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Thursday, June 22, 2017

Courageous Resilience & Creative Risk-Taking (CR2): The Art of Designing Disorder

The Stress Doc reflects on his Five Stage Courageous Resilience and Creative Risk-Taking Path with both a “Resiliency Rap” and essay.  The stages are:
 
1.  First an Agenda…Then into the Arena
2.  Aware-ily Jump in Over Your Head
3.  Strive to Survive the High Dive
4.  Thrive On "Thrustration"…Incubate to Illuminate
5.  Design for Escape, Error, Evaluation…and Creative Collaboration

Enjoy!  MG

Courageous Resilience & Creative Risk-Taking (CR2):
The Art of Designing Disorder

In the 1980s, my “Creative Risk-Taking” path certainly epitomized the paradoxical mantra of the head of a New Orleans law firm:  Strive High and Embrace Failure.  (Examples being trying to turn a mystical Mandala moment into a doctoral dissertation and fairly soon after dropping out of my doctoral program – “when academic flashdancing whirled to a burnout tango” – breaking into Cable Television, with no prior industry experience.)  Though at that tender age in my existential journey, it was less embrace and more “hold on for dear life.”  I was striving and failing yet living and learning at the creative edge.  (In fact, one thing I gleaned from my Cox Cable Chaos:  The only thing more dangerous than taking a big risk or not taking any risk…is taking a risk while minimizing the precarious reality of the situation.  See below essay, “Creative Risk-Taking:  The Art of Designing Disorder.”  It is an upgrade of an essay originally penned shortly after my two season TV run ended.)

