The Syncreate Podcast: Empowering Creativity
Welcome to Syncreate, where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology, and spirituality. Our goal is to demystify the creative process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative.
Creativity. It’s a word we throw around all the time, but what does it really mean? On the Syncreate Podcast, we share stories of the creative journey. We talk to changemakers, visionaries and everyday creatives working in a wide array of fields and disciplines. Our goal is to explore creativity in all its facets, and to gain a better understanding of the creative process – from imagination to innovation and everything in between.
The Syncreate Podcast is hosted by Melinda Rothouse, PhD. She helps individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life through coaching, consulting, workshops, retreats, and now, this podcast. She's written two books on creativity, including Syncreate: A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities (winner of a Silver Nautilus Award for Creativity and Innovation), with Charlotte Gullick. She's also a musician (singer-songwriter and bass player) and photographer based in Austin, Texas.
The Syncreate Podcast: Empowering Creativity
Episode 47: Creative Spark Series - Creativity & Meaning Making with Melinda Rothouse & Charlotte Gullick
In this installment of our Creative Spark series, Melinda shares the connection between creativity and meaning making. We can use our creativity in service of healing, integration and wholeness. This may involve paying attention to our dreams, and to messages from our unconscious, and then conveying them through a variety of creative media. This episode includes insights and prompts from our book, Syncreate: A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities.
For our Creativity Pro-Tip, we encourage you to start keeping a journal or picking up some other kind of creative practice, and returning to it on a regular basis.
Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced at Record ATX studios with in collaboration Michael Osborne and 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Syncreate logo design by Dreux Carpenter.
If you enjoy this episode and want to learn more, you might also like our conversations in Episode 34: Creativity and Transpersonal Psychology Part 1 with Marina Smirnova, PhD, Episode 35: Navigating the Creative Wilderness, and Episode 42: Creativity & Depth Psychology with Jennifer Leigh Selig.
At Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors. If you have an idea for a project or a new venture, and you’re not sure how to get it off the ground, find us at syncreate.org. Our book, also called Syncreate, walks you through the stages of the creative process so you can take action on your creative goals. We offer resources, creative process tools, and coaching to help you bring your work to the world. You can find more information on our website, where you can also find all of our podcast episodes. Find and connect with us on social media and YouTube under Syncreate. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review!
Episode-specific hyperlinks:
Article by Melinda: Navigating the Creative Wilderness
Saybrook University Creativity, Innovation & Leadership Specialization
Jungian / Analytical Psychology
Show / permanent hyperlinks:
Melinda: Welcome to Syncreate. This is a show where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology, and spirituality. We believe everyone has the capacity to create. And our goal is to demystify the process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative. I'm Melinda Rothouse, and I help individuals and organizations bring their dreams and visions to life.
At Syncreate, we're here to support your creativity. So if you have an idea for a project, and you're not quite sure how to get it off the ground, reach out to us. We've got resources, coaching, creative process tools to help bring your work to the world. So please get in touch.
So today I want to talk a little bit about, the mini episode here, about, kind of, creativity and meaning-making. This is a theme that comes up for me so much in my work with clients, in my teaching with students… I teach a course on creativity, individuation and Jungian psychology at Saybrook University. And so what we explore in that course is this idea of individuation, which is the journey to wholeness that takes place across the lifetime.
And this idea that, you know, using creativity, among other things, we can make meaning of our experiences in life, particularly those that are challenging, difficult, traumatic. And really, the way that we learn and grow and develop is through making meaning of these difficult experiences. So we don't necessarily learn and grow that much when things are just rolling along and, you know, smooth and wonderful.
We actually learn the most from when we experience difficulty, suffering, loss, you know, all these kinds of things which cause us to kind of go inward and reflect a little bit, like, ‘what happened there?’ Like, ‘maybe I need to do some healing. Maybe there are some boundaries I need to set in a given situation. Maybe I need to change my life in some way,’ which can be difficult, you know, maybe a different job, different partner, choosing to leave a relationship or perhaps, and turn to a new one, or move to a different city or a different country, you know.
But it's these major life changes which can be the most stressful and challenging, but also potentially the ones that we can learn and grow from the most. And so what I explore in this class with my students is how we can use our innate creativity, which we all have, to kind of jumpstart this journey to wholeness.
