Ep 135: Transforming Tension into Creativity: The Path of Least Resistance

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Truth and Transcendence, brought to you by BeingSpace with Catherine Llewellyn.

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Truth and Transcendence, episode 135.

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Today I want to talk to you about one of my favourite books of all time, which is the Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz Learning to become the creative force in your own life.

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This was written in the early 80s and it quickly became a cult classic, and at the time when I read it, I think everybody I knew had a copy.

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We were all reading it.

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We all thought it was fantastic.

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We followed what was in it to varying degrees.

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I found it particularly compelling and I still use things that I learned from this fantastic book, and in fact, robert Fritz and his wife, ros Hanaman now run workshops in the US around the principles in this book.

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So why do I love this book?

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I think for me, the thing that was most liberating and interesting about it was this idea that we can fundamentally change our relationship with wanting something that we don't yet have, and that we can transform that experience from one of tension to one of creativity.

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Now, there are a lot of different ways to do that, but why I find that particularly compelling as an idea is because I've noticed in myself and in others that quite often, the minute we set an objective or a gender or a goal or an aim of some kind, while we may have enthusiasm about it or excitement about it, either by ourselves or with a group that we're doing it with, whatever it may be, very often there's a pull in the other direction, which is the pull that says it's going to be a lot of effort, it's going to cost a lot.

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I have resistance to that.

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It's going to be difficult, we may fail, it may not work, we may not have enough information.

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All of those negative pulls that can occur almost mirror the pull towards the thing that we want.

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Now, I suspect that most of us have had that experience at least once or twice, and some of us have that experience a lot of the time.

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I remember years ago, when I was in sales.

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It was a very stressful environment.

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We wanted to achieve our goals, we were all working together, we believed in our organization, we believed in what we were doing, we believed in the services we were offering, but we also were racked with all sorts of negative fears and concerns and worries about whether we're going to achieve the goal or not, and so on, which actually made our lives miserable whether or not we achieved the goals.

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Even when we achieved our goals, we were just so exhausted.

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I remember one time three of us at the end of the month we'd actually got through the month, we'd achieved our goals, we'd had great.

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Let's go back to one of our houses to celebrate, have dinner, have a glass of wine.

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We got back, sat there, made the food, had a couple of glasses of wine and all of us just fell asleep.

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Woke up hours later the food was cold and congealed.

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We felt terrible.

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We were still exhausted.

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At that point we realized something was not right in terms of our relationship with our creativity, in terms of trying to achieve our goals.

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Admittedly, we were much younger then.

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We had a lot to learn in many ways, but for me that's an example of not really doing it right in terms of creativity.

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So Robert Fritz actually did an awful lot of research and learning and he was very involved with Peter Senge, who you may have heard of, very wise man, and he came up with this notion the path of least resistance.

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I'm just going to read you something from the back cover of the book, but I think it's quite illustrative.

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What he says is Fritz's most astounding finding is that once an individual makes a conscious choice to be the predominant creative force in his or her own life, that life is changed forever.

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Possibilities open up.

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Projects are born from other projects and the practice of being true to yourself, your project, your vision of life becomes more and more effortless.

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More important, it dispels the idea that you have to be born.

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In quotes, creative Creativity is a skill that can be learned, practised and mastered, and here he's saying that pretty much all of us, whether or not we know it, longed to create something, and that includes the people who have already created something.

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We long to create more, something else, even better and more interesting, whether that's a work related thing or an artistic thing, or whether it's simply good health or a beautiful family life, whatever it may be.

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So he brings this beautiful, optimistic approach and I'm going to try and describe one of the principles, one of the things he speaks about in the book, and I will not do this as beautifully as he does, but I will do it from the point of view of somebody who's been working with this idea for years and finding it very, very helpful.

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So this particular idea is, if you think about going, choosing something that you want.

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So in my case, I choose something that I want Immediately.

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What can then spring up is all of the parts of me that think I can't have that, or it's the wrong thing to want or it's not the right time In other words, resistance and that acts as a breaking force on my ability to move towards accomplishing that particular objective, whatever it might be.

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Now what's happening there is that my inner defensiveness or my inner self-protectiveness is running on over time when that happens, because it's trying to protect me from failure and the disappointment of failure and the cost of failure and the possible damaging effect of failure.

