What if we lived in an environment where we had the space for our best ideas to thrive? Our best and most inventive opportunities exist beyond what we are used to…beyond what we know…and far beyond our status quo.

To often we find ourselves in what psychologists call “Liminal Space.” Liminal Space is: “a place where we stand on the threshold getting ourselves ready to move across the limits of what we were, into what we are to be.”

And while Liminal Space is great, for a season, as creative professionals we must constantly be moving forward. We can’t get comfortable on the edge of where we’ve been or where we’re headed. We have to be moving and we have to:

1. Break our routine. Not just break it…destroy it. Get in a place where we are forced to see, think, smell, and experience different things.
2. Be quiet. Shut down sound, distraction, and anything that grabs our attention. In order to go where we need to go, we have to clear the fog around us so we can see the proper route.
3. Fight status quo. Easy to do in groups…hard to do in self. We have to abandon our comforts and the things we have come to count on if we want to get out of our Liminal Space.
4. Be willing to chase your personal next. What is next for you and your art? We fall in love with the things we create that we know are successful, but reaching our potential means being willing to dig deep and find our NEXT art. It’s the sign of great artists.

What are some ways you engage your own personal potential?

Teacher, author, and creative Matt Appling has written a new book, Life After Art. Life After Art is not a book about becoming an “artist” in the traditional sense. It’s about a journey towards becoming more human – living the lives we were created to live. This is a book for everyone from teachers to truck drivers.

The goal of the book is to help adults get back in touch with the “child artists” that they used to be. Matt believes “You will be creating your entire life. You might as well do it on purpose.”

In Life After Art Matt addresses coming to terms with our limitations in life – limitations on our time, energy, resources and ultimately ourselves (something that perfectionists like me struggle with). Developing a healthy concept of failure – most of us have completely overblown concepts of what failure means, while missing the purpose it serves in life. As well as asking What will my life mean when it is over – what am I leaving behind? Am I striving for a “good” life, or have I settled for a “good enough” life? How much time to I spend being defeated by limitations in my life that cannot change? How much effort do I spend just trying to avoid the appearance of failure?

As an artist you probably need to read this book. I got the chance to interview Matt:

1. Tell us a little about yourself. You have a unique occupation mix.

• Yes, I took a really winding path to where I am today, so I sometimes feel like a jack of all trades. I started out by studying graphic design in college, because I was always a child artist. But rather than go into the design industry, I worked some freelance and went to seminary where I got my Masters of Divinity. Somewhere in that time, I decided that I wanted to be a bi-vocational minister, supporting myself as a teacher. So I got a teaching license. But teaching art was not even on my radar. It was complete providence as many doors closed and just the right one opened. It was amazing to see my life come back full circle to my first love in art.

2. So you started your blog in 2008, which is more fun for you blogging or book writing?

• They are both unique and fun disciplines to me. I’ve probably poured 450,000 words into the blog. It’s been my twenty mile march, the thing I’ve done three times a week for four years. I just could not have written the book without all that practice. The book felt like a moment of nearly divine inspiration really. It came like a lightning bolt, and I just wrote constantly for several weeks, knowing that if I didn’t it would be lost forever.

3. As an art teacher what is 1 thing creative people don’t realize about art?

• I think about how kids are so generous with their work, which is a major theme in the book. Children are not pretentious. They just want to share what they have made with people they love. I think sometimes the art world has an image of being less about “look what I made for you to enjoy” and more about getting attention for the artist. It seems a little bit more narcissistic, rather than being a humble offering of work for others to enjoy.

4. If you could meet one artist in all of history who would it be?

• Claude Monet. Impressionism is one of the high points of art history for me, and he basically founded the movement. It was his first impressionist painting that caught the ire of critics. The man wasn’t afraid of what the critics would think. I think he painted the way he wanted because it brought him happiness. I think I could learn a lot from a man like that.

5. You decided to write a book. What made you feel like a book was the right thing?

• I tried twice to write a book and it actually did feel all wrong. The tone, the subject were just not working. It was a complete struggle. So I scrapped it. It wasn’t until I became an art teacher and started discovering all these things about myself, about life, about spirituality that were coming through these little art lessons that I finally had something that really inspired me. Life After Art has been one of the easiest things I have written – because it was “right.” It’s not that it wasn’t a lot of work. But the inspiration was finally there to make the book work.

