Don’t Forget to Play

Some of you have made resolutions–big ones, small ones, ones you make every year, ones you have never made before. You are focusing hard on keeping them going. Maybe a week into the New Year, you are feeling some pressure to keep going.

May I add something? Please give yourself some time to play. Not work harder. Not work smarter. Play. Not do the laundry first, not check your to-do list. Play.

Play is vital work. It sets your brain up to solve problems. It relaxes your muscles and allows you to take a break from the usual tension, fear and anger. Play is one of the most important activities you can do every day.

What’s play? It’s activities that do not end in a completed project. Play is exploring without expectation of completion. Play is experimenting without any anticipation of a result, of winning. Play is the most important part of your day.

Play is fresh air and sunshine into your soul. Play is a big space to allow thoughts to grow. Play heals. Don’t shortchange yourself. Don’t push it to the end of the day. Don’t discipline yourself out of play.

—Quinn McDonald is a writer who is working on the book on your inner heroes and your inner critic.

Nix the Fix

Over at Create Mixed Media, I wrote an article about first aid for creative wounds. Not the physical ones, the psychological ones, the ones that seem to hurt more and longer.

What can you do to help a friend whose creativity has been hurt? It’s tricky, but here are four reactions that work for me.

1. Listen. Really listen while the person tells the story of anger or hurt. Don’t interrupt, and don’t start to plan what you are going to say. Just listen.

2. When your friend finishes the story, show you have listened by paraphrasing back your friend’s emotion. “That’s horrible! Having your cat stolen is sad and crazy. I can see how upset you are.”

3. Empathize
Empathy makes friends feel supported,  not guilty. “What? You let your cat out at night? What sort of an idiot does that? No wonder the cat got stolen.” This is not the time to teach accountability. Better response: “You must be heartbroken. Can I help you look for your cat?”

Don’t top your friends story. “I know just how you feel. I had my dog and cat stolen the night my house burned down.” That makes your friend stop her own emotions and take care of yours, denying that she is in pain and asking after your situation.

Never say, “I know just how you feel.” You know how you feel, not how your friend feels. Telling your friend you know how she feels cuts off the conversation. It switches the emphasis to you.

4. Ask your friend what she would like you to do to help. Please don’t fix. “Fixing” is the reflexive offering of advice when none has been asked for, or is called for. When we see someone in pain, the instinct to fix may be huge, particularly if you are an extrovert or an expert in the area of the problem.

Fixing isn’t helpful. It doesn’t address what your friend wants or needs. It assumes you know the answer to her problem and you are taking over the job of steering the other person’s life. Without any permission except your own.

Fixing doesn’t work because it creates a new problem–your friend feels obligated to make you feel good by taking your advice, which is often not suited for your friend’s problem.

Fixing is meant to be helpful, but here comes that perspective problem again. What looks helpful to you, makes you look condescending–after all, here is your friend in pain, and you have the easy fix that s/he wasn’t clever enough to figure out. Ouch.

Fixing puts your friend in a bad position. If she tells you that your idea won’t work, she risks making you angry. Who wants that on top of her current problem? If she takes your advice and it doesn’t work, well, it was her decision to follow your advice. No one wins.

It might be a better to ask your friend what kind of help she wants. Offer encouragement. Offer support. No fixing needed.

So is this blog post fixing? Nope. It’s just information. What you do with it is up to you.

—Quinn McDonald is a creativity coach, who studied “not fixing” as a major skill in coaching school.

Simplifying a Complicated World

The world is not easy to navigate. It’s complex and drains a lot of energy from you. Complicated connections. Pull one thing and a whole lot of others come apart, too.

Lots of tangled wires, all connected.

Sometimes, when we don’t do anything except witness–watch and wait, take notes before acting or jumping to conclusions–we get more information. That step–being a witness instead of a fixer–holds the space for learning.

Choosing to be a fixer means we rush in with an answer, a suggestion, a solution as soon as we sense the connection is complicated. We want to simplify it, cut it apart, all before we are sure what  the problem really is. Because solving problems gives us a shot at being a hero. If we are a witness, and wait for information, well, time could be lost.

It’s a twisted fence, ugly from this view. Complicated, too.

Time doesn’t get lost. We do, but time does not. Time knows exactly where it is. When we stand still, stay calm, witness, take notes, don’t give advice till we know what we are doing, we catch up with time. We gather information. We don’t take on work that isn’t ours to do. We see what is ready to resolve itself without our help.

A simple pattern evolves.

And then, in the sharp shadow of understanding, the information becomes not only clear, but beautiful. Sometimes without our getting involved at all. The shadow of the fence on the sidewalk shows, not the complicated twisted pattern, but a simple light and dark outline of connections.

