Dr. Kim Hermanson

Facilitating Creative Breakthroughs

heart

Check out my new article in Greater Good magazine: 6 ways to break your creative block.

“Creativity is an intelligence. When we respect its needs—for freedom, not knowing, beauty, a big vision, intrinsic motivation, and space—it will flourish.”

1. Creativity needs space, both internal and external
– How can you give yourself internal space? If something is on your mind, take care of it before diving into new creative work.
– How can you give yourself external space? How can you give yourself the physical space to create?

2. Creativity is intrinsically motivated
– In this moment, what feels important to you? What does your heart have to say? Do you have a long-standing desire that won’t go away? That’s a directional pointer.
– Many creativity experts have suggested automatic stream-of-consciousness writing as a way to tap inspired ideas.

3. For your creativity to flourish, it wants your biggest vision
– Big visions are just that—they’re bigger than you. They’re bigger than your mind knows how to immediately solve. Be honest with yourself: What is your full vision? Don’t make the mistake of leaping too soon to the practical questions of how it can happen. Let yourself dream big, and then look for the next little action step or inquiry to take you deeper.

4. Creativity is nourished and fed by beauty
– What in your environment, situation, or relationships feels draining, ugly, or dull? Weed those things out.
– Make a list of five things you can do this week that would feel beautiful or celebrate beauty. Then do one of them. (Better yet, invite a friend to do this exercise with you and then share what you each discovered.)

5. Creativity is subversive
– How can you create your own “world”? Is there a medium or terrain that intrigues you? Take a little action step to create a make-believe world for yourself.
– Where (or how) do you need to allow yourself freedom from what others think? Close your eyes for a moment, take a few gentle breaths, and let your heart tell you. What pops in? This is your creative edge. It’s yours alone to traverse.

6. Not knowing is the starting point for the creative
– How can you work on your project from a state of not knowing? How can you set aside what you know and look at it with fresh eyes?
– How can you let yourself flow like a river? How can you let yourself flow and not know?’

Read the full article here:  https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/six_ways_to_break_your_creative_blocks

True genius comes from love

Love is at the heart of genius.

When I was studying adult learning in the PhD program at the University of Chicago, I was fascinated by the lack of heart and soul in the research literature.

It was as if love had been divorced from learning.

Perhaps it was too mushy?

Are the head and heart really so disconnected?

I would say no. Love is not anti-intellectual. In fact, the opposite is true.

Our loves and passions INSPIRE our intellects.

Tolstoy said, “Everything I know, I know because I love.”  And Mozart said, “Neither a lofty intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love—that is the soul of genius.”

To my mind it’s very clear: the next step of human intelligence is love.

Losing my mother

My mother passed away on August 4th and I wish I could do it all over again.

When I received the call at the hotel in the middle of the night, I rushed over to the nursing home. I sat down by her bed and didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t sure how long it would be.

I googled ‘what to do when someone is dying’ and read people’s suggestions:  open all the windows so the person’s spirit can exit. Tell the person it’s OK to ‘let go.’ Read poems.

I loved opening the windows, but reading the poem felt weird. I sang a song or two on my guitar but wasn’t really in the mood for singing either.

I was feeling sleepy and tired of sitting, so what I ultimately decided to do was crawl into her bed next to her. About four minutes later, I heard my mother take her last breath.

While I waited for the funeral home to arrive, I heard her speaking to me.

All the different phases of the dying process were new to me. I found the terminal restlessness phase disturbing, but I absolutely loved the day she spent talking nonsense. Her voice was so light, happy, and free. Almost childlike. I couldn’t understand anything she said all day, but I always agreed with her. Actually there’s one exception to my not understanding her. At one point when my face was close to hers, she gave me an earnest look and said, “You’re not going back to college? I think you should.”

I assured her that I would go back to college.

When she stopped speaking, I bought a cheap guitar and my sister and I sang songs in her room. When we sang, I felt her attention with us and her breathing quieted. I wish I could relive that moment: the three of us singing together.

I feel blessed I had those nine days with her. Nine days immersed in a space of pure love. There were no words.

At one point early on, knowing I wouldn’t get another chance to have a conversation with her, I searched my mind for something to say. Did I need to ask her something? Get answers? Apologize for anything? Have a forgiveness ritual? What would I regret not saying or doing? But there wasn’t anything there.

We just quietly looked at each other.

Whatever I said would have been manufactured. In fact, even trying to find something to say took me out of my heart… and into my head.

Because the truth was obvious: there was nothing but love between us. A month later, I’m still filled with that love.

I’d spent my life carrying around the story that she didn’t love me. I was so wrong.

I also spent my life believing she didn’t respect me and viewed me as irresponsible because I walked away from a well-paid career in my twenties to follow my creativity.

Wrong again.

Of her three very smart and capable children, I discovered after her death that she’d designated me to be executor of her estate. Even though I lived in another part of the country, far away from her and the sibling that we all expected would be in charge. She picked me.

It’s uncanny how our minds can lead us so astray. They jump to conclusions, make up stories, and stick to assumptions that just aren’t true.

And we can spend our lifetime believing those stories. I did.

I’m so grateful for her quiet room… down at the end of a long hall at the nursing home. It was so far away from activity. No one bothered us. No one could hear us sing or talk or cry. No one walked outside or peered in. It was totally private and serene. Two sides of the room were windows–one side faced a brick wall at the back of the property. The adjacent side held a large set of windows that looked out on a green lawn. Quiet, peaceful and beautiful. I brought in bouquets of flowers from mom’s garden and hung out on the sofa that I’d grown up with in our house.

I remember thinking how much I was simply enjoying being there with her. I still feel filled with love. Her love, our love.

I took a journey with her and wish I could do it all over again.

Metaphor allows us to notice and follow divine guidance

When I spent 7 years getting a PhD at the University of Chicago, I over-used the analytical part of my thinking brain. The sight of words on a page made me nauseous.

Our heart learns in a much different way. Our heart doesn’t learning by stuffing information. Heart learning isn’t about quantity. It’s about quality.

Our hearts navigate their way in the world through our capacity for metaphor.  Metaphor allows us to notice and follow vague inner feelings, nebulous nudges, fuzzy forms, and fleeting glimpses of divine guidance.

The heart also learns and knows by following an inner call.

Anyone in this world who is doing anything truly authentic is letting his or her heart lead. They are following heart knowing. They are seeing and feeling an internal vision that is typically hard to explain or put into words.

 

If you’d like to explore what your heart has to say to you, check out how to work with me: https://www.kimhermanson.com/work-with-me/.
 
 

Our hearts determine what we see

Thirty-five years ago in an old, out-of-print book titled, Metaphors of Consciousness, depth psychologist Robert Romanyshyn shared a story about two men—a geologist and a botanist—who are walking together through a forest. They’re both walking through the same forest, but the botanist notices the flowers and trips over the rocks…while the geologist notices the rocks and steps on the flowers. There is only one forest, but the two men have quite different experiences of it.

It’s the heart that moved the botanist to be passionately curious about flowers and the geologist to be enamored with rocks. The geologist loves rocks and doesn’t see the flowers. The botanist loves flowers and doesn’t see the rocks.

So what does this mean?  Our loves and passions drive our curiosities and subsequently, what we notice. Our hearts give us the lenses that we look through in life.

What are YOU noticing today?