6. What do you hope people glean from reading your book?

• I hope people gain a healthy concept of themselves as beings who bear the image of a creative God. There are so many people who I think have achieved the American dream – the career, house, car, kids, but they aren’t happy with themselves. They feel like they’ve missed the mark and their lives don’t have much meaning. My own conscience has been racked many nights by this very fear. But sometimes, it’s not about “growing up” to find our purpose, it’s finding out who we were when we were children that we can truly find ourselves.

7. The cover is great, did you come up with that concept?

• I had no idea who the designer was until I got my own copy of the book. Connie Gabbert did the cover art, and I could not be happier. She has several great book covers to her credit, including Bob Goff’s Love Does. And just the fact that my book is pictured next to Goff’s great book is rather incredible.

http://conniegabbertdesign.com/category/book-covers/

8. Explain the premise of “Church Of No People”

• I started the blog a few years ago just as I was finishing seminary, and the idea was: what if I showed up to church with a sermon ready to go, but no one showed up to hear it? I could say whatever I wanted, without fear or reservation. There are lots of messages and topics that are taboo in church, but if no one showed up to church, they could finally be safe topics to discuss. So the blog has really been a sounding board where my thinking on a lot of topics has evolved and grown as I engage with people who actually do read it.

9. How do you feel art and faith exist in the same place?

• That’s a tough one, because a big chunk of the book is dedicated to the sad reality that in a lot of places, art and faith don’t exist together. I think that’s just sad. I think part of it is the old division between the “haves” and “have-nots.” A whole lot of people feel they are not qualified to be “creative” so they sit out. A lot of people don’t feel qualified to stand up and pray in church, so they sit quietly.
• Art and faith go together because they are fundamentally human activities, able to be engaged by anyone, equally accessible to anyone. And everyone should be able to pray, to sing, to worship and to create – to approach God through all their faculties and derive joy from it.

10. Where do you go when you are stuck and need to be inspired?

• I go to the book store. I’ll browse a couple of biographies. I’ll pick out a book from the art and architecture section, maybe a book on tiny houses (because tiny houses are the most creative.) I’ll even go to the children’s section, which is not at all creepy even though I don’t have kids. There are some incredible artists and writers dedicating their best efforts to children today, and they never fail to inspire me.

You  can grab Matt’s book HERE. It is very much worth the purchase.

 

Photo Props

When a new cast member is hired at Disney they are taken through “Traditions”, an orientation course designed to educate the cast member on the heritage of the culture that Disney has created. The expectation is set in this training that at Disney “We Create Happiness”. Creating happiness is no small order so executives created four “keys” that would help frame the path for cast members. The four keys are:

• Safety – Practice safety in everything you do. Take action to always put safety first and always speak up to ensure the safety of others.
• Courtesy – Be Positive. Project a positive image and energy. Be courteous and respectful to guests of all ages and go above and beyond to exceed those guests’ expectations.
• Magic – Make sure that your area is “show ready” at all times. (Clean, stocked, checked, prepped, and ready to go), stay attentive and be ready to “perform your role”, or do your job at all times.
• Efficiency – Perform your role efficiently so guests get the most out of their visit. Use time and resources wisely. Figure out how to innovate to improve efficient experiences. Communicate.

It does not have to be that daunting. These are actually pretty simple. When we take these keys and apply some of the amazing creativity God is using in our churches, the sky is really the limit. Imagine the experiences we could create for people who are looking for something that will change their lives forever. Applying these standards, the standards that represent the requirement Disney has places on its Cast, position us to create winning experiences. Hopefully these keys will serve as a map for our teams to help adjust our experiences…and maybe create happiness

Photo Props

Everyone!

Why? Because inside we all have something to offer.

Diversity breeds better ideas. When we’re all the same, our ideas are too similar. When we open our sandbox up for others to play, it creates voices, ideas, opinions, and concepts that we may have never thought of before but need in order to make better stuff.

The purpose of a creative meeting is to get ideas – the best ideas, not just our own ideas. We’re trying to get thoughts and concepts that can help us stretch and try new things. We won’t expose ourselves to anything new if we’re not opening our meetings to everyone possible, even if it’s a little uncomfortable.

When we invite people to our meetings, we look at it like this:

People from inside the organization.
People from outside the organization.
People who will end up being the users.
People from other departments.
People from other organizations.
Counters.
Nerds.
Cool kids.
Hipsters.
Artists.
Non-artists.
Secretaries.
Anyone else who can come.

Diversity matters and when we embrace it, we are better.

