Artists Get There First: The Link Between Honesty and Clarity

When we find ourselves confused about what to do, from personal issues to global ones, we can usually find a fresh burst of clarity when we embark on new levels of honesty.

"Any truth is better than indefinite doubt" Sherlock Holmes

Honesty is the catalyst for clarity.

Honesty is the key that unlocks true creativity (and true creativity is at the core of all genius).

Honesty is the highest form of intimacy, thus honesty is the foundation for all real connections.

But First, A Warning: Honesty Brings Conflict

I recently re-watched the BBC's version of Sherlock Holmes. The famous detective uses his sharp skills of deduction to solve unsolvable crimes. His abilities are so great that he's considered a genius. He lives up to the title by solving the toughest cases. With a deep trust in his intuitive faculties and well-developed gifts, he gets results that no one else can, which are paired with highly unusual behaviors that no one else is displaying. Go figure.

To operate at a level beyond the norm, Sherlock must stay in a place of deep attunement to himself, to his gifts, to his process. This is a type of honesty. He is true to who he is, including the gifts inside him and all the oddities they require. The social pressure to 'fit in' would force him to go against his own nature which is attuned to his highest faculties, not his lowest. If he was to sacrifice that to not offend, to feel 'normal', it would put him in a place of personal dishonesty, and he would begin to slowly become separated from his gifts, his genius hunches, and his passion for the process.

Instead, he does the opposite. To stay this attuned to his brilliant hunches, to live day in and day out at his level of genius, he does not fit in with societal norms. He often offends others with his lack of social decorum, he refuses to dumb himself down to fit in or to stifle his odd instincts to make others more comfortable. He makes enemies because his obsession with the truth exposes many lies. He offends people who do not understand his process; people who have never nurtured their own and therefore have no appreciation for those who nurture theirs.

The show is mostly about the adventurous crimes he solves, but it includes a wonderful warning; genius comes at a price, and honesty in all its forms inevitably creates conflict.

"To a great mind, nothing is little" Sherlock Holmes

The Cost of Constant Micro-Dishonesties

When clients lack clarity in their business they are, coincidentally, almost always separated from their zone of genius and flow states. These symptoms can usually be traced back to the hundred micro-concessions they've made into a type of dishonesty.

These micro-concessions add up and create slow blocks of energy that sink them into the outcomes of dishonesty. The classic outcomes of dishonesty look like:

• feeling disconnected (from their gifts, from flow, from the sense of right movement)
• blocked creativity, no more 'aha!' moments they crave
• , and the worst of them all, losing clarity on the path forward

It starts subtly. These great leaders, for example, have stopped maintaining firm boundaries. They're not speaking up, they become afraid to offend. They slip into people pleasing and consistently disregard their intuition in favor of something else, someone else, some other way than what they know in their guts to be right. They slowly start to act out of fear:

• fear of being perceived poorly (mean, bad, wrong)
• fear of making mistakes
• fear of loss
• fear of taking hits to their reputation
• fear of what it would look like to stay true to themselves and their guts as their businesses grow and the stakes get higher

Fear is the mind-killer. So they slowly stop creating in their business. The wells of inspiration and joy that started their ventures get sucked dry through all the little pressures to give into the type of dishonesty that separates them from their highest faculties; creativity, clarity, and connection.

"You see, but you do not observe honestly" Sherlock Holmes

We Require a Return to Honesty

As a culture, we see these principles as well. As a group of people fade into intellectual dishonesty, propaganda, and sales-y lies, we see three consistent things happen.

We lose our childlike instincts to create. We get fed stale replacements for creative activity in the equivalent of junk food for the soul; fake ingredients that hijack our sense of awe and wonder and replace it with shallow dopamine hits of basic entertainment. We switch from creating to consumption.

We then lose intimacy; we become increasingly disconnected from ourselves, our bodies, our environments, and our communities. We have countless ways to interact but people have never been so lonely, so disconnected on a soul level.

And then we find ourselves lost in direction, with massive changes looming and global frictions mounting, most people have no idea what to do. There is great confusion on how to move forward as a group, towards peace and prosperity.

Genius detectives and brilliant business leaders are not the only ones who face the high stakes of giving into a corrosive lifestyle of dishonesty. We the People are living with the growing consequences of losing our sense of truth inside ourselves and the world around us. These consequences look like:

• confusion and chaos, a global sense of lost-ness and lack of clarity over all truth claims
• divisiveness and loss of healthy, intimate connections (with ourselves, our bodies, the environment, our families and communities)
• a removal of true beauty, expressive arts, and true forms of creative engagement in our everyday lives

All these require a return to honesty. We cannot hope for it on a global scale if we do not engage it on a personal one.

