Observations – Allan Johnson, PhD

The Importance of Reflection: Navigating Life’s Transitions

Posted on June 8, 2026June 8, 2026 by Allan Johnson in Observations

Henry Moore’s sculptures don’t have an obvious purpose or meaning. I found myself thinking at the recent exhibition of his monumental work at Kew Gardens, where I went to celebrate my partner’s birthday. We had just made it through the hottest May on record in the UK, but the weather was now colder and threatening to rain. I found myself standing in front of one of Moore’s reclining figures for quite a long time because it seemed to reward simple attention. It simply occupied space in a way that encouraged me to do the same.

That experience stayed with me, perhaps because it arrived during a period that has been unusually rich in encounters with things that don’t fit neatly into the categories through which contemporary culture often understands value. In short, I’ve been busy lately. Recently, I attended the centenary conference at University College London celebrating the 1926 publication of Lolly Willowes. Then, a week later, I found myself in Canterbury attending a tarot conference. Very different events, but both revolve around forms of meaning that require patience.

We live in a culture that has become remarkably efficient at extracting value from experience. Experiences are no longer allowed simply to be experiences. They must become content, products, strategies, frameworks, or outcomes. The philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues that ours is increasingly an achievement society, one in which human beings become entrepreneurs of themselves, constantly converting every aspect of life into a project. I think he is onto something. Increasingly, it feels as though we struggle to encounter anything without simultaneously asking what can be done with it. Yet some of the most important dimensions of human life seem to operate according to a different rhythm altogether.

One of the reasons Lolly Willowes continues to fascinate readers a century after its publication is that it refuses to reduce itself to a single meaning. Every time I return to it, I find a different book waiting for me–is the Devil real or is it a figment of Laura’s imagination? The psychologist James Hillman once suggested that modern culture has become overly attached to explanations when it might be better served by images. An explanation closes a question. An image keeps it alive. I’ve been turning that idea over in my mind ever since.

Perhaps this is why I find myself increasingly drawn to practices that create space for uncertainty rather than rushing to eliminate it. Much of my coaching work involves helping people navigate periods of transition, and one of the things I encounter repeatedly is the assumption that uncertainty itself is a problem. People arrive wanting clarity, certainty, and direction. Sometimes that is exactly what is needed. More often, however, what is required is the capacity to remain with a question long enough for a deeper answer to emerge.

We don’t talk enough about incubation. We celebrate breakthroughs, decisions, launches, and achievements, but far less attention is given to the long periods during which meaning slowly accumulates beneath the surface. Yet anyone who has written a book, developed a creative practice, changed careers, navigated grief, or undergone a significant personal transformation knows that the visible outcome is usually the final stage of a much longer process.

And I suspect many of us are carrying experiences whose significance we do not yet fully understand. Books that have affected us in ways we cannot articulate. Conversations that continue to echo years later. Encounters with art, landscapes, ideas, or people that seem somehow unfinished. We are often encouraged to resolve these experiences quickly, but perhaps some of them are not asking for resolution. Perhaps they are asking for companionship.

As I write this, summer is beginning to gather momentum. The temptation at this time of year is always to focus on goals, plans, projects, and ambitions. There is nothing wrong with any of those things. But I also find myself wondering what might happen if we gave equal attention to the slower work of reflection. What might emerge if we allowed experiences to become part of us before demanding that they become useful?

If these reflections resonate with you, I’d love to invite you into some of the upcoming events I’m hosting over the summer. Each, in its own way, is designed to create room for exactly the kinds of conversations and explorations I’ve been describing here. And if you find yourself at a significant threshold in your own life or work, I continue to offer one-to-one coaching for creatives, academics, practitioners, and thoughtful people navigating periods of transition.

Perhaps the most radical thing we can do in a culture obsessed with output is occasionally refuse to rush. To allow a question to remain open. To spend an afternoon with a sculpture. To sit with a symbol. To reread a novel. To trust.

Upcoming Events

Inner Alchemy: Practices for the New Season of You

Thursday 11 June | 8.00-9.00pm UK time | Free

As the seasons shift, so do we. This free workshop explores practical and contemplative approaches to navigating periods of personal transition with greater awareness and intention.

Returning to Yourself: A 4-Week Journaling Circle for Creatives

Mondays 7.30-9.00pm UK time beginning 15 June | £60

A month-long guided journey into reflective writing, self-discovery, and creative renewal. Together we’ll use journaling practices to reconnect with what matters most and cultivate greater clarity, depth, and presence.

The Symbolic Imagination: Tarot for Writers, Artists, & Creatives

Wednesday 8 July | 7.00-9.00pm UK time | £15

An exploration of tarot as a creative and symbolic tool. Ideal for writers, artists, coaches, facilitators, and anyone interested in working more consciously with imagination, archetype, and symbolic thinking.

One-to-One Coaching

I also offer individual coaching for academics, creatives, spiritual seekers, and professionals navigating transitions, creative blocks, questions of purpose, or significant life changes. If you’d like dedicated support in exploring what is emerging in your life and work, get in touch and I’d be delighted to discuss how we might work together.

