The path of least resistance.

A book review of The Path of Least Resistance on how to improve your life and activate your creativity.

This is not the easiest book, but if you find the strength to read and understand it, it will change your life, help you unleash your creativity and fully live every day.

From the annotation to the book "The Path of Least Resistance"

I know a lot of books about creativity and the awakening of creativity and, as a rule, they are all very imaginative, airy and inspiring. "Muse, Where Are Your Wings" by Yana Frank, "The Artist's Way" and "The Goldmine" by Julia Cameron, "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamothe. If you've read even one of them, then you must know what I mean - they even read differently, not at all like ordinary books on self-development and success.

But in every realm there are books that dissect the central themes of the realm with incredible pedantry (in the best sense of the word) and meticulousness. These books lay them out on the operating table and coolly deduce definitions, make connections and try to get to the bottom of things, showing a purely scientific approach. As a rule, they are hard to read, they are somewhat boring, but they provide deep knowledge that allows you to look at the more pop books in this topic from a different angle.

One of these books, probably, has already got everyone - because it is referred to by all and sundry in their articles and books about the search for a calling and the fulfillment of a dream. I'm talking about Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's "Flow", which revolutionized the science of happiness - positive psychology. Other examples are Bruce Hood and Richard O'Connor, purely scientific books that only try to look like popular science and give deep knowledge of the mechanisms that operate in our head. And then there's Kelly McGonigal.

Robert Fritz's book is a strange thing because it tries to sort out and put a scientific basis under such an abstract and sublime concept as creativity.

Well, since in Csikszentmihalyi's "Stream" and Sonya Lubomirski's "The Psychology of Happiness" researchers have managed to measure such an immeasurable concept as happiness, then why not do the same with creativity?

Book "The Path of Least Resistance"

- writer, composer and director, a creative person to the marrow of his bones. However, he has had some success in the non-creative space as the founder of the consulting firm Robert Fritz Inc., whose clients include corporations such as Nike and Procter & Gamble. His forte is composition, search and study of structures in any areas of life.

A structural approach plus a huge creative experience and an analytical streak allowed Fritz to create his own course "Technologies of Creativity" in the late 70s, which turned out to be super popular. According to Fritz, more than 50,000 graduates from different parts of the world have already taken the program, and the course is constantly being improved. Based on Fritz's course in 1984, the book "The Path of Least Resistance", which went through several reprints and this year, finally reached us under the canonical title.

Three Ideas Technology Creativity

Creative Technology and the Path of Least Resistance are essentially based on three ideas:

Man is like a river - he, like everything in nature, follows only the path of least resistance. That is why it is easier for us to live out of habit than to try to change something; that is why we easily abandon useful undertakings.
The deep structure of your life determines the path of least resistance. No matter how you try to make the stream flow in a different way, it will still return to its course, but if you dig another, more convenient channel, the stream will flow along it. So it is with people - until we make profound changes in our attitude to life, we will remain in our usual place, even if we don’t like it.
The Deep Structure can be changed.

From these three ideas comes the general principle that you can learn to recognize the deep structures of life and change them to make life the way you want it to be.

For an ordinary person, the deep structure of life is oscillatory. As the joke goes, life is like a zebra: a white stripe, a black stripe, a white stripe, a black stripe, and a tail at the end. You can make different efforts to break out of this vicious circle - to force yourself, but, in fact, they all give only temporary changes. And the only way to switch to another life direction, according to Fritz, is not to break the existing structure, but to go beyond it.

How to do it? Engage in creative development, because the deep structure of the life of a creative person is not oscillatory, but progressive. This is forward movement.

And how to do it? Fritz in the book offers several options, and none of them will turn out to be simple (which, however, speaks in favor of their effectiveness - real life does not give simple solutions). You will have to figure out what you really want, what is already in your life at the moment and what you have to go through. You will determine the correct rhythm of the creative process and go through all three of its phases: inception, comprehension and implementation. And finally, you will begin to act.

