YOUR LIFE AS ART — ROBERT FRITZ

John Milton Fogg Robert Fritz — author of “Your Life as Art” and the classic
(Host): “The Path of Least Resistance,” Robert is a mentor &
master of the mechanics, orientation, and spirit of the
creative process.

JMF: Hi everybody. Welcome to a Conversation.

This one is very special for me because this is a person that I

have known for 30 years. I've studied with this man back in
Boston, Massachusetts. It was really at the time when I first
opened up and began to actively jump into the whole business
of personal growth and development and all of that. It was the
days of est and Stuart Emery's Actualizations.

A friend of mine, Michael Melia, got me involved with this

gentleman that you’re going to hear from today. More stuff
that I learned from this man is with me actively today— I talk
about it, I teach some of it, I use it to illustrate things that are
important, and I use it in my life. It's just absolutely stood the
test of time. The title of this Conversation is “Your Life as Art.”
That's also the title of a book this gentleman has written.

It's a hackneyed phrase, a "Renaissance man," but this guy is

one. On his website it says, "Composer, filmmaker, and
organizational consultant." He's much more than that. He has
been a professional musician, he's taught music.

He designs and conducts and facilitates seminars. He's an

accomplished visual artist. Watercolors – I remember seeing
his work. Entrepreneur – he is the author of a book that's just
extraordinary, “The Path of Least Resistance,” and as I said,
“Your Life as Art.”

There are so many things to admire about this man. For me,
all the aforementioned, that his work, his concepts, his
practical application of his philosophies, has stayed with me
for 30 years. When I turn other people on to them, they put
them to use and they get results.

I admire that tremendously, because I'm in that business

myself and this, this is a Master. I just have tremendous
respect for his work. I think he's probably the foremost
teacher of creating on this planet. And his name is Robert
Fritz.

Good day, sir!

ROBERT FRITZ: Hi! Good morning. Good day.

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JMF: All of those things.

What is the underlying premise of Your Life as Art that doesn't

scream at you right from that title? (Chuckle)

ROBERT FRITZ: Well, hopefully the title does, in fact, say what it means.

Another way of looking at this is that we can begin to

approach creating our life the same way a painter makes a
painting, or a filmmaker makes a film, or a composer writes a
piece of music. That the creative process, which is the most
successful process for accomplishment in history. It’s the
process to use in thinking about how you're going to even
create your life.

But most of us have not studied the creative process. We have

incredible misconceptions about it. There are a lot of myths
about it, and we're certainly not taught it in school. In fact,
what we're taught is to either respond or react to the
circumstances in which we find ourselves.

And so it's not usual for people to approach their lives as if

they were making a painting or doing a film or some other
kinds of things that professional, consummate professional
creators do. So the idea behind this is to, number one, learn
the principles of the creative process and then apply them to
your life.

But there's a second understanding that we've come to over

the years and it's not just simply the mechanics of the
creative process. It also has to do with the orientation and
this is where I began to really explore issues around
structures.

Let me sort of describe it this way— the underlying structure

of anything will determine its behavior. There are two basic
structural patterns: one is “oscillating” and the other is
“advancing.”

In an oscillating pattern, first you move in one direction, but

then you move in the opposite direction. In organizations we
see this when organizations build up capacity and then
downsize and then build up capacity and then downsize.

Or they centralize decision-making and then decentralize

decision-making and then centralize decision-making and
then decentralize decision-making again. Another example of
that is when they, for example, acquire other companies and
then they divest and then they acquire and then they divest.
And of course these patterns go over two to five years,

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sometimes maybe a little longer, but they're fairly predictable.

There's a reason why they do that. Now, in our personal lives

an oscillating pattern looks like this: You've set out for
something, you have it for a period of time, but then there's
some kind of reversal, in which at the end of the episode or
the story, you no longer have what you want, and it's not a
good ending.

So when we started to teach the principles of the creative

process, some people had the pattern of accomplishing
various things and having that accomplishment become the
platform for success. We call that an “advancing” pattern.

But others were finding that, in fact, they were having this
oscillating pattern, and so I really had to ask the lucid
question. You know, "What's going on?” How come people are
systematically— or at least you could see the pattern— that
they first would work very hard to create something and then
move away from it?

So that developed an entire field which we now call “structural

dynamics,” which is basically the study of how structure
works and how structures work, not only in people's lives but
in the lives of organizations, in the lives of couples, in the lives
of teens.

The factor is this— we could teach you how to create your

goals. But if you're in an oscillating pattern, eventually you'll
move away from your own success. That was a pretty amazing
insight.

What followed was years of exploration of what caused that

and how you can change from an oscillating pattern to an
advancing pattern. It's a little bit like getting out of a rocking
chair and then getting into a car.

A rocking chair, when you move forward, there's something in

the structure that creates the impetus for that chair to move
backwards. But when you get into a car, that is a vehicle.
That's the structure that's designed to move from one place to
another.