Once we’re done with the creative meeting, we can go into the editing process that is much more closed off for refinement. The more we have to edit and the more diverse of what we have to edit is, the better.

Who are you inviting to your creative meeting?

MONDAY. Late but still MONDAY.

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The call to creativity is being heard loudly and around the world. There are few industries where the call is quieter than in the world of Churches. Everyone believes that being a little more creative could help to woo potential parishioners to give our church a chance. So when we are commissioned, as a creative class, how are we to practically respond?

There are a few rules of engagement to help build a creative culture and foster creativity in our organizations. Lets be clear that the following are strategies that work well for these specific organizations and while they may benefit you every organization is unique and requires unique rules of engagement. According to MailChimp’s CEO, Ben Chestnut, there are five guidelines he follows that he believes helps build a creative culture at MailChimp:

1. Avoid rules and avoid order - Don’t just embrace chaos, but create a little bit of it. Constant change, from the top-down, keeps people nimble and flexible (and shows that you want constant change).
2. Give yourself and your team permission to be creative. Permission to try something new, permission to fail, permission to embarrass yourself, permission to have crazy ideas.
3. Hire weird people (how else do you think some of the greats made it to the top?) Not just the tattooed and pierced-in-strange-places kind, but people from outside your industry who would approach problems in different ways than you and your normal competitors.
4. Make meetings less about delegation and task management and more about the cross-pollination of ideas
5. Structure your company to be flexible. Creativity is often spontaneous, so the whole company needs to be able to pivot quickly and execute on them.

Over at Pepsi the creative team behind some of the most talked about commercials on TV right now have also narrowed their creative culture to five necessities:

1. Invite innovation
2. Challenge convention
3. Experiment – it is one of the only ways to grow as a company
4. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good
5. Learn, rinse and repeat – make sure that best practices, success and failures are shared across the organization

A few of the creative “musts” for our team include:

1. Collaborate freely and often – Voices help to find better results and the best ideas always wins. What one person can create on their own is minimal to what we can do as a team filled with trust. Give ideas space to live, be shared and exist before they are shot down.

2.  Ask a lot of questions – Find out the why behind the way. What are the story, the back-story, and the final story? Who are we talking to and what are we trying to tell them?  How can we do this better? Is this something that has never been tried before? If not, how can it be?

3.  Change the canvas. Move things. Meet in different places. Change the music. Embrace diversity. Canvas changes spur new creative thoughts.

4.  Once we settle on an idea…work that idea. Stay on the idea until we see it come to life.

5.  Create time to be creative. This is very hard. It has to be intentional and made a priority.

6.  Allow our best to be their best. Try to keep people in their sweet spots. Being in our sweet spot allows us to do our best work in our most passionate space.

7.  Give permission to fail. It’s ok as long as we are working, trying and innovating hard. And when we take a risk we are making sure we are not compromising momentum.

Photo Props:

I hate fear. Fear is just a big bully. It intimidates and tries its best to impose itself on creative people. Fear does this because it knows that when creative people stand up and do what they’ve been made to do that things will change, courage will grow, and we will start to fulfill our purpose as artists.

No one wants to be controlled by fear. It happens when we believe the lies that fear tries to sell us. No one or no organization has ever achieved its audacious goals by believing fear as it’s trying to kill courage at every turn. So where does fear hide?

• Fear hides in “business as usual” – The status quo is a safe place for fear to hide. How we’ve always done things is a great excuse to not be courageous and take chances. Business as usual is a great tool because most organizations reward employees for successfully doing what has always been done, which is backwards. Fear secretly tells us that if we depart from what we’ve always done in our past, we will not succeed in the future. Really? I would argue that if we don’t actively look to depart from our past, we won’t be around in the future to even know if it’s worked. It’s time we go on the offensive with business as usual. “Why” is like raid for business as usual. If we’re not asking why, we’ll never uncover if what we are doing even matters.
• Fear hides in success – Success often masks problems. Problems are opportunities waiting to be uncovered. Without intentionality, we never will uncover the opportunities that live inside our success, the future game changers waiting to propel us beyond our dreams, or the places where great lives just a little passed good. How fear hides in success is in comfort. When we’re starting anything, there’s risk, danger, and the very real possibility that tomorrow everything will evaporate. But then success builds this sense of false comfort that lulls us to complacency and then attacks us and cripples us. Never Settle. Ever. Refuse to be satisfied. There’s always more we can do and new chances to change everything.
• Fear of hard conversations.  - Don’t be afraid of them. There was a time I feared these conversations so much because I was afraid I wouldn’t be liked or that I might be wrong. That, and I disliked conflict. Guess what…all of these are legitimate fears. But in the end, none of them really are greater than truth, honesty, and respect. When handled properly, hard conversations build trust, relationship, and respect. They show that we care enough about what we’re doing to fight for it. People respect passion. Now, be nice and carry yourself with respect for others. Don’t be a jerk. No one likes a jerk, but you can have hard and honest conversations without being a jerk.
• Fear feeds the lie “We can’t do without it.” – Sacred cows exist in every organization. Fight them. Make sure the tools, resources, and vehicles we’re using are still relevant and matter. Are all of these things still creating the results we intended for them or are they still in use because we are afraid of what might happen if we remove them…without knowing? Sacred cows paralyze organizations and stifle creativity.

