[Music]
I loved telling stories when I was a
little girl stories about wild and
fantastical adventures where animals and
children were living in a world that
took shape inside of my imagination as
an only child my stories were my secret
friends when I was about eight years old
I wrote a story and I gave it to my
teacher as my homework
he was my favorite teacher this blonde
curly hair red beard and he always wore
brown corduroy jacket I was so excited I
could barely wait to hear what you
thought when he gave me back my story
the next day he told me it was beautiful
even romantic and it had almost brought
tears to his eyes oh wow I was so proud
to think that my story almost made my
favorite teacher cry in that moment I
knew I’d found my calling and then he
added however that’s not what we do here
we don’t make up things and he turned
around and walked away there I was in
front of the whole class it felt as if
the room disappeared and I was floating
in a space of nothing because of that
moment because of that day I stopped
creating stories and I stopped writing
and for a long time after that I didn’t
think of myself as a creative person not
even when I was attending design school
or when I was working in marketing and
creating advertising campaigns or when I
was a lingerie buyer for a department
store when I was developing retail
concepts and merchandising guidelines
for a fashion company and not even when
I was designing stores and showrooms for
famous clothing designers still then I
didn’t think of myself as a creative
person because I did not feel creative
but the issue here however isn’t whether
we’re creative or not
the issue is that we stopped believing
that we are we’re all born creative it’s
innate in us to explore and look for
solutions it’s how we have evolved over
thousands of
years and our imagination is a unique
skill that we all have as human beings
and our curiosity how curiosity is with
us from the beginning is how pill that’s
how children learn about life they ask
why over and over and over again to
understand the world around them when I
was a kid I would ask silly questions
like why is a rock called a rock why is
it not called a glass these are not
questions we can answer but it’s the act
of asking them that opens up something
new inside of us so in 2001 after both
my parents died of cancer just about a
year apart and I was told it was no
longer a matter of if it was now a
matter when I was going to get cancer
too I decided to leave my career as a
fashion executive and I started asking
some deep questions of myself not just
what’s the meaning of life but how can I
take charge of my health what do I want
to do with my life what will inspire me
to live fully engaged for the rest of it
and why would it matter it was the act
of asking these questions that opened me
up to my creative nature again and it
reconnected me with that little girl
inside longing to be nourished so for
the past 15 years now I worked with
people helping them change their
relationship with food by reconnecting
them with why they eat and how it makes
them feel and what I consistently see is
that at the end of the day we don’t eat
based on counting calories
we need to feel nourished and as
emotional beings it’s natural that we
seek to find pleasure and avoid pain
however when we use food as noise to
drown out the inner critic that tell us
that we cannot be who we are
when we snack to distract ourselves from
our fears or
drown our emotions that tell us to be
afraid of who we are or when we face a
deadline and we push ourselves into
survival mode by not eating all day
because we dare not take a break or when
we are ahead or in front of a problem we
stay glued to the computer instead of
taking a walk
we don’t even stop for a glass of water
or to take a breath and we skimp on
sleep so Luba can keep going and going
and going and going that is not how we
feed our creativity if you were an
athlete would you say I don’t have time
to eat drink water take a break or sleep
because I’m training for a competition
No and even though we may not be
athletes here our bodies are still our
tool every day at work and food is not
just fuel for our bodies food is how we
fuel life studies have shown the
creative people have a higher level of
serotonin but they don’t eat that way or
they’re not born that way sorry they eat
that way so they are not born that way
they eat that way right because
serotonin even though it’s a brain
neurotransmitter 90% of it is produced
in the gut and serotonin is our
well-being hormone it helps us feel calm
centered and happy and we boost
serotonin production by eating carbs but
not the sugar cookie candy kind the good
complex carbs from whole-grain and
vegetables we also need dopamine
dopamine helps us feel engaged and on
and we get dopamine when we’re eating
protein and dopamine is an important
brain chemical for feeling motivation
making decisions and mastering our
attention and then there’s cortisol
cortisol cortisol is responsible for a
sense of focus but it’s also our stress
hormone better known as fight and flight
so cortisol can help us perform under
pressure but when we boost up on coffee
to get more energy we also kill our
ability to be open and curious because
it also triggers anxiety so a little bit
of coffee can help you direct your
thoughts when you’re feeling overwhelmed
and tired but too much will narrow the
perspective cause the jitters suppress
serotonin production and have you
struggling to access your creativity