This is a deep, thought-provoking book, and it has, in fact, only one flaw. It will be difficult for a creative person to read The Path of Least Resistance. I don't know if that's the original language or if it's a translation problem, but the fact remains that it's no easier to read than The Flow or How to Read Books by Mortimer Adler. I didn't find any other significant cons.

Such books are not read out of curiosity or for entertainment, but to understand the fundamentals that underlie any creative process. If you liked The Artist's Way and Bird by Bird, give it a try and you'll be able to see art from a completely different perspective. Scientifically accurate and sterile clean.

Robert Fritz

path of least resistance

Robert Fritz

The Path of Least Resistance

Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life

Published with permission from Random House, a division of Random House LLC, and Nova Littera SIA

Legal support of the publishing house is provided by the law firm "Vegas-Lex"

To my son Ivan

Preface to the new edition

At first, when I decided to make "small" edits to The Path of Least Resistance, I thought it was an easy task. I planned to update 20 percent of the content and add some new material, but after reading the old edition, I found that I wanted to redo it. In the end, I rewrote about 70 percent of the text.

When I thought about reworking the Path of Least Resistance, I wasn't enthusiastic about the idea. Making edits seemed akin to a retreat, a return to a past life. But as soon as I sat down to work, I suddenly realized that I had an opportunity to renew my ideas and express myself in a new way. This fact reflects another principle of the creative process, namely that no theories can describe how the creative process will develop. It is impossible to predict what joys and disappointments he will present. And that makes it all the more exciting.

The creative process is a living process. Improvisation. This is both a rite and a way of life; both pleasure and pain. Being creative causes such powerful experiences that few things seem to be able to bestow upon us. The book reflects the results of the work that has been carried out over the past 15 years, that there is a course "Technologies of Creativity". The course curriculum is developed and implemented by one of the companies I founded, DMA.

Teaching the principles of the creative process is one of the most powerful ways to help people. Help them learn and achieve the results they would like to see realized. People come to my course from different countries, with different lifestyles and education. Classes are held in the largest corporations, and in educational institutions, and even in strict regime colonies. From my rich experience, I have made one important observation: most people are able to learn how to create.

Concepts creation and creativity used so often that they are already pretty worn out. As a professional composer and performer, I have never liked that these terms describe by no means creative actions. Creation and creativity that I write about come to us from the history of art and science, and not from psychology or the human development movement, new age thinking, management training or metaphysics, using the words "creativity" and "creativity" in a different way, usually very nebulous.

Creative Technologies students learn the creative process that artists use to paint, architects to design buildings, composers to write music, filmmakers to make films. In our classes, people learn to create, focusing not only on specific results, but also on their lives. Few people are accustomed to think of life as an object of the creative process, but when listeners begin to apply the principles of creativity to their own lives, it changes for them.

Creativity is a skill that can be developed. You can improve in it if you practice, week after week, month after month, year after year. This book will only be an introduction, but it can lead to real change. Experiment with the principles described here, start working with the creative process in a variety of areas. Many of these principles are unique, although readers often say they sound familiar to them. Maybe these principles are simply dictated by common sense? Yes and no. You can see the effect of the principles described in the book in your own life. In this sense, they are familiar to you.

Current page: 1 (total book has 24 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 6 pages]

Robert Fritz

Robert Fritz

The Path of Least Resistance

Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life

Published with permission from Random House, a division of Random House LLC, and Nova Littera SIA

Legal support of the publishing house is provided by the law firm "Vegas-Lex"

* * *

To my son Ivan

Preface to the new edition

Concepts creation and creativity used so often that they are already pretty worn out. As a professional composer and performer, I have never liked that these terms describe by no means creative actions. Creation and creativity that I write about come to us from the history of art and science, and not from psychology or the movement for the development of human potential, new age thinking 1
New age ("new era", English.) - a set of currents and movements of a syncretic and esoteric nature. In the West, they flourished in the 1970s, in Russia in the 1980s-1990s. Note. transl.

