This is the latest in a series of blog posts where I’ve talked about personal hedgehogs, writing about my ancestors, and making only what I can make. This morning, it came to me what all of this is really about: creativity, aliveness, and vitality, at any age. I’m curious about where creativity comes from, how to conjure up aliveness, and what vitality looks like, now that I’m beyond middle-age and officially a “senior”.

I don’t have the all answers, but I’m getting clues.

One Big Clue

The book, What to Make of a Life, introduces the concept of “Extend Out/Circle Back” to feed one’s inner fire, later in life. Author Jim Collins describes it as:

[A] looping process of, on the one hand, pushing out the edges and doing new things and, on the other hand, returning to the wellspring of encodings tapped before.

I think human beings are natural explorers, building on what’s already familiar and expanding the frontier. Babies do this incredibly well. And so do adults, often unknowingly.

An Unfolding Life
To make “Extend Out/Circle Back” concrete, here’s an example from my life:

One of my encodings from an early age is storytelling, through writing. As an eight-year old, I wrote letters to my sister at college describing the latest news of the household. In a junior high English class, I turned in a tongue-in-cheek essay for about two resident “mad” science teachers. And later, as an adult, I blogged about shopping for a new toilet during home renovations. I’m wired to be a narrator of stories.

Extending out meant finding new ways to tell a story and facilitating others to tell their story. Three experiments that worked: 1) Interviewing others with interesting lives (e.g., a “laughter yoga” teacher), 2) Convening “campfire conversations” for fellow engineers to talk about their career when I was an employee at a large telecom company. 3) Creating a podcast, called Conscious Living, Conscious Leaving, consisting of recorded conversations with a dying friend. I learned and grew as a storyteller by discovering another encoding–making meaning.

Later, extending out took the form of using stories for new purposes–more than being entertained or sharing wisdom. I helped entrepreneurs, newly minted graduates and career-switching professionals tell their “brand story”. These were stories to gain credibility and trust, by showing how one got to be so good at what they do today. I recognized a new encoding–getting to the heart of complexity (yes, people are complex!) and eloquently communicating it.

Now, I am a facilitator of healing stories, whether it’s genealogy work to piece together a fuller picture of who my ancestors were, or holding space for a client’s ancestors to tell their stories, or helping a client re-write their stories of unresolved trauma. I now know that I am encoded to be a healer.

Revealing stories is something that has made me happy my entire life. I can see how I tried variations on this theme and in the process, uncovered and strengthened things that are fun and easy for me (read: talents/encodings.) Experimentation led to growth, which gave me an understanding of human beings on an emotional, intellectual and spiritual level. I am grateful for how it opened my mind and heart, and fed my soul. Hmmm, that sounds suspiciously like creativity, aliveness and vitality.

A Final Thought
None of this was planned. I’m not unique in this regard. Life’s twist and turns give us opportunities to grow and discover new encodings. (Oh, I didn’t realize I would be good at that!)

What does your unique version of Extend Out/Circle Back look like? I’d love to hear, as it’s a clue to what feeds your creativity, brings you alive, and makes you feel vital.