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 67: Creative Spark Series - Moving Through the World with a Creative Eye with Melinda Rothouse & Charlotte Gullick
In this installment of our Creative Spark mini-episodes, we discuss what it means to move through the world with a creative eye, to be a creative traveler, as it were, and how this approach can help us stay connected to our creativity in every moment. It can also help us find the humor, the beauty, and the story in everyday situations, including the good, the bad, the ugly, and the bizarre, like when we got shaken down in the bayous of Louisiana while rescuing Melinda’s mom and her cat after a hurricane. This episode, like the mini-episodes that preceded it, also includes insights 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 try something new, like going to a new place, even if it's in your home community, even if it's a place you pass by every single day, but just stop and linger and take the time to pay attention and notice what arises. Then create something based on the experience.
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 about the creative process, you might also like our conversations in Episode 22: Creative Play, Episode 51: Curiosity & Exploration, and Episode 65: Creative Flow.
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 goals. We also 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. Please subscribe and leave us a review! We’d love to hear your feedback as well, so drop us a line at info@syncreate.org.
Episode-specific hyperlinks:
Book: Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway
Book: Deepening Fiction by Sarah Stone and Ron Nyren
Show / permanent hyperlinks:
Melinda: Welcome to Syncreate, a show where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology, and spirituality. We believe everyone has the capacity to create. Our goal is to demystify the process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative. We talk with visionaries and changemakers and everyday creatives working in a wide range of fields and mediums, from the arts to science, technology and business.
We aim to illuminate the creative process, from imagination to innovation and everything in between. I'm Melinda Rothouse, and I help individuals and organizations bring their dreams and visions to life.
Charlotte: Hi, I'm Charlotte Gullick, and I'm a writer, educator, and writing coach. We are the coauthors of a book on the creative process, also called Syncreate. We're here to support your creative endeavors. If you have an idea for a project or a new venture, and you are 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. We're offering a monthly coaching group starting in January 2025, and we'd love for you to join us.
Welcome back everyone. We're here at the Syncreate podcast with another creative spark, or another way to think about it is quickie for your creative self.
Melinda: Creative quickie.
Charlotte: Yeah. Creative quickie. And what we want to just highlight today is the idea that, we as creative people can move through the world with a creative eye.
And this is another way to think, well, I may not be doing my particular, medium or genre or form of art, but still, I'm my creative self in the world. Because there are times when we get called away from our creative practice. And this has happened to me a lot with family members. And, but I know that even when I'm helping someone or if I'm sitting in the hospital with them and, my creative self has right there alongside.
And it's actually my creativity that helps me stay balanced and grounded and find the humor in the situation. So we just want to encourage folks to really cultivate that sense of, you are an artist. Wherever you are. And we want to talk a little bit about how we can keep that ‘I’ like it an attention to it, like, how would my writer self respond to this moment right now? Or how would my dancing self respond to this?
Melinda: Yeah, I was just picturing you, like in the hospital with a family member, like, okay, how would I write this story? Or I've thought that too. In fact, sorry, this is so random, but it's making me think of that time we had to go rescue my mom from the hurricane in Louisiana, and we got shaken down by some crazy dude…
Charlotte: [in character voice] ‘You want me to hang you up by your feet and jiggle the change out of your pockets?’
Melinda: Yeah, that really happened. And it's like one day we're going to write a story about this. But anyway.
Charlotte: That was also a chicken rescue. It was a complex situation.
Melinda: Yeah and a cat rescue.
Charlotte: Yeah there was a lot happening.
Melinda: A lot going on there. But you know, any situation can be kind of like, you know, fuel for the creative process, as crazy as it might be. Yeah.
Charlotte: So the other thing is, moving through the world with creative ‘I’, I kind of like this idea of a creative traveler, whether you're traveling or not, like literally going to other countries or other cultures, versus a tourist, right.
So, we can be a creative traveler wherever we go. So what’s some ways that you've been a creative traveler?
Melinda: Yeah. Or I also love the word pilgrim, like pilgrimage. Right. Instead of, like, you know, travel as tourism, travel as pilgrimage. Because I love to go to, like, you know, meditation retreats or visit, you know, sacred places from different cultures and traditions.
But, like, you can have that mindset of, you know, there's something about being a tourist where you're kind of just skimming the surface of things. And even if you're not on a specific spiritual retreat or official pilgrimage, but you can have that mindset wherever you go. And I think it's about curiosity, like really getting curious about, like, where am I and what's happening here and what's the culture and, you know, trying different foods and all these kinds of things and, you know, but again, you don't have to go far to do this.
Right. So, like, I teach contemplative photography, and it's not about taking beautiful pictures. It's about being where we are in the present moment and seeing what's there and then photographing that. And so we sometimes do an exercise called the human camera exercise, where basically we're moving around a space and looking different directions and seeing like even in this room, like I see this plant over here and I see the wood panels and I see the foam insulation on the walls.
And like everywhere I look, there's a little bit different thing that catches my eye. And so it's like, without a camera, just registering that, like taking a walk and just like really seeing what's there and taking like a mental picture of it can be a way of like really opening things up.
Charlotte: It makes me think about this writing exercise where writers are encouraged to go to a space that they aren't normally in and just write down what they notice.
And the writer of this, I can't remember if it's Burroway or Stone who said this, but it's probably after minute 30 that you will get to your original observation. So it's a kind of like sinking in, right?
Melinda: Yeah. Like really taking the time to be in a place wherever you find yourself. I remember reading a book as a kid, and I can't remember the title of it, but it was about a friendship that developed between a young boy and his, like, elderly neighbor.
And it was all about mindfulness and seeing in this way, even though it wasn't really talked about in that context. But basically, the kid would go over and hang out with his neighbor, and the neighbor would be like, okay, sit for 30 minutes or however long and just look at this one patch of grass and see what you notice.
And the more you would look, like, the blades of grass and the insects crawling around and like this tiny little patch of the world, like, just came alive.
Charlotte: Like a microcosm of the universe. Yeah. That's great. I wanted to say, if people want to know more about how to do that camera noticing, that exercise is fully described in our book.
Melinda: Yes, it is in the book. Yes, indeed. But I think that that's a great segue kind of into the Pro Tip for today, which is, you know, to just try something new, like go to a new place, even if it's in your home community, even if it's a place you pass by every single day, but just stop and linger and take the time to pay attention and notice what arises.
And maybe take a photo or do some journaling. You know, it could be just like going to your neighborhood library, going to a new restaurant, going to a new park, you know. And really, not just with your visual sense, all five senses and with your full body, like seeing what's really there and seeing what it sparks for you. Maybe it inspires a poem or, you know, a painting or whatever it might be.
Charlotte: I think the other thing that can happen in those moments is that you sink into a deeper connection to that place. And so even when, so the next time when you drive past the library, you're like, oh, I've had a deep moment in that place. And so it kind of helps us build our relationship to the logistical, or the locations that surround us.
I think it's so awesome that you brought up all five senses, because I think that's really important. And that's also in anti-anxiety move, is to ground yourself through your sensory observations. And I think it's really interesting, the things that ground us, and help us be like, less anxious are the same things that add to our creativity.
Find and connect with us on YouTube and social media under Syncreate, and we're now on Patreon as well. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review.
Melinda: And again, please join us for our Syncreate monthly coaching group starting in January of 2025. We're recording today at Record ATX Studios in Austin in person together with Charlotte, which is so wonderful.
And the podcast is produced in collaboration with Mike Osborne at 14th Street Studios here in Austin. Thanks so much for being with us, and see you next time.