The other side of complicated is not simple, it’s waiting. So we can learn more.

—Quinn McDonald is a creativity coach who learns on her walks every day.

The Problem-Solving Bee

The bee landed in the pool next to me. They can walk on the water for a few seconds. But much longer and the chlorine will do him in quickly. I’m allergic to bees, so I’ve figured out a way to splash/scoop them out and get them on dry land. Most of the time, they take a few minutes to buzz their wings dry, and then take off.

This one was different. He flew a few inches into the air and landed again. This time, he landed in my drinking glass, or, more precisely, drinking plastic. I’d finished my water, so the glass was dry. I fully expected the bee to climb out. But he didn’t. He walked around the bottom of the glass, bumping into the edge. He did not crawl up the side, he kept circling the bottom of the glass, looking for a way out.

The whole top was open to the sky, available for flying, but he didn’t do that. He didn’t look up where the solution was. He kept looking straight ahead and running into the glass.

The bee was not going to do the one thing he needed to gain his freedom–look around, get a different perspective. And it occured to me that I am just as stubborn as that bee. I keep repeating the same solution, not looking up, not finding a new way. I’ll circle my problem, bumping my head against the wall for days before it occurs to me to look up, to see their was an open space right over my head. A way out, in easy reach.

The only difference between a groove and a rut is the length of time you’ve been going around and your satisfaction level with the route.

Quit circling. Look up. It’s the way out.

Bee image: From the USDA website.

–Quinn McDonald is a creativity coach who helps her clients look up at the big blue sky of possibility right over their heads.

Under the Mistake, Gold

“Sometimes it hits me that I’m wrong about most things. About time. About my place in space. About the nature of the body. About the nature of the divine. About human nature. About what death is. About who I am and who my kids are. And about what the creek needs to support the salmon and all its visitors.

But heavens, let’s not worry about being wrong! I’m gradually learning that, paradoxically, it’s the foolsgold–the blunderings, giving ups, breakdowns, in spite ofs, chance encounters, shatterings, letting gos, and mess-ups, that has led to most of the creativity in my life, not the sweet making of something beautiful, or “enlightened” inspiration, and certainly not feeling in control. It’s the opposites, listenings, buzz hums,  the falling (leaping) down the rabbit hole, the stepping through the looking glass, barefoot, with no suitcase, in new territory.”

–Susan G. Wooldridge, Foolsgold, p. 88.

Transformation. Tape, ink, stitching, © Quinn McDonald. All right reserved.

After reading that, I began to wonder why, when we notice we are wrong, we are so concerned with having been wrong, instead of eager to have the skill of discernment and a chance to practice problem solving.

What exciting, wonderful, practical or clever thing have you learned recently from making a mistake?

Here’s my list: I need seven hours of sleep, no matter how much I think I can get by on five or six.

Rushing in the studio is directly proportional to the project failing at the last moment.

Not walking in the morning means losing important incubation time for ideas.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer, life- and creativity coach.

Archival Papers: Not Always The Best

Newspaper, magazine strips, fading out in the rain and sun.

When I was a child, I had a method for handling problems. With two older brothers and parents who had their own problems, sharing mine didn’t seem like a smart choice. So I would write my worries on strips of blue-lined, rough, tablet paper, tear them up and “hide” them–bury them under a tree. Doing that taught me that paper is plant material and rots. I was fascinated at the decomposition of the paper–and, I was sure, my worries. Mother Earth took them back and made them go away.

As I got older, I developed a ritual of handling worries–always with writing, always with strips. Some paper strips got burned, some got pulped and put into handmade papers, some woven into journal covers. I then switched to ripping the strips from newspapers and magazines and letting nature take care of the paper. I’d write worries down, pull a thread through the top and hang them outside to bleach and fade in the sun and rain. By the time the strips disintegrated, I was done worrying.

Skip forward several decades: I’m a raw-art journaler, but still have worries. One afternoon, I remember the strip method,  grab some paper from the studio, write, sew through the top, hang them from the orange tree in the backyard. In the Phoenix heat. Days go by, 110 degrees, 111 degrees, 108 degrees, never below 90 at night. I hit the papers with a stream from the hose. Nothing deteriorates. The strips stay readable. My worries don’t

Archival strips--still tidy, unbleached or faded. You know, archival.

fade. My brow furrows over this.

And then I realize. . .I have used archival materials. Archival pens, archival,  acid-free, lignin-free paper. My worries are preserved. Possibly forever. Only then comes the wabi-sabi moment.

