12 Unleash Your Creative Genius: 5 Epic Reasons Why Being Creative Makes Life Awesome!

Description:

Have you ever wondered how creativity can impact your life and shape you as a person? I’ve been on a lifelong journey of creative self-expression, from dancing, singing, and improvising to planning my day and problem-solving with an artistic twist. Let me share with you five reasons why embracing your creativity is essential, including personal growth.

Creativity doesn’t just stop at personal hobbies; it can be a component of your professional life too. In this episode, I recount how my love for photography helped me capture eye-catching marketing photos and express myself through smartphone photography. I also introduce you to my gratitude rocks – a heartwarming idea to brighten someone’s day. So, lend me your ears and let’s explore the world of creativity together, and don’t forget to take care of yourself and make time to smile!

Transcript:

Hi everybody, welcome to today’s episode. I wanted to talk to you today about creativity because it is something that is near and dear to my heart. I’ve always been a creative person. I have always loved to make things with my hands, i’ve loved to write and I’ve always loved to talk. There is no doubt about that. I’ve got a pretty big mouth, but I love to share some good thoughts with people, not just talking about gossip and stuff like that. It’s really important, i believe, to be creative, and I’m going to share with you some ways that you can be creative. If you hadn’t even thought about it, i think that human beings are very creative creatures. Everybody has a different way of being creative, whether it’s expressing themselves or just solving problems and being creative in that way. I think that it helps you to really grow as a person when you understand what your preferred way of expressing yourself is, because you will have a way to relieve stress for a lifetime. This is something that’s very important to me because, especially since I have MS and I have mobility issues, the way that I used to express myself creatively was dance. I used to love to dance. I used to go out to clubs at night and think I was the bomb. I would just dance and dance, and that’s one thing that I can’t do anymore. I won’t say that I 100% can’t, i just dance in my own way, but that’s one way that I was able to creatively express myself. No dance would be exactly the same. I would create down the spot and I would just dance and feel really good about myself. So that was a physical way of expressing my creativity. I also used to sing, so that was a way of creatively expressing myself. I had a choice as a jazz vocalist with how to present a musical piece. I could present it in a certain arrangement. I could use different instrumentation for every song. I could just not use the same interpretation for each time I sang it. And that’s one thing I loved about jazz and performing jazz was that I got to improvise with the musicians and be creative that way. But also I could choose how I wanted to sing it and maybe add another instrument if it was percussion or just some clave or a little hand percussive drum. It was a great way for me to have an outlet. And then those years went by and I no longer am on the stage, so I do still sing for myself and my loved ones, and recently I did sing at a get-together that I had with my friends the ladies who’ve lived, and you’ll be hearing more about them. But it’s just a way of creatively expressing myself and it was a way I made a career for seven years. So that was one way that I expressed myself. But I will tell you that the whole kind of big picture of creativity for me is knowing how to break it down and figure out what I need to do for my day. So that’s how I create my plan for the day is to sit down in the morning and mindfully be aware of the things that I need to do and sit down with a pen and paper in the morning, and that’s part of my morning routine and just I have a list and I have it’s kind of like a brain map, if you will. So I put all of the areas of my life that I need to work on, whether it’s things I need to create like a blog post that I wanted to do today on it being my son’s last day of school today, the second grade. I wanted to make sure that I did that. I had my blog, i wanted to do a podcast. Now I will tell you the honest truth. I had no idea what I was going to sit down and talk about with you today, so this is kind of off the cuff. This is all from my heart. I didn’t plan this out well, i don’t know where it’s going to go, but I can tell you I completely have my heart in this topic. This is something that I love very much, so I’m going to speak to you honestly about it and I hope that you walk away with some ways that you can be creative in your life. That is my complete purpose for today’s episode. I want to share with you some ways that you can be creative that you might not thought of, and I want you to also understand five big reasons why you really should be creative. Okay, and you are creative. You may not know that you are creative, but you are. We human beings were here to, were put here to be creative and to create. Okay, if that wasn’t the case, we wouldn’t be able to put other human beings on this earth. So, with that said, let’s take a look at some reasons that you should be creative. Number one problem solving. You can sit down, you can have a brainstorming session with your peers. If you want to think about work, i’m sure you are creative, you know, in breaking down some innovative solutions that you have to problems. That’s for a business environment. But for myself problem-solving sometimes I don’t know how to solve something. I will just sit down in the morning before the sun is