Worried about losing your creative mojo?

Are you afraid to com­mit to really incor­po­rate busi­ness skills and tools because you might lose your cre­ative mojo? Do you have trou­ble adding up 2+2 to get 4?  Have you shied away from think­ing about busi­ness because it hurts your brain? Do you think in images and can never quite get things going in a strait line like fig­ur­ing out what and where you want to go with your busi­ness? Are you resigned to being a starv­ing artist?

You are not alone…creatives through out his­tory have strug­gled with such ques­tions, even more so since the time Descartes when lin­ear left brain think­ing became the accepted lens for view­ing the world. The indus­trial rev­o­lu­tion and the past cen­tury inten­si­fied the pri­macy of lin­ear thought even more by hold­ing sci­ence, math and other “hard” skills up as the stan­dard for deter­min­ing intel­li­gence and cul­tural acceptability.

The result has been a heavy reliance on lin­ear vision  pro­duced gen­er­a­tions of unimag­i­na­tive peo­ple at the expense of those who were less lin­ear. Con­se­quently, lit­tle atten­tion has been paid to dis­cov­er­ing a more holis­tic inte­grated way of see­ing and learn­ing. In many ways this neural split has been a major fac­tor of the gen­eral deval­u­a­tion of cre­ativ­ity and art in par­tic­u­lar. Leav­ing us, has with few excep­tions,  left brain focused peo­ple who have dif­fi­culty “see­ing” the world and right brain folks  who have prob­lems adding.

Such are the issues that Lisa Sonora Bean takes on in her blog The Cre­ative Entre­pre­neur and her book The Cre­ative Entre­pre­neur: A DIY Visual Guide­book for Mak­ing Busi­ness Ideas Real. Lisa’s book and research serve as an exam­ple of how whole brain think­ing can pro­duce a sum greater than its parts.Her MBA focus was on find­ing ways to teach both cre­atives and lin­ear types to fully develop their brain func­tions and in the process she turned the busi­ness devel­op­ment process on its head by giv­ing us a way to approach the left brain world of busi­ness using the visual tools we are famil­iar with. But she didn’t stop there, she acknowl­edged the impor­tance of spir­i­tual devel­op­ment as the first step in build­ing a busi­ness espe­cially one based on cre­ative processes so the first part of her book is devoted to to help­ing us uncover our hid­den gifts.

The four paths

The gen­er­ally accepted way of start­ing to build any busi­ness is to have some idea as to where you want that busi­ness to go. Lisa has taken some of the cur­rent some of the cur­rent think­ing in con­scious busi­ness the­o­ries and added her own visual tools. Using the man­dala, an arche­typal sym­bol of unity and whole­ness, as a model she com­bines left and right brain func­tions. Using graph­ics and mul­ti­me­dia graphic tools she shows us    the “sweet spot of unity” formed by the inter­sec­tion of four paths:

Heart & mean­ing
This path helps us dis­cover to fol­low our heart and cre­ative dreams giv­ing us a frame­work to exam­ine if we are see­ing “what we enjoy” at the expense other points of view.

Gifts & flow
We have been trained to suf­fer, that value is always deter­mined by the amount of “hard work” and “sweat” involved in achiev­ing what we set out to do. This pair shows us how suf­fer­ing has no rela­tion­ship to achieve­ment and that “com­ing easy” is a true met­ric of being in the flow with our gifts.

Value & prof­itabil­ity
Shows us that cre­at­ing a cos­tumer cen­tric busi­ness that cre­ates and deliv­ers value is cru­cial open­ing the door for get­ting paid for that value.

Skills & tools
Helps us see and use the busi­ness tools appro­pri­ate to our busi­ness and vital to our achiev­ing suc­cess in the first two paths.

These four paths rep­re­sent the ever spi­ral­ing jour­ney of clar­ity we all seek when we are in cre­ative flow with our­selves and our work. The “sweet spot” is sim­ply the start­ing point which when refined starts us on a greater jour­ney of heal­ing and dis­cov­ery. To help us along the way Lori includes “prompts” or ques­tions through­out each part level of the spiral.

Begin­ning brain integration

One of the over­rid­ing causes of artists fail­ure in busi­ness is let­ting the fear of los­ing their cre­ativ­ity to left brain busi­ness mas­tery. Lisa debunks this argu­ment with skill and her grasp of graphic tools, quite sim­ply she  leads us through what she calls the “four Modes of Func­tion­ing” or more pre­cisely “how we get things done. Becom­ing aware of the  func­tions of sens­ing, think­ing, feel­ing and act­ing we can become aware of the pres­ence of the con­struc­tive and destruc­tive ele­ments of each through graph­i­cally express­ing their effect on us.

Join­ing the two sides
The tools Lisa set us up with are now ready and avail­able for us to tackle the seem­ingly and fre­quently avoided chal­lenge of strate­gic plan­ning, brand­ing, mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing our value. Once again she coaxes us to look at these left brain tasks using our right brain tools.

Mag­i­cal results
The real value of this book is its mag­i­cally imag­i­na­tive way of giv­ing users a way to move into whole brain liv­ing and even­tu­ally a more inte­grated view of the world.

Inter­est­ingly enough I can’t imag­ine a sim­i­lar book writ­ten from the left brain view that could be even a smidgen as effec­tive or close to pro­vid­ing as much fun!

Rec­om­men­da­tion:

Don’t just buy it …use it!!! And bet­ter yet buy the book and attend one of her work­shops, it will be time and money well spent…you deserve it!!