"This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore.

A People who can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong.

And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, are, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people you can do whatever you want."

Hannah Arendt, German Historian and Philospher (1906-1975)

Artists Get There First:

One of the reasons I love using art in coaching is that the process of art is the most natural corral for honesty. Even clients wanting to be honest can have difficulty getting there. When we live our lives in a constant state of ignoring our intuition for social norms- shoving down our body's wisdom to fit into someone else's idea of a good day, when we constantly censor ourselves in daily conversations because the truth we know might be offensive, it becomes second nature to live in a type of dishonesty. Even when we simply stop engaging with our child-like purity in how we want to live, play, and exercise our gifts in this world- it can be challenging to get back in touch with what honesty sounds like within ourselves.

This is not always the easiest thing to roll out of, and thus, the creative process steps in. There's a saying that 'the body doesn't know how to lie', that it will always offer up the truth regardless of how we feel about it. The art process does something similar, it reaches into the inner world, the world that's grounded in the body. Our souls, hearts, minds- our conscious and subconscious are all tied to the body. When we use the art process, it essentially opens up the conversation with the body, and the soul's honesty begins to pour out slowly, like a detox, our souls are always ready to heal and to pace us through that healing. Too much detox at once and our bodies become ill; too much honesty from the soul at once and we can be overwhelmed. Thus, the process art is the perfect medium to begin the dance of coming back into ourselves, to guide ourselves back into a place of honesty first and foremost with ourselves. It's from this place that clarity springs forth.

"Life is infinitely stranger than anything the mind of man could invent" Sherlock Holmes

Honesty Brings Clarity, Connection, and Creativity:

Almost ten years ago, I moved into a big empty house on Vancouver Island. It had a glass wall that ran the length of the home, floor to ceiling facing the ocean. This quiet place sat high atop a high hill, on the edge of the cliff, looking over the Georgia Strait.

The process that led me to the island was one of honesty. Like Sherlock, I offended a lot of people by pursuing the truth like a detective. These conflicts made it absolutely clear what I needed to do- and I acted on it. This led me to the island, to a fresh round of deep, personal honesty.

I arrived with a few bags and settled in to live there for the next five months, alone on a snowy island for the long winter. For days and months on end, I worked in the silence of the house, facing myself, facing all that had transpired in my life until that point. I poured out art. I created prompt after prompt, scribbling out every inch of my soul I could access. I had paper covering the fridge as I sat on the floor and painted, I had walls of bedrooms with my creations splattered everywhere, with notes and connections interspersed in between. I was like a hound dog on a hunt, I was diving deep, desperate to shake off all the barriers I had created inside myself that blocked me from being honest with myself about everything.

"There's nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact" Sherlock Holmes

I faced God with honesty. I faced myself. I sat with all of it as it unraveled. There was a moment on the island when I knew I had broken through the layers of dishonesty within me. Things got immensely clear, like the 'aha!' of a solved mystery, of discovering a deep truth. The moment was so deep, that it rang my whole body like a bell- realigning something inside. After that moment, I cried for three days, just letting the whole of it wash over me. The process that got me there was a huge undertaking and, as painful as it was, ended in a huge relief.

After the dust settled the most unexpected things began to happen. Without any agenda, without a vision board or goal list, without taking a course on how to manifest or attract, my life took off in a new direction with the most profound experiences I ever had. Like fireworks, one thing after another blew into a grand reality of brilliant creativity, deep connections, and crystal-clear clarity. I live in the miracles of those outcomes to this day.

Being willing to wage a deep honesty with myself brought forth life-changing breakthroughs. And now, almost ten years later, I see a fresh round coming, not just for me, but for Game Changers.

The Moment is Ripe for Honesty

Game Changers are here to give their highest performance, they aren't afraid to go 'in' and become the fullest expression of their gifts; they're here to play their note. Like re-wilding our natural habitats, Game Changers are here to move towards the fullest, most honest expression of who we are and what we're here to do.

Whether you're a housewife or a CEO, a father or Sherlock Holmes, pursuing the most honest expression of our highest gifts is the path that preserves all others.

The conflict that happens when we're honest is worth it. Once we taste the joy of living out our true selves, the cost of conflict pales in comparison.

Honesty unlocks our gifts and provides the bedrock of our most nourishing connections. When we're feeling particularly lost on our path, we can move towards honesty for a burst of fresh clarity.

And if you want to give honesty a good shove into your life, create art. Use the prompts. See what happens...

"The Game is on" Sherlock Holmes