For example, if you drive down to the store, you won't walk
out of the store and find that your car has, in fact, travelled
home so that you couldn’t actually go places. (Laughter) In
people’s lives, that's basically the structures that are the most
useful, and so once that in fact, not only do they not oscillate,
but they become. Your each success you create becomes a
platform for future success and you can begin to build upon

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that.

JMF: Robert, one of the things you taught me— which has been a
slogan, a battle cry for me for 30 years— is create and adjust,
create and adjust. How is that not an oscillating kind of
thing? Or is that different?

ROBERT FRITZ: Oh, that's very different. First of all we have to really
understand. I'm going to say a few technical things about
structure, so I hope people forgive me for this, but it, you
know, it requires knowing something about the physics of this
thing to really understand why it works the way it works.

First principle is that structure, any structure, seeks

equilibrium. In other words, when there are places that are
different, it's what structure tries to do is to end those
differences and make everything equal. An example of that is
when you're hungry.

There's a difference between your desired amount of food that

the body— that your desired amount of food— on the one
hand, and the actual amount of food your body has. And
when that's different, that creates a state of non-equilibrium
or “tension.” And tension seeks resolution.

So when you eat, what happens is that the actual amount of

food and the desired amount of food become the same, ending
the tension, resolving the tension and creating a state of
equilibrium.

Now I'm going to give you one event with two different
underlying structures, and you can see from that why they
actually aren't just simply creating and adjusting. The event is
having what you want.

In one structure, that is the point of most non-equilibrium, or

degrees where you move from equal equilibrium for purist. In
other words, that's a point in the structure that's the most
likely to not be able to sustain itself because the structure
itself is looking for equilibrium, trying to end all differences.
And that's an oscillating pattern.

So when you have what you want, there's a competing

tension. It's pulling you away from that. In an advancing
structure— the event, having what you want— that's a state
of equilibrium. In other words, what you want is equal to what
you have, and that resolves the tension and it creates
equilibrium.

Now, in a creative process, the dominant tension that we work

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with, we call it “structural tension,” and it's two data points

that we work with. One is the desired state, "What is it we
want to create?" and the other is the current state, or the
current reality. "Where are we now in relationship to where we
want to be?"

In the beginning of the creator process there will always be a

difference between what we want and what we have because
the point of creating is to bring something into being that does
not yet exist. And this is the structure that we're teaching
people. We can get into what causes the other structure in a
bit.

But it's really important, I think, for us to realize that there

are two things that we really need to understand in order to at
least create structural tension. One is we have to be pretty
clear about the outcomes that we're after. And secondly, we
have to be very honest about where we are now in reality.

So that means that we can't distort reality. Now some of the

things that happen to distort reality are people’s concepts,
that they don't look, that they speculate rather than observe,
and there's a real discipline around understanding what is in
current reality. So that's not as easy as it sounds.

I mean, you think, "Well, current reality? All I have to do is

look around and see what's there and there you have it." But
often people do not accurately see reality. So those are the two
disciplines that, once you have both of those disciplines in
place, you have the basis of the creative process.

And once you have that in place, then you take action. It
produces a result. You evaluate the result against the
outcome that you're after. You adjust your future actions, and
then you take further actions until finally, eventually, you
move from where you are to where you want to be, and that's
where it creates and just really is relevant.

Make sense, John?

JMF: It does make sense, Robert, in that heady way that I'd
forgotten you express yourself, which is for me, sometimes a
little overwhelming. I want to go back to a thought that
occurred to me while you were speaking with the business of
telling the truth about current reality.

In this day and age of Law of Attraction, of positive thinking

and positive expression, we're encouraged not to think
negative thoughts, not to speak negatively about difficult

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circumstances or, you know, bad things happening to good

people. How does that jive with what you say about telling the
truth of current reality?

ROBERT FRITZ: Yeah, you never want to be in a position where you're lying to
yourself, and quite frankly positive thinking is lying. I think
that...

JMF: I heard that. (Laughter) So is there any validity to… is there

any validity to the business of not giving voice to the
negatives, not dwelling on the negatives?

ROBERT FRITZ: In a way, it's a ridiculous way of managing your

understanding of reality. I mean, the truth is the truth is the
truth, and you either see it or you don't. And it's something
we learn in the art, that you got to really be accurate about
what you're seeing. If you're trying to manipulate yourself,
your mind actually will understand the difference between
what you're telling it and what it sees.

I don't know about you and the folks listening to this, but I
have this weird thing about time. If I set the alarm clock, I
almost invariably wake up, like two minutes, before it's about
to go off and shut it off. I mean, the thing never works.
(Laughter) It actually never gets to ring and wake me up,
because somehow my mind already knows what time it is.

The really strange thing is if I go to Europe, for example, and I

am there the first day and I set the alarm clock, and it's a
brand new time zone, I will wake up two minutes before the
alarm's about to go off and shut the alarm off in the new time
zone. So my mind actually knows what time it is. It knows
other things, too, about reality.