even up and I will sit with a pen and a paper and I will just write down what it is that I want to solve and I will put down all the parts and pieces that I have to. It Say it’s that I want to organize my closet or whatever reason. I will put down a picture of my closet and all the things that are in my closet where they need to go, and I’ll just be creatively making a list for myself. It doesn’t have to be a picture. It could be a picture, but you just, you know, can break down things like that just by putting on a piece of paper, and that is creativity, okay. If you did not put it down, you wouldn’t be creating something. So creating doesn’t have to be where. You are an artist. You don’t have to make a masterpiece. Creating means solving a problem and coming up with a solution. If you created a solution, you used your creativity, okay. So number two is self-expression. Being creative will kind of give you a way to have an outlet. You know, i had to sit down and make this podcast happen because it was welling up in my chest. I just needed to get it out. It was like words were forming. I know that there are musicians who need to sit down with their instrument and just play. I’ve heard of prodigies just sitting down at pianos in a piano source If you can remember back to a time when we had those and just playing masterpieces. For no reason at all. They’re not getting paid. They just enjoy creating music and spreading the joy, making people happy with their music. You know, whatever it is, expressing your thoughts, your emotions, it’s very meaningful, okay. Your ideas, even if it’s not music, you know. You just need to get them out. And these words, i can’t thank you enough for letting me get out it and having me share them with you because they’re so important to me. I was in my car and I was coming back from the gym this morning and, yeah, probably my endorphins are getting this going. I had a lot of blood flowing in my brain. I had this was leg day today for me and big muscles in the legs, so I just had a lot of energy pumped up through my body. I ate well, i had some three egg whites and some mushrooms and asparagus and I’m charged. Okay, so that, for me, really inspires me and gets my creativity flowing, and I could have sat down and done some other things. I’m going to talk to you about which is my chosen forms of expression. But you know, when you’re going, you just need to find a way to express yourself. So if you have an iPhone, you want to use the voice memos, get those thoughts out. Just get them out, because once you get involved in your day, those thoughts are going to fleet and then you’ll never be able to catch them again. Okay, so the number three reason that you should be feeling that you can express yourself and be creative is that it’s going to relieve stress. I was sitting here and I was like scratching my head. I’m like what should I do? And I said your blue Yeti microphone is right there, your computer is there, you’re all hooked up. Why don’t you just do this as a podcast? I really didn’t feel like blogging. I did a blog post this morning on my son’s last day of school, but it just wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to share more with you, and so I thought I’d go deeper into the reason why I had to do that blog post, and I realized it was the creativity, and why I need to get it out and express myself, and it makes me completely happy to do so. Okay, so if you have a way to stress, to reduce stress, you can find a way to have creativity. Creativities, i guess, creative activities are cold creativities. You can really focus your mind on something that you enjoy and you don’t have to think about what worries you. And I don’t have to think about cleaning out the dishwasher with all of the clean dishes in there and just think of where I have to put them. I can just sit down and do this and not have to worry about anything. When I get this out, i’m going to feel so amazing, i’m going to probably release a lot of endorphins and then I can go do my job happily. So number four reason is for personal growth. This will allow you to discover yourself better, you know, encourage self-discovery and be more self-aware. Okay, that’s what it has done for me. I’ve had a lot of ideas that I really would have never sat down and thought about, especially if you’re forced to sit down and do something that you don’t have to move. I have some hyperactivity and even though I have mobility issues, it doesn’t stop me from trying to move around my space and never sit still. I lose crutches in my house all the time. I’m like where did I put that crutch? Or both of my crutches? you know, it allows me to grow and forces me to be in one location to actually create something. So I’m pushed, okay, to explore new ideas, i experiment with things, i develop new skills and I’m always learning and developing myself. One of the ways that I do that is with these rocks that I paint, and I call them gratitude rocks, motivation rocks, whatever you want to call them. They really have changed my life. They’ve given me a way to express gratitude for people and exchange them in and be able to show my gratitude and have a form of creativity and self expression. And I’ll talk about that one little bit, because number five that you will experience with creativity and being creative is enhanced communication. Okay, you’re going to have such better communication skills as you understand your ideas better and really engaging ways. You know, i wouldn’t be able to have you listen to me wherever you are. You may be in your car, you may be I don’t know at the gym. I hope so, because then you’re just like me, where I listen to my podcasts And you know, this way you can really connect with others. It