because under stress we’re driven by
instinct rather than inspiration so
mastering stress is critical for
creativity it’s also why many artists
make it an essential part of the
creative process to go for walks a
creative juices start flowing when we
let the mind wander it’s probably also
why we tend to get some of our best
ideas when we least expect it like when
we’re driving or in the shower and we
cannot take notes right try that so the
elusive nature of creativity can often
feel as if we need luck to get a good
idea like catching a rare butterfly and
actually luck and creativity do have
something in common but it may not be
what you think I tend to find a lot of
four-leaf clovers but it’s not that I’m
more lucky than other people it said I
trained my eye to notice them I look for
patterns among the clovers and the for
leave one stick out as a regular use yet
I also find a lot of five leaf clovers
once I found one I was a believer and I
started looking for that at some point I
was wondering is there such a thing as a
six leaf clover there is I found one
so now that you’re going to start
looking for clovers let me let you in on
a little secret
if there is one four-leaf clover there’s
usually more that’s how I’ve ended up
with as many as 18 all at once
research shows that unlucky people are
simply so because they’re not noticing
what’s right there in front of them
because they’re simply not looking for
it yes there were four four-leaf clovers
in there psychologist richard wiseman
sums up the four traits of lucky people
they look for opportunity they listen to
their intuition they assume they’ll find
something good and if they don’t they’ll
make something good from it anyway he
also found that anxiety causes people to
miss out because they’re not noticing
the unexpected so noticing the
unexpected is what makes us lucky but as
it turns out it’s also what makes us
creative research has shown that a
crucial trigger of creativity is indeed
the experience of something unusual and
unexpected
I love the principle of wabi-sabi it’s
the Japanese art of creating without
perfecting it’s about noticing what’s
real about something and using the
unexpected by implementing it in the
design
it creates an aesthetic that’s beyond
what the eye sees it’s felt our
consciousness you can compare it to
explaining what chocolate tastes like to
someone who has never tasted it by only
describing the shape and the color of a
piece of chocolate when I was designing
interiors for fashion stores I would
start a project by spending two to three
days just walking around the city
noticing how different environments
spaces materials shapes would affect me
a sort of absorbing without thinking
you probably know the feeling of
stepping into a room and you feel
awkward and uncomfortable for no
apparent reason and then you step into
another room and you feel perfectly fine
that’s because our experience is based
on interaction so I would use my body
and my entire body to do the work and
after a couple of days I could just sit
down and draw up the entire project
letting ideas emerge and take shape from
this inner place when we nourish
ourselves and practice mindfulness we
can access our creativity by using the
felt sense the felt sense is that
something that something inside every
single one of us whether we are aware of
it or not it’s that something that we
often don’t put words to because it’s so
vague and so subtle that is often that
we dismiss it in the 50s philosopher
Jean gent Len and psychologist Carl
Rogers started researching why some
people change in therapy and others stay
stuck and they found that people who do
not pause to check in with a felt sense
experience would stay stuck so as a
result Jen Len developed a method to
access the felt sense called focusing
it’s a process that helps the mind
listen to the wisdom of the body our
bodies process on process information
all the time but we don’t know how to
connect with it because it doesn’t
follow the same logic as our cognitive
mind when I was dealing with my fear
around getting cancer I realized that if
I could change my relationship with my
body I could let it guide me so instead
of living in fear I could live in
awareness it’s similar to how I see the
relationship we have with food and the
relationship we have with creativity
if we focus too much on what instead of
why we get stuck because we focus too
much on the end result rather than the
process of getting there so let me walk
you through how focusing works this all
pause for just a moment and take a deep
breath in and then the exhale just bring
your attention into the core of your
body and just notice how it feels in
there when you ask yourself how am i in
there right now and just notice if
there’s a felt sense of a something can
be a very fuzzy experience at first and
it can take a while for something to
form but just wait maybe it’s a felt
sense of a swirling or tingling maybe
it’s tightness or fullness
maybe there’s a feeling energy of a
concern or a longing as you keep that
company whatever is their smile notice
if maybe a word comes or an image maybe
a scene from a memory or metaphor and
then ask yourself what would help me
feel just a little bit better right now
just noticing and acknowledging whatever
is there can be enough for a shift to
come so just notice what might change
our bodies speak to us in ways that
children use in play an artist’s use to
create something from nothing because
something is always there even when it