Now, the folks that bring you positive thinking, what they're
saying is the subconscious mind doesn't know the difference
between what's real and what's not real, and we can basically
tell it anything and it will act as if it's so, and then somehow
that would be a positive thing. It would actually help you in
your own creative process.

Except the truth of the matter is that when you start to lie to
yourself, for example— an example of a lie is an affirmation
that says "I can do it, I can do it, I can do it." Well, in fact, in
reality, you only know the probability. You don't know in fact
if you can do anything because you don't even know if you're
going to survive the day. (Laughter)

I mean, I hope everybody does, but you know, we just really

can't insist upon that. And what is the point of insisting upon

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that? It's basically trying to manipulate the mind. So the key

to this is to really be totally honest with yourself and about
reality, the good, the bad and the ugly. Now, what makes that
difficult is the various concepts people have.

There's an artist named Arthur Stern who wrote a wonderful

book called Color: How to See It and Paint It. He brought a
group of his students down to the shores of the Hudson River
and he had them look across and he says, "Okay, what colors
do you see?" Well, they said, "Well, the brick building is red,
and the tower there is white and that other thing is orange."
They start naming all of these colors.

And then what Arthur Stern did was he passed out what he
calls a “spot screen,” which is kind of like an index card that
has a little hole in it. He had the student hold the card up
against the objects that they were seeing and then he said,
"Okay, tell me what colors you see." They all got very quiet
until someone eventually said, "Blue. Everything over there is
blue."

No. First, the reason it looked blue was because on hazy days,
we don't see the color of objects in the distance. We see the
atmosphere and that's why distant mountains look purple or
look blue, because we're really seeing the air between where
we are and where the object is.

But then Stern goes on to say, "Well, why were they seeing red
and white and orange and all of these other colors?" and he
said that they were substituting a concept of reality for reality.
He said, "Art students need to learn how to see what's in front
of their eyes."

Now, two things that we can understand from Stern’s story.

One is, a lot of times we're not able to see reality because we
have such strong concepts about what we're supposed to see
that we can really miss the obvious.

Secondly, that we can learn to see, we can learn to observe

more accurately, and by doing that, we're at an advantage,
because then we can start to really make adjustments that we
might need to make in the creative process that we wouldn't
even think to make if we weren't looking at reality.

So I mean, certainly Stern understood that they would not be

able to see the colors at first, but that he could teach them to
see what was there to see. I think that's the aspect of reality
that I always call “Reality an acquired taste,” you know?

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JMF: (Laughter)

ROBERT FRITZ: But once you acquire it, you know, it's pretty good. It's hard
to go back to something less than reality. The disadvantage of
lying to yourself is you break down your relationship with
yourself.

Okay, so people are always kind of superstitious about

things— they may get some parking spaces or they, you know,
a few things happen. But if they're in an oscillating structure.
No matter what they create, they can really count on it moving
away and that there'll be a reversal. They will not have what
they want.

So when that happens for the positive thinkers, they're told

that they had a negative thought. They get very superstitious
about this whole thing. They begin to get extremely sensitive
about every little thought that happens to them. The fact of
the matter is sometimes we have negative opinions because
that's what we think. We have one of two choices: we can lie
about it, or we can just tell the truth about it.

So my point is let's just tell the truth and stop the tricks,
because those tricks will never actually be able to lead you to
the kind of level of creative process that we would need to
have if we're going to create our lives.

JMF: Robert, you have a piece that, when I was... (Chuckle) I don't
usually prepare much for any of the interviews, any of the
Conversations that I do.

I want to know a little bit about the person, I want to know

what they're into, but really, I want any question I have to
grow out of the Conversation. So I went to your website and,
you know, looked at, 'Yes, he's worked for AT&T, American
Express, Procter & Gamble.' You know, all this stuff that I
chose not to say when I introduced you. (Chuckle)

But I looked at the wealth of writings and interviews that you

have on your site and one got my attention. Actually a couple
of them, this one and another one you wrote called
“Transcendence,” but this is “The Belief Business vs. the
Creating Business.” I think this is pretty much exactly— and I
want you to correct me if I'm wrong and take it further,
please— this is what you were just talking about. We have a
sense, many of us have a sense, you are what you believe,
and you say that premise is simply not true. That's the same
kind of thing as lying to yourself. I mean, it's not the same
thing...

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ROBERT FRITZ: Yeah. Well, first of all, the fact of the matter is, and the point I
make in that article, is that you got to figure that the people
who really have that notion that you are what you believe
have never read a biography in their lives, because if they
had, and particularly biographies of very successful people,
you'll find that almost invariably they did not have positive
beliefs about themselves. Almost invariably they had grave
doubts or they just didn't have incredible self-love. All the
things that we're told that are important are simply not there.

So you know, how come all of these successful people have

violated the rules that are being set up in the belief business?
The point I make in that article is that because they weren't in
the belief business, they were in the creating business, and in
the creating business it doesn't matter what you believe. What
does matter is how well you create.