Management training or metaphysics, using the words "creativity" and "creativity" in a different, usually very vague sense.

But another world is revealed in The Path of Least Resistance: the world of structures. Most of us have never dealt with the topic of structures and their impact on our lives. For many, the existence of structures that determine the way a person lives will be a discovery. As you begin to study them, some of the recurring events and patterns in your life will become clear to you. You will begin to realize how these patterns arise, why you have previously failed to get rid of unwanted patterns, and how you can form new structures that will lead you to the type of circumstance you desire.

Since the publication of the first edition of the book, I have received a huge number of letters from people from all over the world who have managed to start a new, creative life. These letters are a real source of inspiration. My work has helped people change their lives, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Robert Fritz,

October 1988

Introduction

In the early 1960s, when I was studying composition at the Boston Conservatory of Music, it dawned on me that in order to write music, I knew little and applied the harmony, counterpoint, form, and structure that we were taught. The composer's work revealed a higher, supra-musical dimension. It beckoned and amazed me. I could never understand what kind of elusive, invisible, nameless property distinguishes true masterpieces of art - and is not taught in any conservatory.

Gradually, I began to notice the general laws and principles of creativity, whether in music, painting, sculpture, drama, film or poetry. Moreover, it turned out that the daily life of people of art is based on the same principles and laws. As a composer and musician, I have always been attracted to the creative process by the fact that it involves all dimensions and facets of human existence: from the intellectual to the spiritual, from the logical to the intuitive, from the subjective to the objective, from the technical to the philosophical, from the scientific to the religious.

The Creator is a mystery to most people, because he perceives and reconciles seemingly obvious contradictions. For a creative person, there are no contradictions at all: there are opposites that need to be balanced. So the cyclist transfers weight from one side to the other and maintains balance. The Creators live in several worlds at the same time, and each of these worlds is governed by its own laws. When a creator creates, many universes close together. Physicists who study the space-time continuum often get transcendent and even mystical experience when immersed in the secrets of the world order. Creators experience a similar revelation when the worlds they have created show them the fruit of their own labor. So it was natural for me as a composer to go beyond the music and look at the general principles of the creative process.

Research led me to two different but related fields: metaphysics and nature. I began studying metaphysical concepts in the early 1960s, and much of what I saw was dogmatic and superstitious. However, I have found ideas that, if applied correctly, can release the spirit. One of the postulates is the connection between actions and the conditions in which we find ourselves. Adepts of metaphysics are trying to uncover the laws that govern the universe so that each person can become the creator of his own destiny. The general idea is something like this: understand how the universe works, and act according to its rules. Then, perhaps, actions will bear fruit - spiritual, material or psychological. I studied metaphysical currents for several years and lost interest in them. The years I have spent composing music have given me a far more fruitful experience in all that metaphysicians are so anxious to comprehend. For myself, I concluded: creativity is the best window into the secrets of the universe.

The second area of the liveliest interest for me was the study of organic nature. I loved to walk in the forests, observing the cycles of development, the interconnection of phenomena and forces, growth and decay, and how any particle affects other particles of this complex system. I was incredibly inspired when I discovered patterns that I could use when composing music. Thanks to these discoveries, I was able to come up with new musical forms and structures and understand existing ones, for example, the sonata-allegro, much deeper than before.

After completing my master's degree in music composition, I moved to New York and then to Los Angeles, where I played in an orchestra. During those years, I learned a lot about creativity, because I was lucky to work with the world's largest talents. When viewed from the inside, it turned out that creative activity is not at all what we were taught at the conservatory. I felt the difference between professionals who need to create constantly, and academics who do not have such a need. The requirements of the craft give rise to a different standard of quality and a different scale for evaluating creativity - taking into account the benefits and returns, with an emphasis on practice.