Book your FREE Clarity Call to discuss ongoing 1-1 coaching:

Creativity Coaching

A Note on my Clinical Hypnotheraphy Practice

Posted on June 1, 2026 by Allan Johnson in hypnotherapy, Observations

For the past five years, I’ve been running a hypnotherapy practice alongside my work in teaching, coaching, and reflective practice. I wanted to share a little more about it here, for those of you who might be curious or wondering whether this kind of work might help you.

Clinical hypnotherapy is a calm, focused process that works with the deeper patterns of the mind. We begin with what’s actually going on in your life, and work from there. I often find that people appreciate how ordinary it feels — less like being “done to,” and more like a structured conversation with the subconscious patterns that are running in the background.

Over time, I’ve found myself especially drawn to working with thoughtful, self-aware people — often creatives, professionals, and people in transition — who have already done a lot of inner work, but feel they’ve reached a point where insight alone isn’t quite enough anymore.

If you’re curious, I offer free clarity calls. These are simply a chance to talk things through, explore what’s happening for you, and see whether this kind of work might be a good fit.

You can read more about my practice and book a call here:
Dr Allan Johnson Hypnotherapy Profile

Sometimes change doesn’t come from trying harder. It comes from working at a different level.

Embracing Uncertainty in Creativity

Posted on May 11, 2026 by Allan Johnson in Observations

We underestimate how much creativity depends on tolerating not-knowing.

One of the more radical ideas in creativity research comes from the psychoanalytic tradition, particularly from Wilfred Bion’s notion of “negative capability” (itself borrowed from John Keats). The capacity, as Keats originally put it, to remain with uncertainty without ‘irritable reaching after fact and reason.’ In practice, it means resisting the urge to immediately resolve uncertainty. To not rush to closure. To sit, for a moment longer than feels comfortable, in the space where meaning hasn’t yet crystallised.

We can see similar ideas elsewhere. In Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work on ‘flow’, there is an emphasis on the balance between challenge and skill, but what is often overlooked is that entry into flow frequently involves a period of disorientation. Or take Donald Winnicott’s idea of the “transitional space”—that intermediate area of experience between inner and outer reality, where play and creativity happen. It is, by definition, not fully known. Not fully controlled. It requires a kind of psychological looseness that can feel, at times, like a loss of footing.

Even outside explicitly psychological frameworks, writers have long circled this point. Joan Didion’s famous line—“I don’t know what I think until I write it down”—is often quoted as a neat aphorism, but it carries a deeper implication: that writing is not the expression of prior clarity, but the means by which clarity is tentatively, sometimes reluctantly, arrived at.

One of the reasons I care so much about structured creative spaces—whether that’s the weekly Creative Flow coworking session, the ongoing Writers Flow Circle, 1:1 coaching, or workshops—is that they provide a container for this kind of work. A place where not-knowing is not only tolerated but expected. Where you don’t have to perform certainty in order to belong.

If you’re in a season where your work feels slightly out of reach—where you can sense something wanting to emerge but can’t yet articulate it—you don’t necessarily need a new strategy. You might need a different relationship to that feeling: a willingness to stay with the question a little longer than is comfortable.

If that resonates, I’m running an upcoming workshop that may be of interest:

Mindfulness for Creatives: Cultivating Focus, Flow, and Inspiration
Wednesday 27 May | 7.30–9.00 (UK time) | £12
Register here: https://www.meetup.com/the-art-of-creative-practice/events/314655863/

We’ll be working directly with attention, distraction, and the subtle dynamics that either support or disrupt creative flow, very much including this question of how we meet the unknown.

More to Explore

Overcoming Perfectionism

Posted on May 4, 2026May 4, 2026 by Allan Johnson in Observations

Perfectionism I’m increasingly convinced, is not at all about maintaining high standards. Writers like Brené Brown have been helpful for me in naming this dynamic: perfectionism as a defence against vulnerability rather than a pursuit of excellence. Similarly, Donald Winnicott’s idea of the “good enough” offers a quiet corrective. Not a lowering of standards, but a recalibration—an insistence that aliveness matters more than polish.

What I’m experimenting with, imperfectly, is letting things move sooner. Allowing the work to be seen in earlier stages. Trusting that clarity often emerges through expression rather than prior to it. It’s a small shift, but it changes the atmosphere completely. Less pressure. More momentum.

If this feels familiar, I’ll be exploring these patterns—and offering some practical ways through them—in tomorrow’s workshop, Overcoming Perfectionism and Taming the Inner Critic (Tuesday 5 May | 7.30–9.00pm UK time | £12). You can register here: https://www.meetup.com/the-art-of-creative-practice/events/314377652/

And if you’re looking for something more sustained, I currently have one space open for 1–1 coaching. It’s a chance to work with these patterns at a deeper level, in a way that’s both rigorous and, importantly, kind.