Now the proof of that, by the way, is that first of all, the
creator process is philosophically neutral. A lot of people want
to tie belief, whatever they believe, whatever the belief system
is, they want to tie that to how successful they are.

But if we look at the history of the arts, for example, there

were incredible, masterful artists who believed all kinds of
things, from being devout Christians or atheists or Buddhists
or any of the other religions, and all of the gambit in between.

You know, from believers to non-believers, to politically left to

politically right, on it goes. So what we can understand from
that is that belief is irrelevant to your creator process.

JMF: Excuse me. What about beliefs like… take any of these
creative people. You've got listed a couple of them here. You've
got Beethoven, Winston Churchill— who was also an artist as
well as a statesman— Pablo Picasso, Hemingway, Disney.

What about beliefs, like limiting beliefs, in their own abilities,

in their skills, in their ability to bring something into being?
What about those kinds of beliefs?

ROBERT FRITZ: They’re totally irrelevant.

JMF: Say more.

ROBERT FRITZ: (Laughter) Ask more.

JMF: Well, you said they're totally irrelevant. Tell me more about
that please.

ROBERT FRITZ: Okay. I was hoping you'd guide me more here, but okay.

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JMF: (Laughter) Well, it... okay. I'm, I am...

ROBERT FRITZ: I mean, how are they relevant? Look, you don't know in the
beginning whether or not you're going to be able to create
something. We have, whatever gifts or talents we have, we
have. You're smart as you are, you're not going to be any
smarter than you are or any more stupid. I mean, we have
these kinds of natural abilities. Some of them can be
developed, some of them might not be able to be developed.
But that's just our starting point, not our ending point and it
doesn't call for belief.

One of the people in that list too is Clint Eastwood, and over
the years I've really admired Clint Eastwood incredibly,
because first of all, he's sort of a limited actor in terms of just
his abilities. You know, you wouldn't find him on the same
level as, let's say, a Marlon Brando or a Meryl Streep.

JMF: I cannot conceive of Eastwood doing Shakespeare.

ROBERT FRITZ: Yeah. Well, the point is he knew how to use his talent, you
see? So he had whatever talent he had or has and the
incredible thing is the way he's developed that talent over
years and years of learning and work and experience.

But then his age— in his 70's now— he is one of the great
directors. He's getting better and better all the time as a
director. He's growing and growing, and he's been doing that
for years.

I think he's a great example of how probably he was able to

take a role for himself and design his career, because he was
very honest about his abilities and whatever limitations he
may have had. He used those as a strength, not a weakness,
and I think that's the point. It's not about what you believe
about yourself.

By the way, the word "limiting” belief in that same article,

what I wrote— it a nice-sounding phrase, the implications.
There are some beliefs that will limit you if you have them,
but in fact, every belief is a limiting belief.

Every single belief you have is limiting in that it cuts

something out, you know? So it's therefore some kind of
limitation. I mean, even if you believe you’re God's gift to
whatever, that itself is a limiting belief.

So the proof of the pudding here, John, is in the examples of

all of these accomplished people and who in fact did not have
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the requirements that the belief business says that you got to
have, and how come? And how do they explain that?

JMF: And how do you explain their success, Robert?

ROBERT FRITZ: That they were in the creating business. That they weren't
focused on what they believe, that it wasn't about themselves.
That it was really about whatever the creation was. So if it's a
film, who do you have to be to want to make a great film? If
it's a novel, who you do you have to be to want to write a great
novel? If you make it about you, then it's not about the
creation itself.

So for example, look at the ceiling right now. Now look at the
floor. Now, you notice when you're looking at the floor, you're
not looking at the ceiling. You've changed your focus. So if my
focus is on me, then I'm really not thinking about the creation
except the way it reflects some kind of identity factor.

But if I change my focus and put it on the creation, what I

think about myself is irrelevant. Where does it even fit in?
What is relevant is what do I want to create, and where am I
now in relationship to that? And how can I move from where I
am to where I want to be?

JMF: How do we take that perspective and marry it to your life as

art? If I'm looking to create my life, my...

ROBERT FRITZ: Well yes, it's that the principle there then is you've got to be
separate from the life that you're creating, so that you create
your life in exactly the same way that you would as if it were a
film or any other piece of engineering, or software, or a table
or a chair.

Here you have this life that you're separate from, and you
begin to conceive of the life that you want to create and you
begin to see where you are in relationship to where you want
to be, and then you create a strategy or an action plan about
moving from where you are to where you want to be. You
systematically gain the confidence, gain the skills that you
may need to develop, and over time the probability is that you
will have more and more of the kind of life that you want to
lead.

JMF: So help me get a handle, please, on a couple of things here.

One is, “The notion of separating myself from creating my life
is art,” I stumbled right over that the moment you said it.

ROBERT FRITZ: What was the stumble?