One of the trainees thought up a new career for herself - a field consultant for a high-tech firm. Before that, she worked in one of the largest computer companies in New England, but her position there was a dead end (she sat in her position for more than 12 years). During the course, the woman decided that she needed an interesting job, travel, meetings with energetic people and a high salary. By the fourth week of the seminars, she had moved into a new position that had not previously existed at their firm. First, my listener came with her ideas to the head of the department, who said that all this was impossible. Not at a loss, she sat down to finalize the concept and after another four days broke through to an appointment with the senior vice president. He, too, did not understand why a new position should be introduced, but my listener was so persuasive that the vice president decided to create a position for her. The idea turned out to be so efficient and fruitful that a year later she received a department with a considerable budget.

Another student of mine was an auto mechanic. He worked in a network of repair shops, but dreamed of moving to the Southwest and opening a car service. Using the techniques of how to turn desire into active action, he found resources and contacts, and six months later became the co-owner of a large auto repair shop in Santa Fe. The rest of the students also began to more often achieve the results they needed. Some managed to build great relationships, find interesting jobs, achieve career growth, improve their health. But the most important change did not concern specific achievements, but the acquisition of a new ability. They began to take a different approach to life. Instead of going with the flow or feeling like a hostage to circumstances, they found that they could act and create in any circumstance. A new worldview arose due to the development of the ability to create. The best result of our creative course is that they have learned to implement ideas that are important to them.

I soon founded the DMA Creative Learning Center. We aimed to teach those who wished the basics of the creative process, for which I developed a plan for the course "Technologies of Creativity". I chose the Latin letters D, M and A for the name because of the meaning they are endowed with in Kabbalah. D is a symbol of the creative beginning, or the creative mind. M stands for focused and liberated consciousness, and the letter A encodes life energy, the breath of life (prana). Thus, the creative principle, with the help of our consciousness, releases the life force. Or perhaps it would be better to say this: creativity expresses the full height of the human spirit.

During that period, I began training teachers for the Creative Technologies course and workshops at the DMA, continuing to explore anything that creates a tangible change in life for the better. There are now more than a thousand instructors and creative technology consultants in the USA, Canada, England, Sweden, Holland, Germany, France and several other European countries, as well as in Australia, Africa and India. At the moment, more than 50 thousand graduates have listened to our program.

In the late 1970s, prominent organizational specialist Charlie Kiefer invited Peter Senge, Peter Stroch, and myself to join him and together create Innovation Resource, a company whose mission was to help build creative professional structures. Our company has become one of the most advanced. In 1980, I developed a system to isolate, comprehend, and transform the structural patterns that govern human behavior. For me, this was an important discovery: I noticed that templates inevitably lead to nervous breakdowns and malfunctions. I have designated this field as the study of macrostructural models.

I have always been attracted to the study of structures - musical, pictorial, systemic, especially organic, the order of things in nature. In applying the structural principle to personal development, I have found that many traditional methods of personal growth and unleashing our potential only reinforce patterns and patterns that limit us, and the result is often the opposite of what was intended. The new structural approach has already been tried by psychotherapists with great success. Many patients and clients of psychoanalysts who use macrostructural models note that their lives have undergone drastic changes that previously seemed impossible.

In the early 1980s, I founded the Institute for Personal Evolution, a not-for-profit academic and educational institution dedicated to researching and developing structural approaches to personal growth in the fields of psychology, psychotherapy, education, and organizational development. As a result of my work with the structure and process of creativity, in 1981 I made dramatic changes to the DMA curriculum. The instructors of our center noted almost immediately: the students began to achieve remarkable results and achieved significant changes in their lives. More importantly, these changes were truly profound and listeners came to them with much greater willingness. The renewal took place due to a shift in the basic structures - that is, the very approach, the attitude of students to life.

