Your Life As Art - Transcript of John Milton Fogg in Conversation with Robert Fritz

8/9/2019 Your Life As Art - Transcript of John Milton Fogg in Conversation with Robert Fritz

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YOUR LIFE AS ART ROBERT FRITZ

JohnMiltonFogg.com/ConversationsPage 1

John Milton Fogg

(Host):

Robert Fritz author of Your Life as Art and the classic

The Path of Least Resistance, Robert is a mentor &

master of the mechanics, orientation, and spirit of thecreative process.

JMF: Hi everybody. Welcome to a Conversation.

This one is very special for me because this is a person that Ihave known for 30 years. I've studied with this man back in

Boston, Massachusetts. It was really at the time when I first

opened up and began to actively jump into the whole business

of personal growth and development and all of that. It was the

days of est and Stuart Emery's Actualizations.

A friend of mine, Michael Melia, got me involved with this

gentleman that youre going to hear from today. More stuff

that I learned from this man is with me actively today I talk

about it, I teach some of it, I use it to illustrate things that are

important, and I use it in my life. It's just absolutely stood thetest of time. The title of this Conversation is Your Life as Art.

That's also the title of a book this gentleman has written.

It's a hackneyed phrase, a "Renaissance man," but this guy is

one. On his website it says, "Composer, filmmaker, and

organizational consultant." He's much more than that. He has

been a professional musician, he's taught music.

He designs and conducts and facilitates seminars. He's an

accomplished visual artist. Watercolors I remember seeing

his work. Entrepreneur he is the author of a book that's just

extraordinary, The Path of Least Resistance, and as I said,

Your Life as Art.

There are so many things to admire about this man. For me,

all the aforementioned, that his work, his concepts, his

practical application of his philosophies, has stayed with me

for 30 years. When I turn other people on to them, they put

them to use and they get results.

I admire that tremendously, because I'm in that business

myself and this, this is a Master. I just have tremendous

respect for his work. I think he's probably the foremost

teacher of creating on this planet. And his name is Robert

Fritz.

Good day, sir!

ROBERT FRITZ: Hi! Good morning. Good day.


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JMF: All of those things.

What is the underlying premise ofYour Life as Artthat doesn't

scream at you right from that title? (Chuckle)

ROBERT FRITZ: Well, hopefully the title does, in fact, say what it means.

Another way of looking at this is that we can begin to

approach creating our life the same way a painter makes a

painting, or a filmmaker makes a film, or a composer writes a

piece of music. That the creative process, which is the mostsuccessful process for accomplishment in history. Its the

process to use in thinking about how you're going to even

create your life.

But most of us have not studied the creative process. We have

incredible misconceptions about it. There are a lot of mythsabout it, and we're certainly not taught it in school. In fact,

what we're taught is to either respond or react to thecircumstances in which we find ourselves.

And so it's not usual for people to approach their lives as if

they were making a painting or doing a film or some otherkinds of things that professional, consummate professional

creators do. So the idea behind this is to, number one, learn

the principles of the creative process and then apply them to

your life.

But there's a second understanding that we've come to overthe years and it's not just simply the mechanics of the

creative process. It also has to do with the orientation andthis is where I began to really explore issues around

structures.

Let me sort of describe it this way the underlying structureof anything will determine its behavior. There are two basic

structural patterns: one is oscillating and the other is

advancing.

In an oscillating pattern, first you move in one direction, but

then you move in the opposite direction. In organizations wesee this when organizations build up capacity and then

downsize and then build up capacity and then downsize.

Or they centralize decision-making and then decentralize

decision-making and then centralize decision-making and

then decentralize decision-making again. Another example ofthat is when they, for example, acquire other companies and

then they divest and then they acquire and then they divest.

And of course these patterns go over two to five years,


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sometimes maybe a little longer, but they're fairly predictable.

There's a reason why they do that. Now, in our personal lives

an oscillating pattern looks like this: You've set out forsomething, you have it for a period of time, but then there's

some kind of reversal, in which at the end of the episode or

the story, you no longer have what you want, and it's not agood ending.

So when we started to teach the principles of the creativeprocess, some people had the pattern of accomplishing

various things and having that accomplishment become the

platform for success. We call that an advancing pattern.

But others were finding that, in fact, they were having this

oscillating pattern, and so I really had to ask the lucidquestion. You know, "What's going on? How come people are

systematically or at least you could see the pattern that

they first would work very hard to create something and thenmove away from it?

So that developed an entire field which we now call structuraldynamics, which is basically the study of how structure

works and how structures work, not only in people's lives but

in the lives of organizations, in the lives of couples, in the lives

of teens.