seems that there isn’t we give our mind
so much credit every day but it doesn’t
do the work alone
our bodies is the most important
relationship we have it’s the foundation
for how we live thrive and perform every
single day and we can learn how to be a
team how to be best friends again the
way we were before we lost our inherent
connection it’s not a radical idea what
if we could encourage a corporate
culture of passing where instead of
pushing the last minute out of
everything instead we could take just a
moment to pause look listen and check in
with our felt sense what new could come
what could change it isn’t something
radical it’s just a new relationship
with an old friend waiting to be found
again and again and again and again
thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
you
[Music]
I loved telling stories when I was a
little girl stories about wild and
fantastical adventures where animals and
children were living in a world that
took shape inside of my imagination as
an only child my stories were my secret
friends when I was about eight years old
I wrote a story and I gave it to my
teacher as my homework
he was my favorite teacher this blonde
curly hair red beard and he always wore
brown corduroy jacket I was so excited I
could barely wait to hear what you
thought when he gave me back my story
the next day he told me it was beautiful
even romantic and it had almost brought
tears to his eyes oh wow I was so proud
to think that my story almost made my
favorite teacher cry in that moment I
knew I’d found my calling and then he
added however that’s not what we do here
we don’t make up things and he turned
around and walked away there I was in
front of the whole class it felt as if
the room disappeared and I was floating
in a space of nothing because of that
moment because of that day I stopped
creating stories and I stopped writing
and for a long time after that I didn’t
think of myself as a creative person not
even when I was attending design school
or when I was working in marketing and
creating advertising campaigns or when I
was a lingerie buyer for a department
store when I was developing retail
concepts and merchandising guidelines
for a fashion company and not even when
I was designing stores and showrooms for
famous clothing designers still then I
didn’t think of myself as a creative
person because I did not feel creative
but the issue here however isn’t whether
we’re creative or not
the issue is that we stopped believing
that we are we’re all born creative it’s
innate in us to explore and look for
solutions it’s how we have evolved over
thousands of
years and our imagination is a unique
skill that we all have as human beings
and our curiosity how curiosity is with
us from the beginning is how pill that’s
how children learn about life they ask
why over and over and over again to
understand the world around them when I
was a kid I would ask silly questions
like why is a rock called a rock why is
it not called a glass these are not
questions we can answer but it’s the act
of asking them that opens up something
new inside of us so in 2001 after both
my parents died of cancer just about a
year apart and I was told it was no
longer a matter of if it was now a
matter when I was going to get cancer
too I decided to leave my career as a
fashion executive and I started asking
some deep questions of myself not just
what’s the meaning of life but how can I
take charge of my health what do I want
to do with my life what will inspire me
to live fully engaged for the rest of it
and why would it matter it was the act
of asking these questions that opened me
up to my creative nature again and it
reconnected me with that little girl
inside longing to be nourished so for
the past 15 years now I worked with
people helping them change their
relationship with food by reconnecting
them with why they eat and how it makes
them feel and what I consistently see is
that at the end of the day we don’t eat
based on counting calories
we need to feel nourished and as
emotional beings it’s natural that we
seek to find pleasure and avoid pain
however when we use food as noise to
drown out the inner critic that tell us
that we cannot be who we are
when we snack to distract ourselves from
our fears or
drown our emotions that tell us to be
afraid of who we are or when we face a
deadline and we push ourselves into
survival mode by not eating all day
because we dare not take a break or when
we are ahead or in front of a problem we
stay glued to the computer instead of
taking a walk
we don’t even stop for a glass of water
or to take a breath and we skimp on
sleep so Luba can keep going and going
and going and going that is not how we
feed our creativity if you were an
athlete would you say I don’t have time
to eat drink water take a break or sleep
because I’m training for a competition
No and even though we may not be
athletes here our bodies are still our
tool every day at work and food is not
just fuel for our bodies food is how we
fuel life studies have shown the
creative people have a higher level of
serotonin but they don’t eat that way or
they’re not born that way sorry they eat
that way so they are not born that way
they eat that way right because
serotonin even though it’s a brain
neurotransmitter 90% of it is produced
in the gut and serotonin is our
well-being hormone it helps us feel calm
centered and happy and we boost
serotonin production by eating carbs but
not the sugar cookie candy kind the good
complex carbs from whole-grain and
