86. Ten Ways Modern Creative Women Stay Inspired

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"You can get excited about the future. The past won't mind."
 - Hillary Damiano
 
 This episode is all about making the future a point of interest and excitement. 
 -bridging and bonding
 -a theme for your new year
 -10 ways to stay inspired

Transcript

"You can get excited about the future. The past won't mind.' This is a quote from Hillary Damiano. She's a playwright and author, and this starts our podcast off today, which is all about making the future a point of interest and excitement. 

Welcome to the Modern Creative Woman podcast. And this is for women like you who want to elevate their creativity and start applying creative thinking in their everyday life. I'm your hostess and creativity expert, Doctor Amy, because through our conversations and creative insights, I'll provide simple, science backed tricks and proven creative practices that will help take the mystery out of the creative process so that you can start each day feeling empowered, creative, and ready to take on whatever comes your way. Let's get started. 

How is your New Year's going? I hope you're having a wonderful start to 2025, and I thought I would take the time to share some of my resolutions and strategies for moving forward in the new year. Ever since I was a kid, my mom would suggest adding some things. If there was a holiday, instead of giving something up, she would encourage us to add something. Maybe it was a volunteer project, or maybe it was just a certain kind of kindness that we wanted to adopt. And maybe the last 20 years or so, I've parlayed that into choosing a theme for my year. 

Then I choose it on my birthday in December because I wanted to share why I picked my word this year. My word is style, and I want to do it in my style. And if you're familiar with the quilts of Gee's Bend, you know that my style is what this group of women artists highly prized. If a woman makes a quilt in a design that they've never seen before, that's the best. My style. So I wanted to apply this to the Modern Creative Woman membership. And inside this membership, I teach three classes a month there live. I create a workbook each month that's fresh and new. And I thought, what's maybe missing from the membership on the inside and what's missing on the outside? You know, my own kind of behind the scenes experience of it where I could add in my style. And here's what will be forward facing, what women will see inside the membership that looks a little bit different this year is more of an emphasis on purposeful art, creating art that is designed to make contact with the present moment and also propel us forward. I'm shifting to include a certain type of art each week that we have a class, and I'll add a little bit more of that art to support the meaning and purpose of our life. And so if you're inside the membership, you will hear all about that in our 1st January class. I think the women inside the membership will also notice some really cool other kind of experiences that's happening where they get to bring in their own style. So I want to share that concept of my style and teach it to the women inside the membership this year. 

And it's really valuing our voice, our perspective, our opinion, valuing our health, our longevity, our legacy, and fully recognizing that each one of us makes a very unique contribution in the world. We can certainly copy other people what they wear, how they run their business, and it's often how we get started. We'll see something that we admire, we will start to imitate it. And a lot of women stop there. They fail to move into the my style spirit of things and do their work or their relationships or their painting. In a way that's just them. It's truly authentic. It's tapped into their source, and it's giving of their energy into whatever they're doing. So that's going to be really exciting for the women in the membership. And if you are not yet a member of the modern creative woman. Now is the time. If you're still listening to this podcast, I promise you will benefit time's 100 by being a part of the membership. The membership is the most unique program I've ever seen or ever been a part of, and the community is amazing. I want to invite you to join. The link is in the show notes and being a part of a group has huge psychological benefits. 

It's really incredible how the American society has moved away from joining groups and in the last 60 years, group membership, social volunteer, religious, community group memberships have declined significantly, and the drawback of not being part of a group, online or in person is that we lose the ability to connect, bonding with people who are similar to us and bridging to people with whom we have differences. It allows us to find the commonalities in humanity when we're part of a group. And you might have a workgroup, but what I'm talking about is much different. Blurring the concepts of group and the benefits, of course, reducing isolation, boredom, loneliness, all the things that we have been experiencing the last four years actually have been going on for decades. I belong to a whole bunch of groups. I have a online mastermind, an online coaching group. I am part of an in-person group that does service projects, and I'm part of an anti-racism group. I'm also a part of the Modern Creative Woman community, which I love so much. So the next thing that the women inside the membership will notice this year is my commitment to bridging and bonding. Being able to connect across divides of the internet is so easy these days. More able to connect with women all around the world, and I want to give us more of a chance to be that kind of community that reduces isolation and loneliness and allows us to connect more deeply with one another in a behind the scenes kind of way. 

My resolution of working more in my style is going to include shifting how I structure my work, and how I organize my content inside the membership, and it won't really be terribly obvious to anyone else. It's structuring it in a way that I will have scheduled times to do each task I have scheduled for the whole year, instead of month by month. And I think it's just going to make things easier for me. My style is I love to get in and do deep focused work, and so I'm going to be shifting my own on work time to include how to strategize this a little bit differently for myself. I'll tell you why I'm doing this. I often find myself working up to the last minute on my slides inside the membership. I put a lot of effort to make my slides really beautiful and aesthetically appealing. It is all about neuro aesthetics, after all, and I find that I am spending a lot of time fussing over things and shifting and changing the pictures and the imagery up until the last minute, and I'm going to give myself a deadline on that so that I don't feel rushed. I'm just I'll put in the same amount of time. I'm just going to structure it so that I'm not doing it the day before, where I'm adding final touches the day before.

 I'm just going to kind of limit myself, which means doing a little bit of work earlier in the week instead of later in the week. That part's really a gift for myself to feel more at ease, but a relationship with time and how I use my time. I'd like to share with you ten ways that you can make meaningful and substantial changes as a modern, creative woman. This year I gave you my example of choosing a theme and how I will apply it. So it works really well for my business, for how I work, for what people see inside the membership. But the idea of my style will resonate for me throughout the year. I'll be making art about it, figuring out how I can apply it to all the aspects of my life. What's my style in relationships? How can I be more my style more authentically myself? These are the questions I will be asking myself as the year goes by. 