The factor is this we could teach you how to create yourgoals. But if you're in an oscillating pattern, eventually you'll

move away from your own success. That was a pretty amazing

insight.

What followed was years of exploration of what caused that

and how you can change from an oscillating pattern to anadvancing pattern. It's a little bit like getting out of a rocking

chair and then getting into a car.

A rocking chair, when you move forward, there's something in

the structure that creates the impetus for that chair to move

backwards. But when you get into a car, that is a vehicle.That's the structure that's designed to move from one place to

another.

For example, if you drive down to the store, you won't walk

out of the store and find that your car has, in fact, travelled

home so that you couldnt actually go places. (Laughter) Inpeoples lives, that's basically the structures that are the most

useful, and so once that in fact, not only do they not oscillate,

but they become. Your each success you create becomes a

platform for future success and you can begin to build upon


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that.

JMF: Robert, one of the things you taught me which has been a

slogan, a battle cry for me for 30 years is create and adjust,create and adjust. How is that not an oscillating kind of

thing? Or is that different?

ROBERT FRITZ: Oh, that's very different. First of all we have to really

understand. I'm going to say a few technical things about

structure, so I hope people forgive me for this, but it, youknow, it requires knowing something about the physics of this

thing to really understand why it works the way it works.

First principle is that structure, any structure, seeks

equilibrium. In other words, when there are places that are

different, it's what structure tries to do is to end thosedifferences and make everything equal. An example of that is

when you're hungry.

There's a difference between your desired amount of food that

the body that your desired amount of food on the one

hand, and the actual amount of food your body has. Andwhen that's different, that creates a state of non-equilibrium

or tension. And tension seeks resolution.

So when you eat, what happens is that the actual amount of

food and the desired amount of food become the same, ending

the tension, resolving the tension and creating a state ofequilibrium.

Now I'm going to give you one event with two differentunderlying structures, and you can see from that why they

actually aren't just simply creating and adjusting. The event is

having what you want.

In one structure, that is the point of most non-equilibrium, or

degrees where you move from equal equilibrium for purist. In

other words, that's a point in the structure that's the most

likely to not be able to sustain itself because the structure

itself is looking for equilibrium, trying to end all differences.And that's an oscillating pattern.

So when you have what you want, there's a competingtension. It's pulling you away from that. In an advancing

structure the event, having what you want that's a state

of equilibrium. In other words, what you want is equal to whatyou have, and that resolves the tension and it creates

equilibrium.

Now, in a creative process, the dominant tension that we work


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with, we call it structural tension, and it's two data points

that we work with. One is the desired state, "What is it we

want to create?" and the other is the current state, or thecurrent reality. "Where are we now in relationship to where we

want to be?"

In the beginning of the creator process there will always be adifference between what we want and what we have because

the point of creating is to bring something into being that doesnot yet exist. And this is the structure that we're teaching

people. We can get into what causes the other structure in a

bit.

But it's really important, I think, for us to realize that there

are two things that we really need to understand in order to atleast create structural tension. One is we have to be pretty

clear about the outcomes that we're after. And secondly, we

have to be very honest about where we are now in reality.

So that means that we can't distort reality. Now some of the

things that happen to distort reality are peoples concepts,that they don't look, that they speculate rather than observe,

and there's a real discipline around understanding what is in

current reality. So that's not as easy as it sounds.

I mean, you think, "Well, current reality? All I have to do is

look around and see what's there and there you have it." Butoften people do not accurately see reality. So those are the two

disciplines that, once you have both of those disciplines in

place, you have the basis of the creative process.

And once you have that in place, then you take action. It

produces a result. You evaluate the result against theoutcome that you're after. You adjust your future actions, and

then you take further actions until finally, eventually, you

move from where you are to where you want to be, and that's

where it creates and just really is relevant.

Make sense, John?

JMF: It does make sense, Robert, in that heady way that I'd

forgotten you express yourself, which is for me, sometimes a

little overwhelming. I want to go back to a thought that

occurred to me while you were speaking with the business of

telling the truth about current reality.

In this day and age of Law of Attraction, of positive thinking

and positive expression, we're encouraged not to think

negative thoughts, not to speak negatively about difficult


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that? It's basically trying to manipulate the mind. So the key

to this is to really be totally honest with yourself and about

reality, the good, the bad and the ugly. Now, what makes thatdifficult is the various concepts people have.

There's an artist named Arthur Stern who wrote a wonderful

book called Color: How to See It and Paint It. He brought agroup of his students down to the shores of the Hudson River

and he had them look across and he says, "Okay, what colorsdo you see?" Well, they said, "Well, the brick building is red,

and the tower there is white and that other thing is orange."