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JMF: It’s how can I do that? I mean…

ROBERT FRITZ: Well look, if you were making a painting, in order to make the
painting you’d have to be separate from the painting, right?

JMF: Yeah...

ROBERT FRITZ: So let’s say you start to think about the life you want to
create. And imagine it as, you know, “Here’s this thing I want
to create.” It might include things like how you spend your
time, what you’re doing professionally, what your
relationships are like, what your finances are like, what your
health is like. All of these things are things that you may in
fact have some ideas about that you really want.

That becomes this life that you want to live and it’s a little bit
like creating a part or creating a role or character in a play.
And so you’re creating this idea of what the kind of life you
want. You’re separate from it, and the proof of that is you
couldn’t have created it unless you were separate from it.

You have to be apart from it to be able to start to even

describe what it is that you want. So just think about that in
terms of your position in relationship to your life. There’s a
creator and a creation. So we’re functioning as creator and
there is a creation which is separate from the creator.

Then, as I said, the process is – I’m talking in very general

terms – but over years what happens is you really begin to
understand what really works well and what doesn’t work so
well. How to create from your successes and how to create
from your failures, because you are able to learn. If you make
it about yourself, it’s very hard to learn because it’s very hard
to be self-critical.

Usually the pattern for those people who have problems with
that is they avoid criticism and then they maybe indulge in it,
like beat themselves up for a while to manipulate themselves
into good behavior. That’s both sides of the same coin in
which it matters what you think about yourself. But if we’re
just thinking about this life we want to live, it doesn’t matter
what you think about yourself. What matters is how are we
going to move from where we are to where we want to be?

JMF: How is that learned, Robert? How do we do that? I know that

there are— I’m making an assumption— I know that there are
a number of people listening whose current reality is one
thing and what they really want to make their lives into is
something very different. Is the starting point of that the
identifying and a vision of where you want to be, what you

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want to create?

ROBERT FRITZ: Yeah. Certainly a first step is to think about the kind of life
you want to build. So think about this as a life-building
process, but it’s not a trick and there’s no sudden revelation.
And there isn’t something that will suddenly make you, you
know, help you make the big time as it were. What it is, is
basically a building process like any other building process,
like learning music.

When you learn music you've got to start somewhere. You

practice and practice and practice and eventually if you keep
with it, you might be able to get someplace in terms of being
able to play music. It’s an accumulative process, it’s an
evolutionary process.

The thing though— I also have another contrast I want to

make— is the difference between problem solving and
creating. A lot people see their lives as problems and that
somehow they have to solve the problem so they can then
have what they want.

In our culture problem solving is very popular. People say

proudly, “I’m a dedicated problem-solver.” Well look, you
could solve all the problems you have and still not have what
you want. The creative process is not about problem solving.

It’s about bringing things into being. Problem solving is taking

action to have something go away, the problem. Creating is
about taking action to have something come into being. This
is our result, or the creation.

So what we’re helping people do is to really learn the basics of

the creative process. The way you learn how to swim is by
swimming, and the way you learn how to create is by creating.
So we do start with small exercises, you know, small goals. If
you can’t think about things you want, for example, then start
small. And by starting small you begin to get two things
happen.

One is you have a full process of the creative process in a

short period of time, so you have the beginning, the middle,
and the end. And you know what all the steps are, so let’s say
it’s a dinner party and you create this dinner party, or let’s
say it’s a flower garden. Or let’s say it’s a piece of art like a
painting or a sculpture, or let’s say it’s a birdhouse, or a
recipe if you’re cooking, or anything like that.

Those are short enough examples of the creative process that

you have, the beginning, the middle, and the end. You can

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begin to have a sense of what all of those steps are like and
begin to apply that process more broadly. Particularly one of
the nice things that happens when you start to do that is you
get a sense that it’s okay to think about what you want. That
it’s not arbitrary, that it’s not fantasy, that you can actually
start to work towards it.

Now most people actually want things that are fairly do-able,
funnily enough. You know, the tendency is to think, “Well, it’s
getting everything I want. I want to be a movie star, I want to
be rich, da da da.” Actually, people’s aspirations are a little
closer to home.

Often those aspirations and their values are the organizing

principle around which they begin to organize their lives. Not
only do they become more focused but they become more
create-able, as it were as they learn the creative process. You
know, if you don’t know how to create, you’ll be very clear
about what you want, but your chances of creating that are
pretty slim because you don’t know how to get there.

So we look at three things in the creative process. We look at

the mechanics, which has to do with what do you actually do
in the creative process to learn how to bring things into being.
We look at the orientation which has to do with the
underlying structures you’re in, so that once you do in fact
create and accomplish the goals that you’re after, that they
become the platform for future success rather than a reversal.

And we also look at the spirit, you know. “What’s the impetus
to create in the first place?” As I said in the beginning of this
little bit, the impetus is because you really want to bring
something into being, not because you want to get rid of
something. So creating is not to heal you, to solve your
problems, to fix you. It is to bring into being things that
matter to you.

