Do these questions make you uncomfortable?
Do you find you are judging them?
Are you asking yourself if these are even realistic?
If you are, then you’re attached to an old paradigm and traditional habits of thought that will not serve the future. Open yourself up to being uncomfortable and playing in the unknown if you want to thrive in the emergent future.
Problem Solving vs. Creation
Curiosity, not ego, must be the driver of creation. Curiosity means being comfortable with not knowing and seeing that as the blank canvas on which to paint our new masterpiece. All possibility starts with curiosity and then imagination that projects what might be possible into the future.
Embodying that which we want to create is an essential element in our new future. This isn’t about lip service, as is common now. If you’re committed to the environment, how will you embody sustainability personally (a healthy lifestyle), in your business (ethics, right relationships with clients and employees) and in your culture (how we run our governments and systems).
Why embodiment? Glad you asked.
If you’re an athlete, a dancer or a musician you’ll understand embodiment. When mastery is achieved, the body knows what to do without interference from the rational mind. The athlete trusts his body to respond to a particular stimulus. The dancer senses into the music to move in rhythm to it. The musician doesn’t need to read music to know how to play. It’s literally in the body.
And when it’s in the body, energy flows gracefully and smoothly, unimpeded by thoughts, doubts or judgments.
I’m suggesting that this is the new energy associated with creation.
This energy that flows from joy, love and co-sensing is the energy of creation.
Our traditional way of creating is based on problem solving. What is the problem that we want to solve? Whether we are asking how we solve the problems of racism, poverty, exclusion or a business problem about what services we want to deliver to what clients for what problems, this is the framework we’ve been operating in. Let me share a story to illustrate what I mean.
Many years ago I went white water rafting in Colorado. The guide told us that it was possible that we might fall into the river. If we did, we were to lie on our back with our feet out in front of us and allow the river to take us. We were not to fight the river. If we hit boulders, we would do so feet first and could then bounce off of them. The flow of the river would eventually take us to a calm place near the shore where we could get out of the river.
Problem solving is like being in the river and fighting it. It’s going from boulder to boulder, one obstacle to another obstacle, solving each one then onto another obstacle while fighting against the flow of time. Sure, we eventually get to the shore but with great stress, limited resources and probably more delays.
Focusing on obstacles or problems interrupts the natural flow of creative energy. Instead, our future depends on harmonizing with the flow of the creative energy around us, and within us, allowing it to move us beyond and between the obstacles or problems, to create from purpose, joy and values around thriving not fixing.
I’m not saying that obstacles don’t exist and don’t require attention. I’m saying that our mindset and focus should be from a point of flow not problem solving. We should put our attention and energy into what works (going with the flow of energy) instead of worrying about what has not been done before or what might get in the way or remaining attached to our limited perceptions or beliefs around what is possible.
“Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force.” Lao Tzu
It’s Time for the Creators
To create our future we must begin with asking ourselves reflective questions.
What’s holding the center of what matters most?
What am I choosing to commit to and dedicate my time and energy to?
What am I willing to risk to bring this into being?
We must accept what is right about our present as a launchpad for creating a better business, life or world. This is a very different process than what we are taught or accustomed to. It will take creators as leaders to imagine our future into being.
An example of a leader/creator is Jaqueline Novogratz, CEO of Acumen and recipient of the Forbes 400 Lifetime Achievement Award for Social Entrepreneurship. In her most recent book, she speaks to this creative force in service of “something bigger than yourself”. She writes,
“For while there are skills to gain and character traits to develop, there is only one way to begin. Just start — and let the work teach you… You may not yet have a crystal-clear sense of your purpose. That’s okay. It will grow with you. But if you have an inkling that you’d like your life to be about something bigger than yourself, listen to that urge. Follow the thread. The world needs you. Just start.” ~ Jacqueline Novogratz in Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to Build A Better World
We must reflect on our desire to create something bigger than ourselves for future generations. We can use this new paradigm to envision a future that’s aligned with the collective good in a world where everyone thrives, and where the natural world is valued as a life sustaining organism that must be cared for.
It does take a village; a village of creators collaborating, developing communities that will initiate a massive shift of consciousness around the globe that includes people, governments and systems that affect us all worldwide.
Whether you realize it or not you are creating your future now. Will it be the recycling of the old ways that created our problems through greed, scarcity, a lack of consciousness and fear of collaboration that got us here? Or can you open yourself up to the unknown as a place for true creation that is life sustaining and honors what’s good in all beings?
We all get to decide our future by focusing on what we can do in whatever space we occupy on the planet. Whether it’s planting a community garden, sharing poetry with your kids or activism for any number of issues, if we approach our lives with curiosity around what’s possible, imagining a better future, collaborating on our mutual vision and purpose, and using the tools we have with integrity to implement our vision, driven by the creative flow of energy, then I believe we will make an evolutionary leap for humankind and the planet.
It will take humility and courage to challenge our assumptions and beliefs. Let’s engage the creators and artists everywhere who are unafraid of the darkness of the womb where life begins and can show us the way with their light. Our world depends on it.