More to Explore

Overcoming Procrastination in Creative Practice

Posted on March 16, 2026March 16, 2026 by Allan Johnson in Observations

Creative practice is one of the few places where procrastination can masquerade as discernment.

In most areas of life the difference between the two is fairly easy to spot. If you delay replying to an email for three weeks, you are probably not engaging in a subtle process of ethical reflection. If you keep postponing a dentist appointment, you are unlikely to be waiting for the right aesthetic conditions to emerge. Procrastination, in most domains, looks exactly like what it is.

Creative work is different. Here, hesitation can feel virtuous. Delay can wear the coat of taste. Not doing something can look like a form of artistic integrity. The line between genuine discernment and sophisticated avoidance becomes very thin.

This is one of the reasons creative practice can become psychologically complex. It sits at the intersection of imagination, identity, and judgment. We are not just deciding what to do—we are deciding whether what we do will be worthy of the version of ourselves we hope to become.

The philosopher and theologian Josef Pieper once wrote that leisure is the basis of culture. What he meant wasn’t idleness in the modern sense, but a kind of receptive attentiveness to reality. Creative work often begins in this receptive space. We listen before we speak. We wait before we write.

But the receptive state can also become a hiding place.

I have been thinking about this a lot recently while preparing a few things for the coming week. Ostara is approaching, thel seasonal threshold into Spring hat invites a little reflection and reorganisation. My houseplants are beginning to look as if they want to wake up again. A few of them clearly need repotting and I have been making notes about some spring recipes I want to experiment with.

These kinds of seasonal rhythms often nudge my creative life back into motion. Gardening and writing share a certain temperament. Neither responds well to frantic effort, but both require regular engagement. You cannot simply contemplate tomatoes into existence. At some point, you have to put your hands in the soil.

Writing is similar. The American writer Annie Dillard once observed that ‘how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.’ In creative work, however, the daily decision is often framed differently. The question becomes: is this the right moment to act, or should I wait for greater clarity?

Sometimes the answer genuinely is to wait.

Discernment is real. Ideas need time to ripen. A paragraph written too early can flatten something that needed to remain fluid for a while. Anyone who has done serious creative work knows that forcing an idea before it is ready often produces something strangely lifeless.

But procrastination has learned the language of discernment remarkably well. It says things like: this project deserves better conditions. Or: I should do more research first. Or: I just need a slightly clearer structure before I begin.

These can all be reasonable thoughts. They can also be remarkably effective forms of delay. The sociologist Robert Merton once wrote about what he called “trained incapacity”, the strange phenomenon where the very skills we develop become obstacles in new contexts. I sometimes think something similar happens to experienced creative practitioners. As our taste improves, so does our capacity for hesitation. We become more aware of the gap between what we imagine and what we can currently produce.

The result can be a kind of elegant paralysis. This is one of the reasons community can be so helpful in creative work. When we work entirely alone, discernment and procrastination can blur together indefinitely. When we show up in a room with others—especially others who are also doing the work—things tend to become clearer.

This is something I see regularly in the coworking and coaching sessions I run. Someone arrives saying they have been “thinking about” a project for weeks. Then we spend twenty-five minutes writing together, and suddenly several pages exist.

It turns out the idea was ready all along.

The ancient bards had a word for the mysterious source of creative inspiration: Awen. But they also understood that inspiration rarely arrives in a vacuum. It tends to visit people who are already working.

This is why I have been putting so much energy recently into building spaces where that working energy can gather.

If you are curious about how this kind of creative structure works in practice, I am hosting a free session this week where you can experience it directly:

Inside the Writer’s Flow Circle: A Free Live Taster Session
Monday 16 March | 7.30–8.30 PM UK time | FREE
Register here: https://www.meetup.com/the-art-of-creative-practice/events/313709955/

The session is designed as a gentle introduction to the rhythm of the circle: a short teaching, a guided creative exercise, and some focused writing time together. Many people find that even one hour like this can unlock a surprising amount of momentum.

And for those who want a deeper container for their work, the full programme begins the following week:

The Writer’s Flow Circle: A 12-Week Group Coaching Circle
Beginning Monday 23 March | 7.30–9.00 PM UK time | £180
Register here: https://www.meetup.com/the-art-of-creative-practice/events/313207235/

Over twelve weeks we work with the deeper structures of creative practice: inspiration, discipline, craft, and community. It is part workshop, part coaching space, and part creative fellowship.

Alongside this group work, I also offer 1-1 creative coaching for writers and thinkers who want more personalised support. These sessions can be particularly helpful if you feel stuck in that grey zone between discernment and delay. Sometimes a single conversation can clarify what the next step actually is.

In the meantime, the small seasonal rituals continue. I will probably spend some time this week repotting a few herbs and planning those spring recipes. The shift from winter to early spring always feels like a useful reminder that creative work rarely moves in straight lines.

There are seasons of incubation. Seasons of emergence. Seasons of pruning.

But the key thing—the thing that separates discernment from procrastination—is that the work eventually returns to the page.

The soil is turned. The seed is planted. And something begins