How to Create Your Joy, Life And Legacy in 2024 While Navigating The Contagion of Stress.
Happy New Year - Let 2024 be the year you turn on your Creative-Adventurious GPS to create the joy, life and legacy you are here to create.
Can you believe that 2024 is here? Don't worry - there's no rush to create all you desire as we get past go. However, I would like to invite you to reflect on the power of creativity before embarking on your 2024 journey and acknowledge the potential force that may hinder you and those around you as you set sail: Stress.
Firstly, let me share why I am obsessed with Creativity & why I propose you put Creativity at the wheel:
In the words of author Elizabeth Gilbert, "Creativity is the hallmark of our species." Every groundbreaking idea starts with creativity. It hinges on a single question: The Positive ‘What if’ - envisioning new perspectives and possibilities, enabling us to move from constriction to expansion.
All we need to ask is The Positive ‘What if’:
What if there is a different way?
What if there is a different perspective?
It allows us to move from contraction to possibility and expansion.
“Creativity is the hallmark of our species”
This inquiry guides our creativity, steering us away from the natural 9:1 inclination toward negativity and fear. It's been instrumental for me, helping me navigate a challenging 2023 while maintaining creativity and innovation. This one question allowed me to stay open and navigate a tough 2023, stay creative and innovative, and act like an experimenting scientist, not a defeated cat hiding under my duvet (my old fault position). And I'm not alone.
Psychologists know that creativity is pivotal for successful CEOs and creative geniuses, i.e. the one-percenters. Being 'open to experience' directly correlates with creativity, stemming from curiosity and asking 'what if'. Curiosity illuminates the path to new possibilities, shutting down self-criticism.
This year, I aim to democratise Creative Genius and flow– as a way of life.
Neuroscientists know creative geniuses are special as they use their brains differently and are 34% happier*. We can all do it by knowing how. Our ability to lead, innovate and create at work or solve problems is undeniably linked to our mental and well-being states. This is why these concepts, insights and tools are the premise of my new course, Ingenious Flow, my writing and most of my coaching sessions.
So, my wish for you this year is to strengthen your vessel (your energy and self-mastery) and steer with creativity at the wheel while embracing stress and fear as companions as you learn to tame them and open to your creative genius - as we all have a genius gift.
But what impedes your creativity and joy?
One is fear of failure, the negative, ‘What if’ - Our natural tendency goes towards negativity and fear, which often looms large. Also, not releasing and channelling old unconscious beliefs that fuel our stress further.
But what’s worse is that stress is a contagious force - it's official - that impacts health, effectiveness, and even relationships and ripples further – to your teams and families. Managing it is crucial. If you are a director of managers or a parent - (and let's face it, we are the directors of our children), then you really need to pay attention!! Stress is as contagious as Covid.
Watch the Reel:
Would you sneeze on someone with Covid?
I hope not! You would get help and take your medicine, so why would you let managers spread stress & not help them?
My husband has COVID-19. He is recovering safely, with the right medicine and lots of TLC! Hopefully, he will be better after a week or two, but what's worse is that even though stress is just as contagious as COVID-19, it's like Long-COVID. The effects on yourself and others last for 1+ years after your experience, and you ripple that energy out for all to catch and have a domino effect on your business, family, dreams and relationships (delete as appropriate).
Get the low-down from three decades of organisational psychology studies and some generic tools, read the blog, or watch the short reel to see how it travels invisibly!
Read the Full Blog: Stress contagion
Visualise the impact of stress on you and others & tools to help you release it’s grip.
On a more positive note, there are simple tools we can use to manage this daily! I've delved deep into neuroscience and psychology, gathering tools for stress management. Understanding your nervous system is key, which is why I start here.
On my journey to help, I realised that whether I am trying to support entrepreneurs to create better products, leaders to master their confidence, energy and flow, open people to their joy and intuitive gifts, or loosening past trauma, we need to attend to our nervous system first. It is the holder of our stress, so we must learn to drive it before it unconsciously hijacks us.
So, for personalised tools, watch out for my 90-minute Resilience and Flow Foundations session, where you'll identify your dominant nervous system type, which is crucial for mastering stress and avoiding burnout.
On another note… What will you create this year? Need Guidance - Time for the soul to speak.
Be Guided. Be Still. Create
2024 Inner Compass & Visioning Session. Meet your guiding architype
Join me - Stepping towards your truth.
Due to last year's successful event, I am running a similar deep meditative and inner compass guiding session. It is a sacred space to get guidance, release the stagnant energies of 2024, and align your inner GPS to get guidance to create all that you desire for 2024.
Finally, January’s Intention From the Honesty Journal
I created an Honesty Journal for Clients, as it is only in our honest inventory of our lives and emotions that we move through them and to our future selves.
A reminder of the intentions of the Honest Journal for the month. Have you set your intentions? Here are the prompts to get you going.
Take care dear friends, and take your time creating, your joy, life and legacy - it matters and as Charlotte Bronte says: 'Your will shall decide your destiny’!