In 1984, I developed a system for counselors to identify and change deep structures in their clients' personal and professional lives. We managed to achieve noticeable results, to help people switch to more effective structural models. This is what we call structural consultations. Through the work of the DMA business unit and training in creative techniques, we have been able to help several companies move to a new mindset: creating instead of always fighting problems. Our approach has proven to be one of the most effective ways to transform organizations large and small. Only creativity, perhaps, can change civilization, and the ideas and practices that we teach change individual destinies. When a person masters a creative approach to his life, constant renewal becomes the norm for him. After all, if you learn to read, you will not lose this skill. In the same way, once you have learned to create something important and necessary, you will never get used to it.

The book "The Path of Least Resistance" gives a completely new approach to personal evolution. It makes possible what psychotherapists, psychologists and participants in master classes on personal growth have not yet been able to achieve: not just master the basics of creativity (which is a breakthrough in itself), but radically change the attitude of life, take an independent position as a creator. The book talks about the structure as one of the most important factors that determine our lives. We all recognize the principle underlying the world order, but few consciously apply it. And it consists in the following: energy always moves along the path of least resistance, and any attempt to change life is doomed to failure if the path of least resistance leads the other way. The purpose of my book is to show you how you can create new structures in your life and redirect the path of least resistance to where you really need to go.

Part one
Basic principles

Chapter 1
path of least resistance

Paving the way

Guests who come to my native Boston often ask: “How did you even pave the roads?” The city seems to have no plan. In truth, the roads in Boston were laid out along well-trodden cow trails. How did cow trails come about? Cows usually went where it was easiest to pass. When a cow saw a hill ahead, it was unlikely that she would think: “Aha! Hill! You have to go around it." She simply rearranged one foot after another, and in a way that was more convenient: for example, she walked around large stones and stepped into the smallest holes. In other words, her every step was determined by the terrain.

Each time it was easier for the animals to find that convenient path: after all, the path became more and more distinct. This is how the topography and texture of the soil formed a pattern of behavior in cows when moving from place to place. As a result, the entire city of Boston is marked out at the behest of a cow that lived in the 17th century.

We're on our way

When a structure emerges, energy moves within it along the path of least resistance. In other words, energy goes where it is easier to go. This applies not only to cows, but to everything in nature. Water in a river flows along the path of least resistance. The wind howling through the concrete gorges of Manhattan takes the path of least resistance. Electric current - in a simple device like a light bulb or in the most complex computer circuits - follows the path of least resistance.

Look at the photos of the central streets taken with a short period of time. You will see how people move in the pedestrian stream, trying not to collide with each other. Sometimes it’s easier for a pedestrian to go straight, sometimes it’s easier to take a step to the right or left, sometimes it’s easier to speed up, and sometimes it’s easier to slow down or wait a second.

You have reached the current stage of your life, following the path of least resistance.

Three ideas

This book is based on three main ideas. Here is the first of them: man is like a river. In life, he always follows the path of least resistance. Not only man does this, but everything in nature, and it is very important to understand this. You can try to get out of your own channel: change your diet, work schedule, attitude towards people and yourself, the general perception of life. You can even succeed in this - for a while. But in the end you will find that you have returned to the original pattern of behavior and to the old views. This happens because our life is largely predetermined: after all, moving along the path of least resistance is the law of nature.

The second thought is also very important: the deep structure of your life determines the path of least resistance. In the same way that the terrain of the Boston area determined the convenient path for the local herds, and the course of the river determines the path of the water, so the design of your life tells you the path of least resistance. Even if you are not aware that you have a defining structure, it is still there. The riverbed remains even if no water flows through it. A person often does not notice the deep structure of his life and how it controls his behavior. People live as they live, although they often feel helpless and irritated. They are trying to change something important in relationships, careers, families, quality of life - and soon find that they have returned to their usual circumstances and are on a long-trodden path.

