Creative Flow as a Resource – week 1

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Just last Sunday, November 13th, me and Jennifer Bruder have started the Creative Flow as a Resource course for those who are looking for a new direction in their daily or professional lives and for those who want to bring in more creativity in the daily lives.

It was a great start with loads of creative energy and flow! We are looking forward to see and hear what our creative participants will do for their creative rendezvous during this week. Follow along or share your ideas on #findingcreativeflow.

Creative Time Studio
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Inktober pages

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Sketching has always been my personal challenge – how to draw something in a very short period of time, how to let go of the strive for perfectionism… After my #100daysofcelebratingtime attempt at participating in #the100dayproject I was happy to see that there is something of the sort during the month of October – hence the name Inktober.

The original idea was also providing different prompts for each day – that easily became too much for me, but just the fact of sketching in ink was very appealing. I did not manage to sketch something everyday, but I’m getting better at it. Here are my sketches for the inktober 2016.

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Creative Flow as a Resource – course starting November 13, 2016

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Creative Flow as a Resource is a 4-week course designed to serve as a window into a different reality, a few hours just for yourself, away from usual stress, uncertainties and routines. An opportunity to zoom out, to do something different or something long forgotten, but enjoyable and invigorating.

if you feel like you could use a bit of time for yourself,
if you feel like you’re always running somewhere and now need a pause,
if you feel like you’re stuck and not sure where to go,
if you are longing for more creativity and more inner freedom in your life
if you’re looking for yourself in the midst of the daily routines,

if you wonder how to become more open to different opportunities and let them happen to you,
if you need some time and space to nurture your creative potential,

if you need to discover and recover your resource,
or maybe you just need some energy to realize what you have in mind, but not really sure where to get it –

then this course can help you find answers to these questions.

It is time to create and discover!

This course aims to create conditions in which you can find your own ways to realize the plans and dreams you have, to nudge you towards what you actually want, to refresh, to gain some strength, to relieve from daily stresses and revitalize you and to give you tools with which you can see extraordinary in the ordinary.

The course builds upon research and findings in the positive psychology field, development of creativity and psychology of time and aims at helping out to find your passion, improve well-being and build a balanced time perspective.

The is a 4 week course. We meet on Sundays at 12:00 beginning on Sunday, November 13th and continue on Sunday, November 20th, 27th and December 4th.

What you will need in order to start:
1) a pen
2) a notebook – yep, there will be quite some writing involved
3) 30-60 minutes a day for yourself personally
4) a wish to change some things in your life and stop living on “autopilot” mode
5) join this kick-off meeting on November 13th at 12:00

Places are limited.

Cost: 700 dkk / 175 dkk per session.

Please register here

Creativity as a Resource – workshop at PWN – Copenhagen

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This past Tuesday, I had the pleasure together with Jennifer Bruder from Brain Dialogues to host our Creativity as a Resource Workshop for the Professional Women’s Network, Copenhagen chapter.

It was a very lively and cozy forum with 12 professional women from all over the world, who eagerly tapped into their creative side that evening. In just 3 hours we explored a wide range of issues, such as how to become more efficient, less stressed, and more creative with our daily tasks.

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We have experienced how framing and limiting time can be a tool to boost creativity – it helps to cut out our inner censor and place all of our focus on the process of creation itself.

We stressed that creativity is a skill that can be trained, much in the same way you train your muscles. Thus, it follows, you do need to make time to be creative. The good news is, by giving ourselves 10 minutes a day, we can greatly build on our creative skills and our creative brain. There is no need to look for special days, nor a special atmosphere in order to get into the creative mode. Establishing a daily 10-minute routine will make an enormous difference to your energy, mood and to the quality and novelty of your ideas.

We have also traveled through time during the workshop – tapping into our past experiences and positive emotions, through relaxation and meditation, drawing the inspiration from these experiences and creating something new in the present moment. And we have imagined a few alternatives, some very short sketches of the future possible self. We know that techniques designed to tap into your memories, your emotions and your real and imagined experiences enhance the creative process. Mindfulness is an excellent tool to get this going.

We had a wonderful time and we were so thrilled to feel the inspiration and energy flowing in the air throughout the evening!

If you’re curious to experience your own creative energy, build the creative muscle, and gain motivation for establishing your own creative routine firsthand, we are offering a longer, more in depth course beginning on November 13th. We will meet once a week for four weeks and we would love to have you join us.

Looking forward to exploring creativity together with you!

Anna & Jennifer

About the Hosts:
*Jennifer has a PhD in Neuro-cognitive psychology and owner of the Brain Dialogues, where she translates how brain science can be applied to education, personal development and the workplace.
*Anna has a PhD in psychology and is owner of Creative Time Studio and altogether a very creative person!
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Want to stay sane when working on a big project – take creative breaks

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I’m currently super busy with preparing the conference and festival about the concept of time: Celebrating Time. There are all sorts of things that need to be taken care of in various directions. It’s easy to get side tracked, or burnout. Therefore to keep myself focused, and at the same time to give myself time to recover I am taking breaks. After unsuccessful attempt to find a tango partner or kayaking partner, I’ve settled with an online drawing course: Ethno Fun.

