A fun bookstore in my hometown now has Getting Messy in stock. River Lights Bookstore in Dubuque, Iowa is a charming bookstore in a charming old town on the Mississippi River… and they deliver books for free by bicycle anywhere downtown. (And they’re pet friendly too!)
I’ll never forget the moment that sparked my book Getting Messy: A Guide to Taking Risks & Opening the Imagination. I was teaching in the teacher credentialing program at UC Berkeley, and one of my students—a soon-to-be teacher—asked if I had any tips for “keeping things under control” in the classroom. She wanted things to…
When we are most vulnerable, we are most alive, most open to all the dimensions of existence. In our vulnerability, is our power. ~Miriam Greenspan Teaching is more than just sharing knowledge—it’s about growing into our deeper selves and uncovering our unique gifts. When I started teaching, I was fortunate to have a wise mentor…
Each of us carries a vast reservoir of non-verbal, non-rational, non-cognitive wisdom—a deep well of knowing that exists beyond the boundaries of logic and language. This wisdom is always present, quietly offering its insights, but it often goes unnoticed because our thinking minds dominate the conversation. When we loosen our fixation on what we think…
A fellow in Spain has started a blog about my book Getting Messy. Here’s the link: http://bm31-liburuak.blogspot.com/2010/07/getting-messy.html. He’s from the Basque region of Spain, so if you happen to read Basque, I’d love your help understanding what it says! It’s incredible to see Getting Messy inspiring conversations across borders. A New Amazon Review for Getting…
The creative process is innate to human life. We don’t need to make complicated plans to search for ideas. We simply need to make room for them to visit. The times I’ve been most unhappy with my teaching were the times that I didn’t allow enough of a pause. Instead, I rushed on to the…
I’ve never been a naturally confident person, and sometimes I wonder about that. Every creative thing I’ve done has required inner courage—pushing through a persistent voice that whispers there’s nothing of value here. It’s an exhausting pattern: I dismiss and deny my own work, and then I look at confident people and assume they’re more…