So this week, exercise courage. Have a conversation that stretches you, challenge a system that may not be working anymore, seek data that tells the truth beyond “just because.” God made you creative for more than great art. He made you creative because he knew people would need you to be brave enough to try. When you try, you just might uncover something so fresh and powerful that it changes everything.

Are you ready to be brave?

 

LinkedIn has been a mystery for many, including myself. I just never could understand how a creative person could interface it in a way that made it worth the time. That is why I was really excited when I got a chance to chat with Josh Turner. Josh is the founder of Linked Selling and Linked University. He’s built a number of businesses throughout his life and has a really great perspective.

1. Why should we care about LinkedIN?

LinkedIn is the definitive online network for the business community. Any organization that cares about tapping into business should care about it. For nonprofits, there’s a huge opportunity to leverage the database (LinkedIn) for market intelligence and even direct outreach. Civic and religious leaders care about business, and LinkedIn is where business is at in the online world.

2. What is the best way for a creative person to use LinkedIN? Is it just for “business people”

If you have a “business objective” then LinkedIn can play a role. For creative types, there is usually still a community engagement function that’s part of the process. LinkedIn can help with that, through local groups and collaborating with like-minded creative types.

3. WHat are 3 things creative people should do after they sign up and create a profile?

1. Within your profile, you can embed graphics, videos, presentations, etc. of your work. Be sure to do this, so your work stands out.
2. Export your contacts from your email client (outlook, gmail, etc) and import them into LinkedIn. Doing this, LinkedIn will send a bulk invitation requests to all of your contacts. This is a great way to quickly build up your database of LinkedIn connections.
3. Utilize a free tool such as hootsuite to set up automated status updates. Spending just a half hour each month, you can then have periodic updates appear on your connections’ home page. This is a great and easy way to stay top of mind with past clients, colleagues and friends.

4. What is the biggest secret of LI that creative people don’t realize?

You can privately message any person that is in a shared group. For this reason, you should join the maximum 50 groups that are relevant to your market and trade. Then, when you come across somebody who might be interested in your services….you’re just a couple clicks away from positioning yourself in front of them.

5. Is LI just a job board or are there ways to market on the site?

LinkedIn is far from just a job board. There are really a myriad of tactics that can be used to market and generate business on LinkedIn. Groups, status updates, content distribution, messaging, competitive analysis, market research, and more. For a more detailed look at some of the marketing approaches, visit http://linkedselling.com

6. You built a global marketing firm in less than a year. If you marketed a church what would be the first thing you would do?

Build a plan to engage the churchgoers across more areas of their life. Make the church a central hub for them, not just on Sunday. Specifically online, the popular social networks are a great place to start. Be sure to include a diverse content mix. If parishioners are your customers, then your content strategy should be similar to a business. The content you publish in the form of newsletters, facebook posts, blogs and the like should be more than just church-related content. The more you can speak to the things that really matter to your community, the more they will resonate with your “brand.”

A great example of this is what church youth groups often do. They promote fun activities, concerts, sporting events, etc. as outreach efforts. Adults can be targeted similarly, through events and activities that are in line with their interests.

7. What was your “platform” when you started on LI? Is it only for people who already have a “tribe”?

I began using LinkedIn in 2006. At the time, I started out with no platform. Through the principles discussed above, my “tribe” on LinkedIn alone is now above 8,500. Don’t let the numbers get in your way of putting yourself out there. Keep in mind that it’s not about quantity, it’s about the quality of the relationships you develop. Somebody with 100 connections could get far superior results than somebody with a ton of contacts, if they focus on building quality relationships and engage with prospects, clients and friends.