And immediately below is a “Resiliency Rap” that reflects an almost four-decade journey whose primary goal has been to develop “courageous resilience and creative risk-taking” (CR2) muscles.  Actually, I’ve jumped into another learning curve encounter.  I’ve been reviewing some of my raps and rhymes with the goal of turning them into less abstract and more accessible offerings.  It becomes a dialogue with an earlier version of your own self.  But this time I’m conscious of wanting to further explore and develop my “Dr. Seuss of Stress for Adults (and kids of all ages)” voice.  So, the goal is pairing catchy rhythm with accessible language, bringing to the screen thought-provoking ideas and emotionally compelling images.  Would love to hear your thoughts on whether for you it works or not.  To more good adventures.  MG
~~~~~~~~~~~

Courageous Resilience & Creative Risk-Taking (CR2):
The Art of Designing Disorder

Preamble Trio:
1) The New “R and R”
2) Hide or Seek
3) Failing…Flying

The New “R and R”
Resilience and Risk
The new “R and R”
Where effort and pluck
With guidance and luck
Help you stretch and stick
Even when feeling stuck.
In this life to go far
Forsake the shooting star.
Never, ever pass the buck…
Better slog through the muck! 
-------------

Hide or Seek
You’ve been tossed aside
And question your berth
From reaping and sowing
Which way’s the wind blowing?
Will you choose to hide
In a mask of false pride?
Or still walk this earth
With the tide ebb and flowing?
All the time knowing
Not a clue where you’re going…
Sure, find a guide
But there’s still no free ride
For only you can decide
To fight for self-worth!
-------------

Failing…Flying
Is failing shameful?
Or a chance to learn
The purpose of painful
Life and living
To be forgiving
Perhaps even playful
If not successful, then
A point where you turn
To a shoulder graceful
A hug for the vulnerable
Opens Yin/Yang mindful
So “Right-Wrong” perceiving
Last gasp “achieving”
Just more self-deceiving.
Push back on the rabble
Release your time table
Till mythical flow grieving
Seeds magical conceiving:
Look, up in the sky…a Phoenix is believing!
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Five Stages of the New "R and R" – Resilience and Risk-Taking

The first thought reading "risk-taking":
Getting married or bungee jumping?
Or cold sweats from public speaking?
(Is there a Xanax for the asking?)
Add "creative" to the edgy border:
It's "The Art of Designing Disorder!"

Sure, spend time on mission and goal
But the biggest fear:  losing control.
Before you leap without a net…
Build up your "T 'n T" asset:
Bring a "Tough 'n Tender" mindset!

Risk-taking, Risk-taking
Why are my legs still shaking?
Creative Risk-Taking
Will this be my unmasking?

1.  First an Agenda…Then into the Arena

Why must dark clouds of discontent
Electrify a mind hell bent
Before brain bolt is heaven sent?
One never breaks out of a rut
With "b.s." (be safe) chorus of, "Yes, but."

Climb upon a pregnant stage
Can one give birth at any age?
Let "why not?" be the dawn outrage.
Is it time:  the hero's journey?
To be contrary…now that's scary!

Risk-taking, Risk-taking
What will you be forsaking?
Creative Risk-Taking
Bring on the crazy-making?

2.  Aware-ily Jump in Over Your Head

Take the plunge; eyes wild and wide
Set book knowledge to the side
For Wonderland's dopamine ride.
Are you in flight or stage fright freezing?
It's passion-play…deep breaths, keep breathing.

Crisis mode; now high alarm
Go ahead, just take my arm
(Unless you have a lucky charm?)
Still, better do an inventory
Own your defects; no need for sorry.

Risk-taking, Risk-taking
Is your false pride a-quaking?
Creative Risk-Taking
Don't get tied to burnout staking.

3.  Strive to Survive the High Dive

Time to face your "Intimate FOE":
Fear of Exposure, oh no, oh no!
The Big Q:  Shall I stay or shall I go?
To "b.s." or not to "b.s."?
“No Pain…No Gain” for real success.

The formula to grow stronger:
Not black or white, “I’m right, you’re wronger”
But, Strive High…Embrace Failure!
Repetition with reflection…
Still, when soaring sans direction
Beware Icarus ** perspiration!

Risk-taking, Risk-taking
Is it a vision speaking?
Creative Risk-Taking
Or hallucination needing tweaking?

**  Icarus - in Greek mythology, son of Daedalus who, employing his father’s invention – wings of feather and wax – lost his life daring to fly too near the sun

4.  Thrive On "Thrustration"…Incubate to Illuminate

When ideas just won't unite
Your fishing line can't get a bite
Let conscious mind drift out of sight.
Volcanic dreams spark lava light.
Perhaps it’s finally time to huddle
Cold concepts too need chance to cuddle.

Forget willpower resolution
When torn between thrust and frustration
Try an incubation vacation:
Some subterranean obsession
For that newly hatched creation.
Let go to flow into your Zen
Up there…”Aha”:  rainbow horizon!

Risk-taking, Risk-taking
Surprise stops brain juice slaking.
Creative Risk-Taking
Now you’re the news that’s breaking!

5.  Design for Escape, Error, Evaluation…and Creative Collaboration

You unearthed the link; crawled through the cave
Survived the dark heart craze and crave.
It’s time to think outside the maze
To set some hollowed truths ablaze.
Now find a kindred-vexing view…one who
Makes the “strange familiar,” the opposite, too.
Like Lennon-McCartney and the Powers of Two. **
Still never forget:  To thine own self be true!

** Joshua Shenk, Powers of Two:  Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014

Through trial, error, and appraisal
Endless duels of angel and devil
Let you mine those sacred symbols.
Mystic silence…out of body travel
Now reveals the archetypal
Mandala ** vision of the soul
Spirit voice from a black hole
Are we ready?   Let's Rock and Roll!

**  Mandala - Sanskrit for "magic circle"; a meditative tool/artistic structure often revealing: a) a geometric – concentric and symmetric – patterning with a focal or centering point, b) a North-South, East-West axis, and c) an image of synthesis, signifying a higher or sacred “Self.”  Akin to an India rug pattern or the unfolding petals of a flower, for the pioneering psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, the Mandala was a cross-cultural symbol or archetype of the collective unconscious depicting psychological wholeness or his concept of "individuation," that is, psychic – persona and shadow, conscious and unconscious – integration.  Email stressdoc@aol.com for more information.

Closing

On this "Resilience and "Risk” voyage
An ongoing “Word Artist” passage
Often with a mercurial message:
Not "means to an end" nor a quest "one and done"…
Not when nightmare daze blocked a child’s sun…
Still, battles once lost may now be rerun
And the memory web can be respun
As the wheel of choice for “R and R” madhouse fun.
Oh, will you resist that old urge to run?


© Mark Gorkin  2015/17
Shrink Rap ™ Productions

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