Maria, the author of the course, sends me an email once a week with the description of the lesson and plenty of photos that illustrate it. By today I’ve received five lessons, but was able to work on three of those and still haven’t completed the third lesson fully. However, it’s very rewarding. It has been a while since I held a paint brush in my hand and I haven’t really worked with watercolors earlier either. It has been a journey full with different discoveries.

Besides the standard watercolors, we are using tea and coffee as paints and all sorts of natural materials as a ‘brush’, such as feathers, sticks, toothpicks, leaves, ropes, and etc. I’m gradually getting more different brushes and markers and am getting better at using them, well at least that what I think…

Here you can see some of my work that was born during this course, which helps me to unwind and switch off and then to be fresh again.

Lesson 1: Creating the universe and planets

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A balanced time perspective and finding fulfilling work

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As Abraham Maslow famously noted, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” – I study time perspective and I see traces of it almost everywhere. Here are some of my time perspectively infused notes while reading “How to find fulfilling work” by Roman Krznaric.

“We are not psychologically ready to deal with the expansion of choice in recent history”

While discussing his concept of ‘hardiness’ Salvatore Maddi notes: When choosing a future, or unfamiliar path, over repeating a past, something familiar and convenient, it is most consistent with our pursuit to elaborate life’s meaning (and finding a fulfilling work), but it also brings ontological anxiety – the fear of uncertainty and possible failure:

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Want to pursue your dream job – Denmark is a place to be

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Half the workforce in the western world is dissatisfied with their careers, but around a quarter of them are too afraid to make any change, trapped by their fears and lack of self-confidence – says Roman Krznaric in his book “How to find fulfilling work”.

I looked up the research he was citing and found out some curious facts about Denmark in regards job satisfaction (in 2007 though.. I wonder how is the current situation?):

When it comes to realising your workplace aspirations and making the most of your potential, it pays to be Danish. The Danes stood out in the research as overwhelmingly contented with their lot. Most respondents clearly felt they have found their niche:

  • Nearly 90% feel their current career matches their aspirations.
  • Two in three Danes believe their previous roles have suited them too – more than any other country.
  • Nearly three in four believe they are making the most of their strengths in their current role.

The Danes express satisfaction in spite of the fact that just a small number have pursued their dream career – less than one in ten. Nearly half would take a different path a second time around.

Clearly, more effective development of their employees by Danish organisations has some bearing on their levels of job satisfaction:

  • Nearly three quarters of Danes believe their employers know their strengths.
  • The Danes were most likely to confirm that employers are helping them realise their potential.

A research report by OPP July 2007

Indvielsen – Invitation to the exhibition opening – June 3 – Copenhagen

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It is my great pleasure to invite you to the opening of the exhibition of our project –

Indvielsen | Initiation: The Danish Tribe

June 3, 2016
17:00 – 19:00, Artist talk at 17.30
Politiken Boghal – Rådhuspladsen 37 , 1785 København K

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This is a multi-disciplinary art project that me and Laureline Demonet have been working on lately. It is a project where we combine social studies, fashion, textile craft and photography.

Laureline explores the views of newcomers to Denmark on the Danish fashion and “Danishness” in general. She then creates a mask of what she has discovered through the interviews and later on I take photographs of the interviewees wearing their “Danish” mask.

This work is an opportunity for the Danes to look at themselves from a very unusual angle. We wish thereby to shake up the stereotypes about national identities and invite you to join the tribe!

The first part of our project will be exhibited as an installation on the Metro’s construction’s wall -City Hall Square. This is definitely the largest installation that I have ever been part of – we take over the whole wall, which is 4 meters high and 50 meters long, from top to bottom! The oversized portraits, accompanied by a narrative, will be there from the 3rd of June 2016 until end of December 2016.

More about the project: https://indvielsen.dk/

I’m really looking forward to seeing you on June 3rd for the opening of this bizarre project!

How to be happy: Don’t compare yourself to others

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Some days are like that – the first thing you want to do is to clean up the space around, to restructure, to create opportunities for new things to happen.

Spending 5-10 minutes for going through some papers that got accumulated over the past few weeks, throwing some things out, putting away some others, creating space for new or more relevant to be in front of you – feels so rewarding!

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I don’t curerntly have an opportunity to set up a permanent table for my creative projects. A friend shared her tips how she does it – she uses a window sill or a small shelf when she is on the go and once more settled, sets up a table. My window sill is currently an extension of my working desk and sudden;y I realized, that actually it doesn’t have to be. Most of my work realted stuff I can bring to another place and actually set up a small creative window sill here.

While cleaning up, I have stumbled upon some interesting previous work. My first attempt at making a cut out poetry from the newspaper headlines, and also my work on vitality from February, when I was rather sick and really needed some strengths to get over a cold. I’ve done it in one of the Creative Rendezvous sessions. We chose a strength that we felt like we really lacking at the moment and tried to picture it while using a non-dominant hand. It was very inspiring – since themovements become more free, since you can’t control the very fine movements that your dominant hand is capable of doing. It felt invigorating and liberating at the same time.

One of my favorite excercises in the Creative Flow as a Resource course is my adaptation of a Life Ring exercise. I believe that it is very beneficial for own mental health and life satisfaction not to compare your place in life to others, but to you, 3 months ago or a year ago. Reflect on how are you actually doing since then? What has changed? What got better? What goe worse? What can you improve? Are your priorities and interests still the same?

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