5-Day Creating Challenge Coming Up!

Hello, Brilliant Chaos fans!

Time for yet another Creating Challenge! This one will be a five-day Challenge running from Monday, December 5 to Friday, December 9, 2011.

Here are the four steps for each day of the Creating Challenge:

1. Before you take any actions, sit down for a minute or two and conceive of the result you want to create. (Have a clear vision of the finished creation.)
2. Note the current state of the creation. (What is the current status and materials/elements needed to complete the creation?)
3. Take action. (Move from vision to completed reality. Stay true to the vision and resists improvisation.)
4. Once you have finished the project, look at it and live with it for a few minutes. (Reflect on the process and your experience.)

We hope you join us for this upcoming Creating Challenge. As well, if you wish, please join our  Facebook group so you can post your creations and responses to this challenge both on this blog and with our FB community!

Momentum

A week or so ago we completed our seven-day Creating Challenge. How do we all keep the creating vibe alive? We leverage the momentum that naturally occurs in the creating cycle. In this podcast, we describe how!

Creating Challenge #2--We're Halfway There!

Hey, everybody!

We're at the halfway mark of our most recent Creating Challenge. Congratulations for making it this far! To celebrate, we made a podcast just for you--it was our creation for Day 4. It's a little on the rough side--Lisa sounds sometimes as if she's underwater--but we decided to eschew perfection and embrace enthusiasm.

So please take about eight minutes to listen to our five-minute podcast. And thanks for embarking on this challenge with us!

Creating: Not Just for the "Creative" Anymore

"Oh, I can't participate in a Creating Challenge. I'm just not a creative person."

We tend to think that creating is the realm only of the creative: the artist, the writer, the musician, the dancer, anyone with a hand in a free-flowing expression of self. When we don't fall into a more right-brained way of being, we dismiss the concept that we, too, can be creators.

Well, none of you get off that easy! ;-) We are throwing down a Creating Challenge, not a Creative Challenge. Creating is different from being creative. Many creative people don't create at all. They dream big dreams but for whatever reason cannot put pen to paper, hands to clay, or voice to microphone. In contrast, people who create begin a project and finish it. They conceive of something they want to exist in the world, they do what it takes to bring it about, and once it's completed, they release it into the wild.

That's what this challenge is about, and therefore, it can include any number of projects. For example:

• Cooking a beautiful meal for family and/or friends;
• Developing a time map for your week;
• Making a chore jar for your kids, filled with slips of paper that list daily chores;
• Devising an Excell or Numbers document to track your expenses;
• Writing an itinerary for an upcoming trip;
• Replacing a torn screen in your screen door with a new one;
• Arranging a restful space in your home for mediation, reading, and other quiet pursuits; and/or
• Creating anything your heart and mind can imagine!

The Creating Challenge can also include ventures we more traditionally call creative, so go ahead and write your poems and songs, paint your pictures, mold your sculptures. Whatever you choose, take ten minutes to two hours to dream up something and make it real.

So, let's brainstorm some more potential projects. Please comment below and let us know some creations you might bring to fruition during our Creating Challenge! And in case you need the details for our Creating Challenge, you can find those here.

Creating Challenge #2!

Hello, Brilliant Chaos fans!

We got such a charge out of our test-run Creating Challenge that we decided to turn right around and do another one. Not only that, but we've also chosen to lengthen it--this time to seven days. So our upcoming Creating Challenge will run from Monday, June 27 to Sunday, July 3, 2011.

But wait, there's more! We really want to invite YOU along! This challenge is perfect for:

• people who have a number of projects they'd like to complete;
• gifted kids out of school for summer wanting something challenging to do;
• anyone interested in creating; and
• lots more people!

Remember, we've outlined four steps for each day of our Creating Challenge:

1. Before you take any actions, sit down for a minute or two and conceive of the result you want to create. (Have a clear vision of the finished creation.)
2. Note the current state of the creation. (What is the current status and materials/elements needed to complete the creation?)
3. Take action. (Move from vision to completed reality. Stay true to the vision and resists improvisation.)
4. Once you have finished the project, look at it and live with it for a few minutes. (Reflect on the process and your experience.)

