Break the Isolation & Find Your Creative Pack

Most creatives I know and work with struggle with how to get optimal doses of solitude and of social interaction. I call it the Solitude – Social Conundrum.

Last week we gathered with a group of creatives and entrepreneurs from around the globe to discuss the epidemic of isolation and introduce people to how they can break that trend and find support through collaborative alliances in our Business Artist Alliance.

While I could spend hours each day immersed in my creative work, not talking to anyone, and be content, I need meaningful connections too.

Too much social stuff, and I get a strong solitude deprivation. My head feels compressed. My jaw goes lax. I’m spent.

But too much solitude, and something uglier can happen. The crazy Congress inside my mind ratchets up its cantankerous partisanship.

My mind’s Congress has a two-party system – one side that thinks I should spend the day climbing trees, feeding birds, and writing poems, and the other side that tries to pass legislation for me to balance books, count beans, and re-organize my Mind Rooms.

Numerous studies in social psychology reiterate how important the right social connections are to our well-being, optimal mindset, and drive.

I’ve found an optimal social engagement. Mostly. It’s worked for me and for several of the creatives and solo-preneurs and even teams I work with.

We recently established our first Business Artist Alliance online which essentially is a Pack. A Creative Pack. I have found that Packs typically come  3 forms.

A Smooth Running Pack. This pack includes my creative team at Tracking Wonder with whom I work remotely made up mostly of of specialized experts and freelancers. I call on them and count on them regularly. I bow before them because they each possess skills and talents that I either lack or have no interest or time to develop.

A Nourish Pack. My family, in short. My wife, daughter, and other family members – just by who they are – feed my drive and mend my wounds.

A Wild Pack. This Pack includes a handful of allies I trust with my ideas and creative challenges. I know they’ll “get” my creative problem, not psychoanalyze me but understand me, and “run wild” with my ideas or creative problems. This pack mostly includes a few other creatives, another enterpriser, and, again, especially my extraordinary wife.

But my Wild Pack also sometimes includes members of my Smooth Running Pack, members of the Quest community, members at some co-working spaces I frequent, and even some Twitter and Facebook chums.

One outgrowth of the Wild Pack has been creative partnerships – these have formed collaborations that I’ve partnered and teamed up with for enterprises, cross-promotion, and more.

And there are the Big Wolves in my life – my own teachers, mentors, and coaches – who are indispensable.

In all such Packs, my best self is respected, engaged, and nurtured.

These packs and alliances quiet the Congress.

THE WRITING INVITATION

Find a quiet, private place and write into this prompt:

Imagine yourself on a specific day late in 2017. You reside in a comfortable place where you can reflect on your wondrous best self’s year. You’ve engaged in activities and creative challenges and made stunning growth in your business and creative pursuits.

But you haven’t done it alone. 

Imagine yourself as part of a Business Artist Alliance – or Pack. How does your body and mind and heart feel to be part of this group? How is your best self engaged and respected? How has your best self grown as a result?

Who has been a key player in your Smooth Running Pack? Your Nourish Pack? Your Wild Pack?

How have you reached out through friendships, social media, and conferences to do so?

What key attitudes and principles guided you as you formed, grew, or changed your Packs?

Now read back over and consider a strategy from what you just wrote that you could implement to support you in helping you create your vision for the year.

I’m really curious about your responses to some of the questions above. Let me know what your plans are for your Business Artist Alliances and what you think is useful for us to know about forming creative partnerships.

If you can imagine yourself accomplishing more though a collaborative group of like-minded creatives and entrepreneurs, I invite you to join our international  Tracking Wonder Quest Community.

In our community you’ll gain weekly inspiration, access to special meetups, and opportunities to find allies online and in your region of the planet. Our free community is comprised of professionals, entrepreneurs, creatives, teachers, coaches, and consultants from 15 countries dedicated to doing business from a place of authenticity and wonder. Join us.

After you’ve joined our community, you might want to consider starting your own Business Artist Alliance. Our free Business Artist Meetup Ambassador Program empowers you to host your own real-time meet-ups so you can build your live and local pack.

Connect with individual change-makers in your community who share your desire for a more meaningful working environment and who understand the value of community.