How can we use our creativity for healing and to make meaning of our experiences? And so, you know, people find that keeping a journal is one way that can be really helpful to kind of reflect on and record our experiences and, and sort of process things externally, like get it out of our head and onto the paper, which can actually be very cathartic.
Or for some people it might be visual art, some kind of painting or drawing or, you know, if you're a musician, some kind of musical composition or song. If you're a dancer, movement. But these different creative media are all ways, kind of different ways of getting into different parts of our brain and different ways that we process our experiences and our emotions.
And maybe allow us to somehow, you know, essentially, it's about transformation. It's about moving from one state of being where maybe we're stuck, or we're confused, or we don't know the way forward. And by reflecting creatively on our experiences, this can help us kind of move through that unknown.
I often talk about the, sort of, journey through the wilderness that's part of the creative process. We've talked about that in a previous episode, but there's always, in life, places where we get stuck, right? And we don't really know the way forward or we go on down into that abyss or that dark night of the soul, and we don't know how to get out of it. And sometimes it's that our conscious mind can't find a solution or doesn't know a way.
But maybe there are ways of tapping into the unconscious. So paying attention to our dreams, different symbols and images or, you know, even words of wisdom that appear in dreams or, you know, just allowing our brains a break from the usual day-to-day, linear, go-go-go and just engaging in a creative practice can open up different possibilities for us.
So I know for myself personally, songwriting is really helpful for this. You know, I often process particularly challenging experiences or important experiences in my life by writing songs about them. And as I've mentioned in other episodes, you know, recently I've been noticing when just like a little snippet of a song or a melody will come to me, just as I'm like, falling asleep.
And if I can record that, you know, on a voice memo on my phone or something, it's something I can come back to later and develop into, you know, a full song. And that's been really fun. But there's many different ways of going about this. And even if you don't consider yourself to be an artist per se, you know, we can all journal.
We can all write. Nobody else has to see it, by the way. You know, you could write something out. And just the act of writing, like I said, can be very cathartic and healing. And then you could burn it if you don't want anyone else to see it. I find journaling to be helpful because it helps me create a record of my life, and I don't often go back and read my journals, but sometimes I do.
And when I do do that, it's so interesting to me to see how I've progressed over time. Or like, ‘oh yeah, like three years ago, that's what I was thinking about and dealing with’ and ‘wow, I've come a long way since then,’ you know? But again, it could be through any sort of creative medium, you know, just picking up some watercolors.
That's a really low stakes way to get into visual art, or some pastels or, you know, photography is another one. I practice and teach contemplative photography and I find it to be a really beautiful way to kind of step outside, slow down, really see what I'm seeing, open up to the senses, and photograph what I see. And it's kind of a mindfulness practice unto itself.
And then we can often end up with really beautiful images as well, that we might feel inspired to share. So I think it's important to remember that creativity is not only for, you know, sharing with the world. It's great to share our creative work with the world, but our creativity can also be part of our own healing and reflection process, and a way to work with whatever is happening in our lives, particularly the challenging things. But maybe also the joyful things, the fun things, the exciting things, and that it can be part of our toolkit for navigating the challenges of life.
As well as, again, we might feel inspired to share our work with the world, but not necessarily. And that's okay too. So our Creativity Pro-Tip for today is to maybe start keeping a journal or picking up some other kind of creative practice, whatever is resonant for you and accessible for you, and utilize that practice. Approach it on a somewhat regular basis, you know, weekly, daily, even.
It's to kind of record and process and reflect on the events of your lives, whether it's in images, words, music, movement, photography, and see where that takes you. Because a lot of people do find that this can be very transformative, particularly in working with the difficult challenges in our lives and allow us to move kind of from one maybe stuck, confused state of being into a place of more clarity, or where we can see a way forward or whatever it might be. So try it out and see what happens and let us know.
We're recording today at Record ATX Studios in Austin, Texas. The podcast is produced in collaboration with Michael Osborne at 14th Street Studios. Thanks so much for being with us, and we'll see you next time. If you're enjoying the show, please connect with us and subscribe and leave us a review.
