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- [00:01]
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Welcome to five Minute Magic from the Mindful Creative Podcast, a short bonus episode sharing tips and insights from the pages of the book of the same title. Every week, I'll be sharing one or two ideas that can give you an actionable takeaway for your creative process, your work, your business, or just food for thought for the weekend ahead. These episodes share content from the audiobook, and you can find a link to the full version in the show Notes Life in the next two episodes, we're going to run through the whole Chapter Number three, titled Pause. Because we can't make any meaningful changes to our lives or work if we carry on with business as usual, falling into the same unhelpful grooves over and over again. This section considers life and work together and encourages you to make time to reflect on both how far you've come and what a mind needs changing. You can't fix a leaky pike if you don't know where the water is coming from. The sections that we will go through are realization that change is needed and we'll look at personal audit. In the next episode, we'll look into Work audit and how it informs our next step.
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Chapter 3 Pause Change is needed. You've probably heard Einstein's famous quote, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. This of course, applies to methods that aren't working, but it can equally apply to us creatives. When we get stuck in an unhealthy routine and keep going and going without taking care of ourselves. It's pretty insane to keep running around the same hamster wheel thinking that it will change anything. The only thing it will affect is our energy levels and ability to cope, and always for the worse. Contrary to what you may have been told, sold, or come to believe, there's no wisdom in always working, always striving to be somewhere that you're not. It's a myth. We're back to the idea of the busy fool. In the creativity business, there are rarely prizes for hard work in and of itself, there has to be an output. When we're going and doing all the time, however, it can be hard to read the signs they go whizzing by, or our minds are constantly preoccupied with something else. In most, if not all cases, the only way to make a difference is to slow down and stop. If you're stuck in gear and feel you have to keep moving for fear of being left behind, for fear of missing out, for fear of acknowledging things that become harder to block out. When you pause, then stopping to make a difference can seem crazily counterintuitive. How are you going to get anywhere? By stopping and standing still? But we've also acknowledged that if you're reading this, then it's likely that something isn't working for you, or you're at least concerned that something feels a little off. The only way to work it out truly is to stop. It's time for a change of action. How present are you? Here's a true story about a pizza After a long, whirlwind day of work and admin, I was balancing it all out by lying on an exercise mat and taking in guided, deep breaths as directed by my Pilates instructor. As ever, it was proving almost impossible to rid myself of my thinking overload, mulling over the dozens of things that had happened that day and were scheduled to happen the next. As a result, I often spent the majority of this hour long session trying to switch my focus and failing and pulling some pretty unconvincing Pilates moves along the way. My thoughts just kept wandering backwards or forwards. During one session, a rather stern and commanding instructor kept pacing the room, checking on everyone's process. During one particularly deep stretch, which we were meant to be focusing on with our breath and our mind, she asked me what I was thinking, presumably hoping that all the stretching we'd done to reach this climactic point was worth it. Fiorentina, I replied, giving my honest thoughts at that moment. Definitely having a Fiorentina pizza. After this, she looked confused and asked if I was trying to be funny. I didn't have time to be funny. I was busy thinking about my dinner. Of course I'm not, I replied to her with her visible dismay about the whole exchange. The incident sums up the daily battle I had not only with all the aspects of my work, but also with myself. To counter the overwhelm I felt from overloading myself. I tried to incorporate helpful around the work activities such as Pilates into my day, but all it ultimately meant was another battle. If the short walk to the studio wasn't enough to disengage, I therefore felt I had to work doubly hard so that I could finish earlier and give myself a little more time to unplug and therefore feel the benefit of the exercise. Just reading that sentence is exhausting to me now, let alone living it. Audit yourself what do you see when you look in the mirror? Assuming you're present enough to assess what you see? Are you looking at you as you actually are? Are you seeing who you want to be? What you lack. Are you seeing someone whose identity is so enmeshed with their work and their creativity that those things are no longer separable? As creatives, we can feel ourselves deeply connected to our work, and of