The revelation comes with a blast–isn’t this what I do (however unintentionally) with worries–preserve them, hang on to them, refuse to let them deteriorate?  And so they’ll stay with me, until I am willing to let them deteriorate, bleach out in the sun, fade in the passage of time.

—Quinn McDonald is a writer and chief learning officer of QuinnCreative. She teaches others what she’s learned. Sometimes they are interested.

The Problem With “Fixing”

We are so helpful. We have to keep things perfect. When things aren’t perfect, even if that happens in someone else’s life–we have to fix it.

You don't need a toolbox to help

My husband slipped on the kitchen floor a few days ago and crashed into the kitchen island. He will have to have surgery and an immobilized arm for a while. Life for us will be significantly different for a few months. We will have to make work adjustments. He will have to ask for help. I have to drive him everywhere, pick up his chores and do them along with mine. I won’t be cheery all the time, and I’m sure there are frantic days ahead. My focus is to be mindful, balance humor and despair, and know it’s OK to harbor murderous fantasies as long as I don’t act on them.

As people hear about this, I will inevitably hear  a lot of “fixing” advice. Sure, people say the first thing that comes to mind. It’s almost as if they need to create a space between misfortune and themselves. But I’ve gathered a few things people say from some other incidents in my life–the other rotator cuff of ’04, the fire of ’02, my mom’s death in ’03–and I’d like to pass on what sounds like “fixing” –things you think would fix the problem.

I notice that they are not necessarily things people actually do, but things that sound good.  The next time you get ready to “help” someone by using one of these phrases, re-think it. Most likely you don’t know all the financial, emotional, or work circumstances involved. And a “fix” generally is a big-picture idea that has small-detail consequences that are hard to apply.

“I had the same thing happen to me two years ago. . .” This isn’t about you, and telling that story is not helpful to the person you are telling it to.

“Well, what can you expect if you run in bare feet?” Thank you, Obviousman. What do you expect for an answer?

“It could have been worse. . .” What, this isn’t bad enough for you? When a dominant arm is strapped to your side, you need help in the most interesting ways. That’s plenty bad for me, thanks.

“Here’s what you should do. . .” You don’t know this person well enough to take over responsibility for their decision-making, even if it’s your sister.

“Just hire someone to do the yard and house work. . .” Unless you are offering to pay for these services, don’t suggest it. Most freelancers, if they have medical insurance, have a giant deductible that has to be paid out of pocket before the insurance kicks in.

“You’re so lucky that it wasn’t worse. . .” Lucky is winning the lottery. If that didn’t happen, don’t use the word ‘lucky.’

“It’s all God’s will . . .” Stop blaming higher powers for dumb accidents. Accidents are called that because no one wanted them to happen and they don’t have a lot of purpose. I’m with the Buddhists on this–stop trying to get ground under your feet and deal with the uncertainty that is.

“Really, some good will come from all this. . .” Unless you are personally going to make something fabulous happen, skip this one. Some things are just rotten, and getting through them is rotten. And it still has to be done. Self-discipline is a virtue you hate to practice.

“I’m not married and I have to do all the work all the time. Be glad you have a husband.” Sigh. It’s still not about you. When you are married it’s more than twice the work to take over the spouse’s chores. When you live by yourself, there is less laundry, less food (and you can eat over the sink), and half the people to make the mess in a smaller place.

So what is a good way to help? Be empathetic. You don’t need to fix this. Just witness it. A witness sees and notices but doesn’t turn into Dear Abby. If you offer help, expect it to be taken and be ready to give it cheerfully and without payback. You don’t have to offer help, either. You can say something like, “What a rotten break. I’m so sorry, ” or “I hate it along with you.” Empathy glides over bumps while advice has a nail in the tire.

If you do offer help, give a hint what kind you are willing to offer. Because if you ask “What can I do?” and your friend says, “Clean my house and drive him around on Tuesdays,” you’ll probably turn her down. If you say, “Can I bring you my clam and watermelon casserole?” you’ll get a polite turn-down and won’t have to offer anything else.

Being a witness is all that it takes to nourish a friendship. You don’t have to be a healer or a fixer.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer, life- and creativity coach. She has a business website at QuinnCreative.com and an art website at raw-art-journals.com

Finding an Answer Like a Bee

The bee landed in the pool next to me. If he doesn’t get scooped out, the chlorine will do him in quickly. I’m allergic to bees, so I’ve figured out a way to scoop them out and get them on dry land. Most of the time, they take a few minutes to buzz their wings dry, and then take off.

Bee at work

This one was different. He flew a few inches into the air and landed again. This time, he landed in my drinking glass, or, more precisely, drinking plastic. I’d finished my water, so the glass was dry. I fully expected the bee to climb out. But he didn’t. He walked around the bottom of the glass, bumping into the edge. He did not crawl up the side, he kept circling the bottom of the glass, looking for a way out.

