Creative Strategies for Individuals to Manage Change in Challenging Times: The Power of Story, Part II
Bette Davis famously repeated, “Old age ain’t no place for sissies!” So true! But creatives can thrive no matter what by integrating strategies to manage any physical, emotional or mental changes specific to our temperament, time and place in history.
Creatives are people willing to imagine a better world, and work towards their vision, building on a foundation of practice, discipline, and solid values. I work with creatives both in my writing mentoring and in my organizational consulting, and have learned a great deal about the courage it takes to commit to innovation and invention. I’ve also learned a lot about ways to minimize the stress of being brave and creative in a world that doesn’t always seem to reward us for choosing to thrive and innovate.
Above all, we need to learn how to make fight or flight work for us, not against us! We need to be alert when there’s real danger. But the overworked, overstimulated limbic system of the modern human triggers us unconsciously and with annoying regularity. The resulting cascade of stress hormones not only stimulates chronic health and mental imbalance, it also hobbles our ability to respond creatively and proactively to small and large crisis situations. Physical activity and social support help us manage physiological and emotional stress.
But for creatives, the best way to find greater resilience is to let yourself play — using brainstorming, art-making, out-of-the-box thinking and writing games to switch gears from exhausting stress to satisfying stretch. You’ve felt the pressures from deadlines, distraction, procrastination, and interruption! Here are some sure-fire ways to get yourself back on track for a more creative life.
Don’t just walk the treadmill — dance! Put on some music and let your body teach you how to move into the sweet spot, the state of creative flow Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “the secret to happiness.” (Watch his TED talk here!) Whatever gets you there, do it with the focus you’ve brought to regular exercise, diet, or any other life-sustaining discipline. It’s fundamental for creatives.
Start with and always return to questions that help you identify where you find joy: What lit up my soul this week? Which relationships make me truly laugh or inwardly sing? What tasks feel like home to me? Celebrate the light you felt. Cultivate those relationships. Make more room for the work that feels like home, that probably doesn’t even feel like work. Trust me, the money, satisfaction, creative energy, and completed passion projects will follow!
Create (and follow through) with an interesting, short term experiment. Choose a question that you’re curious about, and make a mindmap about possible ways to discover the answer. Then design a hypothesis, do an experiment that tests that hypothesis, and record your discovery. It’s likely that you’ll surprise yourself if you keep the spirit of experimentation at the center of this exploration.
For example: If you’re curious about plants that would thrive in your house/apartment, map out possible locations and personal tastes considering light/water/flowers/size and other plant qualities. Then choose one area, and put a few plants there for a month to see if they’ll like it. If they burst into bloom, success! (Water, beautify, celebrate!) If they wither, success! (You can always move them around to find the perfect spot.) This kid of experiment is a good ice breaker for stressed out creatives.
To focus on a creative project you might want to try something like this: If you’re curious about what times of day you are most productive with your creative work, make a mind map about what you need to get in the flow. Then choose a time and place where those needs can be best met, and every day for two weeks, commit to working creatively at that time. Then assess. Were you more productive? Success! (Keep creating on that schedule.) Was it hard to maintain? Success! (Choose another time to schedule creative work, until you find the sweet spot.)
Remember, one person’s rejuvenating tool to build adaptability is another person’s unmanageable chore. Honor your unique ways of coping, expanding, and destressing. Lather, rinse, repeat…. The goal is to be resilient as well as creative, and only you know what that looks and feels like.
When times get tough, the creative get — well, creative! Creativity ain’t for sissies — and that’s what makes it so satisfying over a lifetime of resilience!