Thinking creatively amid the stress of success.
Our ability to innovate is our most important skill. Thinking creatively through problems is a source of tremendous satisfaction. It is why we do what we do. Too often, though, the stresses of managing our businesses jeopardize our capacity for clear and creative thinking.
Stressful thoughts trigger the same neural pathways used in the fight or flight response, flooding the brain with cortisol and adrenaline. This alters cerebral blood flow, favoring fear based over creative thinking. Thus stressful thoughts oppose spontaneous, generous and innovative thinking. We can't be stressed and innovative at the same time.
Given our proclivity for stress, we feel we have little control over our capacity for innovative thinking. We welcome creativity when it shows up, but do not feel we can count on it's arrival. We strategize ways of "getting out of our heads". Through exercise, travel and other novel experiences we hope to bypass our anxious thinking and find inspiration. This capricious quest for the innovative mind can become frustrating and ironically stressful.
Our strategies do not address the fundamental problem: stressful thought patterns. They do not challenge the false notions we hold which cause us such distress. We try to manage the symptoms of stressful thoughts without actually challenging them.
How can we address these false beliefs? How can we reliably access the innovative mind?
The Work is a simple, incisive way to look into and question the false beliefs that cause us stress. Through inquiry we come to understand the erroneous ways we think that cause us such anxiety. When we stop buying into these stressful thoughts they no longer rob us of our well being, no longer obscure our clear and generous vision of our businesses and our world.
Leaving us in our best mindspace: creative, compassionate and intelligent.
Innovative.
