The Deliberate Creative

Sleep is a huge factor in our ability to be creative and come up with new ideas. Recently, there has been more research about how sleep affects our brains. This episode explores the effects of sleep on our creativity. Learn how you can get more sleep and how to support your teams to get more sleep and function at an even higher and more creative level.

What You'll Learn

• Why you and your team need more sleep
• Six ways you can improve your sleep
• How you might be preventing your team members from getting the sleep they need to perform their best

Resources

• Climer Cards
• Free Climer Cards eBook
• How to set Do Not Disturb on your iPhone
• How to set Do Not Disturb on your Android
• Flux for Mac
• Article: Creativity - The Unconscious Foundations of the Incubation Period
• The Model Health Show Podcast Episode 147: 10 Ways Sleep Can Give You a Better Brain

The Weekly Challenge Get more sleep! Try a few of the suggestions mentioned in this episode and try them more than once. Challenge yourself to implement one of the suggestions at least five nights in a row and observe what happens. Ask your family members and colleagues if they notice a change!

Team meetings are an opportunity to gather input, share ideas, and explore strategies. However, in many teams there are some team members who talk more, while others are less vocal. Every person's input if valuable, otherwise they shouldn't be on the team. In this episode, learn six techniques to equalize the voices in team meetings. The powerful techniques are easy enough to implement in your next meeting. This is the third episode in a three part series about team meetings.

What You'll Learn

• Six techniques to help equalize input from team members
• How to hear from the less talkative members
• How to get the full potential from team members

Resources

• Climer Cards
• Free Climer Cards eBook
• Episode 56: Five Ways to Open Your Team Meetings
• Episode 57: Five Ways to Close Your Team Meetings

The Weekly Challenge Try one of the six techniques with your team at your next team meeting. Let me know how it goes. What happened? Feel free to share your experience in the comments below.

Meetings are often the primary communication tool for teams. The way meetings begin and end impact the quality of the meeting. The episode explains five different ways to end your team meeting. The techniques encourage reflection and allow everyone to gain data about where the team is at. The episode builds on 056 which talked about how to open a meeting.

What You’ll Learn

* Why being intentional about how you end your meetings can help your teams be more successful.

* Five techniques to close your team meetings.

* How to increase reflection from team members and gain more insights into member’s perception of a topic.

Meetings are often the primary communication tool for teams. The way meetings begin and end impact the quality of the meeting. The episode explains five different ways to end your team meeting. The techniques encourage reflection and allow everyone to gain data about where the team is at. The episode builds on 056 which talked about how to open a meeting.

What You'll Learn

• Why being intentional about how you end your meetings can help your teams be more successful.
• Five techniques to close your team meetings.
• How to increase reflection from team members and gain more insights into member's perception of a topic.

Resources

• Climer Cards
• Free Climer Cards eBook
• Episode 56: Five Ways to Open Your Team Meetings

The Weekly Challenge Try one of the five techniques to close your team meeting. How did it impact the meeting? How did it help the team? Feel free to share your experience in the comments below.

Meetings are often the primary way a team works together. The format and process of team meetings affects how a team works together, their sense of purpose, and their ability to innovate. By changing the format of a meeting you can increase trust among team members, improve communication, and do better work together. In this episode, learn five ways to begin your meeting that will help build your team to be even stronger.

What You’ll Learn

* Why starting a meeting with a short activity can help your team be more productive and focused

* Five ways to begin your meeting that will help you focus on your goals and increase camaraderie and trust

Meetings are often the primary way a team works together. The format and process of team meetings affects how a team works together, their sense of purpose, and their ability to innovate. By changing the format of a meeting you can increase trust among team members, improve communication, and do better work together. In this episode, learn five ways to begin your meeting that will help build your team to be even stronger.

What You'll Learn

• Why starting a meeting with a short activity can help your team be more productive and focused
• Five ways to begin your meeting that will help you focus on your goals and increase camaraderie and trust

Resources

• Climer Cards
• Toppers Pizza Five Core Values

The Weekly Challenge Try one or more of the meeting openers at your next meeting. What happened? How did it affect the meeting? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Do you ever doubt your creativity? Do you ever think you just aren’t creative enough or you don’t have a creative bone in your body? If so, this episode is for you. Amy explains why the planet needs your creativity and reminds you of your creative potential. If you are doubting your creativity listen to this episode!

