NonOrdinary Impact: Moving from Vision to Action

Announcing NonOrdinary Impact, a new course I’ve developed with Trish Blain. Also, thanks to everyone who came to our first community call to share insights and make new connections - stay tuned for the next one in the summer.

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We may be the only animals who make maps of the world in our heads. It’s a gift, and a trap. We can imagine the most incredible futures, but unless we enact them, they never leave the hazy realm of possibility. 

This corner of the internet is sometimes called the ‘Liminal Web’, because we explore a world between worlds to ask how to bring about a sustainable future. By its nature it’s also a place where we can become stuck in possibility, and forget that our visions yearn to be lived into being. 

The challenge for many of us is to bring our creativity and our unique offering from the realm of abstraction into our bodies. To act it into the world, or as Rilke put it, to take all the questions and possibilities that lie ‘unsolved in our hearts’ and to ‘live them toward the answer.’

Recently, I’ve been reflecting on what we did at Rebel Wisdom, and what I’ve been up to since then. If there is one thing that feels incomplete about that project for me, it’s that we focused too much on diagnosis and not enough on how to transform wisdom into practical solutions. It doesn’t matter whether we’re imagining a new life for ourselves or a new social reality; the step after imagining is to let the model go, connect to our desires, and take the first step into new territory. 

As Peter Limberg puts it, that means shifting from sensemaking to scene-making. Or, as Terence McKenna used to say, to start creating culture instead of consuming it. That idea has always inspired me, and I’ve been speaking with Trish Blain about this a lot recently, because the idea of following our desire and stepping into new territory is fundamental to her work. 

The more we spoke, the more we found our own desire sparked, landing on questions like ‘How can we facilitate moving from visioning the possibilities of a new reality to living them together?’ and ‘How do we cultivate new paradigm collaboration to amplify each other’s unique expression?’

We kept coming back to one idea: creativity lies at the heart of it all.

As Trish put it, “The new world we are visioning isn’t abstract and impersonal. It needs to be born of our deepest desires brought into reality through collaboration with life and others.”  This “desire gap” as Trish calls it, is the creative space that calls something new and often unexpected into existence.

Ultimately, it all comes down to that spark inside us that helps us bring our vision into the world, play with possibilities and flip the script. 

The world is calling out for billions of those sparks right now, and maybe it always has been. We all have a unique vision to contribute to the larger human story, grounded in our desires, life experiences and innate creativity.

Listening to that spark isn’t always easy. It is a journey that invites us to move through our own blockages, take risks, and overcome obstacles.

I’ve run courses and retreats for thousands of people over the last decade, and one thing that keeps coming up is that we’re all holding a huge untapped potential, but often those blockages hold us back. I’ve met countless people holding unique artistic visions, economic innovations, relational practices, social ideas, and everything in-between. Some have written to tell me how the connections they made at courses and events have led to new collaborations or inspired them to take a risk. Others have shared their frustrations, knowing what their contribution is but unsure how to bring it into the world. 

As Trish and I followed our own creative desires, we had the idea to create a course around creativity and expression. A process that helps people to tap into that potential and crucially, to act on it. We’ve called it NonOrdinary Impact, because we’ll be exploring how to draw from the unseen worlds within us to move beyond the ordinary.

Whether you’re holding the smallest glint of an idea, or you’ve been sitting on a project for years, this process is a quick-start guide to help you bring your vision to life. It might be that you want to try drawing or painting, or you have an ambition to found a new company, or create a new living situation.

Whatever you want to express but haven’t found a way to, we’ve designed the process to help you bring it to the next stage. And it isn’t something that we do in isolation; having collaboration and support opens up new possibilities, provides inspiration, and makes the process easier and more enjoyable. 

Ultimately, how that looks will be up to you. We’re seeing this as an incubator for the deeper desires within you. We’ll help you identify practical and actionable paths forward, with the help of other participants from around the world. Trish and I both have experience bringing successful projects into reality, and Trish’s models and facilitation have helped me during what’s been the most creatively productive period of my life. As well as facilitating processes and practices we know work to move from thought to action, we’ll share what we’ve learned (and are learning) from getting new projects off the ground.  

NonOrdinary Impact is open to everyone, whether you’re toying with an idea, already immersed in a project, or just want to express yourself more authentically. You don’t have to come with a specific project or artistic vision, just the willingness to inquire and act on what you find. It will inspire you, challenge you, and invite you to collaborate in unexpected ways. 

What to Expect

This is an experience of collective inspiration as much as it is a training. Trish and I will guide you in weekly sessions focused on enhancing your creative impact and moving through blockages. You’ll work in small groups with participants from around the world to give and receive support. In the process, you’ll tap into that unique spark of creativity and vision you’re holding, and work with the facilitators and the others on the course to breathe more life into it.

Often, we’re unaware of what’s blocking us, or narrowing our perspective. What’s needed is connection, energy and the right practices to break through.

We’ll be using a number of practices and psycho-technologies throughout to help you do that, from breathwork and movement to group inquiry, embodiment practices, practical problem solving and peer support. We’ve also designed some processes that combine all of these in a way we’re confident nobody has before.

The course begins on Wednesday, May 22nd and runs for six weeks. Each week we’ll host a live session on Wednesdays at 8pm UK time (3pm New York and 12pm Los Angeles) for 90 minutes. All sessions will be recorded, in case you have to miss a session.

You’ll also have the chance to participate in more intimate sessions with a small ‘pod’ of four people, where you will be provided with practices to support one another on your individual journeys, while exploring new ways of collaborating that amplify everyone’s impact. We’ll also provide resources, practices and reading lists you can explore in your own way throughout the process.

Space is limited so that we can keep the group sessions intimate, and if you’re interested you can book your place here or on one of the buttons in this post. We’re conscious that sometimes our challenges are practical and financial so we’ve created as many scholarship places as we can, which you can apply for on the website. Paid subscribers also get 10% off, just write to courses@alexanderbeiner.com for a discount code.

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You can find a summary of each session below

Week 1: Claiming Your Vision 

In this first session, we tap into deep desire and your unique offering. Explore what is being called from you into the world. What does impact mean to you? What is the knowing that won’t go away? What is the vision that wants to be claimed? What desire makes you feel most alive? Let’s do that. 

Week 2 - Working with Resistance

Learn how to transform blockages, resistance and fear into creative fuel. Explore the places where limitation and fear may be showing up or hiding out. Embrace resistance as important information showing you the path to something new. 

Week 3: Collaborative Consciousness 

In this session, we invite you to engage your project as a living being and expand your experience of collaboration. Explore consciousness fields and how to cultivate a new state of collaborative consciousness with your project, with others and with life. 

Week 4 - Creativity and Improvisation

Having impact at the edges is a truly creative act, as we bring something that hasn’t existed before into the world. In this session, we dive into the creative process, improvisation, and techniques for turning up the lifeforce and creative juice. 

Week 5 -  Show and Tell

It can feel incredibly risky to put your work into the world, however an important part of the creative process is getting feedback and iterating. In this session, we share our offering and dive into how to give and receive feedback. We work with what comes up and celebrate what you are bringing to the world! 

Week 6 - Momentum 

In this final session of the cohort, we explore how to cultivate momentum through discipline, ritual, rhythm and habit. Set an intention for next steps and a support plan for moving forward with bringing your desires into the new reality.