Role* and Creativity

A friend of my son is a film major at one of our universities here in Toronto, and was trying to deal with a creative block leading up to the beginning of school this year. He had come up with a half-dozen potential themes for his senior year project, and with a week to go before class starts, in his words, they all “sucked.”

From where I sit, only a couple of them actually sucked. But the problem was not that of the suckitude of the themes, but rather his inability to engage the aspects that particularly motivate him. And this isn’t particularly surprising, since he was not explicitly aware of the connection between what he thought motivated him, and what actually motivated him. In other words, he was unaware of his Role* motivating aspects.

Because I’ve known him for quite a few years, the Role* Discovery Conversation was probably a little quicker than most (most lasting between ninety minutes and two hours). Within a remarkably short time, we were able to identify not only the source of his dominant motivating aspects, but also the source of his creative block. In addition, he saw how to actualize his motivating aspects to create what might turn out to be a compelling documentary examining an important issue at the boundary between public policy and the struggles of ordinary families.

So it seems as if unblocking creativity is yet another application of Role*!
[Technorati tags: rolestar | creativity | creative block | writer's block]