They start naming all of these colors.

And then what Arthur Stern did was he passed out what he

calls a spot screen, which is kind of like an index card thathas a little hole in it. He had the student hold the card up

against the objects that they were seeing and then he said,

"Okay, tell me what colors you see." They all got very quiet

until someone eventually said, "Blue. Everything over there isblue."

No. First, the reason it looked blue was because on hazy days,

we don't see the color of objects in the distance. We see the

atmosphere and that's why distant mountains look purple or

look blue, because we're really seeing the air between where

we are and where the object is.

But then Stern goes on to say, "Well, why were they seeing red

and white and orange and all of these other colors?" and he

said that they were substituting a concept of reality for reality.

He said, "Art students need to learn how to see what's in front

of their eyes."

Now, two things that we can understand from Sterns story.

One is, a lot of times we're not able to see reality because we

have such strong concepts about what we're supposed to see

that we can really miss the obvious.

Secondly, that we can learn to see, we can learn to observemore accurately, and by doing that, we're at an advantage,

because then we can start to really make adjustments that we

might need to make in the creative process that we wouldn't

even think to make if we weren't looking at reality.

So I mean, certainly Stern understood that they would not beable to see the colors at first, but that he could teach them to

see what was there to see. I think that's the aspect of reality

that I always call Reality an acquired taste, you know?


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JMF: (Laughter)

ROBERT FRITZ: But once you acquire it, you know, it's pretty good. It's hard

to go back to something less than reality. The disadvantage oflying to yourself is you break down your relationship with

yourself.

Okay, so people are always kind of superstitious about

things they may get some parking spaces or they, you know,

a few things happen. But if they're in an oscillating structure.No matter what they create, they can really count on it moving

away and that there'll be a reversal. They will not have what

they want.

So when that happens for the positive thinkers, they're told

that they had a negative thought. They get very superstitiousabout this whole thing. They begin to get extremely sensitive

about every little thought that happens to them. The fact of

the matter is sometimes we have negative opinions becausethat's what we think. We have one of two choices: we can lie

about it, or we can just tell the truth about it.

So my point is let's just tell the truth and stop the tricks,

because those tricks will never actually be able to lead you to

the kind of level of creative process that we would need to

have if we're going to create our lives.

JMF: Robert, you have a piece that, when I was... (Chuckle) I don'tusually prepare much for any of the interviews, any of the

Conversations that I do.

I want to know a little bit about the person, I want to know

what they're into, but really, I want any question I have to

grow out of the Conversation. So I went to your website and,you know, looked at, 'Yes, he's worked for AT&T, American

Express, Procter & Gamble.' You know, all this stuff that I

chose not to say when I introduced you. (Chuckle)

But I looked at the wealth of writings and interviews that you

have on your site and one got my attention. Actually a coupleof them, this one and another one you wrote called

Transcendence, but this is The Belief Business vs. the

Creating Business. I think this is pretty much exactly and Iwant you to correct me if I'm wrong and take it further,

please this is what you were just talking about. We have asense, many of us have a sense, you are what you believe,

and you say that premise is simply not true. That's the same

kind of thing as lying to yourself. I mean, it's not the same

thing...


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ROBERT FRITZ: Yeah. Well, first of all, the fact of the matter is, and the point I

make in that article, is that you got to figure that the people

who really have that notion that you are what you believehave never read a biography in their lives, because if they

had, and particularly biographies of very successful people,

you'll find that almost invariably they did not have positive

beliefs about themselves. Almost invariably they had gravedoubts or they just didn't have incredible self-love. All thethings that we're told that are important are simply not there.

So you know, how come all of these successful people have

violated the rules that are being set up in the belief business?

The point I make in that article is that because they weren't in

the belief business, they were in the creating business, and inthe creating business it doesn't matter what you believe. What

does matter is how well you create.

Now the proof of that, by the way, is that first of all, the

creator process is philosophically neutral. A lot of people wantto tie belief, whatever they believe, whatever the belief systemis, they want to tie that to how successful they are.

But if we look at the history of the arts, for example, there

were incredible, masterful artists who believed all kinds of

things, from being devout Christians or atheists or Buddhists

or any of the other religions, and all of the gambit in between.

You know, from believers to non-believers, to politically left to

politically right, on it goes. So what we can understand from

that is that belief is irrelevant to your creator process.

JMF: Excuse me. What about beliefs like take any of these

creative people. You've got listed a couple of them here. You'vegot Beethoven, Winston Churchill who was also an artist as

well as a statesman Pablo Picasso, Hemingway, Disney.

What about beliefs, like limiting beliefs, in their own abilities,

in their skills, in their ability to bring something into being?

