Creating Space - Finding Flow
Creative Lift
In this episode of Creative Lift: "Creating Space: Finding Flow," we're revisiting the ideas offered in season eight. Join me to reflect on our journey through the Illuminary's five rooms - the Studio, Workshop, Attic, Library, and Garden Cafe, in Creative Lift episodes 60-70. Each of these Illuminary rooms offer unique tools and mindsets to support different aspects of your creative process. In this episode, we explore: How each room in the Illuminary serves a specific creative purpose Real-world examples of using these spaces to overcome creative blocks Ways to reframe creative challenges...
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Creating Space: Collaborating in the Cafe
Creative Lift
In today’s episode of Creative Lift, Creating Space: Collaborating in the Cafe, we’re getting practical about how we might invite feedback in the most helpful way. Rather than asking someone to tell you what they think of your work, how might you shape a question that makes it possible for them to give you information that will illuminate the next steps of your creative process? Episode Links: Find me on Instagram: Find Alex on Instagram:
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Creating Space: Designing with Collaboration in Mind
Creative Lift
In today’s episode of Creative Lift, Creating Space: Designing with Collaboration in Mind , we’re considering the importance of collaboration in the creative process. How might we outfit physical spaces and design our mindset to make the most of the varied perspectives and possibilities that arise when we work creatively with others? What approach might we take to sharing our ideas, inviting feedback, and then processing that feedback in a way that furthers our creative work's goal? How might we offer feedback to others in constructive and concrete ways that boost their...
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Creating Space: Learning in the Library
Creative Lift
In today’s episode of Creative Lift, Creating Space: Learning in the Library, we’re building on last week’s exploration of an expansive library space, dedicated to learning, which houses artistic masterpieces of all kinds. Today, we’ll step into that space and learn a reverse-engineering strategy. This strategy will make it possible for you to apprentice with any creative hero in an approachable way. First, spend intentional time studying their work, figure out what makes it so impactful, and then personalize those strategies so that you can use them in your own way, in service of...
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Creating Space: Designing with Apprenticeship in Mind
Creative Lift
In today’s episode of Creative Lift, Creating Space: Designing with Apprenticeship in Mind, we'll explore another essential mindset for creative thinking: apprenticeship. So far in this season, we've considered the importance of improvisation, critical thinking, and reflection, and their related skillsets. We've given each of these thinking modes a specific space in our mind. We've visualized a building to hold these rooms, our creative Illuminary, and considered the look and feel that each room might have. We've noted how these rooms can provide shortcuts into a particular way of thinking,...
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Creating Space: Reflecting in the Attic
Creative Lift
In today’s episode of Creative Lift, Creating Space: Reflecting in the Attic, we’re building on last week’s exploration of an inner, mental space, specifically designed for reflection. Today, we’ll step into that space and try an activity together called The Emotion Jars. You’ll consider the emotional fuel you currently have for your creative work through a hands-on experience. I encourage that you listen to this one with pen, paper, and some colored pencils in hand. Why consider our emotions in relation to our creative work? In Brené Brown’s book, Atlas of the...
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Creating Space - Designing with Your Voice in Mind
Creative Lift
In today’s episode of Creative Lift, Creating Space: Designing with your Voice in Mind, we’re continuing our series that explores the Illuminary. The Illuminary is a visualization tool that invites you to picture your creative thinking process happening in various rooms. Our goal is to make the abstract and sometimes confusing creative process more tangible, giving ourselves tools to see the way we move through the creative process with clarity and flow. Today's room is the Attic. In this mental space, you’re invited to think reflectively—collecting ideas, asking questions, and...
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Creating Space - Strategizing in the Workshop
Creative Lift
In today’s episode of Creative Lift, "Creating Space: Strategizing in the Workshop," we’re continuing our series that explores the Illuminary. The Illuminary is a visualization tool that invites you to picture your creative thinking process happening in various rooms. Each room is designed to support a particular mode of thinking. For instance, your Studio is a space for divergent thinking, brainstorming, improvising, and experimenting, where your Workshop is a space for strategic thinking, craftsmanship, and decision-making. Both kinds of thinking are essential in the creative process....
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Creating Space - Designing with Strategic Thinking in Mind
Creative Lift
In this season of Creative Lift, “Creating Space,” we’re making the abstract and sometimes confusing creative process more tangible. We’re giving ourselves tools to see the way we move through the creative process so that we can ideate, craft our work, gather feedback, and revise our work with more clarity and flow. Today’s episode, “Designing with Strategic Thinking in Mind,” builds on the concept of the Illuminary, which I outlined in episode 60. In this imagined space, you can visualize different kinds of creative thinking inside distinct mental rooms. In our last two...
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Creating Space: Playing in the Studio
Creative Lift
Today’s episode of Creative Lift, "Creating Space: Playing in the Studio," is a hands-on experience of playing in one of the Illuminary's rooms, the Studio. You can think of the Illuminary as an inner creative hideout that is made up of various rooms designed to support your creative thinking process. The Studio is a space for divergent thinking, brainstorming, improvising, and experimenting. Last week's episode offered a tour of the Studio, and today's episode invites you to experience it. Since this is a hands-on experience, I encourage you to listen to this episode when you have a...
info_outlineWhat if you could show up at your creative desk with no ideas at all, or with a million ideas, and either way, feel sure you had a process to move you reliably into flow? What would it mean to be able to count on creative momentum?
We all face blocks now and then, sometimes major ones, and that reality makes it hard to believe in a world where we could count on creative momentum.
On the other hand, most of us would count on making some kind of progress if we signed up for a facilitated workshop. We’d expect the workshop leader to guide us into flow.
So, what if we could offer ourselves that kind of facilitated, reliable space? What if we were as confident in our own ability to move ourselves into flow as we were in the skills of an expert guide?
It may sound impossible, and sure, sometimes we do need the caring support of someone who is not inside our own heads. That said, if we can shift our mindset a bit, we can find ways to create space for ourselves that uses similar tools to what a facilitator might provide. We can prepare activities, recipes, games, fun supplies, tools, and other enticing resources ahead of time so that when we sit down to create, we’re in a safe, possibility-filled space.
In today’s episode, Equip Yourself for Creative Momentum, we’ll talk about how you can build customized tools that fit your specific needs, tools that make slipping into flow much more possible and predictable.