What if … you dare to be yourself

We are educated or tamed to get disconnected from our creativity.? When we lose connection from our creativity we somehow disconnect also from our ability to sense making. We do need purpose and sense in life. Losing the feeling of purpose pushes to negative critical thinking depression and burnout.? This post that mixes inspiration from Johann Hari’s book, Lost Connection, a journey into the reasons of modern? Western society most serious pandemic, and? my experience as a coach and trainer for a creativity approach through Design Thinking

It is an invitation to reconnect ourselves to … ourselves, claim our need of meaning in life so we can unleash the creativity we all have .

Design Thinking, a creativity empowering process

When I give Design Thinking classes ( an approach to create innovative user centric product and services), I use to say that Design Thinking is also a personal growth process. It’s a great and simple process. Well, it’s great because it’s simple. If you, dear reader, are a metrics fan, allow me to give you the absolute metric for a great innovation:? when released , it turns instantly into obvious.

Some of my favorite examples ? The hairdresser. The computer mouse. Airbnb. The smartphone….

Design Thinking process says that if you want to define a product or service that answers users need you need to start by exploring user’s ecosystem, create empathy with, so you can define what is the problem that, If solved, it will create the highest value. This is not a post about Design thinking, but about an? important pattern I have observed while facilitating the process:

letting go of our beliefs to make space for new possibilities is hard as hell

Crossing the chasm of creativity

A frequent reaction when introducing creative processes in very normative contexts is that people cannot project that process into their regular business.

One of the most difficult steps in Design Thinking, and any creative process, for that matter, is the capability to shift perpective. Getting out of our mental models. More the environment is regulated, harder it is to train the brain muscle to ??get out of the box??. Mainly because the entrenched belief is that compliance with the normative model is both a virtue, and a way to stay safe.

Creativity cannot be unleashed if the main focus is to stay safe, i.e., contain into fixed boundaries.

An invitation to creativity is actually une invitation to dare. Drop down beliefs ans step into un unknown zone.? For that to happen,? letting go of our entrenched belief is necessary, yet so difficult, that it may feel nearly unbearable. When something feels unbearable, like a huge loss. Letting go is like mourning; just like in Virginia Satir’s model, mourning is hard and starts with denial. Some manifestations of denial in business world invited to transform itself and become more creative are remakes like : ??this does not work here?? and/or ??we don’t have time right now"

The thriving zone

Someone can argue that people just aren’t willing to cross the chasm into an uncomfortable zone where they will eventually reach some innovative ideas. Why should they do that? My answer to this is there is a huge difference between comfort zone and thriving zone.

I believe that a lot of people are in their comfort zone, most probably stuck there,? but they are not in their thriving zone. People stuck in the comfort zone are often resigned and the mental model of "this is only way and nothing can be really changed" reinforces itself. The frustration may rise accordingly, because we all dream of a better world. Come on, don’t you?

Talking about beliefs, this is one of my most rooted one:

I believe that everyone has the right to reach their thriving zone. Everyone is creative. Every environment can host creativity.

The invitation…

My work is to support people and teams to cross the chasm toward their thriving zone that will make their performance look like ??magic??.

Because of so, I invite you to never ever think low of your aspirations or your capacity to be creative and thrive. If you are part of a big regulated environment and you think you are to small to initiate a change, I am inviting you to just be you. Dare to express what you really want for your environment. Not what your job description or annual evaluation is telling you to. By the way, evaluations can also be changed in a creative way!

Thomas Hubl, who is working on the topic of collective trauma healing says that a system starts to heal when a cell at a? time is healing.

Each of us can be that cell!

The example

If you don’t believe you can accept my invitation, I have an example for you out of the Johann Hari's book, I was mentioning at the beginning of this post. It's a long quote. It’s the? story of the journalist Andrew Sullivan, diagnosed with AIDS in 1993 and who retreated to die:

So Andrew went to Provincetown, the gay enclave at the tip of Cape Cod in Massachussetts, to die. That summer, in a small house near the beach, he began to write a book. He knew it would be the last thing he ever did, so he decided to write something advocating a crazy, preposterous idea (…). He was going to propose that gay people should be allowed to get married, just like straight people. He thought this would be the only way to free gay people from the self-hatred and shame that had trapped Andrew himself.

When the book—??Virtually Normal??- came out a year later, (…) Andrew was widely ridiculed for suggesting something so absurd as gay marriage. Andrew was attacked not just by right-wingers, but by many gay left-wingers, who said he was a sellout, a wannabe heterosexual, a freak, for believing in marriage. A group called the Lesbian Avengers turned up to protest at his events with his face in the crosshairs of a gun. Andrew looked out at the crowd and despaired. This mad idea—his last gesture before dying—was clearly going to come to nothing.

….

Okay, Andrew, you’re not going to believe me, but this is what’s going to happen next. Twenty-five years from now, you’ll be alive. I know; it’s amazing; but wait—that’s not the best part. This book you’ve written—it’s going to spark a movement. And this book—it’s going to be quoted in a key Supreme Court ruling declaring marriage equality for gay people. And I’m going to be with you and your future husband the day after you receive a letter from the president of the United States telling you that this fight for gay marriage that you started has succeeded in part because of you. He’s going to light up the White House like the rainbow flag that day. He’s going to invite you to have dinner there, to thank you for what you’ve done. Oh, and by the way—that president? He’s going to be black.??

Johann Hari, Lost Connections,? Bloomsbury Publishing, page 307

I hope you enjoyed this post.

I hope it inspires you to never ever let your true self down.