We hope you join us for this upcoming Creating Challenge. As well, if you wish, please join our new Facebook group so you can post your creations and responses to this challenge both on this blog and share with our FB users!

We look forward to enjoying this challenge with you!

The Creating Challenge - Day 4

Hello, all!

Well, yesterday was the last day of our challenge, and I (Lisa) celebrated by finishing a drawing I'd begun on Day 3. I followed the process and found it easy since I already had a vision from the first day of drawing. It was simply a matter of completing what I'd begun. I would not have completed the drawing as quickly as I did had I not been involved in this challenge.

I am so happy we did this challenge. It felt good to create each day and to reflect on the process. I am much more in touch with ways I create daily. I hope we do another and longer creating challenge soon. Make sure to follow our young creator Micah who has already begun his own seven-day challenge! And stay posted for our next event--we'd love to have more people join us and tap into their own creating energy!

(And now I've created yet another blog post!)

The Creating Challenge - Day 3

It's amazing that we are already on Day 3 of The Creating Challenge!!!

My (Wendy) creating challenge today was to read a short booklet I've had on my "list of things to read" and then use it as inspiration to create four exercises that teams can use to get past their creative or relational blocks. The goal was to have a short description for each exercise so that I can revisit it at a later date and add more detail for a step by step process.

I found that by approaching this as a creating challenge, I was able to accomplish the task more quickly than I would have otherwise. After reading the booklet, it took about 15 minutes total to come up with each of the four exercises with their description and name. At completion I found that I did not want to spend any time being with what I created but I wanted to be done and go on to the next creating challenge which was to create this blog post. Then I will be complete. Except then I want to start the next creating challenge which may be a two day project...

This is actually really addicting!!! Having a structure for creating, as simple as it is, gives direction to the process and gets both my right brain (creative) and left brain (structural) engaged. I love it!

What is it like for you by Day 3 of your Creating Challenge? Share in the comment space below!

The Creating Challenge - Day 2

Phew! It's been a grueling two days of creating, but we're halfway to the end of our challenge! (Pausing for laughter... What? No laughter?)

Today I wrote a blog post entitled "Meet Me at the Intersection of Gifted Way and Asynchronous Drive". I had promised someone I'd write a blog post for an event she's organizing, so this was a creating opportunity with a deadline.

I followed the process we've laid out--the four steps outlined in "The Creating Challenge - Day 1." I knew I wanted to write a blog post, and had a vague sense of the topic. But I really didn't know what to envision other than a finished blog post. The current state of the creation was just a few ideas in my head, so I moved straight to taking action. I dove into writing and found I had little direction. I had to stop to do some brainstorming, then something coherent seemed to come together. After tinkering with wording and grammar, I hit "publish," and now I have another blog post out there in the world.

As I sit with that reality, I'm feeling grateful yet separate from my creation. I usually feel good when I complete something such as this. I don't feel particularly euphoric today, but I'm thankful that I met the day's challenge.

The irony here is that I'm creating another blog post to describe how I've created a blog post. Maybe a little laughter is called for now? (C'mon--I'm beggin' ya!)

The Creating Challenge - Day 1

Welcome to Day 1 of the Brilliant Chaos Creating Challenge! Both Lisa and I (Wendy) have been inspired by the work of Robert Fritz through his book "Creating" (open your books to pages 173-176) and have taken a 4 day challenge to create 1 thing a day. This podcast is our creation for day 1...and we invite YOU to join us and try out intentional creating for 4 days in a row too!

Here are the parameters:
1. Before you take any actions, sit down for a minute or two and conceive of the result you want to create. (Have a clear vision of the finished creation.)
2. Note the current state of the creation. (What is the current status and materials/elements needed to complete the creation?)
3. Take action. (Move from vision to completed reality. Stay true to the vision and resist improvisation.)
4. Once you have finished the project, look at it and live with it for a few minutes. (Reflect on the process and your experience.)

This challenge is meant to include creation challenges that can be completed within 10 minutes up to a few hours. You choose!

We'll be posting our creations and experience each of the 4 days of this challenge and welcome you to do the same. Join us and see what creating on a daily basis does for you!

Here we go!