allows me to communicate with you in a way that I wouldn’t have before. I can share my perspectives effectively, i can talk to you, i’m sitting down, i’m forced to stay in one place and not move around, and I can really understand my thoughts before I speak them into this microphone. So those are five ways that you know creativity is really going to help you. There are five benefits. Right, we’ve got number one problem solving. Number two is self expression. Three stress relief. Number four was personal growth that I love specifically. And five is enhanced communication. Okay, so these are just some of the many ways that you know you’re going to have advantages, with good things to come, if you embrace creativity in your life. Now I want to share with you some of the ways that I am creative, so this can get your creative juices, if you will flowing to think how you might be able to include some creativity in your life in ways that you didn’t think Okay, and I also want you to think of ways that you currently are creative. They could be for business, okay, they could be ways in your job and think about what the things are that you’d like to do to be creative. You know, if you have an operational kind of job where you just go through the motions every day, you might not be that happy. So if you can create a new way to be more efficient or a new way of doing something, i’m sure that that’s, you know, one of your creative outlets that you may not have even thought of. I have always been creative in my work environment. I will say this is probably one of the most creative ways that I’ve been able to express myself is to have this podcast once again after the eight years that I was on hiatus, and I’m very thankful for that. But when I was in the work environment and I would let me see, my last job was in marketing And I focused on the online marketing because that’s what I was so good at. I was good at social media and connecting with people and just creating things, and when I was there, i really had to get better at photography And being the online marketing manager and managing a website. I needed to get in charge of photos and a way to sell the products that were not there. So I needed to get better at editing the photos that were available that may have had some things in the background that were not conducive to getting attention focused on products. I really needed to get better at photography. I had to get great at figuring out the best lighting for the product in a dark warehouse. I don’t want to go too much into the work that I did specifically for the company that I worked at, but I will tell you they were very large displays and they were in a warehouse that was very dark and not conducive to great photography. So I also had to take pictures of some pretty small things and people that worked at the company, because I think that we do business with people. We don’t do business with businesses. Okay. So I think that one of the ways that I found out that I was really good at photography is because I’m so creative. It was something that I needed for my job to make me better in marketing. I needed to have something to actually sell product and make people engaged and excited, and that’s how I really started my photography And even before that, when I was diagnosed with MS, i just didn’t have the energy to really look at anything outside my self. I was just down in the dumps and in misery every day. But when I took a photo workshop a photography workshop at Unique Photo and you can find some information on my website about that They have courses on photography Actually live workshops. I took a wonderful workshop with Mike Downey and we a wonderful photographer. We took a wonderful workshop with Mike Downey, who is a professional photographer, and he is amazing. He taught me the ropes And I took these amazing pictures at the Brooklyn waterfront of the sunset. It was my first experience really doing anything like that, and that photo ended up being the cover for the book that I wrote on smartphone photography. It’s called Visual Marketing Secrets How to Take Smartphone Photography for Your Business. Now I was on Best Seller and it was wonderful. I never thought that my photo would be on the cover of that. It was spectacular And I created that. That was not something that I would have ever done, but I took a photography workshop on a whim and it happened. So I have my blog and I use all the photos that I take now with my smartphone. All of the photos on my blog are done with my smartphone And you know I don’t use my DSLR, my Canon T4i, anymore. I will use it on occasion when I don’t have to move around much, just because I have two crutches, and it’s difficult for me to walk and be safe with the camera because it is a little bulky. So if I’m sitting in one place I can take the photo if you hand me the camera, but it’s hard for me to walk with it. So I use the camera that I’ve got on me And that’s the best one that you’re going to have. There’s a lot of things that you can do with your iPhone And I always love to learn and be creative with it. So you know, if you have your iPhone, you definitely have a way to be creative. If you have an Android, don’t get smart, because you could still be creative with an Android. I was just saying that you can have creativity with your smartphone in infinite ways. There are infinite ways that you can have fun with it. One of the things that I love about smartphone photography is food photography, so I get to enjoy a meal And, yeah, sometimes people may have to wait for me to get that shot before digging in, but that’s one thing that I really love. So I’ve got my rocks that I paint, my gratitude rocks, and these rocks I have set up in a special