Why mindfulness helps innovation and creativity

Speaker 0 00:00:00 Welcome to design in confidence posted by me, Stephanie <inaudible>. I'm a creative coach speaker and facilitator, helping people in businesses, design innovative experiences together. Design in confidence is a podcast for designers, innovators, creative leaders, or just anyone who wants to change how we share learnings, dips, or reflections, or how mindfulness and design can meet, create creative confidence, improve emotional intelligence in management. This episode is about all the things I wish I knew about how mindfulness helps innovation and creativity Speaker 0 00:00:46 In confidence. Sometimes I do some actions without really thinking about it, to do go like on autopilot. Like if I had a navigation app inside my head that tells me what to do, and I'd just do straight away without even questioning. For example, the next social media post, keep scrolling, get angry above this thing. Even if you don't really care about it at the next frustration, leave your job and take whatever similar job comes up. Thus, anything similar happened to you too. Like you do make decisions without even realizing action of behaviors that you design unintentionally or thoughts or reaction that you have without being aware of it. You maybe don't realize it, but you might realize of the problems that comes out of them. For example, you waste time on their own things. Well, you reacted really badly to a colleague's feedback about your project, about yourself, or you struggled to work with others, whether they are your boss, your peers, your team, your clients, if any of these happens to you, you might be interested with them about to tell you. I will share with, I knew on how mindfulness helped me to be a better person, designer, creative and innovator. For those who don't know, I can explain what mindfulness is. Speaker 0 00:02:23 Mindfulness means awareness being aware of when your head wanders or have a lot of thoughts on its own because you start thinking about stuff and how all this makes decisions. So wall you think or do without even realizing mindfulness helps us pay attention to our mind so that we can be in control of it and design what we want to think. And do. Let me give you an example. Have you noticed that the background music stopped? It was there since the beginning, maybe some of you didn't notice it at the beginning. You didn't even realize that there was music in the background. Maybe some of you did. And then the stop actively listening to it to focus on my voice. Others maybe kept listening while I was talking. Maybe shaking your head and moving a little bit. Well, it was there. Let's listen to it again, by the way, this is a music by Oak studios. You're always going to find all the songs in the show notes. Let's hear it now. Speaker 1 00:03:36 Yeah, Speaker 0 00:03:41 None. Now, if you didn't notice it before, did you pay attention to it better? How many instruments were there? How many instruments were playing? You did pay attention. Let's try again. Have you paid more attention? Did you know this? How many instruments were there? But I personally am not sure there was a drum that was green Speaker 0 00:04:11 And then there were two strings. There was <inaudible> something like that. I love music. I always liked to listen to it. I'll have her. I don't always pay attention to it in the same way I always have in the background keeping me company. And really few times I actually just sit down, close my eyes and listen carefully to the music. But it's interesting because even if, sometime I'm not actively listening to it and paying attention to it, I can see my leg moving, following the tempo and the rhythm of the music, or sometime I do that and wisdom music. I really loved dancing with some of them. I just dance with other types of music. I'm more okay, I'm going to follow this music. And I listen to it and I choose how to move. According to these instruments that play in the background, he requires much more attention children do that. Speaker 0 00:05:15 You feel, look at them. They observe music. They're listening to carefully with a lot of wonder curiosity. So imagine doing the same exercise, but with the orchestra of your thoughts and feelings in your mind, you might, you pay attention about how they make you think, do say things. Sometimes we more or less control just like music and dancing. Mindfulness means listening to your mind with the same attention and curiosity children do with music and with time develop the emotional intelligence for you to understand and control it. For example, I don't have the musical intelligence to actually describe you. What is tremendous? We're playing there besides <inaudible> is the same with our emotions. We cannot address them, label them. We are less in control that we can use them less confidence. I was always in control of my mind and my creative process. Since I discovered mindfulness years ago, I started to be more aware of my strengths, my weaknesses and biases. Speaker 0 00:06:35 I started to accept feedback more and use it. I started to be a more active listener before my head was wandering during interviews meetings. One-on-ones I developed more empathy towards others and be aware of all the different mindsets, a different phase of a project needs, but also understand how some people bring different mindset compared to others. And this brought me to be more open, to collaborate and better at facilitating the collaboration of others. Everything is designed. Some things are designed well, there's a design bodily, and some of those things are designed badly. It's not always because of the inability of people that designed them, but because those people weren't aware, they were designing those things. Speaker 0 00:07:33 Once you become aware that you are designing, you can use design methodologies, they're going to help you be more aware of what happens and control. If when and how the experience is going to happen. Mindfulness makes us innovate and design better because he makes us more aware and in control of what we listen, feel, think design say, and do you know a career. For example, when we want to change it and improve, we need to be aware of how our strengths and weaknesses impact on our job and what are the opportunities so that we can develop when we are part or we do manage a team. We need to be aware of all the processes and behaviors that are happening and understand how they link to each other and how the impact on the efficiency of the team. Speaker 0 00:08:34 When we design or deliver a product or a service, we need to be aware of how it works and how stuff, stakeholders, customers, how they experience it, interact with it and how this is impacting their lives bold. So we need to be aware not only about our service, but how he leaves in their yard. More of all the other services competitors are not in our customers and staff life. And we need to be aware about all these things are connected. Will the causes of consequences in the system. It's a journey. It takes time and design and mindfulness do take practice. As Dr. Shauna Shapiro says, well, we practice grows stronger and in confidence as still not always in control of my mind and my creative process, I'm a work in progress. I accept that it takes time to become aware of what I do will the causes in my mind and its consequences and how I can control it, what I can become and whether these improve things or not. Speaker 0 00:09:53 So I invite you to start your mindfulness journey, or if you already started it to start to see the parallels between design innovation and creativity, because if mindfulness is about being aware, design is about discovering and defining what to do. If mindfulness it's about being in control design is about develop and delivering new experiences. If you are familiar with the design councils double diamond, you might see what that is. If you aren't just check the show notes, you're going to see how this means. Having a mindset that makes us aware of what we need to do and in control or how we do it. Speaker 0 00:10:42 Becoming a mindful designer means having the creative confidence to navigate the uncertainties of innovation. Like a taxi driver learns how to drive anywhere around the city has a long, you do eat mindfully though, but then attention instead of being on autopilot and controlled by the navigation up inside your head, and now leave a review, subscribe and share this podcast. Kidding. Actually, I will love you to do it. It's going to help a lot. I didn't have the time to go in detail. How mindfulness make me a better designer, creative and innovator on a lot of these things, but we're doing feature episodes when I'm going to go in deeper and deeper on some of the things I just mentioned here. So go to design in confidence.com as always. It's a pun. There is no G before confidence there, you can see how to contact me and also find links to relevant resources and people have on the sparring for this and other talks. Speaker 0 00:11:48 And I remind you that what I talk about here does not a percent, any of my former or current employees. And if you found these aspiring, please leave a review and share this podcast. Tell people why you think this podcast help your creative confidence, become someone else's safe space to talk about these topics and to find support in building their creative confidence. Because if you got this far, I'm sure you're a great listener, which I thank you for. And now it's time for me to shut up so that you can listen to your thoughts after this episode and remember to thank yourself for the time you spent to learn and grow.