011. guarding our creative energy

When you are thirsty and you want a fresh cup of water, what do you need? You will need a cup and you will need fresh water, right? It's the same if you want to have fresh creative ideas. Let's talk about it. It's usually, um, a common sense that we think that creativity comes and goes, and actually it does. But let's think of creativity as a fresh energy. Let's think about it as the energy that comes when we are alive, when we are truly alive. And what I have seen with my clients and even with myself is that there's this sense that creativity comes and goes and that it's totally random. But what I have found is by using a metaphor by one of my mentors, an amazing executive coach called Jerry Colonna, he brought this concept of The container and the content. So when we have these 2 things together, the container and the content, we can really achieve amazing things. But the 2 of them need to be in the right time, in the right place. What is the container for creativity? I will talk about it actually in the next episode, but let's now focus on the content. And I would say that one of the most amazing mentors for really creative development— I have cherished one of the retreats I attended with her in Montserrat, in one of the mountains here in Catalonia— is Julia Cameron. And she's like, let's say, the guru of creative thinking, of really living life as an artist. And her book, The Artist's Way, it's one of the most cherished practices that I follow. And I would borrow from her, let's say, one of the poems that comes from Toni Morrison, one of the, the best American novelists. And she says, we are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A pluses for that. Is creativity something that comes randomly and we dedicate just some time for it, or is it an energy that we cultivate where we connect with this energy and then things unfold, where we can do amazing things, new things, where our ideas can come to life? And I have seen this with many of my coaching clients. Where they are not feeling motivated, and because of that, they are not feeling creative. But I think it also goes the other way around. When we are not feeling creative, we are not motivated because we are working day by day in the same chores. Our agenda, our schedule is actually ruling what we want to do, what we want to achieve. And this has happened to me this week where I wanted to have this meeting with an important person for these— for my podcast, for these YouTube channels. And I thought Okay, let's— I want to talk to her. And I noticed that the only time that I had available was between 11:15 and 12. So I was like, what? When did this happen? So it's important to create the proper content and also the proper container. Let's focus on 4 practices that will help us to boost our creativity, and 3 of them I borrow from Julia Cameron's The Complete Artist's Way book. And the first one is to have a moment of morning journaling. I have been really resistant to, to, to having this practice, but actually it has been amazing for me. What do we do with morning journaling? What we do is we need to write down 3 pieces of paper. Here in Europe we use A4, or you could use something larger in America than letter. But you just take the time early in the morning, as early as you can, with your best beverage— coffee, tea, whatever you want— and you sit down and you start downloading. I mean downloading. It's not thinking about, my dear diary, I would like to say today— no, it's whatever it's in your mind, you write down. And when you don't know what to write down, you say, I don't know what to write down. Right now, right? So it's downloading all these thoughts that are in our mind, in this consciousness stream that we have, and that it's like these stickers that we can see when we are watching the news. When there are things happening, we have these kind of thoughts in our mind. So by taking the time of writing down three, three pages of whatever is out in our mind, and that might take us maybe twenty minutes or so. The rest of the day is going to be for us like, uh, like fresh water. We're going to be in a different mindset. And I would like to say that I have been resistant to that because it's important for me, because it helps me to be clear, it helps me to focus, it helps me to clear the screen of my mind and to then focus into what's important. But my ego doesn't allow it. So we need to be really confident that this kind of practices, like the morning pages done daily, helps a lot. Now let's move to the second one. The second one is the artist date. What is this? Julia says that we need to take the time once a week, and it could be just for 1 hour, going somewhere by ourselves where creativity flows. It could be going to a theater, it could be going to a museum, it could be going to a really nice library where we are there by ourselves opening our eyes into something that is artistic, something that is creative, something that helps us to open our minds. That we can connect with this creative energy that it's in this place. My best artist date that I had was a couple of years ago where I went to see some ballet, ballet from the, the National Opera House in Lyon in France, and I went to Barcelona by myself. I wasn't that much into dancing, to be fair, but something called me and I went there, and actually I repeated the same activity a couple of days later because I was so amazed by what I was seeing. The bodies, people moving, the scenario, the music. I mean, I even created a playlist in Spotify because the music was outstanding. What happened there for me? I recharged my creative juices and I was able to really open my eyes into something that it was new, that was outside of the hamster wheel of work or routine. And it really helped me. The third one, the third practice that Julia Cameron mentions is walking. Again, walking by ourselves could be daily, just taking some time to move around in a calm way and open, looking at the buildings, looking at the trees, looking at the kids playing or dogs or whatever, just walking without any intention other than being with ourselves. So this movement of walking allows us to be in a certain pace, and this pace serves again our mindset, and by doing that, our emotional state. And we're feeling calmer, we're feeling better, way better after doing this. And the fourth is not from Julia Cameron, but it's from my own experience and the testimonials that I get from my clients. I always tell them If they are taking the time to do something that is meaningful for them. Because we need to, to connect with joy. We need to connect with something that we love. The first 3 practices are a little bit probably outside of what you normally do, but there are some things that you already have incorporated in yourself, like maybe cooking or drawing, playing guitar. Or I don't know. In my case, I really enjoy the act of just listening to music, sitting on my chair, and like getting this musical bath, let's say, letting the musical notes and the rhythms touch me, to be close to me, and to make me feel. And just by playing something like Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, I mean, I get a lot of goosebumps, and my energy. Really changes. Up until now, we have talked about the container, we have talked about the content and how these 2 parts go together. In the case of content, the 4 practices: morning pages, the journaling, the artist date, walking, and doing something that is meaningful and important for us. If you do that, I— trust me, in the next Daily. No, some of these practices, or one or two cycles of artist dates that are weekly, you will get better ideas, your energy will be boosted, and then your motivation will increase.