JMF: So is it required, Robert, in this process of creating our lives

as art that we divorce the notion of things that are broken,
fixed, bad... that we don’t want and focus solely on what is it
we want to create?

ROBERT FRITZ: In general terms, yeah. I mean, there might be things that you
really want to improve about your health or about other
things in your life, but problem solving is not usually the most
effective way of even addressing those things. Okay, so let me
give an example of problem solving.

JMF: Please.

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ROBERT FRITZ: Our medical health system. So you get sick and then you go
to the doctor and you get fixed. Contrast that with the ability
to create optimal health— “optimal” meaning the best it can
be for you. So if you can actually get to the point of creating
optimal health, you will not have to get to the point of having
to go to the doctor and heal your disease.

Now, we’re glad that medical science exists. It’s a good thing.
On the other hand, as an approach it’s not even the best
approach to creating health. So creating health is different
than healing disease. And that’s a very tangible example of
this principle, one that probably most of us have experienced.

JMF: Do that same illustration with money, with finances.

ROBERT FRITZ: Give me the starting point.

JMF: Somebody’s struggling financially— more bills than… What’s

the line? “More month at the end of the money,” or something
like that.

ROBERT FRITZ: (Laughter)

JMF: You know, where somebody is struggling financially.

ROBERT FRITZ: Right. There are two sides to that equation. One is income
and the other is cost. You know the secret of course: Viability
is to make more money than you spend. (Laughter) And you
can either do that or you can’t. That would mean that over
time you would either cut down on your expenses or increase
your income. Now that’s simply not a problem. It’s a situation,
it’s not a problem.

Are you with me so far that it’s not a problem?

JMF: I’m going right immediately, Robert, to what’s the difference?

You said situations versus problems…

ROBERT FRITZ: It’s a situation in which currently you’re making less money
than you’re spending and the outcome we want is to have
more money than you’re spending.

JMF: Right.

ROBERT FRITZ: That’s the outcome. So then the question becomes okay, at
least in that equation there are two things that are possible—
make more money, have less expenses. So we begin to figure
out, you know, “Are there ways we can make more money?”
The answer to that will be either “Yes” or “No.” And then, “Are
there ways of cutting our expenses?” The answer to that is

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probably “Yes” or “No.”

Now, with a lot of people we call it “feeding the beast.” You

know, they get to a certain point in their life, their costs are
either greater than their income or equal to their income, and
they are trapped by trying to feed the beast. In other words
they have to make money, maybe doing something they don’t
particularly like doing, but it’s the only way they can make
that level of income.

And we’re not talking about immediately running away and

joining the circus. We’re talking about maybe over time one
way to transition from that situation to a different situation—
one that’s probably more to your liking— is to figure out how
much money you can live on.

Then cut your costs and enjoy the freedom that comes from
the relationship between how much you’re making and how
much it’s costing you. I mean, where’s the problem? What’s
the problem?

JMF: The place I always go…

ROBERT FRITZ: You’ve got to answer my question. What’s the problem?

Somebody’s not making… Their income is not as high as their
cost. What’s the problem?

JMF: Looking at my own situation, the desire, want, need for more
coming in and the continuing exercise of spending less.

ROBERT FRITZ: That’s not a problem. That’s just a strategy to accomplish

what you want. Where’s the problem?

I know we think of it as a problem. We cast it in that role and

then we react against it as if it were a problem. But what’s the
problem? It’s simply a situation, one that we want to change,
but this one’s actually rather easy in the sense that we want
to have income either equal or higher than cost.

That’s just the outcome we want and then we start to design

action steps around that, which probably include increasing
our income capacity and decreasing our cost or making so
much money that it doesn’t matter. But it’s certainly not a
problem, it’s only a situation.

By the way, I do think there are problems, it’s not like I don’t
think there are problems. (Chuckle) You know, I see there’s a
situation we don’t like but it’s certainly not a problem.

JMF: That was going to be my next question, so do you have the

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philosophy or the point of view that there are no such things

as problems?

ROBERT FRITZ: No, certainly there are lots of problems.

JMF: Give me an example of a problem.

ROBERT FRITZ: My car breaks. It’s a problem.

JMF: That’s not a situation. Or is it?

ROBERT FRITZ: That’s, well, for me it would be a problem and then I’d take
action. I think problem solving has its place, and I’d take it to
the mechanic and of course that would still be in the context
of an outcome I want, which is to have a car that works.

But I might also, you know, have a physical situation. It could

be a problem and I would apply problem solving to it. You
know, at that point.

If I have a hernia I would get an operation and get it fixed.

That’s absolutely problem solving. Then I might have other
things I’m doing to produce health but that would actually be
a problem that I’d see that problem solving would be a rightful
way of addressing it.

But not an orientation, not a lifestyle, not a general thing to

do in life, but something that is very specific to the problem
and to the solution of that particular problem.

JMF: You’re not employing creating in solving problems, Robert?