station in my kitchen that I set up with paper plates that I can put them on when they have to dry, and special paints that I use in paint brushes And sometimes I use paint pens And I will just write a word or draw a picture, and it doesn’t have to be anything fancy, it really doesn’t And then you can share that with somebody that would never expect it And they think it’s like a lucky charm And it makes you feel like a million bucks And they appreciate it so much that you thought of them And you a lot of times you get a picture of them sharing it with wherever they put it on their desk or their car. It’s awesome. I highly recommend sharing rocks of gratitude or motivation rocks, even with one simple word on it. You know, just to make someone’s day, it’s gratitude is going to unlock doors for you in every way. So I have also come to really been be working on my website more, because I really want that to be a clean plate for where people can come to find my blog and find my podcast right. I want to have all my podcast episodes and I really don’t want to have a dirty table waiting. So that website I’ve been working on. It’s not easy. My mom is helping me. She’s really a designer and she’s very creative in that way, so she’s been helping me with header images and kind of stuff that makes it look pretty. I’m more of the big picture person, so we’re still doing some edits and tweaking around the blog or podcast or the about me page. If there’s anything that you see on my website chronicallyempoweredbombcom that just doesn’t fit right with you, just let me know. Okay, because I’m happy to work on it. It’s one of my creative outlets. So one of the things that I’m using to help me with it is chat GPT. Now I can say a lot of people have kind of been scared of chat GPT or AI, and I don’t want to go into too deep a discussion about this now because this episode is really on creativity. But I use chat GPT to really spark my creativity. Okay, i will ask it things like to give me five interview questions for somebody, or I will ask it Give me five ways to do something. Or you know, give me 10 topics first for something, and then it will run with it, and I’ll be surprised. I will never use exactly what it has. I will always just use it to spark my own creativity and build upon it. Sometimes I will change things, but chat GPT is excellent if you’re creative and you’re writing. Don’t be afraid of it, because the one thing that I love about chat GPT is that you can also use it to become a better writer. You can ask it to critique your work, or what do you think about this title? And I asked it to critique a title that I had for a new workshop that I’m coming up with, and it said that it’s okay, it’s compelling and engaging, but you could also do this. So it was really awesome, you know. So it’s like a little personal assistant. You know whenever you need help, you could just ask it a question. Don’t think that it’s the beat all end all, because it doesn’t know everything, but it’s a good place to start. So that’s also something that I’m working on is a new workshop. I just did a gratitude workshop for my awesome ladies who lived Okay, a group that I created yes, created from Planet Fitness, by asking if they would like to join me and maybe connect, you know, outside of the gym, because we really don’t get to talk to each other in the gym environment. We’re kind of on our way to the next thing. We just kind of see each other in passing. But I wanted to create something and I did And it has taken off. It’s allowed me to really have a group of women that are very receptive and giving me feedback and helping me grow as a person. And I just did my gratitude workshop, which is the last episode that I did. I don’t know if it’s going to be right before this one, but that was episode 11. And I’m able to really share my creative thoughts and see how they go and see how they’re received by people before I develop more, because I’m going to put this out here. I want to be a TED Talker. Okay, i want to have a TED Talk. It can be TED Talk X. I want to be an expert and in having, you know, overcome some challenge and really learn how to stay positive, have a positive mindset all the things that go into that and help you to become a better person, not just myself, but humanity as a whole. Okay, i think that it’s silly if you’re just going to become better and keep it all to yourself. There’s a lot of room for improvement in this world, people. I think so, you know. I hope you do too, so I hope that you’ve learned something from this episode. I really didn’t have an outline for it. It was just something that I created on a whim. I sat down with all of these thoughts flowing down in my head and I just came up with five reasons, right, that you should have creativity in your life, why it’s going to make you a better person and the things it can do for you. So now you just have to think about the different ways that you can incorporate more creativity into your life, whether it’s in your morning routine, starting and jotting things down and figuring out a pattern for your day how you can become better and create your world. Okay, so let’s all create a better place together, and I am so blessed and inspired that you came here today and joined me. You had a choice to be here. You didn’t have to do that. You didn’t have to keep playing my episode and hope that I would say something special at this point, because it’s almost the end, right? It’s almost about half an hour in, and that’s a lot to take of your day. So I really thank you for being here. I hope that it makes you just a little bit better than yesterday and I hope that you keep smiling today. Okay, have a wonderful day and I’ll talk to you soon. Take care.