What is Createfulness?

Createfulness is about growth and expansion – whether for personal self-development, or for an idea, team, or venture. The changes needed is not always the easiest, but utilising the 3 tools of play, create and lead produces a more holistic journey that promotes the idea of being cognisant of our well-being, exploring creative ideas, while taking responsibility for our actions related to exploring our chosen journey.

To begin with, Createfulness is a philosophy that forms part of my coaching and training. It forms part of 1:1 coaching sessions with individuals, a membership program to bigger groups, or as a training program for organisations.

If you break down the word “Createfulness” it can read as Create-fullness, or Createful-ness – two very important components needed to live a fulfilled life, or while wanting to grow something, whether personal development, team building or a creative venture. With this in mind the 3-word byline that describes what it consists of are Play (-fulness), Create (-ivity) and Lead (-ership).

Before I explain how it all fits together in my Createfulness approach to coaching and training here is a brief recap of my interpretation on Play, Create and Lead.

Createfulness Play

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.” George Bernard Shaw.

The act of play – doing something fun, for no real reason – contributes to our wellbeing and creates a mindset for creative inspiration. As we grow older, and the responsibilities of life take precedent we play less. Even though there are ways to introduce play in the work environment, we can’t always play at work, but we can engage in a light-hearted manner – this in itself is an act of play. This works before and during brainstorm sessions and meetings. Play also includes our environment, and studies have shown that brightly coloured walls, plants, softer lighting in any environment including a workplace lifts the mood of those affected by it.

On a personal level -a hobby, throwing a ball for a dog, doing something just because we can, are all acts of play that we benefit from greatly. It fits into the Createfulness coaching concept by reminding us that there is a fun aspect to life, and that we must make time for it. It is an important aspect when exploring in our personal growth, and the growth of anything related to an external achievement.

For a more detailed article about PLAY follow this link.

Createfulness Creativity

Ed De Bono describes creativity as such:

“ There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.”

Creativity is not only about being an exhibiting artist, award winning actor or best-selling author, it’s about being curious, courageous to try new things and open to the idea that we might make mistakes. We are all creative in different ways. For any change to happen we need to be creative and at times step out of our comfort zones. This is how creativity falls into the Createfulness concept. It is about promoting the idea of curiosity, of exploring new things and engaging with what’s termed, “unnecessary creativity,” which is to engage with a personal creative project at work (Amazon, Google and Apple are big promoters of this,) and in our personal lives. This can be linked to an existing hobby, a buried interest, or a passion.

For a more detailed article about CREATIVITY follow this link to an article on the topic.

Createfulness Leadership

“Leadership is not about men in suits. It is a way of life for those who know who they are and are willing to be their best to create the life they want to live.” Kathleen Schafer

Kathleen Schafer’s quote resonates with me as my belief on leadership is that it isn’t a position but rather a set of traits that can be developed by all, and that we can only effectively lead others, once we’ve learned to lead ourselves. Even though I do coach and train these leadership traits to individuals and organisations, within the Createfulness concept I refer to it as effective personal leadership. It’s about acting as a leader, being responsible for our actions so that we can lead our way and grow with the other tools in the program, either individually or as a group.

You can read more about PERSONAL LEADERSHIP here.

So how does play, creativity and leadership it all fit together in Createfulness?

It is a journey.

And with every journey there is the starting point, the destination or desired outcome, and there is the pathway. With a journey there is exploration and discovery and along the Createfulness voyage there is both self and external exploration that will lead to new and interesting discoveries.

The Createfulness Skyline

Let’s start with the desired outcome.

What is it you’re wanting to achieve?

Is it personal growth?

Is it linked to a start-up, creative idea, or business, team, organisational growth?

Or is it linked to a purposeful goal?

In Angela Duckwoth’s book, Grit – why passion and resilience are the secrets to success her interpretation of PURPOSE, is the intention to contribute to the well being of others. She does also mention that it’s OK to have either purposeful and self interest goals, or both together.

Whichever one you want to FOCUS on- whether personal growth, a creative venture ,or purposeful, they are all perfectly fine as it is YOUR desired outcome.

When exploring the Createfulness skyline – the desired outcome, the questions we’ll be exploring are:

• “Why do YOU want this?”
• “Is it in line with your passions, interests, values?” (Not overly important if it doesn’t)
• “Do YOU believe you can achieve this?”

How Createfulness fits in here is that this desired outcome is not something we have to stress about achieving. It is played with and created in a way so appealingly, in our mind and physically, that we want to engage with it continuously. To enjoy its worth, we will have to think and act creatively along the journey – keeping it light-hearted but rewarding enough, while taking the responsibility to act as a leader of ourselves, and others, if need be, to get to enjoy the outcome.

The Createfulness Foundation

“…let’s talk about you and me, let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be…” Salt-N-Peppa, is a line from Salt- N-Peppa’s song, Let’s talk about sex.

YOU form a HUGE part of what it is you’re wanting to create and during this part of the journey, we explore YOU as an individual or all who are involved – the team, staff etc.

