Creating Growth
Challenging Our Creative Growth
I was in my Monday Flow group last week and the gentleman that hosts it referenced something I said the week before just as we were wrapping up. We were talking about growing creatively and I shared a philosophy that I learned many years ago. Since I’ve evolved my own thoughts and ideas on the concept. I’ve tried to follow it, live it and apply it to all aspects of my life.
I’m a chef by trade and can get in the kitchen and just go. I’ve worked just about every aspect of the business. I’ve worked restaurants, catering, fairs and outdoor events, pizza, pasta, steak, fish and on and on. I worked at the University of Scranton for almost 20 years. I’ve even worked as a chuckwagon cook for Vision Quest which was a program for incarcerated teens. We had a tractor trailer fitted with a mobile kitchen, with a stove, flat top, oven and small walk-in fridge and an even smaller reach-in freezer.
I know the order that things need to be prepped for in advance, things that can’t be done till the last minute. The ability to time things so that they can be plated up and served fresh and hot. It’s the 30 plus years of experience that I’ve been doing it. But there are still things that I’m learning.
It’s a simple concept, really. The things you have developed, have muscle memory for, the ability to do without thinking about and take for granted. We all have them, things that we do daily. We developed habits that we embed in our brains that automate the things that we have to do every day.
If your question this idea just try to change the way you do some of your daily hygiene routine. You don’t think about how to brush your teeth, or shave you just do them. Try putting your shaving cream on the other side of your face than you usually do. Then start shaving from the opposite side. You can do it but you’ll find that you need to think about it.
So, here it is. The inner white circle represents your current comfort zone. The red circle represents the new things that you want to learn. It doesn’t matter what it is, it’s going to be a little uncomfortable. But if you can challenge yourself and push through these awkward feelings and get to the other side, literarily in the case of our circle. Then you have expanded that comfort zone and have improved your abilities. Look at the diagrams below for the process.
Whatever it is that you’re trying to grow in, find and know your current comfort zone. Then push beyond that comfort and challenge yourself, experiment, do something new, untested. Something that will challenge your limits.
When this new challenge is committed to muscle memory, or memory recollection, and you can utilize it on demand, you’ve pushed past that zone and expanded you skills.
You know the cliche, wash, rinse, repeat. It’s very much like the concentric circles of a tree. You look at the Each season another ring appears as a result of your efforts. Does a tree feel the pain of growth? I don’t know, perhaps? I know that we can. We strive to find a comfort level in life and just settle in there. We seek the status quo. Mankind as a whole seeks equilibrium. That stable, comfortable, almost zombie like life. Where everything is stable.
I think it was Bob Dylan that said “there is nothing more stable than change.” So, that’s the challenge. Change is inevitable. Are we going to embrace change and make it work for us. The alternative is float along and our circumstances determine how we grow.
They say that you can count the circles of the tree to determine its age. I’d suggest that we could do the same. Our growth can be measured by the nourishment and sustenance that we feed our creative selves. This is the process that encourages growth, improvement and inspiration. It’s the boarders of our creativity that will encounter us and bring us to new levels and challenges. It’s the difference between staying on the highway or getting off to the back country roads and seeing what’s around us. For me I want to choose my Creative Path.