What about those kinds of beliefs?

ROBERT FRITZ: Theyre totally irrelevant.

JMF: Say more.

ROBERT FRITZ: (Laughter) Ask more.

JMF: Well, you said they're totally irrelevant. Tell me more aboutthat please.

ROBERT FRITZ: Okay. I was hoping you'd guide me more here, but okay.


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JMF: (Laughter) Well, it... okay. I'm, I am...

ROBERT FRITZ: I mean, how are they relevant? Look, you don't know in the

beginning whether or not you're going to be able to create

something. We have, whatever gifts or talents we have, we

have. You're smart as you are, you're not going to be anysmarter than you are or any more stupid. I mean, we have

these kinds of natural abilities. Some of them can be

developed, some of them might not be able to be developed.

But that's just our starting point, not our ending point and it

doesn't call for belief.

One of the people in that list too is Clint Eastwood, and over

the years I've really admired Clint Eastwood incredibly,

because first of all, he's sort of a limited actor in terms of just

his abilities. You know, you wouldn't find him on the same

level as, let's say, a Marlon Brando or a Meryl Streep.

JMF: I cannot conceive of Eastwood doing Shakespeare.

ROBERT FRITZ: Yeah. Well, the point is he knew how to use his talent, you

see? So he had whatever talent he had or has and the

incredible thing is the way he's developed that talent over

years and years of learning and work and experience.

But then his age in his 70's now he is one of the great

directors. He's getting better and better all the time as a

director. He's growing and growing, and he's been doing that

for years.

I think he's a great example of how probably he was able totake a role for himself and design his career, because he was

very honest about his abilities and whatever limitations he

may have had. He used those as a strength, not a weakness,

and I think that's the point. It's not about what you believe

about yourself.

By the way, the word "limiting belief in that same article,

what I wrote it a nice-sounding phrase, the implications.

There are some beliefs that will limit you if you have them,

but in fact, every belief is a limiting belief.

Every single belief you have is limiting in that it cutssomething out, you know? So it's therefore some kind of

limitation. I mean, even if you believe youre God's gift to

whatever, that itself is a limiting belief.

So the proof of the pudding here, John, is in the examples of

all of these accomplished people and who in fact did not have


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the requirements that the belief business says that you got to

have, and how come? And how do they explain that?

JMF: And how do you explain their success, Robert?

ROBERT FRITZ: That they were in the creating business. That they weren't

focused on what they believe, that it wasn't about themselves.That it was really about whatever the creation was. So if it's a

film, who do you have to be to want to make a great film? If

it's a novel, who you do you have to be to want to write a greatnovel? If you make it about you, then it's not about the

creation itself.

So for example, look at the ceiling right now. Now look at the

floor. Now, you notice when you're looking at the floor, you're

not looking at the ceiling. You've changed your focus. So if myfocus is on me, then I'm really not thinking about the creation

except the way it reflects some kind of identity factor.

But if I change my focus and put it on the creation, what I

think about myself is irrelevant. Where does it even fit in?

What is relevant is what do I want to create, and where am Inow in relationship to that? And how can I move from where I

am to where I want to be?

JMF: How do we take that perspective and marry it to your life as

art? If I'm looking to create my life, my...

ROBERT FRITZ: Well yes, it's that the principle there then is you've got to beseparate from the life that you're creating, so that you create

your life in exactly the same way that you would as if it were afilm or any other piece of engineering, or software, or a table

or a chair.

Here you have this life that you're separate from, and youbegin to conceive of the life that you want to create and you

begin to see where you are in relationship to where you want

to be, and then you create a strategy or an action plan about

moving from where you are to where you want to be. You

systematically gain the confidence, gain the skills that youmay need to develop, and over time the probability is that you

will have more and more of the kind of life that you want to

lead.

JMF: So help me get a handle, please, on a couple of things here.

One is, The notion of separating myself from creating my lifeis art, I stumbled right over that the moment you said it.

ROBERT FRITZ: What was the stumble?


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JMF: Its how can I do that? I mean

ROBERT FRITZ: Well look, if you were making a painting, in order to make the

painting youd have to be separate from the painting, right?

JMF: Yeah...

ROBERT FRITZ: So lets say you start to think about the life you want to

create. And imagine it as, you know, Heres this thing I want

to create. It might include things like how you spend your

time, what youre doing professionally, what yourrelationships are like, what your finances are like, what your

health is like. All of these things are things that you may in

fact have some ideas about that you really want.

That becomes this life that you want to live and its a little bit

like creating a part or creating a role or character in a play.And so youre creating this idea of what the kind of life you

want. Youre separate from it, and the proof of that is youcouldnt have created it unless you were separate from it.

