[00:00] Welcome back to the Focus B show. This is Katie Sudddhart here aka the focus b. And on this show I interview high performers and leaders around the world to discover their secrets on peak performance, productivity, mindfulness and leadership. So if you want to take your performance and your leadership to the next level, then you're in the right place. Listen up and connect with the magic.

[00:36] How can you have more creativity in your life and in your business? Recently I've been reading the book Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Pray Love, and I found it absolutely fascinating. She goes into so much depth about the journey of a creative person. And there's several key points that I'd love to bring up today because I think it's wonderful to have creativity in our life. And I think we all have it, but sometimes we get out of touch with it. It's a bit as if it disappears or let us go for a bit. One notion that Elizabeth Gilbert discussed is the fact that ideas come to us. But if we don't do anything about them and we don't use our creativity and we don't bring them into life, then the idea just goes and it goes to someone else or somewhere else into the world. This is a very spiritual, metaphysical way of looking at things, but I absolutely love it. And it 200% resonates, because what you'll find time and time again is you might have an idea, but someone else also has it, maybe even at the same moment. And if you don't take action on it, if you don't bring it into life, it just leaves. And I like looking at it that way also because it means we take the ego a bit out of things. It's not your idea, you're not special because you came up with it. The idea comes in and you can choose or not to make it happen. And if you don't, sure enough, it'll leave it'll, go to someone else. And I think that's a really healthy way to not get too involved in our egos. Because if we think of our ideas and our creativity in form of ego, it's very easy to have fear of failure, to think that if we identify with our achievements, then if we don't do well, we will think we messed up somewhere versus okay, it's an idea that came, I just bought it into life and moving on. And also I like this because I often feel when I'm in the flow, for instance, recording this episode, I feel I'm just channeling the whole time, just listening to thoughts coming in, coming out. I don't feel I'm actually inventing them or making them up. I'm just listening and then putting it out there. And it's the same when I write. And that's sort of similar to this idea of ideas coming and leaving us. So that was one notion that I really loved. Another idea is the fact that this concept of the tormented artist and to always be suffering if you're a creative person is really a flawed concept and that creativity doesn't lead to suffering. But it's only people that have suffering for whatever reason in their life, and maybe they're also creative, and therefore we do an association. But that doesn't at all have to be the case. And especially and Elizabeth Gilbert really goes into depth with this, we don't have to suffer in order to have great art. This is not a thing. We don't have to be suffering in order to create something that's wonderful. And this is so important because many people cling to their suffering because they feel it fuels their art and creativity. This isn't true. It's misleading. And actually, as Elizabeth explains in the book, it actually holds back our creativity in many ways. And one other concept that I think is really amazing and so insightful in many ways is the fact that we're all creative naturally, and we just block ourselves. Throughout the whole book, I could sense this idea of we're just getting in our own way, which is very similar to the sort of things I deal with in coaching. We block ourselves, we get stuck ourselves, but actually it's there all along, through this idea of we're channeling ideas, but also just we're naturally creative in different ways, and we have different outlets. And it's a misconception, I think, to think that certain people are more creative than others. We just maybe have different ways of expressing that creativity, all of life is creativity. And what I've noticed more and more, whether it's through this book Big Magic, or just in general, through my own life journey, is that spirituality and creativity are really tied together. This is something that I realized, and I even thought about creating another podcast called Creativity and Spirituality, because I'd been thinking recently of creating another podcast called Daily Spirituality Podcast, and then I realized I already have a podcast, and I could just record spirituality topics from time to time on this podcast, too. And that avoids overwhelming myself with too many creative projects, which I think us creative people sometimes gets a bit overly inspired by so many ideas and topics. And I say, us creative people, we're all creative. We just have different outlets, perhaps. So coming back to this idea of creativity and spirituality, this is very interesting because the more I work on my own spirituality journey, the more I meditate, the more I let go and surrender and reread over and over again. Michael singer the surrender experiment the untethered soul the powers now eckhart toll the inside out revolution by michael O'Neill big leap by gen hendrix all of these books, the more I tap into them and read them and go through it, pema Shodron also a lot of great books there. The more I notice not only this inner sense of peace and joy and abundance, but also this creative energy. And I really feel they happen at the same time. I suddenly feel like painting or drawing or writing songs or writing fiction or playing another instrument. I bought a harmonica the other day, and I feel the link is just so it's like the same thing. And I never really thought about spirituality and creativity as being one topic. I really thought of them as quite separate. One was connection with the whole believing in something greater than ourselves, maybe nature or the universe or life, and reconnecting to that and finding this inner peace within us, surrendering to the present moment and accepting, letting go and stop clinging. And that was really my idea around spirituality. Greatly inspired by the authors I mentioned, but also by Buddhism and Taoism, and also from a philosophy perspective, by Stoicism. And on the other hand, creativity for me was art, writing, dancing, fun stuff, expressing ourselves. And I didn't really tie them together until one day it just clicked. And I thought, there's a same, it's really the same. And I guess this comes from the fact that both spirituality and creativity are about connection. If we think about it, we're connecting. We're connecting with something bigger than ourselves. We're connecting with our inner source of inspiration, our inner alignment. We're connecting more deeply with ourselves and with the surrounding. So they really do the same thing. In other words, if you're on a spiritual journey, maybe you'll start to have more creativity in your life. Or if you're a highly creative person with a lot of projects and a lot of art, maybe that's your way of growing spiritually and having that greater connection with the world. Either way, I've just realized that they merged into one, and I now don't really see them as separate, but more as the same entity in different words. I often see things this way. For instance, I mentioned in a previous episode, being proactive and mindful self discipline because they're the same thing. Being highly proactive and having this mindful self discipline, they're slightly different nuances, but it's the same concept and here's, the same spirituality, greater connection, universe, life, nature, present moment, creativity, outlet, maybe. I'd say that the spirituality, the fact of being very present leads to greater creativity, because when you're fully present, you've got more mental space, you've got more clarity, you've got more inner peace. And from that place, creativity emerges, but they're really the same. So that was one of my greatest insight. Again, I highly recommend also the book Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. I absolutely love it, especially if you're into writing, although I think it applies to all creative fields. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Would love to hear your thoughts, your comments on today's episode, on today's topic. I think it's really fascinating, which is why I like talking about it. I love spirituality, absolutely love creativity, love all the books that I mentioned and yeah. Greatly inspired every day by such wonderful work, though. Thank you also to Elizabeth Gilbert for writing the book Big Magic and for helping us to see how we can tap into our own creativity. And I hope I've managed to transmit some of that joy, some of that energy and some of those thoughts to you. So thank you so much for tuning in. Wishing you a fantastic day.

[09:55] Thank you so much for tuning in today to the Focus Bee Show. I would absolutely love to hear your feedback, so let me know in an Apple review or YouTube comment what was most valuable for you, and feel free to share this episode with a friend or a family member. Wishing you a wonderful, magical and focused day ahead.