Love is what creating is all about.
In the creative process, the love comes first,
and the situation later.
In the creative process, love is generative
rather than simply responsive.
The object of your love does not yet exist.
Quite often, it isn’t even established in your mind.
It may be just a glimmer or impulse,
or even a vague impression,
or it may not even be that much.
But a creator is able to love something that does not yet exist
– even in the imagination –
and bring it into existence.
From nothing, something is formed.

What Is Creating?

What is creating? Creating causes something to come into existence that didn't exist before it was created.

Of all of the wise comments in Robert Fritz's book, Creating, the one that I consider most significant is the difference between first-person and third-person orientation.

First-Person Orientation

A preoccupation with identity is more than an occasional sojourn into questions of identity. For many people, it is a way of life. It is an orientation. I call this the first-person orientation, first-person as in language – I, me, us, we.

People in the first-person orientation have a way of making everything seem as if it is about them, whether it is or not. They manage to take everything personally (Creating, page 133).

 Third-Person Orientation

Another orientation that people can live in is third person, as in language – he, she, him, here, it they, them. In this orientation the focus in on yourself, but rather outside yourself in a third-person relationship. Third-person orientation you are more capable of establishing relationships, because of the duality that is created between you and something else

People in the first-person orientation are focused on self; people in the third person are focused on something other than self. (Creating, 136-137).

Focus

What is the significance for this distinction in your life?

The way you move from a first- to a third-person orientation is simple but powerful, you change your focus. Instead of directing your focus inward, you direct it outward. Then you can begin to relate to the world, because you are now separate from it.You are free to be the way you actually are, and the world is what it is (Creating, page 142-43).

Comments about Creating

Review

'Robert Fritz is without doubt one of the most original thinkers today on the creative process in business, the arts, science, and life in general. His work has deeply impacted my life and the lives of many of my colleagues. Unlike many who write as outside experts about 'creativity', Robert Fritz takes you inside: the secrets of creating as understood by a master musician, artist and composer.'
Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline  — This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Publisher

[Original Post October 18, 2014]

My book, How to Get Out of The True Self Trap: The Life-Changing Secret of Heroic Stories, challenges the assumptions of self-help work that treats you as a problem to be solved. This tendency is deeply rooted in religious and psychotherapeutic beliefs about fixing what is wrong with you. In contrast, heroic stories are about ordinary people doing extraordinary actions in response to some outer challenge. In the process, they discover that they are capable of far more than the imagined.

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