ROBERT FRITZ: Well, it’s impossible because creating is about bringing

something into being that you want. It’s not about taking
action to get rid of something. That’s why the whole notion of
creative problem solving is totally ridiculous.

What they mean by creative problem solving is some fanciful

way of generating some action to get rid of something you
don’t want, which is supposedly unusual versus usual. But I
also make a distinction between creativity and the creative
process.

The creative process is the most reliable process for

accomplishment in history. If you read Lee Strasberg’s book
on acting— I think it’s called Life of Passion or In Search of
Passion, I’m sorry I don’t remember the actual title— but he
talks about what he was doing when he invented the method
school of acting.

The story that he tells is that he went to the theater one night

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and he was absolutely blown away by an actor that he saw.

So the next night he brought all of his friends. That night the
same actor was having an off night and it didn’t have the
same impact at all.

So he started to wonder what was the difference between the

night that he saw it and the next night. And he was told this
is the actor’s problem: that you’re struck by the muse or
you’re at the mercy of the muse and it’s the luck of the draw.

Well, the Moscow Art Theater came to New York. This is

Stanislavski’s theater group, and Stanislavski created what he
called “the system” which is the way of having a reliable
creative process.

Every actor every night— because Strasberg went night after

night after night— every actor, every night, big or small part,
they were all brilliant all the time. What Strasberg says he
discovered was, “Ah! There is a reliable aspect of the creative
process.”

Now of course I felt kind of close to Strasberg when he was

working on those issues since I work on the same thing. The
reliable process for the creative process means that you do it
over and over and over, that you create something.

Creativity is about suspension of the norm. It’s about the

unusual. The creative process, if you do it reliably, over time
the unusual becomes the usual. And so these notions of
creativity that people have— for example, the creativity people
talk about— freeing the mind and how many uses can you
think of for a brick.

Any ideas that if you can think of more uses for using a brick,
you’re more creative. So that means if Frank Lloyd Wright can
only think of one use, making buildings, I guess he wasn’t
very creative.

There’s this whole notion in the creativity business of

generating alternatives that’s seen as somehow creative. In
the real creative process as practiced by the Steven Spielbergs
and the Quincy Joneses and the Georgia O’Keeffes and the
consummate professionals, people have nothing to all their
budgets and have deadlines.

They don’t have time to generate alternatives. What they do

instead of freeing the mind, they focus the mind. I think this
is the real key to innovation and invention. It’s often you don’t
have a goal in mind and in current reality you don’t have

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enough time or resources or capacity to get there.

Now what does it actually mean? It means you don’t have

enough time to get there in the conventional way, or money to
get there in the conventional way. So therefore, what the mind
begins to do is to really invent ways that will take into account
the current situation and invent something, a process that
you hadn’t thought of before that will actually manage to
really accomplish the goal that you’re after.

That is the power of both the structural tension and the power
of the mind to want to resolve that tension. You set up that
tension and, you know, by tension we’re not talking about
stress, pressure or anxiety. We’re talking about structure, the
position of the difference between what I want and what I
have, and the way the mind takes that and starts to work it.
That’s where a lot of innovation happens.

There’s a terrific book in the business world called Competing

For The Future by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad. It’s on
Harvard Business School Press. In that book they talk a lot
about smaller companies that beat the larger companies that
had all of the resources in the world, because the smaller
ones didn’t and had to invent ways of competing in the
marketplace.

A lot of times the ways they invented were superior to the

conventions that were going on, and in fact they started to be
a competitive threat to the larger companies.

They name company after company that did that. So those are
the kinds of things that are some of the myths of the creative
process that it matters what you think, that you've got to
solve your problems first, that you got to find the right belief
that you have to be positive, that you should look for best
practices.

Well, it’s nice to find out what people did, but a lot of times
you will not be able to use someone else’s best practices
because you don’t have the same circumstances. So you’ll
have to invent something. After all, those best practices were
invented in the first place by somebody.

This is the nature of the beast; it’s very fluid, it’s very flexible,
and it’s very much a learning process.

JMF: Robert, we don’t have a great deal of time left, and there’s one
more subject I want you to talk about and I’m going to guess
that it is near and dear to your heart, because on your
website you say that you’re currently engaged in a new book

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project about transcendence called “The Transcendence

Project.”

Would you speak to me— speak to us— about what you mean
by “transcendence” please, and what’s making that word, this
project, so important to you?

ROBERT FRITZ: Transcendence is the principle that no matter what the past
has been, you can start again. One way of thinking about this
is that there are two principles that we often work with in the
creative process.

One is we could call “karma,” and karma is a Sanskrit word

which means “action” in the East. Of course, whatever you’ve
done has some karmic response or consequence and you have
to sort of pay all of your bills from the past, all the bad things
you’ve done. You’ve got to somehow pay for it.

In fact, what the principle or the law of transcendence is, is no

matter what the past has been, you can start again. In the
West this is sometimes called “grace.” What it means is that
even though you may have made a lot of mistakes, just like a
painter can take a new canvas, or a writer can turn to a clean
sheet of paper, or a musician can do take two on a number
they’re playing.

