Robert Fritz > Quotes

“If you limit your choice only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life

“The human spirit will not invest itself in a compromise.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life

“Creators understand that their emotions are not necessarily a sign of the circumstances. They understand that in desperate circumstances they may experience joy, and in jubilant circumstances they may feel regret. They know that any emotion will change. But because emotions are not the centerpiece of their lives, they do not pander to them. They create what they create, not in reaction to their emotions but independent of them. On days filled with the depths of despair, they can create. On days filled with the heights of joy, they can create.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life

“If you limit your choice to only what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself form what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life

“Creating is no problem - problem solving is not creating.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life

“Some people choose "to go to college" rather than choose "to be educated", or choose "to eat health foods" rather than choose "to be healthy." Because this kind of choice invests undue power in the process, the result is inextricably tied to the process, and the ways in which the desired result can come about are limited.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life

“In the creative process you do not make choices about what you do not want. You make choices about what you do want.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life

“Faith was the excuse you used if you didn't have a good argument.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life

“Hector Berlioz’s witty comment, “Time is the great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all of its students.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance

“You are like a river. You go through life taking the path of least resistance. We all do—all human beings and all of nature. It is important to know that. You may try to change the direction of your own flow in certain areas of your life—your eating habits, the way you work, the way you relate to others, the way you treat yourself, the attitudes you have about life. And you may even succeed for a time. But eventually you will find you return to your original behavior and attitudes. This is because your life is determined, insofar as it is a law of nature for you to take the path of least resistance.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance

“In the orientation of the creative, once you have consciously made the choice to be healthy and you are attracted to eating certain foods and following certain forms of exercise, you are involved in an organic process. The structural tendency of this organic process is for you to be attracted to those processes that will be particularly beneficial to your health. Those processes might include the usual, expected ones, such as health food and exercise, as well as unexpected ones.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life

“You got to where you are in your life right now by moving along the path of least resistance.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance

“There’s nothing like surrounding yourself with people who actually like you just the way you are–people who are not trying to improve you, change you, manipulate you, save you, etc. There is a line. On one side of the line are those who will give you the news–good, bad, and indifferent. They care about you and your success. On the other side of the line are those who do not actually care about you and have motives other than true support.”
― Robert Fritz, Your Life as Art

“If the creative process is so powerful, it would be natural to wonder why many artists have difficulties in their lives. It is because they do not know what they know.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance

“You love your child for who the child is, not as an extension of your identity or as an example of your good parenting or even as a companion.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life

“Often, the person reaches a point where there is a choice between two conflicting interests: reducing the emotional discomfort or seeing what is really going on. The person needs to make a value choice at this point. Which is more important to you, seeing reality or feeling okay? Almost always, the person chooses to see reality, and therefore, to let the emotional chips fall wherever they may.”
― Robert Fritz, Your Life as Art

“It's not what the vision is, it's what the vision does.”
― Robert Fritz

“One basic principle found throughout nature is this: Tension seeks resolution. From the spider web to the human body, from the formation of galaxies to the shifts of continents, from the swing of pendulums to the movement of wind-up toys, tension-resolution systems are in play.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance

“You can get rid of all your problems and still not have what you want.”
― Robert Fritz

“Secondary choices are always subordinate to a primary choice. Often there is no reason to make such choices outside the context of the primary choice that calls for them.

Athletes and musicians may not enjoy practicing long hours, but they do so just the same; not out of duty, obligation, or any other form of self-manipulation, but because they are making secondary choices consistent with their primary choice to be able to perform music or excel at sports.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life

“Once a structure exists, energy moves through that structure by the path of least resistance. In other words, energy moves where it is easiest for it to go.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance

“We don’t make art because we need it. We make it because we love it. The love artists have is generative, not responsive. Romantic love is responsive. You meet and then you fall in love. The situation first, the love second. But for the artist, the love predates the situation. The filmmaker loves the film before the film is made. The painter loves the painting before paint touches canvas. The choreographer loves the dance before it exists. To do what we need to do is not special. After all, we need to do it. But to do what we do not need to do is special. To the artist, to make art is one of the most special things one can do in life.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance for Artists: The Structure and Spirit of the Creative Process

“When you merely choose a process, you do not establish structural tension, and you do not make energy available to complete the creative process.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life

“As adults, we create myths about ourselves and about our lives. We often use the myth to organize reality into a type of order. Anything that might contradict the myth seems to bring disorder that can feel disorienting. The myth forms a bias and matrix against which the person’s life experiences are evaluated. The sense of myth is often in sharp contrast to the macrostructural patterns that dominate our lives. The myths are often about the details of the events that happened, including who did what to whom. The pattern shows that the details are not causal but only orchestrative. If we describe the details, we see the uniqueness of the events that have taken place, and the story can seem like a one time deal. But if we describe the form and sequence of events, the critical moments, etc., we see how un-unique the story actually is. We can see that, yet again, the same damn thing has happened.”
― Robert Fritz, Your Life as Art

“Even Mozart, perhaps the most gifted composer in history, developed and grew in his art. The music he wrote in his thirties was far more advanced than what he wrote in his twenties or in his teens. The more music he wrote, the more he was able to write.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance

“What motivates a creator? The desire for the creation to exist. A creator creates in order to bring the creation into being. People in the reactive-responsive orientation often have trouble understanding this sensibility: to create for the sake of the creation itself. Not for the praise, not for the "return on investment," not for what it may say about you, *but for its own sake.*
Poet Robert Frost captured the spirit of the orientation of the creative when he said:
"All the great things are done for their own sake."
...
When you separate yourself from your creations, you can experience one of the most profound understandings of creativity - love. *The reason you would create anything is because you love it enough to see it exist.*”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance

“The FIRST Law of Organizational Structure Organizations either oscillate or advance. This distinction is truly as black and white as it sounds. An organization is predominately one that advances or one that oscillates. When any type of action (TQM, organizational learning, reengineering, lean, you name it), occurs in an organization structured to advance, it has an entirely different impact than it would in an organization structured to oscillate. In the first, actions actually work; in the second, they don’t. In both types of organizations there are instances of success. In fact, every organization is filled with plenty of successes. But the consequences of success in an advancing organization are radically different from an oscillating organization. In structural advancement, success ultimately leads to long-term success; you can build on it, you can grow other successes, you can create momentum, energy and drive; in organizations in which structural oscillation is in play, success is neutralized.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance for Managers

“Originality means nothing. It is the power of the artistic vision that counts. As time passes, most things original will not be original. Fashions, styles, forms, flairs, and what’s in vogue, all will pass. The fashion will become out of date, the style will change, the flair will fizzle, and we will wonder why anyone was shocked. What will always matter is the substance of the artwork, not its style.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance for Artists: The Structure and Spirit of the Creative Process

“To the reactive-responsive person it is not acceptable to spend your life on what you love, because what you love is not tied to the circumstances.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance

“Some teachers think they are preparing their students for life by teaching them that the choices they have are limited. Thus the real lesson they teach is compromise: Learn to live with what you don't really like because you will have plenty of that.”
― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life