Your Gutsiest New Year’s Resolution, Is the Easiest One to Keep

Dare to bring more joy and creativity to work in the New Year!

For years, every December 31st I’d bust out my journal and excitedly write down New Year’s Resolutions, which went something like this: 

1.    Eat less pastries and more green-leafies

2.    Exercise more (cuz of the above-mentioned pastries)

3.    Quit my crappy job and get one that is fun, joyful and wildly creative!

Then, without fail, every Jan 2nd,  I’d go back to work and fall back into the same rut of complaining about the afore mentioned crappy job and firmly believing that joy and work were destined to be mutually exclusive. Unless, of course, I won the lottery, or was mistaken for Ellen DeGeneres and offered a Covergirl contract, or just waited for the weekends.

After years of clinging to the certainty that Joy, Creativity, LLC was never gonna hire me, I had a crazy idea: What if instead of waiting for the weekends to express my creativity and joy, I brought them to work? What if I approached less overtly joyous and creative tasks and jobs with more creativity and joy? What if instead of complaining, I started reframing?

So, in an effort to keep myself entertained (and away from open windows), I found myself inviting fellow grocery store baggers to participate in playful challenges (How many grumpy customers can you make smile today?). Then it was writing custom plays for colleagues’ birthdays and giving everyone in the department a part to read. Then it was turning my tiny cubicle into a creative idea-sharing space for the entire company.  

By fusing joy with work, no matter what work I did: bagging groceries, balancing budgets, or cold calling, it felt like a creative pursuit rather than a crappy task. And, even cooler, colleagues started to see that there were more fun and joyous ways to do their jobs too.

For the last 10 years I’ve been exploring what is probable, what is profitable, and what is possible when we bring our happiness and imagination to the workplace, to our cubicles, to everyday challenges and limits. I’ve made two startling discoveries:

1.    We don’t need to be in a job that is distinctly creative in order to be distinctly creative within our job. No matter what we do or where we work, we can all transfer joy and imagination into places where it doesn’t seem to belong, but where it is desperately needed; where it adds layers that people never knew were missing in their lives but now can’t live without.

2.    Whenever we are faced with limits, obstacles, and challenges and we approach them with joy and creativity, we will experience unlimited solutions, ideas, and innovations.

This mindset that any pursuit can be a creative one has been my guiding principle ever since. I call it Creative Trespassing.

So, this New Year, when you dare to sneak more joy and creativity into your work, I promise it will make you and those around you more playful, productive and maybe even profitable.

Here are 3 creative ways to start bridging the gap between joy and work.

Bring Your Walk-On Song to Work

A walk-on song is one that is played as a public speaker, baseball player, or entertainer struts on stage ready to rock the house. It sets the tone. It’s a song that inspires a sense of confidence, energy and joy in the person walking on stage as well as everyone in the audience. Essentially, it’s a song that pumps you—and your intended audience—up!

The best part of a walk-up song? You can bring it with you to work (and even awkward holiday parties). When you need a little extra confidence to ask for a raise, the energy to confront a disgruntled colleague, or the motivation to share your most creative ideas (in the least overtly creative job). All you need to do is cue up that sucker, walk into work, and push play on your mental ipod. 

Who knows, after mentally playing Nelly’s Ride Wit Me while asking for a raise, you just might end up with a Benz-E (hey, must be the money).

So tomorrow, when writing your resolutions, think of an anthem that motivates you to walk into work on January 2nd with all your joy and imagination intact, and write down your walk-up song!

Remaster Your Imagination

Artists are masters at the art of questioning. By looking at the world through inquisitive eyes, artists can help us break free of entrenched assumptions, mindsets, and routines. And once we realize we’re free to ask questions, we can find extraordinary ideas and solutions in pretty ordinary places, tasks, and work. As Steven J. Tepper, dean of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University told me

“Routines are comfortable grooves that can keep us stuck when, in fact, we need to expand our imagination, test ideas, and work through ambiguity. Artists are trained to avoid routine (even while adhering to certain mastery), by asking “what if” questions.”