You can reset your life. You can rethink your life. But you do
not have to complete the past. The past in reality is over. I
know people really spend a lot of time trying to relive and
repress theories of consciousness.

Psychotherapy is big on trying to help people come to terms

with their past, but actually if they were steeped in reality,
they would discover the past is over. No matter how good,
bad, or indifferent it was, the past is in fact over.

So what transcendence does is it gives you a new chance on

life. I think that’s really the power of it. So on our website
we’ve asked people to submit transcendence stories, stories
that they have in their life about how things are one way and
for whatever reason, suddenly was a different way and there
was no cause-and-effect.

There was nothing they did, or maybe it was something they

did but that it didn’t connect to the past so that the new
transcendence, or the new chance in life, was not
extrapolation of what’s happened in the past.

Most people really are unaware of that principle but that’s one
of the major principles that the creative process affords you.

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Now once you have transcendence, once you are able to start
again, then we go back to the principle of consequences. So in
the creative process you definitely want to stack the cards in
your favor so if you’re aiming toward a certain result, you can
accomplish that result. That is in fact laws of consequences.

JMF: There seems to be a thread, Robert— I’m not sure... I’m a

writer, I’m supposed to know all these words. I’m not sure
what word to use to define, categorize, or describe it.

Your remark here on this page about transcendence is, “It is

not a reaction to past circumstances but rather an awakening
to new possibilities.” The same sense I get when you speak
about creating. It’s not about solving problems, it’s not about
fixing things, it is about new possibilities and a new vision.

ROBERT FRITZ: That’s very consistent. Yeah, uh huh.

JMF: So that’s one of the fundamental premises of your work, is

that creating, creating your life as art is a focus on the
possibilities, not on what’s been in the past.

ROBERT FRITZ: That’s right. Although in the past, to me, I’ve in fact come to
certain insights or wisdom or developed certain talents and so
on. Those are all useful, but the real understanding of reality
is the past is over.

So for example— and I’ll tell you a little bit of news here for
you (chuckle)— so I created a feature film this year. I wrote
and directed it. I actually shot it and wrote the score, and the
film, now, it’s a murder mystery. It’s just a very tight thriller
murder mystery with a love story connected to it and there’s
some interesting relational things going on too.

The film will premiere at the Boston International Film

Festival, April 24 in Boston. It has already won a couple of
awards. One is that it won Honorable Mention at the LA Reel
Film Festival.

It has won an Aloha Award for Excellence in Filmmaking at

the Honolulu International Film Festival. It’s scheduled to
appear in some other film festivals coming up. It’s an example
of the creative process, you know, so I’m making films.

JMF: And the name of the film is? I’m sorry…

ROBERT FRITZ: “Overload.”

JMF: Will we get to look for it?

ROBERT FRITZ: Yeah, and we can find the trailer if you want. If you go to The
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International Movie Database, IMDb, and put in “Overload,”

you’ll find that there’s two films titled “Overload.” The one
that’s mine is the one from 2009.

The one that’s not mine is from, I think, 1997 or something

like that, so it’s pretty easy to find mine. You can watch the
trailer for the film.

JMF: Robert, my mind is spinning. Thank you.

ROBERT FRITZ: (Laughter)

JMF: You started it spinning 30 years ago and you just wound it
back up. (Laughter)

ROBERT FRITZ: Oh, it’s still spinning, eh? (Laughter)

JMF: I admire you very much. Just your contribution to the world
in terms of having us realize the power and gain a greater
understanding of the creative process is stunning and I thank
you for that very much. I appreciate you.

ROBERT FRITZ: You’re quite welcome and thank you for your praise

JMF: Wow. Sincere and serious about my mind spinning. It’s so

much to think about and look at and as always, for me with
Robert, he shakes my foundations. (Laughter) The business
about belief and the possibility that all beliefs— the ones we
call “limiting,” “self-sabotaging,” as well as the ones we
cherish that seem to empower us— limit us to possibilities.

Fascinating stuff. I hope you enjoyed it. I would suspect this

would be a great Conversation to listen to again and again
and again.

Normally what I want to do with all Conversations is to

present you with what I call “additional material,” bonus
material, some more stuff to help you understand this
Master’s work.

In the case of Robert Fritz I’m not going to do that. I’m going
to give you a URL. It’s an easy one: www.RobertFritz.com.
Just go there.

He’s got radio interviews, he’s got writings that just go on and
on and on and on. I know I’ve promised you a Conversation
every month. Frankly, were you to simply focus your attention
on Robert Fritz for the next year, I think you would grow
immeasurably. The man is all about transformation.

That’s what the Conversations are all about and that’s what

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you’ve been listening to. JohnMiltonFogg.com/Conversations.

If you got a lot out of this as I did, please tell your friends.
Thank you for listening. I appreciate you.

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