This concept challenges your memory and perception. It involves impulse. In fact, it is impulsiveness which yields the best results. This exercise uses places and objects to supply impetus.

Start it by arbitrarily writing down things from your past and rapidly go on to another. Suggest the first thing which leaps into your head and as soon as you have named the object, go on to the next. Allow yourself to be affected by each suggestion, but do not dwell on it. Keep the exercise going for ten minutes. Then pick another starting off point and do it again. Try at least ten threads. For example, these fragments are from my own high school experience:

Parking lot…blue Mercury… Ed Sullivan… Milton Berle… Best friend, Stewie and Bobby… Tennis… I’m not a good athlete… sexual fantasies… Gong steady… double dating… Barry’s Olds… my father’s Caddie… Drive-in movies… I’m not good enough… feeling alone… college applications… doing it all myself… bad SAT scores… embarrassed… don’t like school… bored… hate gym…hate gym teacher… shame… Tony Curtis hair-do… Elvis sideburns… Wildroot Hair Tonic… white grease on a black comb…

I know these entries would be different next time I use high school as a place for my journey. You could do a similar exercise from points of view of a first grader or junior high school student. What would a series of personal images based upon your stream of consciousness look like? How can you make it interesting to someone else?

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The Heartstorming Philosophy

Ian Summers

Like most of you, I think of myself as a damned good problem solver. In fact, that’s how I earned my living as a creative director for a couple of decades. As a consultant, I traveled the country helping clients maximize their creative potential via creative problem solving. I was well rewarded as a problem solver, however I felt something was missing. Then something changed. I discovered that creating and problem solving are the antithesis of each other. In problem solving, energy usually flows from the outside. Someone presents you with a problem; a client for example. Depending upon the complexities of the problem, alternative solutions are created, one is chosen, and if there is enough energy produced the solution is implemented. The problem is replaced with a solution. So problem solving is about making something go away — the problem.

Problem solving has often been confused with creating. In fact, many workshops have been developed to teach creative problem solving. And they usually are about solving someone else’s dreams. They promise to unleash your creativity, as if it was a monster that needs to be tied back up when you’re through with it. These dated methods reinforce the erroneous concept that creating is a shadowy activity. I believe creating is joyous and celebratory.

Don’t Unleash The Monster!

Creating is about manifesting. Its energies come from within. I define creating as causing what you love or what matters to you to come into being. Heartsorming is a process — a journey — that helps creators identify what they love and to empower themselves to bring those loves into being. It is an adventure. Heartstorming uses your own loves and dreams to produce an abundant source of energy resulting in creative growth.

Imagine rediscovering the love you already are. Imagine being out of your mind and into your heart. Imagine knowing what you love and finding ways to integrate it with your life’s mission. Imagine a heart based career producing prosperity and abundance. Imagine making a difference. Imagine learning new ways to deal with growth, change and risk. Imagine manifesting your loves in the world every day. Imagine…

Imagine Being Out of Your Mind

Creating is a process that originates in your body. Heartstorming helps people to drop from the place of judgment and into the body — the place of feelings. It is not that judgment isn’t important. It is. However, it comes later in the process. Good judgment helps to choose which ideas to manifest and problem solving will help you to bring your concept into being. If creating and judging go on simultaneously, it is like driving the car with the brake and the accelerator on at the same time. Movement is impeded. New ideas are blocked from emerging.

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Whose Line is it Anyway?

Watching Whose Line is it Anyway? is always a treat. It is watching the creative process happening before your eyes. Actors take risks. Make mistakes. And have incredible successes. Actors work in teams and learn how to integrate another actor’s thoughts with their own. Thus juxtapositions develop. Improvisation is an extremely stimulating approach for developing ideas. Improvisation is a great loosening up exercise for any form of creation. Those of you who are photographers might direct models or actors through some improvisation based upon the project you are co-creating. It is a form of role playing or pretending.

The following suggestions are improvisational cues. Make up your own. Role playing improvisation is a process, not an outcome. It’s about going with first thoughts, using feelings and hunches to guide you… about seizing the moment before the energy is past, and capitalizing on the feelings in the group at the time. The benefits of using this process rather than planning meticulously are that you can get more responsive and more intense play as a result. You may also tap into insights and knowledge you didn’t know you had. And it’s exciting and very entertaining because nobody is sure what will happen next.

Ten Sample Scenarios:

1. Telephone Conversations
Telephone a friend who is ill, having a birthday, or to say, “Thank you for sending a present.” A friendly chat on the phone ends in an argument. Apologize .

2. Falling Out Scenario
Two friends have argued and won’t speak to one another. How might we bring them together again? Discuss what caused each argument and how each argument might have been avoided.

3. Flying Saucers Scenario
You hear a noise outside the bedroom window and look towards the back lawn. A flying saucer had landed. You go outside to take a closer look. Call the police to explain what happened.

4. Choosing a Movie Scenario
Pretend that you and your friends are in line at a multi-plex movie theater. Convince the others to choose the movie only you want to see.

5. Lost Your Wallet Scenario
You pull into a gas station to fill up the tank. He asks credit or cash. You tell him, cash. While your tank is being filled you realize you left your wallet on the dresser.

6. Petting
One person is a dog who wants to be petted. His master is watching a football game and doesn’t want to be bothered.

7. Fire One

A cave dweller accidentally makes fire when rubbing two sticks together and demonstrates what was done to a friend.

8. Fire Two
A cave dweller sees fire for the first time, experiments with it and finds that it hurts when touched, makes meat taste better when cooked in it and wild animals are afraid of it.

9. Sneezing Fit
You are sitting in the front row at a Broadway show. You feel a sneezing fit coming. Fight the sneeze.

10. Toll Booth
You have been in line for almost an hour to go through the toll booths at the Holland Tunnel. You are mistakenly in the EZ Pass lane and have to cut across traffic to get to the single cash lane. When it is your turn to pay your car stalls and the engine will not turn over.

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