"Cultivating Creativity Battles Burnout"

As a public speaker with decades of experience in front of audiences ranging from hundreds to thousands of people, I'm available for public speaker opportunities, either live or through zoom.  Send an email to: ki@amendcoaching for more information.  Below are a some topics that I can speak about.   

Mental Health and Creative Practice

1. What is Creative Burnout?

There are days when our mind is overflowing with ideas; we’re brimming with enthusiasm and confidence, so immersed in our creative careers that we lose track of time.  On the flip side, we also go through times when we feel sluggish and unable to think clearly. 

This state of  feeling ovewhelmed, anxious and fatigued is called creative burnout. Creative burnout can often go unidentified, and to manage its crippling effects, it’s essential be able to identify the signs.  To prevent it, there are creative practices that can keep it at bay. 

Attendee Results:

• Learn how certain negative mindsets such as perfectionism can exacerbate burnout.
• Ways to plan for creative slumps by scheduling in down-time and not over-committing
•  Employing mindfulness techniques such as somatic awareness and journaling to stay centered creatively
•  Establishing boundaries and taking breaks to create work-life balance

2.  The Enemies of Creativity

In her book “Big Magic,” Elizabeth Gilbert discussed some enemies of creativity. Fear, self-doubt, procrastination, perfectionism. These can derail us as creatives and prevent us from putting our work out into the world. But, there are other more dangerous aspects of creative life that get splashed out in the media and that often get glamorized as the “tortured artist.” 

• The falsehood that creativity must come a place of deprivation and sadness, and that we need to be in that state to make great art
•  The stereotype of heroin chic and the need for artists to be edgy and troubled

I propose an alternate view to creativity that involves cultivating healthy emotional habits to get into the “flow” that Mihaly Czikscentmihalyi writes about – the state where time stands still and you feel the most productive and effective. I outline ways that successful artists and designers use mindfulness to achieve flow and be the most sustainably creative. 

3.     Why Its Essential to Cultivate Creativity

We often talk about people having a level of creativity like it's an inborn trait, something akin to physical beauty. And, though some people may seem to have a greater ability to access it, what we don't realize is that the quality of creativity can be cultivated.  We also don't realize that even those who seem to have in in spades, often get burned out because it's not something that simply keeps giving without us also cultivating it. The question then is, how do not only cultivate creativity, but also prevent creative burnout. 

 A. Practices that Cultivate  Creativity

1. Somatic awareness
2. Recharging our creative battery

                    3.   Cross-pollination 

                     4.  Having fun 

                     5.   Journaling

                     6.  Physical Activity

B.  Identifying Causes of  Creative Burnout

 Creative burnout is described as "the loss of the ability to generate novel and/or useful ideas and solutions to everyday problems, function confidently as a contributing member of a creative team, and maintain faith in the creative process for yourself (Hantula, 1998)"

Practices that cultivate creativity mentioned in the first part of this lecture help to prevent it. 

Some mindsets that can exacerabate burnout are: 

                       1.  Perfectionism-falling into vicious cycles of self-criticism

                       2. Lack of self-confidence as an artist -feelings of inadequacy or imposter 

                           syndrome

                       3. Overworking -  working too much, or feeling the pressure to perform

                        4. Unrealistic expectations - having unrealistic demands from ourselves or others

                        5. Procrastination - postponing important work until the last minute; 

                          maybe due to fear of failure; then pressure to get things done push us over the 

                           edge. 

                        6. Not having clear work boundaries

                         7.  Stressful life events or going through life transitions

Problem with this is that you then can feel stuck, but the longer you're in this state, the harder it is for you to break free. The lack of productivity feeds into your own frustrations and fear that you may not be able to be creative again. 

C.  Recovering Your Creativity

         a. Rest - you need a strong body to have a strong mind.

                 Focus on the essentials:

                       1. food

                        2. sleep

                        3. emotional/spiritual self-care

          b. Change your physical environment

                       1. remove the clutter from your workspace

                        2. move things around in your home; re-arrange your physical space to spark new

                             ideas

                        3. change the route you take to work

              c. Play

                       1. experiment with new techniques, new genres. Do it without judgement but 

                           do it with curiosity.  Feed that curiosity.    (" Big Magic",  E. Gilbert)

                        2. Play is a state of mind essential for creativity ("Play",  St. Brown)

                        3. Embrace the imperfect

                        4. Connect and seek support from other creatives

References

Brown, Stuart, M.D, 2009,  Play - How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul

Czikscentmihalyi, Mihaly, 2008, Flow-The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Gilbert, Elizabeth, 2015, Big Magic - Creative Living Beyond Fear