Episode 16: How Practicing Creative Confidence Can Help You Embrace Risk

Risk can mean a number a number of things. It could mean speaking up. Or striking out on your own. But taking a risk is hard. What’s easier is following a known path. Creating what we’re told to create. Doing what we’re told to do. So why not just go for the easy path? Because it doesn’t always lead to us to feeling fulfilled in our careers and everyday lives. What does is pushing our creative limits, and that’s where risk comes in. The reason risk is hard is because it’s surrounded by fear. Anytime we want to take a risk by sharing ourselves or pursuing a new experience, our inner critic: that little voice inside our heads stops us dead in our tracks. It fills us with fear... Fear of criticism, rejection, and failure. It’s hard to put the inner critic in its place because of the way we’ve been educated and conditioned: to not make mistakes. So what does it take to get over our fears and take a risk? Creative confidence. Creative confidence is a mindset, a way of being, that comes from design thinking. Design thinking allows you to be experimental, make mistakes, let go of perception, embrace testing to see what happens, and be detached from outcomes. In today’s episode of FemgineerTV, we’re going to be talking about how to manage the various fears we come across and gain creative confidence. To help us out I’ve invited a good friend of mine Maria Molfino who is a women’s leadership coach and helps women gain the creative confidence to lead. With a Masters in Design from Stanford, she has worked with top managers and professionals at companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and IDEO. Maria says, “If you care about growing and expanding then you have to find out how to relate to your fears.” She continues, “If fear isn’t coming up, you’re not playing at your edge.” As you watch the episode you’ll learn: - Why the fear of failure is bigger than actually experiencing failure - Why we’re sensitive to feedback and how to remove the sting of it - How to deal with criticism from ourselves, bosses, peers, and loved ones - Why it’s important to create space between yourself and your creative work - How to reframe self-promotion This is a must watch episode if you find want to grow, but feel stuck, and especially if you are looking to help others grow! In the episode Maria shares her Creative Confidence Playbook to help you overcome obstacles such as perfectionism, comparison, and more. You can download her playbook here: http://www.mariamolfino.com/free-playbook Maria also recently launched a podcast called Heroine where she interviews creative women leaders in art, business, design, science, and tech. Listen to the podcast here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/heroine-womens-creative-leadership/id1100949693 --- FemgineerTV is produced as a partnership between Femgineer http://femgineer.com/ and Pivotal Tracker: http://www.pivotaltracker.com. San Francisco video production byStartMotionMEDIA: http://www.startmotionmedia.com/