Category: Creativity

My son Maximus has a little ruggie, that he loves to pieces. I never really understood the power of a ruggie, until I had a child.

Yesterday was a sad day for many of my friends, a father of two young children lost his life tragically and it is at times like this, that I linger a little longer in the morning with my son as he drags his ruggie from his room into ours.

Life is way to short for shallow conversations.

Life is way to fleeting to live inauthentic lives, trying to please people you never will.

The people who will love you no matter what are the ones who see you with your ruggie and they don’t mind.

A day of reflection here for my family, I ate my eggs on toast a little slower this morning, I intentionally left my phone at home and walked the beach with my husband and son. I sat back in my rocking chair and I watched them playing cars and planes together.

I let the washing slide, I left the toast on the bench and allowed it to go cold, I visited my mum for no reason but to walk in the house I grew up in.

I savoured those who I can be real with.

I love this story from the velveteen rabbit, it describes everything I am feeling with much more eloquence.

Be real.

Leave anything fake behind.

Shed that which is not bringing beauty to your world.

Honest, real, hair has been loved off genuine relationship.

Life is way to short for anything else.

Amanda

One of the greatest hindrances to progressive leadership is nostalgia.

We find something that works and then flog that dead horse till we are dragging it up the mountain.

I am a great believer in tradition.

I am a great fan in reflection and learning lessons from my past but I am also realising that this can easily turn into nostalgia.

It is a liar. It is a selective thinker. It is easily convinced that everything was perfect, when it was far from it.

Nostalgia helps you remember the beautiful, lovely moments of success and forget the pain, stretch and chaos it took to get you there.

If you want to be a leader that brings change and leans into the new, you need to flush nostalgia out of your system.

Traditions are brilliant, lessons we have learnt from the past necessary, but doing the same thing you have always done will always get the same results.

If you are using the same systems as you were 10 years ago everything has changed, (in the last 10 years, facebook, twitter and instagram have completely changed the way the world communicates). Social media has brought new words, new customs, new problems in with it. Therefore systems and processes must change with the crazy changing landscape of society.

If you are singing the same songs from 5 years ago, in a leadership context, you are stuck in a moment.

If you are reading the same books,

Writing the same sermons, with the same jokes and the same themes,

Speaking the same language,

Wearing the same clothes, from the same shop, that you bought 5 pairs on sale a few years ago,

Sitting in the same seat, in the same cafe, drinking the same coffee…

I would guess some of your leadership outlook and strategy is stuck in a nostalgic moment.

I love routine, I love drinking tea and lighting a candle and pursuing truth but I need to continue to remind myself what CS Lewis wrote

‘There are far better things ahead, than those we leave behind.’

Are you stuck in a moment?

Then innovate something.

Today.

Speak soon

Amanda

I started an online creativity course with Brene Brown this week. One of our exercises was to write down three things that we would like to learn or get better at throughout this course. Three creative things that we would actively allow ourselves to practise, no matter the outcome.

One of my three was photography.

This last Christmas my husband bought me a great camera, but so often I stop myself from using it, because one it’s easier to just pick up my phone and two because I have so many friends who are amazing photographers and I kind of feel like a try hard. (vulnerable moment right here)

One main reason why I endorse and love creativity so much is because it always brings out our unique.

There is a way that we see the world, that no one else does.

No one else has the same eyes, the same perspective, the same story and therefore everything we produce is unique.

Even if we have gotten the idea from somewhere our reproduction is always different.

Yesterday I jumped in the deep end. My mum runs a home for women who find themselves pregnant and in a place of vulnerability.

It is a beautiful home, that Max and I often visit to just hang with these brand new Mums, who are staying there finding a place to plant themselves and their new little family has some support to thrive.

Every time I hang there I find great perspective.

Strength, hope, potential, struggle…The stories the walls of that home holds.

Back to my story, one of the new Mums asked me to take some photos. (It’s funny when you make a private decision about something, opportunities quickly arise).

With permission from the beautiful Mum, here are a few of my favourites from yesterday.

I am learning that even when we just have a go, our unique comes to the fore.

What’s your unique?

Make a decision to explore it this week.

Speak tomorrow

Amanda