Some seek external changes, but then they begin to understand that nothing has changed in the most important thing. They guess that there is more to be gained from life than has fallen to their lot, but they do not know how to create more of it. As long as the course of the river does not change, the water will flow along the old path - because it is the most natural for it. If you do not change the deep structure of life, you are likely to move in the direction in which you are naturally drawn.

The third thought is: the basic structure of life can be changed. After all, engineers create a new channel for the river by changing the terrain. And you can change the deep way of life in order to receive more returns. In addition, when you restructure life in a new way, its very pressure - like the force of a river current - produces the results you need. The direct path to these results becomes the path of least resistance and leads to where you really need to go. From these three ideas follows a general principle: you can learn to recognize the deep structures of life and change them to make life the way you want it to be.

What is a structure? When we say the word "structure" we mean the general arrangement of anything: the main parts and how they "work" as part of the whole. For example, the structure of the human body is its organs: brain, heart, lungs, nerves, muscles, as well as their function in the body. In A Fuller Explanation, Amy S. Edmondson explains the key concepts of synergetic geometry by R. Buckminster Fuller 2
Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) was an American architect, designer, engineer, and inventor. Note. ed.

Thinking singles out and separates events; “understanding” connects them to the big picture,” says Fuller. To understand means to establish a connection between events.

Therapists and surgeons learn to perceive the body structurally. The surgeon must assess not only the condition of the diseased organ, but also the health of the whole organism. Blood pressure, brain activity, allergic reactions - all this is taken into account in any operation. Even just pouring water into a glass, you think structurally. The elements of the structure here will be a glass, water, a faucet, the desired amount of water and the level of water already collected. When you fill a glass, you have a goal: pour water into it. In addition, you must analyze the situation: how much water is already in the glass. If it is less than necessary, you correct the discrepancy by adding water to the desired level. When the amount of water in the glass approaches what you need, you reduce the flow and then turn off the faucet. It takes a couple of seconds to pour water into a glass, but the real structure is involved in this process.

Everything has a unifying Deep Structure. Structures are material, physical, such as bridges, buildings and tunnels. There are also non-material structures – the plot of a novel, the form of a symphony, the action of a film. Moreover, any structure consists of parts, and when these parts interact, they generate a trend, that is tendency to move.

Robert Fritz

path of least resistance

Robert Fritz

The Path of Least Resistance

Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life

Published with permission from Random House, a division of Random House LLC, and Nova Littera SIA

Legal support of the publishing house is provided by the law firm "Vegas-Lex"

* * *

To my son Ivan

Preface to the new edition

Robert Fritz, October 1988

Introduction

Paving the way

We're on our way

You have reached the current stage of your life, following the path of least resistance.

Three ideas

Thinking singles out and separates events; “understanding” connects them to the big picture,” says Fuller. To understand means to establish a connection between events.

Structure includes movement

Any structure carries the possibility of movement - it is able to move from one state to another. But some structures are changed, while others retain their original appearance. Structures that remain unchanged are usually made up of elements that hold each other together. A wheel is more prone to movement than a brick, a car than a skyscraper. A wheelchair has more movement potential than a rocking chair, but a rocking chair has more potential than a sofa. What determines the possibility of movement? Deep structure.

Structure defines behavior

One of the main theses of the book can be formulated as follows: structure defines behavior. Take any device - everything that happens in it depends on how it is arranged. Notice how the structure of the large building affects your movement within it. You can not go through the wall, and you go down the corridor. You cannot enter the room through the window, and you enter through the door. You can't jump from floor to floor, and you're on an elevator.

So in life there is a deep device, a kind of framework that determines the path of least resistance for everyone. We are most influenced by structures that are made up of our desires, beliefs, and life circumstances. When considering the construction of your life, it is important not to confuse the structural approach with the psychological one. Psychology studies the inner world of a person. If it were a book on psychology, you and I would be trying to figure out how consciousness works. Many psychological theories and techniques have a common property: the object of research, that is, the nature of the human soul.

