Creativity Returns: A Disney Déjà Vu

What if creativity is less about inspiration and more about conditions?

In this episode, I explore the moments, conditions, and patterns that helped me reconnect with a creative flow, first at Disney and now as I am rebuilding my life from scratch in Madrid, Spain.

I dive into the main three key factors that ignite creativity for me:

Alignment with your surroundings and yourself.

Observation and curiosity.

Unconventional growth opportunities.

Through a few real-life stories- from navigating internal Disney interviews to taking unexpected classes that shaped my communication- I share thoughts on recognizing and cultivating the creative spark, even more so when it feels lost.

This episode isn't about magic or randomness, it's about designing the right conditions for creativity to be more present.

If your creativity could speak, what would it tell you about the environments, people and opportunities around you? I hope this episode serves as your thinking partner as you reflect on your own creative flow.

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Transcript

Creativity Returns: a Disney Déjà Vu

What I learned about creativity when patterns reappeared years later. 

In this episode, I am not talking about finding inspiration. I am talking about the conditions under which creativity actually returns, because in my experience, it does not come back randomly. Although it looks like it is random.

Before we start, this is what I would ask you if we were sitting in the same room. How did creativity return for you after being gone for a long time?

Remember, even if I can’t interact with you this podcast is not to tell you what to do or not to do, we have enough of that out there and that is never my intention. Here I offer perspective, angles, layers, think of it as your critical thinking partner. 

In the last episodes, I talked about a creativity drought that came with a few unstable and difficult years. So today I wanted to spend more time on how creativity actually came back. 

When I started analysing what triggered that reconnection, what conditions made it possible again, it brought me back to a few particular times at Disney that I have never been able to unsee. 

What surprised me is that the same patterns showed up again, finally.

So today, I wanted to explore that pattern with you and invite you to look at your own creative moment from a slightly different angle.  

Do you need to flush out creativity? Do you even want to? 

Perhaps you are preparing for an important interview and could use a creative spark? 

Perhaps you are feeling stuck in this particular moment in time and need to get creative to see other possibilities?

When I look back, creativity didn’t return just randomly, even less so magically. 

It returned when three things aligned. 

I first saw them during my time at Disney. But now, years later I have my own personal proof. And again, it may feel magical but creativity isn’t just pixie dust. 

When I talk about creativity, I mean two things, as a skill you can develop, and also creativity as a way of living, a way of thinking, mostly driving your life. A force you can engage with when you see it, a force you may have but may not be able to connect with it, or a force you could  ignore and never even question it, it stays there untapped. Here I am looking at creativity from the latest angle, creativity as an anchor.

There are three things that play a key role in how we connect (or disconnect) to our creativity:

• Alignment with our surroundings and ourselves
• Observation and curiosity
• Unconventional growth activities or opportunities

I will give you one example for each drawn from the moment I first learned to recognize them.

Alignment with our surroundings and ourselves

This is very related to self awareness and how frequently we exercise critical thinking.

Creativity doesn’t just flourish because you are in a creative place although most certainly can get inspired by it. But also, you can spend a decade in the most inspiring environment and also get almost nothing out of it if you are disconnected from yourself, functioning on autopilot, or misaligned with your life. I don’t mean it in a negative way because we all go through those times, but just to bring awareness to it. If there is awareness there is higher chances to do something about it when we are not content with a situation. 

At Disney I started to notice the moments when I felt most alive creatively weren’t just because of the company or the projects. The environment which in that case encouraged and was designed for collaborative thought and creativity, and most importantly, when the people I worked with supported it and understood it. And this one took me longer to understand but makes a huge difference. 

What happened to me back then is what is happening to me now again, hence the title of this episode. That’s because after the last two difficult years I experienced a shock in losing ‘ everything’ and rebuilding back that helped me prove this theory or reassure it in my own experience. I could not tap into my creativity even if I forced it like I spoke about in the last few episodes, but what a coincidence, I finally got myself in the right environment, changed and realigned my life with what I want now, have an incredible supportive leader in my day time job and BOOM. The same formula I noticed first at certain segments at Disney, and carried through Getty Images repeats.

 Alignments matter. We can’t just rely on external factors, it’s an intersection of micro factors that helps unlocks creative flow, particularly coming from a turbulent moment in life, not a happy flower one when everything is already predicted and going smoothly in our day to day. 

My reflection question here is: If your creativity could speak, what would it say about the spaces you occupy, the people you collaborate with, and the way you show up for yourself?

Observation and curiosity

The first time I experienced this in a very life changing way, was right before I got at Walt Disney Animation Studios.

My temporary contract at Imagineering was ending. I had one shot to apply internally to a role to stay as a permanent employee. I just applied to one, the ultimate dream role at Disney Animation,

I honestly knew it was a long shot. I was foreign, my English was not at the business level I wished it was, and of course was competing with internal and external candidates who had been in the system longer than me. 

Instead of trying to sell myself hard, or think how I could impress, I tried something different. I tried to understand them, like really see them. Where am I going to actually work beyond paper, even though the name itself is so blinding?

I studied the environment, and tried to understand it. I observed what was important to them. I started asking How do they think? What language do they speak? How can I connect with them? 

Before that final interview, I prepared a portfolio, not of artwork, but a visual storytelling of the specific things I did but could help them and presented it in a way that was more visual so required less words. I could translate even the most mundane thing to a creative language. 

The center was them, not me. I didn't do it intentionally back then, I am just realising it a long time later that that’s what I did.

I do speak a lot about observation and curiosity in the Net-learning philosophy I developed, and explained in the Networking when you don't like to network book.

Unconventional growth activities/ opportunities

This one is about being able to stop paths that don’t look logical on paper, look harder outside a straight path.

Growth doesn’t always come from formal training or an obvious next step. Some of the things personally that elevated my creativity were small creative experiments, unconventional classes, a conversation in depth or even just observing leadership I admire in action, truly observing.

A dearest FX artist once suggested I take classes at Second City in Hollywood. At first I was. Are you crazy? Being on a stage kills me especially when I get nervous, my english does not make sense, forget it. But then, I went for it, I thought heck more reason for you to go. Just do it, see if storytelling classes can help you be more on point as you start sitting in meetings with executives. 

So I did, and it did help. 

Those classes completely transformed my confidence, communication, writing and it was a before and after in how I sat in meetings, specially in a second language. No communication or language class had achieved this for me before. My writing also changed a bit, I would even start getting noticed in the company for crafty emails. These are learnings that stick, great pedagogy.

The key is to seek experiences that push one self, ask others what they did. Get advice from people you trust and people are pushing themselves to get better each day, to improve, to grow. 

Conclusion

I haven't found a scientific paper or an already established framework that captures this exactly, but there is substantial research supporting each of these elements. 

Environments, and the people we surround ourselves with, will make us grow or stall, it will light you up or dim the creative light. And so it will be our internal state.

If you are curious about this topic and want to expand on it, I recommend Ed Catmull book: Creativity Inc. I read it twice and understood it very differently the second time. 

My invitation to you is to reflect on how you connect with creativity in your own life. If it’s important to you, it’s not optional, it’s an anchor. And no, you don’t need to be at Disney or any big company at all , not even close, to seek , create or experience environments that foster your creativity. That was just one of multiple touching points in my career, and that’s why I simply refer to them. 

Examine what surrounds you:

People

Spaces

Opportunities

Creativity doesn’t disappear, sometimes it just waits for the right conditions. 

If you have any questions, curiosities or wonderings,  please send them away through instagram at creative career thinking!

This episode isn’t advice, it’s a pattern observation offered as a lens : )