You have to be apart from it to be able to start to even

describe what it is that you want. So just think about that interms of your position in relationship to your life. Theres a

creator and a creation. So were functioning as creator and

there is a creation which is separate from the creator.

Then, as I said, the process is Im talking in very general

terms but over years what happens is you really begin tounderstand what really works well and what doesnt work so

well. How to create from your successes and how to createfrom your failures, because you are able to learn. If you make

it about yourself, its very hard to learn because its very hard

to be self-critical.

Usually the pattern for those people who have problems with

that is they avoid criticism and then they maybe indulge in it,

like beat themselves up for a while to manipulate themselves

into good behavior. Thats both sides of the same coin in

which it matters what you think about yourself. But if werejust thinking about this life we want to live, it doesnt matter

what you think about yourself. What matters is how are we

going to move from where we are to where we want to be?

JMF: How is that learned, Robert? How do we do that? I know that

there are Im making an assumption I know that there area number of people listening whose current reality is one

thing and what they really want to make their lives into is

something very different. Is the starting point of that the

identifying and a vision of where you want to be, what you


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want to create?

ROBERT FRITZ: Yeah. Certainly a first step is to think about the kind of life

you want to build. So think about this as a life-buildingprocess, but its not a trick and theres no sudden revelation.

And there isnt something that will suddenly make you, you

know, help you make the big time as it were. What it is, isbasically a building process like any other building process,

like learning music.

When you learn music you've got to start somewhere. You

practice and practice and practice and eventually if you keep

with it, you might be able to get someplace in terms of being

able to play music. Its an accumulative process, its an

evolutionary process.

The thing though I also have another contrast I want to

make is the difference between problem solving and

creating. A lot people see their lives as problems and thatsomehow they have to solve the problem so they can then

have what they want.

In our culture problem solving is very popular. People say

proudly, Im a dedicated problem-solver. Well look, you

could solve all the problems you have and still not have what

you want. The creative process is not about problem solving.

Its about bringing things into being. Problem solving is takingaction to have something go away, the problem. Creating is

about taking action to have something come into being. This

is our result, or the creation.

So what were helping people do is to really learn the basics of

the creative process. The way you learn how to swim is byswimming, and the way you learn how to create is by creating.

So we do start with small exercises, you know, small goals. If

you cant think about things you want, for example, then start

small. And by starting small you begin to get two things

happen.

One is you have a full process of the creative process in a

short period of time, so you have the beginning, the middle,

and the end. And you know what all the steps are, so lets sayits a dinner party and you create this dinner party, or lets

say its a flower garden. Or lets say its a piece of art like apainting or a sculpture, or lets say its a birdhouse, or a

recipe if youre cooking, or anything like that.

Those are short enough examples of the creative process that

you have, the beginning, the middle, and the end. You can


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begin to have a sense of what all of those steps are like and

begin to apply that process more broadly. Particularly one of

the nice things that happens when you start to do that is youget a sense that its okay to think about what you want. That

its not arbitrary, that its not fantasy, that you can actually

start to work towards it.

Now most people actually want things that are fairly do-able,

funnily enough. You know, the tendency is to think, Well, itsgetting everything I want. I want to be a movie star, I want to

be rich, da da da. Actually, peoples aspirations are a little

closer to home.

Often those aspirations and their values are the organizing

principle around which they begin to organize their lives. Notonly do they become more focused but they become more

create-able, as it were as they learn the creative process. You

know, if you dont know how to create, youll be very clear

about what you want, but your chances of creating that arepretty slim because you dont know how to get there.

So we look at three things in the creative process. We look at

the mechanics, which has to do with what do you actually do

in the creative process to learn how to bring things into being.

We look at the orientation which has to do with the

underlying structures youre in, so that once you do in factcreate and accomplish the goals that youre after, that they

become the platform for future success rather than a reversal.

And we also look at the spirit, you know. Whats the impetus

to create in the first place? As I said in the beginning of this

little bit, the impetus is because you really want to bringsomething into being, not because you want to get rid of

something. So creating is not to heal you, to solve your

problems, to fix you. It is to bring into being things that

matter to you.

JMF: So is it required, Robert, in this process of creating our livesas art that we divorce the notion of things that are broken,

fixed, bad... that we dont want and focus solely on what is it

we want to create?

ROBERT FRITZ: In general terms, yeah. I mean, there might be things that you

really want to improve about your health or about otherthings in your life, but problem solving is not usually the most

effective way of even addressing those things. Okay, so let me

give an example of problem solving.

JMF: Please.