But we are not talking here about the soul or consciousness, but rather about behavior. structures. We are interested in how structure affects human behavior. The same approach can be applied to inanimate matter - and get similar results. The study of structures is different from and unrelated to any psychological concepts. But when you understand how structures work and apply it to human behavior, two principles stand out.

The first one is that a person acts in accordance with the deep structure of his own life. Humanity is part of nature, and there is nothing strange in the fact that people obey its laws. But for many of us, this thought turns out to be unexpected, because our culture teaches us to ignore the connection between man and nature, to see in nature the environment from which we once came out, and now we use, tame or subjugate ourselves. Some call this view of nature "the apotheosis of human arrogance." I don't agree with them. I think it's more about ignorance. It is this that reinforces the image of the individual, opposing the forces of nature. Many of us tend to perceive life as a struggle with nature. The composer Hector Berlioz noted this very wittily when he said: “Time is a wonderful teacher, but, unfortunately, it kills all its students.”

The second principle is: there are structures that contribute to the achievement of results better than others. In the structure, as they say, there is "nothing personal". A person who finds himself inside a structure that encourages impotence and despondency was not conceived by the Universe as a victim of fate. Put anyone in this structure and they will experience the same. On the other hand, put a person in a structure that leads to fulfillment, satisfaction, and success, and he will get exactly this positive experience. As a rule, people believe that if you change your behavior, then the structure of life will also change. In fact, the exact opposite is true.

I do not want to say that a person is arranged as a mechanism. Each of us is a unique individual. But we are all subject to the influence of structures, and you cannot fool the mother structure. There are structures that lead to fluctuations, and there are those that lead to the final goal. The device of the pendulum involves oscillations. Rocket device - movement towards the target. The rocking chair is designed to rock back and forth. Car - to move towards the goal that the driver has identified.

Life in hesitation

Some people spend their whole lives in hesitation: in any undertaking, they first move forward, but then they roll back, and again a little forward, and again back. This cycle can continue indefinitely. Their attempts to change lives may initially succeed, then fail, then work again, and then fail again. There is a feeling that they are moving in a circle or marking time. In fact, the lives of these people are changing - but not for long. The improvement seems to be temporary. All of us at times found ourselves within the framework of such a structure, but there are those who live in it permanently. If your ups are inevitably followed by a fall, do not despair for long. There is a song by Bruce Springsteen that captures this feeling of hopelessness perfectly: "One step up, two steps down." Unless you know that a whole structure is involved, it's hard to understand why attempts to change lives always lead to a dead end.

Psychologists explain chronic failure unconvincingly. “Sabotage”, “self-destruction”, “loser complex” sounds solid, but this is only a description, and they often try to “tie” it to solving the problem: “You are prone to self-destruction. What are you punishing yourself for? "Why are you at war with yourself?"; "Why are you resisting change?" It is generally accepted that deep feelings - emotions, needs, fears, prohibitions, urges, instincts - push for reckless actions and suggest bad decisions. For example, a long-standing unresolved conflict with the mother leads to the avoidance of romantic relationships. Or childhood trauma still causes fear of superiors. And in general, you drink because you were weaned a day earlier than you should.

There can be any number of explanations and theories, and they all boil down to one thing: something is wrong with you. It is believed that you need to find the cause of the problem, fix it and return to a full life. For many people, finding a solution takes years (and a lot of money). Sometimes it seems that the ulcer is cured, but success never comes. And here again begins the search for the root cause, which explains all the failures. If your life is flowing within a structure that is conducive to fluctuations, a psychologist will not help. The fact is that psychotherapy is usually directed not at the structure, but at the behavior that is dictated by it. This is not to say that this approach does not work. But the effect of such a "treatment" is temporary, followed by a movement back. One step forward, one step back, and then another step back. If you look for a psychological solution to a structural problem, the very structure of life will not change..

