Hello worklifers,
I am a creator and creative collaborator. Cultivating creativity is a huge part of my work and life and something I love to cultivate and coach on.
Today I want to talk about creativity and unlock the formula for cultivating creativity at work and life. Understanding how to cultivate and nurture creativity is sparkling. It brings the joy to our lives like nothing else.
However, there are also limited beliefs we can get stuck on when it comes to thinking about our ability to cultivate creativity. This can limit our ability to offer work as creators and creative collaborators from our highest potential. Work that is true to us, original and authentic from us.
Firstly let us start with a beautiful belief I have enjoyed cultivating.
A Creative mind == Brave mind
I do believe that, for one to live life fully and make meaningful contributions to the world one has to be willing to feel and experience all emotion. Fear of failure and rejection is one such emotion that often creates an obstacle for worklifers.
Confronting fears is not easy as it is strongly associated with failure. Failure that our work is not good enough and failure that we will disappoint people eventually leads to the emotion of shame. That shame keeps us from showing up as our authentic selves and offering our work to the world.
As one further digs further into their fears they show up alongside the next obstacle which is self-doubt. Self-doubt can result from not having done the specific task, activity, or simply not lived the specific experience that one is trying to touch, create, and feel. I call it your new “new” or the “unknown”. In the “unknown” resides the courage. It is within embracing the “unknown” and getting comfortable with trying something “new” that lies our creativity. Therefore, in order to open the gift of creativity each one of us has to demonstrate vulnerability, let go of shame and move forward with courage. If we cultivate this as a daily practice, almost like a ritual then what would our lives look like? At worklifeunstuck we offer a framework to cultivate creativity as a daily practice or ritual with the coaching tools you put to practice.
“The creative mind is on the other side of fear, self-doubt and shame and crossing it with a brave mind is the solution to cultivate creativity.”
Limited thoughts about creativity
Let’s identify the most two most common limited beliefs that worklifers get stuck on when thinking of cultivating creativity or believing in their ability to do so.
- Creativity has to be grand and inspiring, such as crafting a beautiful painting or designing an innovative product, writing a book or forming a company.Creativity need not be artistic or world-changing to count as creative. Our work and life requires daily acts of ingenuity and novel workarounds with creativity; In that sense, almost everyone possesses creativity. It’s a part of our drive as humans—fostering, resilience, sparking joy, and providing opportunities for self-actualization. Creativity is the ability to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others. As worklifers we are often cultivating creativity in many situations. When we think of creativity in this way all the situations, projects, communication can spark joy and provide an opportunity to be creative.
- Another limited belief is that in order to cultivate creativity is I don’t have time every day.We say, I am in meetings all day and very busy. We tell ourselves today cannot be a creative today as I don’t have the time. We limit ourselves with the scarcity of time and don’t constrain ourselves to plan ahead of time. We think the spontaneity in our schedule will result in creativity. However, turns out the primitive brain takes over and we end up buffering and doing exactly the opposite of thinking freely which is feel scattered.As a product manager a large part of my job entails designing products, creating and collaborating with partners and customers. I simply love this aspect of my job. I get to think and apply creativity to many situations I work on everyday. Think of new frameworks, give input on product plans and designs, brainstorm solutions to tough problems, figure out ways to simplify, helping customers adopt our solutions, think of workarounds to get unstuck on thoughts and ideas. One of the limited beliefs around creativity that I had was in my own ability to cultivate that creativity and tap into it every single day. I felt like there were times I could tap into the creative side and produce high quality ideas for myself and the team and there were other days I just could not. It baffled me when that happened. Sometimes it let to frustration as well. We often think of a creative output with it resulting in manifesting the idea, creating a presentation, writing a paper or shipping a product. However, so many times creativity shows up on how we need to re-think our beliefs, cultivate feelings such as motivation and grit when it comes to tackling tough problems, simplify and constrain our own goals and those of the team, make a breakthrough connection on a difficult conversation or provide that coaching to team members. It calls upon us to be brave and resilient and not give up on our ideas or communicate our thoughts. When I changed my outlook to how I thought about creativity and incorporated killer time management to make decisions ahead of time for what I wanted to do vs. what I have to do is where I cultivated daily creativity.