The whole top was open to the sky, available for flying, but he didn’t do that. He didn’t look up where the solution was. He kept looking straight ahead and running into the glass.

The bee was not going to do the one thing he needed to gain his freedom–look around, get a different perspective. And it occured to me that I am just as stubborn as that bee. I keep repeating the same solution, not looking up, not finding a new way. I’ll circle my problem, bumping my head against the wall for days before it occurs to me to look up, to see their was an open space right over my head. A way out, in easy reach.

Quit circling. Look up. It’s the way out.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach. She is circulating journals around the world in an experimental project.

“Soft Skills”–Necessity in Hard Times

Mention that you teach writing, a key business skill, and a software instructor will say, “Oh, a soft skill. I don’t teach those–I teach software.”

The generally accepted belief is that software requires an instructor with special knowledge, but skill like listening, writing, presenting, running a meeting or solving problems come naturally, or can be picked up by being in an office.

Soft skills are hard to come by without instruction. Soft skills need practice and support. You don’t learn them by listening alone; you learn them by practice. As with most change in life, the people who surround you are not eager to have you change, because it demands change on their part, too.

Learn a computer program, and something happens on the screen. It’s easy to see, and if you want it to happen again, you repeat the process. What you learn is the keystroke to create the desired result.

Soft skills don’t work that way. You learn by doing, and each time you take the action it feels more natural and the results get more obvious. Practice counts in soft skills. Practice involves making mistakes, learning how to fix them, moving on.

Soft skills are hard. I think soft skills don’t get respect because of their name.Look at the power in words that have ‘hard’ in them–hardball is playing tough, hardcore is uncompromising, hardshell it tough and protective. Hardheaded is single-minded and persistent. Hard news is important, soft news is cheap, starchy filler. No one wants to be soft-headed, softhearted, or an old softie.

But the very skills called “soft” are the ones desperately needed when the few are pressed to do the work of many. Listening skills and problem solving aren’t taught in school, but they make businesses successful. And the results of listening and problem solving are often presented in writing.

Judging from the number of unintelligible emails, confusing instructions, unclear requests, and rambling directions I’ve read in the last two years, there are a lot of people who need to learn how to write, and write clearly.

Before you think “soft skills” are not important, think about the power of writing–almost all Web content is writing, after all. Writing clearly and concisely is a vital business skill. Make it a “must have” on your training schedule. It’s a portable skill that you can’t do without.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer who develops writing courses for businesses. She teaches Writing for the Web; How to Write A Good Article, Beginning to Publication; Writing and Giving Powerful Presentation and other, well, soft skills courses. See her work at QuinnCreative.com

–Image of soft-serve ice cream: http://www.cactice.com

The Hard Edges in Life

My father was always studying, taking notes, learning. So much so, that my predominant memory is of the back of his head, bent over a book. He spent each evening reading, studying, working on projects he brought home from the office. At home, his workspace was also our dining room. We knew to clear the table quickly after dinner, slide the table back into the slot in the wall,  and leave my father to his work. He was neither a tyrant nor a pal. He was, in fact, a rocket scientist.

Taking care of the edges

Occasionally, he would become briefly involved in one of his children’s lives. One afternoon, I was destroying a slice of bread, tyring to get cold peanut better on a freshly-baked slice. He surveyed the scene, took in my frustration, and said, “Take care of the edges, the middle will take care of itself. ” He was right.

The sturdy crust helped the edges hold onto the cold peanut butter, and as I carefully applied it up to the edges, the stiff  peanut butter  warmed and made it easy to spread to the soft middle.

Turn out that this advice works well in the rest of life as well. Fitted sheets attached by the corners pull the wrinkles out across the middle of the bed.

Start the glue on a collage at the edges, work it carefully toward the corners, and the middle won’t be overworked and buckle.

Start a story at the edges–with research, character development, a plot line, and the middle of the story won’t be a problem.

And while we are talking about problems, they, too, are best solved from the edge in. When we jump in without thinking of the cause, trying to fix the heart of the issue, we allow it to pull at the soft belly of our pain. Work at the edge, at the cause, and by the time we get to our pain, we understand it better and are ready to let go of the pain and see the growth.

My father has been dead for more than 28 years, but I never scoop peanut butter out of a jar without thinking of his clever aphorism that has served my sandwiches–and me–well.

–Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach who helps people through transitions in life and re-invention. She is also a life coach and workshop leader. See her work at QuinnCreative.com (c) Quinn McDonald 2007-9.  All rights reserved