Cre­ativ­ity coach­ing is a new pro­fes­sion that in recent years has begun to attract artists, writ­ers, musi­cians, ther­a­pists, coaches and other inter­ested indi­vid­u­als look­ing for a “path with heart” and a new rev­enue stream.

Hun­dreds of these indi­vid­u­als have trained with Dr. Maisel and there is now a solid con­tin­gent of cre­ativ­ity coaches offer­ing their ser­vices in the United States, Canada, Aus­tralia, Europe, and around the world.

Dr. Maisel has worked with cre­ative and per­form­ing artists for over twenty-five years, first as a ther­a­pist and for the past dozen years as a cre­ativ­ity coach. Dur­ing that time he has writ­ten more than twenty books on the cre­ative per­son­al­ity and the cre­ative life, among them The Van Gogh Blues, about cre­ativ­ity and depres­sion, Fear­less Cre­at­ing, about the place of anx­i­ety in the cre­ative process, and Cre­ativ­ity for Life, a com­pre­hen­sive look at the chal­lenges that artists face.

His book Coach­ing the Artist Within is the first book on the art and prac­tice of cre­ativ­ity coach­ing and his ebook Become a Cre­ativ­ity Coach!, avail­able at this site, will help you decide if cre­ativ­ity coach­ing might be for you.

There is now an active Cre­ativ­ity Coach­ing Asso­ci­a­tion that pro­vides addi­tional train­ing, a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram, and other ser­vices for coaches and for the gen­eral pub­lic. Many peo­ple are dis­cov­er­ing that cre­ativ­ity coach­ing is exactly the work they had always wanted to do. This fas­ci­nat­ing, heart­felt work is attract­ing mid-career artists, ther­a­pists want­ing to break away from the med­ical model, and life coaches and other coaches look­ing for a res­o­nant spe­cialty. This may be exactly the pro­fes­sion you’ve been look­ing for.

Just as impor­tantly, incor­po­rat­ing the prin­ci­ples of cre­ativ­ity coach­ing into your life will help you cre­ate more deeply and more reg­u­larly. If your goals are to cre­ate and to build a career in the arts, cre­ativ­ity self-coaching can help you achieve your goals. Dr. Maisel’s Cre­ativ­ity Coach­ing train­ings have a self-coaching track for indi­vid­u­als want­ing to learn cre­ativ­ity self-coaching prin­ci­ples and practices.

Dr. Maisel explains: “As I prac­tice it and envi­sion it, cre­ativ­ity coach­ing is one per­son offer­ing soup-to-nuts help to another per­son who is try­ing to live a suc­cess­ful cre­ative life. The cre­ative client may have career con­cerns, cre­ative blocks, psy­cho­log­i­cal issues, rela­tion­ship issues, or exis­ten­tial and spir­i­tual crises, and may face a gamut of chal­lenges that come from want­ing and need­ing to cre­ate. A cre­ativ­ity coach expects all of this and is ready for all of this.”

“An effec­tive cre­ativ­ity coach is aware of the big pic­ture: human nature, per­son­al­ity struc­ture, the psy­cho­log­i­cal makeup of cre­ative indi­vid­u­als, the prob­lems inher­ent in the work cre­ative indi­vid­u­als attempt, the shape of the dif­fer­ent intel­lec­tual and art mar­ket­places, and so on. When a client comes in, the coach joins with the new client, as one human being to another and one cre­ative per­son to another, lis­tens to what the client is say­ing, and makes obser­va­tions and suggestions.”

“Cre­ativ­ity coach­ing is not psy­chother­apy but cre­ativ­ity coaches need to have psy­cho­log­i­cal insight and acu­men and rec­og­nize that psy­chol­ogy is on the table when­ever one human being attempts to help another. But the coach­ing they offer does not rep­re­sent itself as psy­chother­apy, any more than the men­tor­ing or coach­ing that a good writ­ing teacher or art teacher pro­vides rep­re­sents itself as psychotherapy.”

“Many peo­ple have the desire to help oth­ers man­i­fest their cre­ativ­ity and suc­cess­fully nego­ti­ate the chal­lenges that come with the artist’s life. You may be one of those peo­ple. Maybe you’re a psy­chol­o­gist, social worker, or fam­ily ther­a­pist. Maybe you’re a career coun­selor, con­sul­tant, or coach already. Maybe you’re an artist in one of the dis­ci­plines or some­one who always meant to be an artist. What­ever your back­ground, you prob­a­bly never received any spe­cific train­ing in cre­ativ­ity coach­ing. Now that train­ing is avail­able to you and a pro­fes­sion exists to sup­port you should you decide to travel down the path of becom­ing a cre­ativ­ity coach.”

If you would like to learn more about cre­ativ­ity coach­ing, please take a look at Become a Cre­ativ­ity Coach Now! or join Dr. Maisel for one of his cre­ativ­ity coach­ing trainings.