- So do think about these limited thoughts and any others that show up for you when it comes to thinking of your ability to cultivate creativity.
The simple formula to remember about cultivating creativity
I like to think of creativity as sitting on the top of a pyramid and there are two layers underneath it. Understanding and being mindful of those layers is important and next practicing those steps every single day is the secret to unlocking that creative mind, the brave mind. So, let’s start with the bottom most layer…
Bottom layer is your Empowering beliefs
In order to tap into high quality ideas or generate them, clarity of beliefs is the most important. When we cultivate our beliefs tied to who we are becoming this lends itself to feelings we generate and massive action we take. Think of your belief when it becomes to cultivating creativity in your life. Write it down and live by it. The reason to cultivate this is because one can have difficult circumstances that show up. We also have thought errors. However, our anchoring beliefs keep us on the path.
Middle layer is creating “Rituals (Actions you perform daily)”
Creating and sticking to daily habits are the biggest gifts one gives to themselves. I was at odds with rituals and creativity. If I do the same things daily how can I be creative? Wouldn’t things be too mechanical? That is exactly what your primitive brain wants you think and leads you to buffering and breaking away from rituals. That was a thought error. When I embraced the joy around my daily rituals such as morning routines, my protocols for food, and my protocols for consuming content vs. producing content I eliminated so much of that mind drama. These rituals are planned ahead of time, and I am able to do them with equal joy. I do so because I know they contribute in the production of creative work. This happens because by taking care of those activities and having made decisions, I clear my headspace. This gives room for creativity to thrive during my focus time when I produce on a daily basis
Top layer is Creative mind
So what is creativity then and how does it show up in my work and life. It is a great thought exercise to do something similar
- Creativity is building and creating a high-quality empowering beliefs that move your ideas forward
- Creativity is about constraining and simplifying a problem at hand at work and life
- Creativity is about cultivating joy doing your rituals & being comfortable with the reward of delayed gratification you get from bringing a clear mind to your work
- Creativity is about sitting in one place and writing down all the ideas you can think of about the problem at hand.
- Creativity is learning to enjoy the process of creating rather than thinking of the shape and size of the results when working on the task at hand
- Creativity is about maintaining headspace to come back to our obstacle thoughts and think of amazing strategies the next day
- Creativity is creating a new framework for the product, process, or problem at hand
- Creativity is bringing clarity on tough problems by writing high quality problem statements
- Creativity is about thinking and producing new work the “Why & the What” and not just about consuming and knowing the “How”
- Creativity is about thinking of workarounds for problems
- Creativity is about having a breakthrough communication with a client, customer or partner
- Creativity is overcoming the need to be perfect and offer work for feedback that is not yet done
- Creativity is the ability to output and communicate our ideas by showing up with courage and authenticity.
Think about the pyramid, and don’t be afraid to recognize the importance of the bottom and the middle layers when it feels like you are unable to seek that top layer. For the bottom think of that empowering belief that you can cultivate for you (the more authentic and truer version you seek to become). For me that shows up by believing and knowing, creativity lies on other side of fear, self-doubt, and shame and crossing it with a brave mind is what helps me unleash the full potential at the top. Whenever, I am hesitant or unable to take massive action, I go back to the bottom layer and get curious about the limiting thoughts that are keeping me stuck. Also another real obstacle that does show up is falling off rituals due to thought errors. However, I have come to learn through practice that the more our rituals can be tied to our empowering beliefs, they become sticky. You don’t have to beat yourself when you fall off them. You can be kind and gentle to yourself and place them back on your pyramid by cleaning up those thought errors. Create with courage, be vulnerable and offer the work you were meant to offer to the world.
Maithili Vijay Dandige