The oscillatory movement is both slow and fast. The return to the starting point can be swift, or it can take a week, six months, a year, two. And when everything returns to normal, to a seemingly defeated problem, a person often experiences shock and becomes discouraged. If you find yourself inside such an “oscillatory” structure, this does not mean that you need to overcome yourself and solve the problem. It's not a problem at all. It's just that the current structure is not suitable for what you would like to make out of your life.

Structure and creative process

We have been taught since childhood to think that circumstances that are not suitable for the implementation of our plans are a problem. And now, being sure of this, we are trying to solve this problem. And to solve a problem means to make something—in fact, the problem—disappear. To create means to make something - our creations - come into being. Please note: the intentions in the first and second cases are directly opposite. When you think structurally, you start asking more pertinent questions. After all, instead of “How to make the barriers disappear?” one might ask, “What conditions do I need to create what I want?”

Over the past 14 years, while developing the program of the course "Technologies of Creativity", we have repeatedly observed how people change the deep way of their lives. This is not due to the resolution of problems, but due to the creation of new configurations. Changing the structure changes the path of least resistance, so our students were able to bring into their lives what really matters to them. All the main achievements of our civilization are the result of the creative process, but people are practically not taught to create. Creativity is a different way of perceiving the world, not the one that school and society instill. The creators live in their own system, different from the one in which most of us were brought up.

The structure of creative activity does not presuppose fluctuations, but a systematic movement forward, towards a result: towards the generation of what the creator strives for. In this book, I would like to explain the nature of creativity so that you can understand its principles and structures and apply them where needed. Then the path of least resistance will lead you to your goal. This book is not about how to solve your problems, but about how to create what you would like to create. Many of you are already successful, self-sufficient people. But if your success is not backed by the very structure of life, it will be limited. By rearranging the structure so that it leads to accomplishment and not to hesitation, you will increase not only possibility continued success, but probability that he will come.

Artists don't know what they know

I recently gave a master class in New York for professional artists. The audience included directors, writers, singers, jazz, classical and rock musicians, sculptors, architects, composers, artists, photographers, designers, actors, playwrights. The idea of the master class was to work with recognized professionals. It was a great honor for me to meet these people, but in the course of the work I noticed a sad discrepancy more and more clearly. Almost none of these great creators applied the creative techniques of their craft to their own careers and personal lives - it simply did not occur to them.

When I was a student at the conservatory, we were also not taught how to use the basics of the creative process in everyday life. And only many years later it dawned on me: after all, it is possible to apply the skills of a professional composer not only for its intended purpose, but also to what I want to create around myself! If creativity is such a great and universal force, you might be asking, why is life often difficult for creative people? They just don't know what they know.

The most grateful students of my course are precisely professional artists: after all, they have mastery, you just need to learn how to use your life as material. The rich tradition of science and art is the best school for creative thinking. Creators know how to lay down a deep structure to get a piece. For them, the path of least resistance is from the first sketch to the finished product of their designs.

For thousands of years, each of our cultures has had its own music, painting, poetry, architecture, sculpture, its own dances and legends, its own pottery. The need for creativity has no nationality, religion, boundaries, does not depend on the era or level of cultural development. The desire to create is inherent in each of us, but few have been taught to do it. By understanding where your path of least resistance lies, you can join one of the oldest traditions of mankind. Communication with many generations of creators will not be limited to one area of art for you - you will feel kinship at all levels, from everyday trifles to the true heights of the spirit.

Portal for the student. Self-training

Book "The Path of Least Resistance"

Three Ideas Technology Creativity

Robert Fritz

* * *

Preface to the new edition

Introduction

Part one Basic principles

Chapter 1 path of least resistance

Paving the way

We're on our way

Three ideas

Structure includes movement

Structure defines behavior

Life in hesitation

Structure and creative process

Artists don't know what they know

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Part one
Basic principles

Chapter 1
path of least resistance