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ROBERT FRITZ: Our medical health system. So you get sick and then you go

to the doctor and you get fixed. Contrast that with the ability

to create optimal health optimal meaning the best it canbe for you. So if you can actually get to the point of creating

optimal health, you will not have to get to the point of having

to go to the doctor and heal your disease.

Now, were glad that medical science exists. Its a good thing.

On the other hand, as an approach its not even the bestapproach to creating health. So creating health is different

than healing disease. And thats a very tangible example of

this principle, one that probably most of us have experienced.

JMF: Do that same illustration with money, with finances.

ROBERT FRITZ: Give me the starting point.

JMF: Somebodys struggling financially more bills than Whats

the line? More month at the end of the money, or somethinglike that.

ROBERT FRITZ: (Laughter)

JMF: You know, where somebody is struggling financially.

ROBERT FRITZ: Right. There are two sides to that equation. One is income

and the other is cost. You know the secret of course: Viability

is to make more money than you spend. (Laughter) And you

can either do that or you cant. That would mean that over

time you would either cut down on your expenses or increase

your income. Now thats simply not a problem. Its a situation,its not a problem.

Are you with me so far that its not a problem?

JMF: Im going right immediately, Robert, to whats the difference?

You said situations versus problems

ROBERT FRITZ: Its a situation in which currently youre making less money

than youre spending and the outcome we want is to have

more money than youre spending.

JMF: Right.

ROBERT FRITZ: Thats the outcome. So then the question becomes okay, atleast in that equation there are two things that are possible

make more money, have less expenses. So we begin to figure

out, you know, Are there ways we can make more money?

The answer to that will be either Yes or No. And then, Are

there ways of cutting our expenses? The answer to that is


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probably Yes or No.

Now, with a lot of people we call it feeding the beast. You

know, they get to a certain point in their life, their costs areeither greater than their income or equal to their income, and

they are trapped by trying to feed the beast. In other words

they have to make money, maybe doing something they dontparticularly like doing, but its the only way they can make

that level of income.

And were not talking about immediately running away and

joining the circus. Were talking about maybe over time one

way to transition from that situation to a different situation

one thats probably more to your liking is to figure out how

much money you can live on.

Then cut your costs and enjoy the freedom that comes from

the relationship between how much youre making and how

much its costing you. I mean, wheres the problem? Whatsthe problem?

JMF: The place I always go

ROBERT FRITZ: Youve got to answer my question. Whats the problem?

Somebodys not making Their income is not as high as their

cost. Whats the problem?

JMF: Looking at my own situation, the desire, want, need for more

coming in and the continuing exercise of spending less.

ROBERT FRITZ: Thats not a problem. Thats just a strategy to accomplishwhat you want. Wheres the problem?

I know we think of it as a problem. We cast it in that role and

then we react against it as if it were a problem. But whats the

problem? Its simply a situation, one that we want to change,but this ones actually rather easy in the sense that we want

to have income either equal or higher than cost.

Thats just the outcome we want and then we start to design

action steps around that, which probably include increasing

our income capacity and decreasing our cost or making so

much money that it doesnt matter. But its certainly not aproblem, its only a situation.

By the way, I do think there are problems, its not like I dont

think there are problems. (Chuckle) You know, I see theres a

situation we dont like but its certainly not a problem.

JMF: That was going to be my next question, so do you have the


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philosophy or the point of view that there are no such things

as problems?

ROBERT FRITZ: No, certainly there are lots of problems.

JMF: Give me an example of a problem.

ROBERT FRITZ: My car breaks. Its a problem.

JMF: Thats not a situation. Or is it?

ROBERT FRITZ: Thats, well, for me it would be a problem and then Id take

action. I think problem solving has its place, and Id take it tothe mechanic and of course that would still be in the context

of an outcome I want, which is to have a car that works.

But I might also, you know, have a physical situation. It could

be a problem and I would apply problem solving to it. You

know, at that point.

If I have a hernia I would get an operation and get it fixed.

Thats absolutely problem solving. Then I might have other

things Im doing to produce health but that would actually be

a problem that Id see that problem solving would be a rightful

way of addressing it.

But not an orientation, not a lifestyle, not a general thing to

do in life, but something that is very specific to the problem

and to the solution of that particular problem.

JMF: Youre not employing creating in solving problems, Robert?

ROBERT FRITZ: Well, its impossible because creating is about bringingsomething into being that you want. Its not about taking

action to get rid of something. Thats why the whole notion of

creative problem solving is totally ridiculous.

What they mean by creative problem solving is some fanciful

way of generating some action to get rid of something youdont want, which is supposedly unusual versus usual. But I

also make a distinction between creativity and the creative

process.