What You’ll Learn

* How the stories we heard at a young age impact our creative self-identity

* The role genetics play in your creativity

* Why we need you to be creative

Resources

* Book: A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson

* Quote: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”~ From A RETURN TO LOVE by Marianne Williamson © 1992 (Paperback; pp 190-191)

 

The Weekly Challenge

Try to identify where those negative messages about creativity came from. When have you received positive messages about your creativity? Do you ignore those and focus on the negative ones? How can you shift your thinking to realize you are creative? The planet needs your creativity!

Transcript

Feel like reading instead of listening? Download the free PDF transcript or read it below. Enjoy!

Transcript for Episode #055: Your Creativity Pep Talk

Amy Climer: Welcome to The Deliberate Creative Podcast Episode 55. Today’s episode is a creativity pep talk. In this episode, I want to remind you how creative you are and how amazing you are. I have been thinking a lot about creativity lately. I know that is not going to surprise you at all because I do think about it a lot anyway, but I have not been podcasting that much lately. It has been somewhat of an intense summer. Over the summer, while I might have typically done say maybe twelve episodes, I only did five. Episode 50 was in May and it is now Episode 55 and it is early October.

I have had a lot going on in my life. You all already know this, but I finished my PhD in the last month, I moved from Wisconsin to Asheville, North Carolina. I am now living in Asheville, which I love. It is awesome! That whole process of moving was much more intense than I expected, in many ways, both physically and mentally transitioning, and even just emotionally leaving Wisconsin, a place that I have been for 15 years and moving to a new place, Asheville. Totally worth it, absolutely worth it. And in the process I have been thinking a lot about creativity because I have had a really hard time getting to the mic and doing a podcast, something that I typically really enjoy and I have been dragging.

I talked about this a couple of episodes ago, but just that need that when we do have something intense going on, we usually have to let something else go. And there is that balance that is so important and trying to figure out how much do I listen to myself and my body and maybe not engage in some project and then how much or when is that avoidance or me trying to procrastinate when really I want to do that project and I care a lot about it. I am still playing with that,

Do you ever doubt your creativity? Do you ever think you just aren't creative enough or you don't have a creative bone in your body? If so, this episode is for you. Amy explains why the planet needs your creativity and reminds you of your creative potential. If you are doubting your creativity listen to this episode!

What You'll Learn

• How the stories we heard at a young age impact our creative self-identity
• The role genetics play in your creativity
• Why the world needs you to be creative

Resources

• Book: A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson
• Quote: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

  ~ From A RETURN TO LOVE by Marianne Williamson © 1992 (Paperback; pp 190-191)

The Weekly Challenge Try to identify where those negative messages about creativity came from. When have you received positive messages about your creativity? Do you ignore those and focus on the negative ones? How can you shift your thinking to realize you are creative? The planet needs your creativity!

Every one of us has our own unique, interpersonal style. In essence, we all have a default, natural behavior that we are most comfortable with. This behavior is called your Social Style. Social Styles explain our communication preferences, how we deal with conflict, and how we interact with others. By understanding your own style and others' you can learn to become more versatile therefore enhancing work relationships, resolving conflicts more effectively, and creating effective change. You'll learn your Social Style and how to adjust to better work with colleagues, partner, and friends.

What You'll Learn

• Your own personal Social Style
• Three ways to increase your versatility in working with others
• Hear an example from Amy's life where she adjusted her style with great success

Resources

• Book: The Social Styles Handbook by Wilson Learning
• Website: Social Styles by Wilson Learning
• Episode 8: FourSight with Blair Miller
• Orangutan Survival Species Plan

The Weekly Challenge Determine your own Social Style. Figure out one way you can adjust your approach to better match someone else's style. What happened? How did it go?

If we keep operating at maximum intensity we won't continue to perform at maximum intensity. Without intermittent periods of rest creativity and productivity suffer in both teams and individuals. This episode explores the need for recovery time after intense projects and look what happens when we don't pause, slow down, and let ourselves rest.

What You'll Learn

• Why recovery time for your brain is as important for creativity
• What happens when we don't slow down, take vacations, and give our brain time to rest.

Resources

• Podcast: Magic Lessons with Elizabeth Gilbert
• Episode 52: On Multitasking with Darcy Luoma
• Book: Art of Thought by Graham Wallas, 1926

The Weekly Challenge Figure out your "end game" with the current projects and other things that are causing stress for you. Is there an end date? If so, what will change? If not, how can you make some changes to your life to allow more space and recovery time for your brain. This will increase your creativity! Share your comments below.