So I want to share how you can do the same thing. And remember, New Year's Day is a fresh start, but your resolutions can start anytime. There's no need to wait till Monday or the beginning of the month at all. 

So number ten celebrate progress, not perfection. When we focus on our values, we can judge ourselves for having taken progress steps towards what's important to us. And remember that that process of growing and transformation is the goal is not necessarily. The product that we create when we make art. It is the process of making art, and it goes the same way for the process of being in a long term relationship. The process of being a good neighbor. Number nine use visual tools for both your personal vision and for planning. Planning the month. Planning the year. Now you can leverage tools that are really popular out there, like vision boards. And I've talked a little bit about neural graphy. We do mind maps a lot inside the membership, and these are really simple visual tools that help you visualize your dreams, your emotions, whatever it is that you want to express. These are really powerful tools inside the membership. We go a little deeper than these, of course, but these are ones that are easy enough to access. They can make our abstract ideas more tangible, more achievable. 

Number eight focus on your wellbeing. What do I mean by that? It's balancing creativity with self-care, incorporating mindfulness, exercise, relaxation, just really staying energized and mentally clear and making that most important, nourishing the instrument of your life, which is you, so that you can live a good life.

 Number seven invest in lifelong learning. The happiest people stay curious and pursue new skills or areas of interest over their lifetime. That means enrolling in workshops, attending retreats, taking online courses, memberships. It's really essential that you constantly refresh and expand your horizons. I like to say keeping up with the trends isn't like the way we want to think about things. We want to think about investing in our learning. Number six cultivate resilience. Really using a setback as a stepping stone. In the next episode, I'll tell you a little bit more about how to do that in the emotional cycle of change. But cultivating resilience requires us to reflect, adapt. Sometimes it requires us to slow down or stop for a minute. But then keep moving forward and resilience builds our confidence, strengthens our creative risk taking. It means telling a story that is positive, that's leading us towards what we learned from every setback. I say this one a lot. Mastering the art of saying no. Protect your time and energy by setting boundaries. And I'm talking about inner boundaries and outer boundaries. And we're going to have a whole month of that inside the membership soon. It's saying yes only to opportunities that align with your vision and bring real value to your creative journey. Number four, maybe this should have been number one, build a supportive community and that means constantly adding to it. Surrounding yourself with like minded women who can inspire you or challenge you. I think engaging in memberships or workshops like the Modern Creative Woman, of course, but being a volunteer in your community, working in a group, a service group can connect and help you grow together. Number three set realistic goals with micro steps. Teeny tiny and these realistic goals are in alignment with your vision of how you want to be, what values are most important to you, and taking the value of health into micro steps like walk every day. Taking the value of your education into micro steps like study 20 minutes a day. With these goals, we have to celebrate the wins. Because the second way to meet these kind of goals, we set another goal and we're living in this perpetual movement towards a goal. We have to celebrate and look back to. Number two, embrace creative habits. Just go ahead and observe your way of doing things that you like, and you can start to integrate creative practices into your life. Journaling, sketching, brainstorming, whatever it is that you really enjoy. Do a synthetic creative process. Pull things together. If you like sketching and you want to have a, um, morning routine and you think it's supposed to look a certain way, why not just include sketching? Maybe that's all your morning routine is a cup of coffee in your sketchbook. There's no need to do things like everybody else. Creating the habits that will invigorate you and nourish you really gives you a sense of accomplishment. Number one, prioritize your personal values. And this is something we work on every single month inside the membership. It's defining your core values and ensuring that your goals align with them, not spending time on sort of urgent things and neglecting the really important things. It might be you want to focus on creativity or your impact in the community, knowing your why, your meaning, and your purpose. These things help anchor all of your decisions. It fuels your motivation when you're very clear on your personal goals. And I've got a bonus one. One more. It's about making contact with the present moment. This is really important. It will support all of these other habits that will allow you to change. Remember to go back to episode 85 on the Ever Present. Now, if you need a reminder on making contact with the present moment. So remember these top ten celebrate progress, not perfection nine. Use visual tools for your vision and planning. Eight is prioritize your well-being. Seven is investing in your lifelong learning. Six cultivating resilience. Five is mastering the art of saying no. Four is the importance of a supportive community. Three is your realistic goals with micro steps teeny tiny progress forward? Number two is embracing your creative habits. Designing it by style for yourself. And number one, prioritizing your personal values. That bonus one was all about making contact with the present moment. Let me know how you use this list to make your life your style. Have a wonderful rest of your week. Now that you know about how to use your creativity, what will you create? Want more? Subscribe to the Modern Creative Woman digital magazine. It's absolutely free, and it comes out when some men and I know you can get a lot out of the podcast and the digital magazine. Yet when you're ready to take it to the next level, I want you to know you have options inside the membership. And if you're interested in a private consultation, please feel free to book a call with me. Even if you just have some questions, go ahead and book a call. My contact is in the show notes and you can always message me on Instagram. Do come find me in the Modern Creative Woman on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest at Doctor Amy Backus. If you like what you're hearing on the Modern Creative Woman podcast, I want to give you the scoop on how you can support the podcast. You can be an ambassador and share the podcast link with three of your friends. You can be a community supporter by leaving a five star review. If you think it's worth the five stars, and you can become a Gold Star supporter for as little as $3 a month, all those links are in the show notes. Remember to grab your free copy of the 21 Day Gratitude Challenge. The link is in the show notes and you can find it at Modern Creative Woman. Com. Have a wonderful week and I cannot wait to talk with you in the next episode