Now, you yourself don’t need to be an artist in the traditional sense—a painter, a dancer, a writer—to bust out of your work rut, all you need to do is start asking What If questions. Here are some to get you started:

What if we rewrote the company’s core values statement to reflect on the ground realities? What if we shared our renegade values statement with the CEO? What if we looked for new talent in new places? What if we approached our stale daily tasks with the empathy and fresh eyes of an anthropologist? What if we launched a brand campaign in outer space?

So, what if we let curiosity be our guide? What if we trust that it will lead us from rut to freedom, even during the work day? Remember, the opposite of fear is freedom, so put on your artist eyeglasses and start inquiring about the world around you.

Leave Limits Behind

Ever have a self-limiting belief? Scratch that. How many self-limiting beliefs do you have during an average workday? You know, those seemingly innocuous beliefs we tell ourselves in order to dodge our dreams, escape our fears, and run into the warm, snuggly arms of our comfort zone. Come on, you can tell me, I’ve probably heard ‘em all and definitely said ‘em all, too.

I can’t do it like THAT, we’ve always done it like THIS. How can I ‘think outside of the box’ when I am stuck inside a cubicle? I can’t pursue my dreams because I don’t have enough money, resources, time. I don’t have a big enough budget to do my job properly. I don’t have a big enough team. My chair isn’t big enough! I can’t change careers, I don’t have all the right credentials. I can’t leave this job, ask for a raise, challenge the rules, speak up, because x, y, and z!

There was a time when I was invited to give a talk about creativity in the workplace to CIOs (Chief Information Officers) that I realized the power in leaving limits behind.

I showed up at the CIO Summit wearing an orange blazer, light blue t-shirt, skinny jeans and green and yellow sneakers. I looked more like a cartoon character than an expert in technology. The hotel ballroom was filled with over 400 CIOs from Disney to NASA, all wearing suits ranging in color from dark blue to black. It was a Saturday, so you know they didn’t have to wear suits, they wanted to.

As I was waiting for my turn to speak, I watched from the back of the room as the speaker before me was killing it. He was talking about AI, IA and VR and the crowd was going wild! Which, for CIOs meant nodding, subtly, in the affirmative, then looking back down to take notes. That’s when I started to panic and launch into a mental self-limiting beliefs monologue: I don’t belong here. I’m a creative not a technologist. I am a technology imposter! What could these super smart people possibly learn from me? I mean, unless they want to hear a talk about TMIs, UTIs, or LOL, I am SOL.

As the awesome speaker finished, the emcee started to introduce me, “We’d like to welcome to the stage, Tania Katan, she is a CIO…” OH hell no! I don’t know anything about anything, let alone technology. What am I gonna do, share my quick fix for all tech problems: turn it off, count to ten, then turn it back on again? And before my self-limiting beliefs had a chance to render me immobile, the emcee continued with his introduction. “She is a chief inspiration officer.” Whew.

In retrospect, it was clear that they weren’t inviting me to speak because I was an expert in information risk management or have a closet full of black suits, they invited to speak because I was an outsider, because I didn’t fit it in, because I was an expert in creativity.

Have you ever been hiking and come across a sign that reads, No Trespassing? Did you think to yourself, “Guess we’ll scrap our plans for an awesome hike on a beautiful day and head home.” No, more likely you figured out a way to walk around it, tunnel under it, leap over it, or find an entirely new hike. When confronted by self-limiting beliefs, we can choose to give up or forge our own unique way.

 Here’s an exercise that I created for people, teams and companies to see limits as opportunities.

1.    Write for 3-minutes (without editing): A list of all your self-limiting beliefs.

2.    Pick one self-limiting belief.

3.    Write for 3-minutes (without editing): All the ways in which this self-limiting belief has unlimited possibilities.  

4.    Pick one possibility.

5.    Take it out for a spin. 

What if instead of seeing our self-limiting beliefs as static signs that say, KEEP OUT we started to see limits, obstacles and challenges as invitations to find new ways.

Happy New Year! Happy New Ways!

If you dig this and desire more tools, strategies and stories for creative trespassing, subscribe to my monthly newsletter here. And if you want to see photos of my french bulldog and find out about the upcoming Creative Trespassing book tour, follow me on Instagram @unrealtaniakatan