Do you use LInkedIN? If so, how have you used it? Also, if you are on LinkedIn, lets be friends and see how this works. Cool?

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I get bored. Often. And usually when I get bored, I start to drift.

I’m just being honest. Doing the same thing over and over doesn’t engage me creatively or fill me up…it drives me CRAZY! I like new challenges. I like new projects and new opportunities. I like to be told something can’t be done and then to go out and do it. My creative muscles are best engaged when I have the chance to try things that maybe haven’t been done. But recently while reading an article, I learned something I think us busy creative people tend to overlook – the power of boredom.

I mean, our lives are fast. We work, create, dream, tweet, text, pin…and that’s before we even get out of bed.

But maybe there’s something missing from our lives and from our creative equation. Maybe we need to learn to embrace boredom.

Boredom stretches our imagination. We need a little bit of it in our lives in order to be our creative best. Our best ideas rarely appear when we’re busy…they usually show up when we find ourselves in a place of solitude – a quiet place where we can actually pause a little and reflect. A place where we can actually process and allow our ideas to develop.

Boredom also helps us figure out new solutions. When we shift from complaining about being bored and take the challenge of criticizing by creating, our boredom actually helps us create new solutions.

Boredom also gives us permission to have conversations we wouldn’t normally have, to explore things that normally wouldn’t intersect our worlds, and positions us in a place where we can actually do the things we enjoy. Like designing for fun and not function, writing a song, writing a novel, painting, or whatever it is that you once loved to do that filled you creatively.

It’s been said that “boredom is a creative state”. Sure, I know the push back: “boredom can be uncomfortable”. True, but discomfort usually creates the best art.

So embrace boredom. If it’s in your job, figure out how to make it exciting again. That’s a creative challenge. Further, find some time to get into places where you force yourself into “boredom” to uncover your creative best
 

Photo Props

 

Working with artists is an amazing gift. They are some of the most talented people in an organization. It’s also likely they’re some of the most frustrating and messy. It’s like there’s a secret code to getting the most from this class of people who excel. They push our boundaries and challenge the status quo, but these two things also create tension in how we work with them.

So if you’re an artist and you have a manager who doesn’t understand you, print this off and talk it over with them. If you’re a manager and you don’t feel like you’re able to communicate properly with the creative people in your organization, consider this an introductory language class that will help you translate a few of the core needs of your creative geniuses.

• Start with the vision – Why matters…a lot. Creative people have a deep seeded passion to do something that matters. When they understand the “why” behind a project and can connect to it, they will create their best work. As the project progresses, they may drift. Bring them back to the why behind it all. There’s a seducing energy in starting and a joy in completing, so keep vision on the forefront.
• Invest the time – Spending time with artists matters…and it matters more than most other departments in an organization. Listen to them. Let them talk. Allow them space to process. Chat with them and answer their questions. When you give artists time, you’ll be amazed at the return it produces. Never be afraid to have a conversation. If things aren’t lining up. Stop and talk – it will work wonders.
• Know when to give some space – Artists connect emotionally with their projects. When you feel an artist creating distance, ask if they’re okay. If they say yes, give them space. Allow them the ability to create out of their emotions. It’s a necessary dance we do.
• Recognize & reward – Artists want to be recognized for what they do and rewarded for a good job. It doesn’t always have to be monetary. There are plenty of other ways to reward these teams. Find what you can do and do it as often as possible. It will keep your artists engaged and passionate.
• Embrace the unique – The creative process may not look how you thought. The clothes, music, spaces, may confuse some people. The approach they take to a project may be different than most. Remember: you hired these people because they are different. Don’t try to conform them. Give them space, set expectations, equip them, and then let them do what you hired them to do…create! If you have an expectation, put it out on the front end and you’ll be surprised how they blow you away. Allow them to be peculiar and you’ll love what they produce…most of the time. Andy Stanley has a great statement that says: “Do for one what you wish you could do for all.” This class of people you hired has to be different. Otherwise, you don’t really need them. Also, they will challenge you to do some things you are not comfortable with. Thats ok. Learn to trust each other because they will stretch you but need you to help guide them as well.

We may be a messy but we work hard, fight, cry, get scrappy, and invest like crazy. We’re probably different and might cause the occasional problem, but it’s not because we don’t care – it’s because we care passionately. So before you throw the paint out with canvas, take some time and try to and embrace all the possibilities that exist when we figure out how to work together.