A Coaching Power Tool created by Yuliya Goloskokova
(Transformational Coach, Kazakhstan)
Reading
All throughout our lives we are guided. There is a multitude of guides around us that affect the way we live, think and develop. These guides range from external, such as people, circumstances and needs, to internal – our emotions and feelings. There are also unexplained occurrences of inner guidance that are often called divine guidance, inspiration, intuition or sixth sense. Lets call them creative guidance. Often influenced by the creative guidance we come up with powerful solutions that surprise us.
As much as we prefer to learn to be independent in making our own decisions and living our life the way we want, at this point in time we exist in the world where anything and everything exercises influence over us. We are under influence of stars according to some and economic turbulences according to others. It is very obvious that people close to us influence us greatly too as well as people who may be living thousands of miles on the other side of the globe. All these influence our moods, actions, decision making abilities and as a result the way we live and develop.
As many have tried, we can, of course, run away into the mountains or some other peaceful place in hopes of maintaining the pureness of thought and mind in order to live right. Yet even in such pristine places we will remain under some kind of influences.
Ability to come up with creative solutions has often been attributed to people with extraordinary gifts that allow them to somehow create things and develop solutions that others cannot think of. Yet, can we learn to be creative and be guided by that creative force to answer questions, find solutions to situations, etc? Recent studies show that yes.
How then can we learn to make the choices that are right and beneficial for us and others using our inspired creative side? How can we learn to be attuned to those guides that help us achieve our higher purpose and avoid those that prevent us from moving forward in our growth?
We have a choice to let one of the influencing us forces take the upper hand. As the old tale of a hunter and his grand son goes, in each one of us there are always two wolves that fight for dominance, the kind one and the unkind one. And which one wins? The one whose side the person is on.
What is creative guidance?
Inspiration, literally meaning to be ‘breathed upon’, has always been connected to higher powers. Creativity is often linked to being inspired by higher powers. Yet it is a skill that each one of us can learn and develop.
Interestingly what helps us develop our ability to tune in to creative guidance is problems. Its all about in what spirit we deal with them.
Creative guidance is something that each one of us has encountered personally or at least heard about once in our lives. There are stories of miraculous guidance and sudden insights that have affected our or someone else’s life in a deep way. It usually comes from within and at the same time from without, a sudden thought or solution that becomes key to solving something complex in an unexpected and an unthought-of manner.
Many have been in a situation when our mind was open to a seeming outside suggestion to not go someplace for no apparent reason and arrived there only to find that the shop, office or whatever they came there to find has moved, closed down or vanished altogether. You wasted time going there and you knew before hand that something was not right. Well, this is a classic example of letting the unkind wolf win 🙂 or not listening to a your intuition/higher guidance.
According to recent studies there are things that help us develop receptivity to creative guidance. Amongst them humor and relaxation or simply lightness and positive outlook. When we are in the state of lightness, we are less focused on “going by the book” to do things right. . Although we live in an age that worships focus—we are always forcing ourselves to concentrate, gulping caffeinated drinks—this approach can inhibit the imagination. We might be focused, but we’re probably focused on the wrong answer.
The research also explains why so many major breakthroughs happen in the unlikeliest of places, whether it’s Archimedes in the bathtub or the physicist Richard Feynman scribbling equations in a strip club, as he was known to do. It reveals the wisdom of Google putting ping-pong tables in the lobby and confirms the practical benefits of daydreaming. As Einstein once declared, “Creativity is the residue of time wasted.”
Not all revelations come through the medium of relaxation and lightness. There is also a need for hard work, of course. Yet in the world driven by guidelines and deadlines and hard work there is room for light work too.
This relentless form of creativity is nicely exemplified by the legendary graphic designer Milton Glaser, who engraved the slogan “Art is Work” above his office door. Mr. Glaser’s most famous design is a tribute to this work ethic. In 1975, he accepted an intimidating assignment: to create a new ad campaign that would rehabilitate the image of New York City, which at the time was falling apart.
Mr. Glaser began by experimenting with fonts, laying out the tourist slogan in a variety of friendly typefaces. After a few weeks of work, he settled on a charming design, with “I Love New York” in cursive, set against a plain white background. His proposal was quickly approved. “Everybody liked it,” Mr. Glaser says. “And if I were a normal person, I’d stop thinking about the project. But I can’t. Something about it just doesn’t feel right.”
So Mr. Glaser continued to ruminate on the design, devoting hours to a project that was supposedly finished. And then, after another few days of work, he was sitting in a taxi, stuck in midtown traffic. “I often carry spare pieces of paper in my pocket, and so I get the paper out and I start to draw,” he remembers. “And I’m thinking and drawing and then I get it. I see the whole design in my head. I see the typeface and the big round red heart smack dab in the middle. I know that this is how it should go.”
The logo that Mr. Glaser imagined in traffic has since become one of the most widely imitated works of graphic art in the world. And he only discovered the design because he refused to stop thinking about it.
But this raises an obvious question: If we need different motivating factors for different problems, how do we make sure that we are using the right process at the right time?