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So this is a natural, powerful, useful and relevant aspect of ourselves that I believe exists in all of us to one degree or another.

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Alternatively, it's possible to get clear about the thing that I want and instead of ignoring or resisting my own resistance, or instead of simply feeling that as a breaking force on my endeavours, instead I can put aside my clarity about what is the thing that I want.

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I can then pay some attention to getting very, very clear about what is true for me in this moment now, in relationship to the area where I have the goal.

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So let's say it's good health.

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Let's say I want good health and I've worked out all sorts of criteria and parameters for what I mean by that exactly.

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Then up pops the parts of me that say, oh God, I can't do that, I haven't got the willpower, it's too cold to go out for a walk, which is a thought I have sometimes these days, at the moment, at the point of recording, which is the middle of winter or I might think, whereas I've had this thought before, I know people have this thought oh, I can't go to the gym until I've lost weight, but I can't lose weight until I go to the gym.

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Or I can't do that because I haven't got right shoes yet, or I haven't got the right.

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I can't change my diet because I'm working really hard this month and I need the energy I get from sugar-rich foods which I'm currently eating.

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So all of these resistances that come up, if I just say, ok, I understand that, and then turn my attention to what's the truth now and then examine my existing health this is just an example, the health one and say, ok, right, I am perfectly capable of walking up and down the hill from my cottage to the main road.

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I can do that quite easily.

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Good, ok, I'm carrying I'm such and such a weight which is different from the weight I would like to be, or most of my clothes fit comfortably, but there's one particular skirt that doesn't fit comfortably at the moment.

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So my breathing is good, my sinuses are fine, my hair is growing well.

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The whole picture of what is true now.

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That immediately creates a completely different experience from the experience of lack, which is where I might have started from in relationship to the goal or the aim of good health.

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Because then, once that truth in the current moment is understood, a lot of the emotional charge, fear of failure and everything else seems to dissipate, because what you've got there is you've got two different statements.

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One is the thing I want, the other is what I have now.

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And what I have now might include some fears and concerns about the objective, or some feelings of fragility or a self-doubt, but that's part of the picture, it's not the whole picture.

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So those two things being clarified, that creates a creative tension between the two, because we will naturally then our energies will naturally then start us moving in the direction of the thing that we want from the strong foundation of where we are now.

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Now I've no idea whether my description of that actually resonated with you as something that feels like a real thing or something that feels in any way helpful I know it's helpful because I've been practicing it for years and it works really well or another way that particular thing works is if we're in a situation where things are terrible, we hate the way things are we can actually clarify for ourselves, right, what is the actual truth of everything that's happening at the moment the good, the bad and the ugly and then do it the other way around and say, great, how do I want the situation to be?

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And then you're creating that creative tension, but from the other way round.

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So you've sidestep the whole process of inner conflict between I want this, I can't have it.

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Essentially and it's interesting because in our particular culture, certainly over here in the UK, there's quite a strong set of beliefs around the idea that we can't create unless we are up against it.

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We can't be productive unless we're in danger of something awful happening.

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And you'll notice this often in sales situations where someone wants to sell you something and they start off by trying to persuade you that your life will not work for you or that your life will be terrible if you don't change something.

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So, in other words, it's creating an experience of lack and disturbance in order to then create a tension of wanting something different.

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Now that's a negative impetus.

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It's a trying to run away from or rescue ourselves from something, from ourselves, from our own lives.

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And it can work, it can create an impetus and a motivation, but it's not a creative way to do it.

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It's a stress orientation.

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It's a stress motivation.

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It's an escape motivation, whereas what I'm talking about is a creative process.

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So I highly recommend the Path of Least Resistance.

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It's not a long book.

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It's available on Amazon.

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I love it.

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I highly recommend that you get a copy and see what you think.

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So thank you for listening and have a wonderful week.

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See you next time.

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Thank you for listening to Truth and Transcendence and thank you for supporting the show by rating, reviewing, subscribing, buying me a coffee and telling a friend If you'd like to know more about my work.

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You can find out about mentoring, workshops and energy treatments on beingspaceworld.

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Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time.

Ep 135: Transforming Tension into Creativity: The Path of Least Resistance

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