Today’s Life-Work Balance post is dedicated to Principle 5 (Own Your Life), and the topic is Creativity. It is also inspired by the #PeriGirlsChat Twitter chat where I was a guest co-host.

My business is all about creativity. Both my event and wedding planning and my business coaching benefit from creative thinking. For me, it’s a natural process, and the more I train my mind to find creative ways to solve my clients’ problems, the easier it gets.

We all need and use creativity in our lives and in our business, it’s not only for artists. Sometimes we don’t even realize it, and many of my coaching clients don’t know they’re creative in their business until I point out what they do every single day and they tell me: “Ohhh… is that what you refer to as creativity? Then yes, I’m very creative!”

Despite what people (and scientists) used to think, research has finally shown that our brain grows and changes according to our daily happenings. Both positive and negative emotions, feelings, and thoughts can influence our brain. When you use your creative genius, your brain creates neural pathways that help you create and stimulate new connections, this generating more and more creativity. This is thanks to our brain’s plasticity.

Not everyone thinks creativity is part of their daily job but if you look closer at what you do, you will realize that many details are inspired by your creativity: your brand vision, your marketing message, your way of welcoming new clients.

That’s what allows us to create our products, our services, when we sell, and what makes us different, what makes us stand out. By being creative with your strategy you can attract the right audience.

Think about this: If you are an entrepreneur and you start a company is because you envisioned something. You are thinking about creating a solution, about solving a problem in your niche, improving on a current service or product, and when you visualize, develop your idea, and you take action, you bring passion, motivation to your creativity. Without creativity, you wouldn’t have any idea or vision. And I love to see how each of us applies creativity to ideas, services, products. Each of us provides a different solution because that’s the way how each of us thinks and processes our own ideas. Here’s how you stand out in your industry.

How can you improve creativity?

That’s easier than you think! Let your daily life and surroundings inspire you, don’t force creativity to come to you or you will get stuck. Plus, I have 8 tips for you today:

1) Take a walk – It sparks creativity and it gives you the opportunity to get away from the technology. Let your mind go! Being outdoors also acts as a healthy detox from stress, technology, and noise in our daily lives. It’s also a great excuse to go have fun and explore, and learn something about new places or just your neighborhood

2) Get enough sleep – Lack of sleep can kill creativity. Although we feel the urge to always be on the move, when we are tired, our brain can’t function 100%. Plus, when you’re exhausted it gets harder to retain information when you learn something. Therefore, the less you sleep, the less you learn and apply solutions to situations and you can’t perform effectively

3) Exercise regularly – When you exercise you feel (and get) healthier because of the increased blood flow and the hormones released. Feeling healthy improves your confidence, and confidence leads to more mental energy. Mental energy will improve your creativity

4) Meditate – I don’t know if you ever notice but, when you are always thinking about a past or future event, it takes your mind away from concentrating and working on the current situation. Meditation is a great way to develop stillness. Mental stillness allows you to eliminate many of the thoughts that constantly distract you. With a meditation practice your mind will learn to be entirely in the present situation. You will become more focused and more creative in each moment

5) Abandon procrastination – Procrastination forces you to work on projects last minute and when you force productivity (and creativity) nothing comes out. The same applies to multi-tasking: focus on one task at a time and you will achieve better (and faster) results

6) Enjoy the process of creating – Have you ever hit writer’s block, for instance? When you write content for your blog, or for your business offerings… That’s when you realize your creativity is suffering. So what do you do? Usually you try and find ideas, and you keep thinking and thinking and thinking. And then you get frustrated because nothing comes out. And the more your struggle the less you find ideas, right? You need to stop struggling and thinking too hard. Don’t put too much pressure on this otherwise you won’t achieve your goals as you wanted. Instead, stop struggling and try one of these tips that I’m sharing with you today. Just let it go. Enjoy the process of creating.
When you see it as a positive experience, creativity can improve every time. The more you implement creativity in your business the more creative you become, it’s like practicing

7) Join masterminds – Mastermind groups are excellent because you get to work with different individuals, different personalities, and the experience provides a very creative environment when each participant uses their unique perspective and inspires others to take action

8) Create vision boards – These can expand on your creativity. What is a vision board? It is a board that is usually created during a creativity or mastermind session to help clarify, concentrate and maintain focus on your life goals. So, basically, you find and attach different images that reflect who you want to be, how you want to feel in your life. Your board should always be displayed in a prominent area of your house: it could be in front of your work desk, on your fridge, by your bed. That way, it will serve as a reminder and you will keep looking at it every day. By doing so, you will create a habit with these goals in mind, you will visualize your goals, and you will eventually go in that direction.

You can also get some inspiration from one of my favorite creativity experts: Sir Kenneth Robinson. He is a British author, speaker, and international advisor. He suggests that in order to engage and succeed, education has to develop in three areas. 1) it should encourage diversity and individualization of the learning process. 2) it should foster curiosity through creative teaching; 3) it should focus on awakening creativity”

He said, “One of the myths of creativity is that very few people are really creative. The truth is that everyone has great capacities, but not everyone develops them.”
I recommend his book, Out Of Our Minds: Learning To Be Creative.

Today’s tool is Brain Sparker, a free app that stretches your creative muscles. The app contains 200 cards that have thought-provoking words and phrases. You simply shake your device to shuffle the pack and the movement will produce a new card that will supposedly stimulate a new idea.

Need help with your creativity? Let’s connect! Schedule your FREE Clarity Call HERE

Sabrina Cadini

Holistic Precision Life Coach, Brain Wellness Coach, and Life-Work Balance Strategist helping busy professionals and high achievers live and work better by prioritizing themselves. I use different modalities (epigenetics, neuroscience, chronobiology, and positive psychology) to implement effective lifestyle changes.