The creative process is the most reliable process for

accomplishment in history. If you read Lee Strasbergs bookon acting I think its called Life of Passionor In Search of

Passion, Im sorry I dont remember the actual title but he

talks about what he was doing when he invented the method

school of acting.

The story that he tells is that he went to the theater one night


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and he was absolutely blown away by an actor that he saw.

So the next night he brought all of his friends. That night the

same actor was having an off night and it didnt have thesame impact at all.

So he started to wonder what was the difference between the

night that he saw it and the next night. And he was told thisis the actors problem: that youre struck by the muse or

youre at the mercy of the muse and its the luck of the draw.

Well, the Moscow Art Theater came to New York. This is

Stanislavskis theater group, and Stanislavski created what he

called the system which is the way of having a reliable

creative process.

Every actor every night because Strasberg went night afternight after night every actor, every night, big or small part,

they were all brilliant all the time. What Strasberg says he

discovered was, Ah! There is a reliable aspect of the creativeprocess.

Now of course I felt kind of close to Strasberg when he wasworking on those issues since I work on the same thing. The

reliable process for the creative process means that you do it

over and over and over, that you create something.

Creativity is about suspension of the norm. Its about the

unusual. The creative process, if you do it reliably, over timethe unusual becomes the usual. And so these notions of

creativity that people have for example, the creativity people

talk about freeing the mind and how many uses can youthink of for a brick.

Any ideas that if you can think of more uses for using a brick,youre more creative. So that means if Frank Lloyd Wright can

only think of one use, making buildings, I guess he wasnt

very creative.

Theres this whole notion in the creativity business of

generating alternatives thats seen as somehow creative. Inthe real creative process as practiced by the Steven Spielbergs

and the Quincy Joneses and the Georgia OKeeffes and the

consummate professionals, people have nothing to all theirbudgets and have deadlines.

They dont have time to generate alternatives. What they doinstead of freeing the mind, theyfocusthe mind. I think this

is the real key to innovation and invention. Its often you dont

have a goal in mind and in current reality you dont have


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enough time or resources or capacity to get there.

Now what does it actually mean? It means you dont have

enough time to get there in the conventional way, or money toget there in the conventional way. So therefore, what the mind

begins to do is to really invent ways that will take into account

the current situation and invent something, a process thatyou hadnt thought of before that will actually manage to

really accomplish the goal that youre after.

That is the power of both the structural tension and the power

of the mind to want to resolve that tension. You set up that

tension and, you know, by tension were not talking about

stress, pressure or anxiety. Were talking about structure, the

position of the difference between what I want and what Ihave, and the way the mind takes that and starts to work it.

Thats where a lot of innovation happens.

Theres a terrific book in the business world called CompetingFor The Futureby Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad. Its on

Harvard Business School Press. In that book they talk a lotabout smaller companies that beat the larger companies that

had all of the resources in the world, because the smaller

ones didnt and had to invent ways of competing in the

marketplace.

A lot of times the ways they invented were superior to theconventions that were going on, and in fact they started to be

a competitive threat to the larger companies.

They name company after company that did that. So those arethe kinds of things that are some of the myths of the creative

process that it matters what you think, that you've got tosolve your problems first, that you got to find the right belief

that you have to be positive, that you should look for best

practices.

Well, its nice to find out what people did, but a lot of times

you will not be able to use someone elses best practicesbecause you dont have the same circumstances. So youll

have to invent something. After all, those best practices were

invented in the first place by somebody.

This is the nature of the beast; its very fluid, its very flexible,

and its very much a learning process.

JMF: Robert, we dont have a great deal of time left, and theres one

more subject I want you to talk about and Im going to guess

that it is near and dear to your heart, because on your

website you say that youre currently engaged in a new book


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project about transcendence called The Transcendence

Project.

Would you speak to me speak to us about what you meanby transcendence please, and whats making that word, this

project, so important to you?

ROBERT FRITZ: Transcendence is the principle that no matter what the past

has been, you can start again. One way of thinking about this

is that there are two principles that we often work with in thecreative process.

One is we could call karma, and karma is a Sanskrit word

which means action in the East. Of course, whatever youve

done has some karmic response or consequence and you have

to sort of pay all of your bills from the past, all the bad thingsyouve done. Youve got to somehow pay for it.

In fact, what the principle or the law of transcendence is, is nomatter what the past has been, you can start again. In the

West this is sometimes called grace. What it means is that

even though you may have made a lot of mistakes, just like apainter can take a new canvas, or a writer can turn to a clean

sheet of paper, or a musician can do take two on a number

theyre playing.

You can reset your life. You can rethink your life. But you do

not have to complete the past. The past in reality is over. Iknow people really spend a lot of time trying to relive and

repress theories of consciousness.

