Ora Nadrich is founder and president of the Institute for Transformational Thinking and author of Live True: A Mindfulness Guide to Authenticity, named among the “top 18 books on what an authentic life looks like” by Positive Psychology and “one of the 100 Best Mindfulness Books of All Time” by Book Authority.
In a world where creativity often feels elusive, Dr. Ronald Alexander offers profound insights into unlocking our inner potential. In this interview written by Ora Nadrich, the esteemed psychotherapist and mind-body coach shares practical strategies to enhance creativity and overcome mental blocks.
Who is Dr. Ronald Alexander?
Dr. Ronald Alexander is a mind-body psychotherapist; a mindfulness, creativity, and leadership coach; and an international trainer of healthcare professionals, lay people, and businesses with a private psychotherapy and coaching practice in Santa Monica, California. He is executive director of the OpenMind® Training Program, a leading-edge organization that offers personal and professional training programs in mindfulness-based mind-body therapies, transformational leadership, and meditation. He is also the author of Wise Mind, Open Mind: Finding Purpose and Meaning in Times of Crisis, Loss, and Change (2008) and two meditation CDs. His new book is Core Creativity: The Mindful Way to Unlock Your Creative Self (June 2022).
Often referred to as Zendoc because he is a Buddhist practitioner and was ordained as a Zen Buddhist, he has studied and taught cross-cultural systems of meditation, Buddhist psychology, Kundalini yoga, and other healing disciplines for 40 years in the U.S., Europe, Russia, Australia, Canada, Japan, and Asia.
Describe your work and how you help your clients.
As a leading pioneer in integrating the mindfulness teachings of the eastern with western therapy modalities, core creativity, and leadership coaching, I’ve been able to develop a unique and comprehensive mind-body program. This system combines techniques that support strategies of personal, clinical, and corporate excellence and growth.
How do creative ideas originate?
The ancient Greeks believed that creative ideas came from nine goddesses who bestowed inspiration on humans. Today many people believe that ideas can come from what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious — which all human beings share. It’s here that the archetypes of stories, themes, and characters are said to reside, seeping into our conscious and unconscious and influencing our perceptions about ourselves and our lives.
You might believe that ideas are coming only from your own unconscious mind, but in my many years of working with creative people, I’ve found that curiosity about the ultimate origin of the ideas and insights that come to us, as well as the power of core creativity and intuition, can lead to the state of open mind.
What habits or mindsets can prepare us to achieve creative breakthroughs?
In my book, Core Creativity: The Mindful Way to Unlock Your Creative Self, I write about the mindsets and habits of highly creative people. These strategies and habits of highly creative people are portals to help you enter what I call “open mind” so that you can access your core creativity and use it for whatever you’d like to create or change in your life. The strategies include:
1. Being solutions-oriented as you create a vision for yourself
For many people, the default is to focus on problems. A solution orientation means focusing on what you would like to create and experience, crafting a vision that can inspire you even when challenges and obstacles threaten to derail your goal.
2. Identifying new or repurposed winning formulas
Identify winning formulas you can use — blueprints for success you or someone else have benefitted from. A winning formula is a structure for playing to win rather than playing to not lose. You want to be focused on the positive — winning in a competitive situation, creating something fresh, and opening the door to new possibilities.
3. Seeing failures and setbacks as offering opportunities
If you’re willing to detach from your ego’s ideas about who you are and what you’re not capable of, you might find that failures, setbacks, and mistakes can be viewed as “mis-takes”. Like a director telling an actor “Let’s do another take,” you can do another “take.”
4. Taking a risk rather than staying in your lane
Creative artists break the rules all the time. One of those rules is to “stay in your lane.” Great musicians often venture into film, painting, sculpting, and even inventing devices — we wouldn’t have multitrack recording or electric guitars if it weren’t for guitarist Les Paul tinkering with electronics.
5. Acknowledging your successes to maintain your motivation
When you’ve completed a project or even just a challenging part of it, be present with the feeling of satisfaction and pride. Journal about your creative successes, analyzing all that you did right. And talk with supportive creative people who will acknowledge your creativity and take it seriously.
6. Getting organized, establishing routines, and respecting your natural rhythms
Respect your habits and rhythms as you organize your time and processes. You might have to do some research to figure out what organizing systems work for you.
7. Setting goals and staying on track
Start your day by visualizing yourself accomplishing what you’re planning to do and then visualize yourself arriving at the completion. Maybe imagine yourself focusing on your three or four most difficult and important tasks. Do you know what they are each day? Identifying them might help you stay on course.
In your book, Core Creativity, you share insights from personal interviews with several highly creative artists. Will you share one of your stories with us?
One needs patience to develop the skills to achieve a vision. Award-winning actor, musician and songwriter Dennis Quaid told me, “I’ve always had to really work at everything… I know many, many talented people who gave up or lost interest in whatever it was, or believed what people were saying about them. And I just felt like I would always have to work harder than anybody else. I didn’t feel like I really had any kind of, like, amazing gifts... I just thought I really had to work harder.” His hard work paid off in the movie Great Balls of Fire, in which he played rock-and-roll icon Jerry Lee Lewis. “I got Jerry Lee Lewis mentoring me,” Quaid shared, “and I had a year to prepare for it. At that time, I didn’t play piano. I was, like, 33 years old, and I practiced the piano 12 hours a day.”
What inspires you in your work?
Initially, my plan was to teach at a university and ride it out until my 60s, when I could retire and enjoy a pension. When I moved from Boston to LA and started a holistic behavioral medicine and psychology clinic, some of my first therapy patients were musicians and television and film executives.
Many of the young musicians I worked with were in a band that toured but would also go off and play with other musicians, later to return to playing with their original group. Their “mix and match” approach to their work inspired me. Soon I realized that I could remain in private practice, be a part-time university adjunct professor, do creativity coaching, and host workshops. This decision helped me avoid boredom and burnout. I continue to enjoy my work thanks to the insight I had working with these young musicians.
For those who may be interested in joining in our Core Creativity and Mysticism Omega workshop that the two of us are facilitating in October, what can people expect from it?
This empowering week will be an inner journey for participants to directly access their mystical, creative unconscious where inspiration is found. They will come to understand the numinous and oceanic feelings that spark a sense of limitless creativity.
Together we’ll explore the inner world as both a guide and map to discover the evolution of the creative process. We’ll delve into the deep roots of Carl Jung’s The Red Book to identify archetypal energy patterns and learn somatic and yogic breathing approaches. In the workshop we’ll be utilizing mindfulness meditation, contemplation, guided imagery, trance, healing affirmations, prayer, and deep silence as pathways for the creative process, as well as the illumination and realization of one’s self — mind, body, and spirit. This interconnectedness is a valuable discovery on the life journey of self-transcendence for awakening the divinity within. To register go here.
Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info!
Ora Nadrich, President of Institute for Transformational Thinking
Ora Nadrich is a certified life coach and mindfulness teacher, specializing in transformational thinking, self-discovery and mentoring new coaches. Her new book is Mindfulness and Mysticism: Connecting Present Moment Awareness with Higher States of Consciousness (IFTT Press, Nov. 11, 2021).