One of the traits of a personal leader is that of Self Awareness, and in this part of the journey we explore YOU and what you have available to help you get to your Createfulness Skyline.

During this phase there will be activities and questionnaires that will explore your:
• Values
• Mindset
• Grit
• Interests, talents, passion, and limitations

Besides having a clearer understanding of yourself by exploring the above, it’s also interesting to find out if they are in tune with your desired outcome. It does help if they are but alternatively it’s not journey-ending if they’re not as another two traits of leadership is adaptability and commitment, both of which are explored while on the journey.

“Personal Me time,” is so important and here we’ll find out about your relationship with yourself.

What do you do to look after, ”me?”

• Do you exercise and if so, how? If not, would you like to?
• Journaling, mediation or breathing exercises – would this be of interest to you?
• How can you make any of this fun to engage with.

As play forms a big part of this section we will look at:

• Your fun and play history to see how we can incorporate it into your existing life. This can include a past hobby, learning something new or even some DIY – whatever it is you feel you want to engage with along your journey just because you can. Your play time can include others as group play is it is beneficial.

Collaboration is key.

It has been proven that collaboration is key when along the journey towards achievement. We view the world through different lenses and different viewpoints can shed new light on the way forward. It’s also easier to have travel buddies along a journey. People to share both the challenges and the windfalls with, people to bounce ideas off and share stories with.

Here we look for:
• Your tribe or your potential tribe.
• Just by being part of the Createfulness program automatically connects you to like-minded people – who will be enjoying a similar journey to you.

The Createfulness Adventure

Even though the traits of a leader now play a huge role in the journey towards the desired outcome, this pathway can’t leave us feeling anxious and stressed, because if it does, not only isn’t it fun and more like an arduous task, but also the more anxious we become the more it stifles our creative inspiration and free-flow of ideas.

One of the reasons people give up on their goals, dreams, desired outcomes is because they’re not sure of how they’re going to get there. The truth is we don’t need to know, we just need to believe we can get there, and we need the courage to take the first step.
We have explored what we want, and who we are and now the first step along the actual pathway begins.

By the way of discussions, activities, exercises, questionnaires, insightful videos, and content we’ll be exploring:

Fear

Fear is a big part of our lives. “What will people say?” “What if I fail?” etc etc etc. It’s one thing to acknowledge that we’re scared but it’s another thing to be debilitated by that fear as it stifles the potential results. At the beginning of the journey section, we discuss FEAR and how to overcome it.

Goals

Exploring, discovering, and setting the HIGH level, MID level and LOW-level goals related to not only your desired outcome but also to include the “ personal me time,” and “fun” time.

Time Management

One of the skills of executive functioning is the ability to manage our time. In a world that includes the ever-increasing need for results, it seldom seems that there is enough time in the day. Another parasite of our time is the level of distractions because of smartphones and social media. BUT time is the most valuable commodity we have and here we explore how to manage our time, and deal with distractions, not only related to our desired outcome but also our lives in general. The challenge is that we are different when managing our time. Some are routine based and work by the clock while others prefer a more disorganised approach. Both ways work, it’s just that we must acknowledge an implement step to manage our time.

Habits

The challenge is that the rewards related to bad habits are usually instantaneous – think of that drag of a cigarette or biting into one too many cookies, and the rewards related to a good habit, like going to gym are usually long term. The creation of good habits is easy but the motivation to stick to them is much more difficult. However, for results we need to create habits – which will be covered in this section.

Grit

Passion and perseverance are what’s needed for achievement but also when the going gets tough. Grit can be developed, and passions can be discovered and ways to do it form part of this section.

Creativity

If nothing changes then nothing changes. As previously mentioned, creativity is about being curious, making a connection, being brave and trying new things – stepping outside of our comfort zones and exploring various options to move forward. This will include the promotion of an “unnecessary creativity project,” to add to the importance of keeping life, playful, light -hearted and inspiring.

Play

The importance of play has been mentioned and it plays a part of the journey. Here we look at our environment,(office/study/garage etc)our play community – if we have one or can we create one, and how we can include ways to keep our journey playful – like introducing fun rewards etc.

Leadership

Here are the leadership traits that I promote that form a holistic approach to personal leadership: (Self) Awareness, Confidence, Empathy Accountability, Adaptability, Decisiveness, Commitment, Integrity, optimism, vulnerability, adding value, grit, creativity.
All of these traits are explored and ways to develop them are discussed during various stages in the program.

Effective Interpersonal Communication

Life is a team sport and how we communicate with ourselves and with others plays a big part in whether we achieve something or not. In this section we will be going over, listening to understand, speaking clearly so nothing gets lost in translation, and how to build rapport.

The Createfulness program does include a lot of content – all of which contributes to exploring, discovery, growth and expansion.

To find out more about the upcoming online membership program, please join me for a 60-minute live online seminar on Thursday 3rd August at either 11am-12pm or at 7pm-8pm. You can find out more by clicking here.