course our most authentic work always has something of us inside it. But just like it's important to stop, it's also important every so often to untangle ourselves and our process from our output and look objectively at both. Are you defining insanity by doing the same unhelpful things over and over again? The first thing to audit is your lifestyle. That way you can gain an understanding of the mindset that you approach your creativity with. From the way this chapter started, you might be forgiven for thinking that a busy lifestyle only applies to those who are in a similar situation to my former one. Always working on briefs, phone ringing off the hook, new emails every five seconds, as little sleep as possible to keep the wheels turning, etc. But if we remember the anxious anxiety of the previous chapter, we realize that we can find ourselves stuck in unhelpful, busy patterns. At any other stage, for example, you might be struggling to find work and clients, definitely the ebb end of the ebb and flow of professional creativity and either be doing nothing but worry or still moving at the same rate as when you're busy, still going through the same old motions, content mills, sites where you pitch and bid for work as cheaply as possible, do an unpaid sample for us, etc. That are keeping the wheels spinning but getting you nowhere. You might be anywhere between dead and overrun as far as work is concerned, and be equally consumed by ambitious anxiety. You're still not where you want to be or feel you should be. Others have more high profile, better paid, interesting work than you. This might lead you to make poorly thought decisions that waste your time and your money, particularly if you're desperate to find work. It should hopefully be clear from looking at all of these very different situations that they're all screaming out for the same answer. Stop. It's vital that we as creatives make the time, preferably before we crash, to step away from our lifestyle, stop hammering away at the coal face and create some space between us and it. The view is so much clearer when we can get up high above the imposing buildings and smog of our everyday tasks and worries. Then you can see what is working for you and what is defining insanity and begin planning to make changes accordingly. So far, so inspiring, but also vague. What does auditing yourself actually look like? It's really pretty simple as long as you're honest with yourself. The first practical step you can take in a lifestyle audit is to keep a record of your days. Note down what you do and how long it takes you. All of it, including time spent getting distracted by social media, looking at the news, playing games on your phone, giving time to tasks that slow you down or add to your workload, etc. Keep a food diary. This isn't implying that you need to diet, but sometimes we can eat less healthily than we think simply because we don't notice or we think will compensate for the takeaway. Complete lack of food the next day without realizing that we do the same thing three days in a row. If you feel like crap after eating food, the answer is often in the takeaway box. And what we put into our bodies can really impact what happens in our minds over the course of a week or so. Note down how much time you spend socialising, how often you go out, as in spend time outdoors, what exercise you get, how much time you spend on your mental development, reading, learning, etc. Did your cognitive overload and long hours of work make you feel socially awkward and anxious? Keep a mood diary. Note down how you feel throughout the week. This will help you to get an overall picture of where your mind is at. Negative thoughts tend to cloud our judgment and often override the happier moments. Ask your friends and family how they think you're doing right now. An outsider view can provide you with a valuable perspective. After seven days of this, you can get a realistic idea of where you are right now. You can even structure it into sections or columns covering work, general, life, admin, play and rest, giving you a clear visual idea of how your life is divided up. Finally, calculate how your time is spent in percentages, for example work 75%, life 15%, rest 10% and you will quickly see how your scales require rebalancing. If you're finding you're spending an unhealthy amount of time on work, or equally, an unhealthy amount of time doing everything to avoid work, then this is an ideal time to observe your thought processes as well. You may have already noticed them as you've kept record of your day. Are there any strong or negative habits? Is there resistance to change or resistance to stopping or to doing? Do you head for social media as a way of avoiding dealing with these thoughts? Schoolteachers are fond of saying if you cheat in an exam, the only person you're cheating is yourself, and the same principle applies here. There are no prizes or plaudits for having or pretending to have a healthy, balanced lifestyle and mindset. The only people who gain or lose are you and those around you. Remain honest with yourself about why you're doing what you're doing. What's driving your mentality that way? Is it fear of stopping? Ambitious Anxiety Overwhelm? If you genuinely don't know, then it really is time to stop and ask.