Category: Creativity

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

Comparison is something that eats away at our hearts slowly.

It is a thief that steals our joy, peace and promises for a better tomorrow.

When we spend our days comparing ourselves to one another we don’t allow ourselves to discover who we truly are.

I grew up the daughter of an identical twin.

Over and over, season through season, we watched our Mums struggle with comparison and competition.

They navigated its poison well, but I am still so aware of the difficulty it imposes.

Yesterday I started an online course with Brene Brown. I have been a little addicted to her writing this last year and I stumbled across this course and decided to have a go.

It is all about living a wholehearted life and allowing creativity to inspire and heal those parts of us that have been suppressed and broken.

The course walks slowly through the book I finished a few weeks ago called ‘The gifts of imperfection’.

Two of the exercises we were given today was to draw a self portrait (mine is above), writing a few words beside it about what we believe about ourselves.

Then another exercise was to write down our creative wounds, scars that have held us contained in our creativity (I went back to a day in my journal that I missed and reclaimed that little blank page of failure). We were to write in red pen words that have impacted us from our upbringing. Words that have been spoken over our lives and our creativity

Some of my words were;

Too much

Too loud

Too fat

Too pushy

Too messy…

Things that had been spoken over my life that caused me often to compare myself with others as I created.

As much as I love blogging, it is like a double edged sword. The comparison to others online, the negative criticism, the competition, so easily can take over and affect my output.

Brene asked us to paste over those scars with bandaids and then write words of recovery and belief in their place.

I wrote words like

enough

strong

leader

loved

purposed

and more.

It is amazing how much comparison robs us of our peace. It is a thief. It steals from our today and plunders our tomorrow.

What are you spending your days comparing yourself to?

Mummy bloggers?

The type of prams others have?

The house you live in?

The job you have?

Someone’s instagram account?

When we live in a place of constant comparison we are paralysed from making changes that are necessary to live to life of creativity and inspiration we were designed to.

You are a creative being, even if you don’t believe that you are. You were created in the image of the most amazing Creator.

Maybe you need to do a couple of these exercises as well and post them in your 365 journal together.

I am scared and excited about this 6 week course I have now embarked upon.

I hoping to embrace my imperfections and continue along this inspiration journey of 2014.

See you tomorrow.

Amanda