Psychotherapy is big on trying to help people come to terms

with their past, but actually if they were steeped in reality,

they would discover the past is over. No matter how good,bad, or indifferent it was, the past is in fact over.

So what transcendence does is it gives you a new chance on

life. I think thats really the power of it. So on our website

weve asked people to submit transcendence stories, stories

that they have in their life about how things are one way andfor whatever reason, suddenly was a different way and there

was no cause-and-effect.

There was nothing they did, or maybe it was something they

did but that it didnt connect to the past so that the new

transcendence, or the new chance in life, was notextrapolation of whats happened in the past.

Most people really are unaware of that principle but thats one

of the major principles that the creative process affords you.


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Now once you have transcendence, once you are able to start

again, then we go back to the principle of consequences. So in

the creative process you definitely want to stack the cards inyour favor so if youre aiming toward a certain result, you can

accomplish that result. That is in fact laws of consequences.

JMF: There seems to be a thread, Robert Im not sure... Im awriter, Im supposed to know all these words. Im not sure

what word to use to define, categorize, or describe it.

Your remark here on this page about transcendence is, It is

not a reaction to past circumstances but rather an awakening

to new possibilities. The same sense I get when you speak

about creating. Its not about solving problems, its not about

fixing things, it is about new possibilities and a new vision.

ROBERT FRITZ: Thats very consistent. Yeah, uh huh.

JMF: So thats one of the fundamental premises of your work, isthat creating, creating your life as art is a focus on the

possibilities, not on whats been in the past.

ROBERT FRITZ: Thats right. Although in the past, to me, Ive in fact come tocertain insights or wisdom or developed certain talents and so

on. Those are all useful, but the real understanding of reality

is the past is over.

So for example and Ill tell you a little bit of news here for

you (chuckle) so I created a feature film this year. I wroteand directed it. I actually shot it and wrote the score, and the

film, now, its a murder mystery. Its just a very tight thrillermurder mystery with a love story connected to it and theres

some interesting relational things going on too.

The film will premiere at the Boston International FilmFestival, April 24 in Boston. It has already won a couple of

awards. One is that it won Honorable Mention at the LA Reel

Film Festival.

It has won an Aloha Award for Excellence in Filmmaking at

the Honolulu International Film Festival. Its scheduled toappear in some other film festivals coming up. Its an example

of the creative process, you know, so Im making films.

JMF: And the name of the film is? Im sorry

ROBERT FRITZ: Overload.

JMF: Will we get to look for it?

ROBERT FRITZ: Yeah, and we can find the trailer if you want. If you go to The


22/23



International Movie Database, IMDb, and put in Overload,

youll find that theres two films titled Overload. The one

thats mine is the one from 2009.

The one thats not mine is from, I think, 1997 or something

like that, so its pretty easy to find mine. You can watch the

trailer for the film.

JMF: Robert, my mind is spinning. Thank you.

ROBERT FRITZ: (Laughter)

JMF: You started it spinning 30 years ago and you just wound it

back up. (Laughter)

ROBERT FRITZ: Oh, its still spinning, eh? (Laughter)

JMF: I admire you very much. Just your contribution to the world

in terms of having us realize the power and gain a greaterunderstanding of the creative process is stunning and I thank

you for that very much. I appreciate you.

ROBERT FRITZ: Youre quite welcome and thank you for your praise

JMF: Wow. Sincere and serious about my mind spinning. Its somuch to think about and look at and as always, for me with

Robert, he shakes my foundations. (Laughter) The business

about belief and the possibility that all beliefs the ones we

call limiting, self-sabotaging, as well as the ones we

cherish that seem to empower us limit us to possibilities.

Fascinating stuff. I hope you enjoyed it. I would suspect this

would be a great Conversation to listen to again and again

and again.

Normally what I want to do with all Conversations is to

present you with what I call additional material, bonusmaterial, some more stuff to help you understand this

Masters work.

In the case of Robert Fritz Im not going to do that. Im going

to give you a URL. Its an easy one: www.RobertFritz.com.

Just go there.

Hes got radio interviews, hes got writings that just go on and

on and on and on. I know Ive promised you a Conversation

every month. Frankly, were you to simply focus your attention

on Robert Fritz for the next year, I think you would grow

immeasurably. The man is all about transformation.

Thats what the Conversations are all about and thats what


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JohnMiltonFogg.com/Conversations Page 23

youve been listening to. JohnMiltonFogg.com/Conversations.

If you got a lot out of this as I did, please tell your friends.

Thank you for listening. I appreciate you.

Documents

Your Life As Art - Transcript of John Milton Fogg in Conversation with Robert Fritz