vegetables we also need dopamine
dopamine helps us feel engaged and on
and we get dopamine when we’re eating
protein and dopamine is an important
brain chemical for feeling motivation
making decisions and mastering our
attention and then there’s cortisol
cortisol cortisol is responsible for a
sense of focus but it’s also our stress
hormone better known as fight and flight
so cortisol can help us perform under
pressure but when we boost up on coffee
to get more energy we also kill our
ability to be open and curious because
it also triggers anxiety so a little bit
of coffee can help you direct your
thoughts when you’re feeling overwhelmed
and tired but too much will narrow the
perspective cause the jitters suppress
serotonin production and have you
struggling to access your creativity
because under stress we’re driven by
instinct rather than inspiration so
mastering stress is critical for
creativity it’s also why many artists
make it an essential part of the
creative process to go for walks a
creative juices start flowing when we
let the mind wander it’s probably also
why we tend to get some of our best
ideas when we least expect it like when
we’re driving or in the shower and we
cannot take notes right try that so the
elusive nature of creativity can often
feel as if we need luck to get a good
idea like catching a rare butterfly and
actually luck and creativity do have
something in common but it may not be
what you think I tend to find a lot of
four-leaf clovers but it’s not that I’m
more lucky than other people it said I
trained my eye to notice them I look for
patterns among the clovers and the for
leave one stick out as a regular use yet
I also find a lot of five leaf clovers
once I found one I was a believer and I
started looking for that at some point I
was wondering is there such a thing as a
six leaf clover there is I found one
so now that you’re going to start
looking for clovers let me let you in on
a little secret
if there is one four-leaf clover there’s
usually more that’s how I’ve ended up
with as many as 18 all at once
research shows that unlucky people are
simply so because they’re not noticing
what’s right there in front of them
because they’re simply not looking for
it yes there were four four-leaf clovers
in there psychologist richard wiseman
sums up the four traits of lucky people
they look for opportunity they listen to
their intuition they assume they’ll find
something good and if they don’t they’ll
make something good from it anyway he
also found that anxiety causes people to
miss out because they’re not noticing
the unexpected so noticing the
unexpected is what makes us lucky but as
it turns out it’s also what makes us
creative research has shown that a
crucial trigger of creativity is indeed
the experience of something unusual and
unexpected
I love the principle of wabi-sabi it’s
the Japanese art of creating without
perfecting it’s about noticing what’s
real about something and using the
unexpected by implementing it in the
design
it creates an aesthetic that’s beyond
what the eye sees it’s felt our
consciousness you can compare it to
explaining what chocolate tastes like to
someone who has never tasted it by only
describing the shape and the color of a
piece of chocolate when I was designing
interiors for fashion stores I would
start a project by spending two to three
days just walking around the city
noticing how different environments
spaces materials shapes would affect me
a sort of absorbing without thinking
you probably know the feeling of
stepping into a room and you feel
awkward and uncomfortable for no
apparent reason and then you step into
another room and you feel perfectly fine
that’s because our experience is based
on interaction so I would use my body
and my entire body to do the work and
after a couple of days I could just sit
down and draw up the entire project
letting ideas emerge and take shape from
this inner place when we nourish
ourselves and practice mindfulness we
can access our creativity by using the
felt sense the felt sense is that
something that something inside every
single one of us whether we are aware of
it or not it’s that something that we
often don’t put words to because it’s so
vague and so subtle that is often that
we dismiss it in the 50s philosopher
Jean gent Len and psychologist Carl
Rogers started researching why some
people change in therapy and others stay
stuck and they found that people who do
not pause to check in with a felt sense
experience would stay stuck so as a
result Jen Len developed a method to
access the felt sense called focusing
it’s a process that helps the mind
listen to the wisdom of the body our
bodies process on process information
all the time but we don’t know how to
connect with it because it doesn’t
follow the same logic as our cognitive
mind when I was dealing with my fear
around getting cancer I realized that if
I could change my relationship with my
body I could let it guide me so instead
of living in fear I could live in
awareness it’s similar to how I see the
relationship we have with food and the
relationship we have with creativity
if we focus too much on what instead of
why we get stuck because we focus too
much on the end result rather than the
process of getting there so let me walk
you through how focusing works this all
pause for just a moment and take a deep
breath in and then the exhale just bring
your attention into the core of your
body and just notice how it feels in
there when you ask yourself how am i in
there right now and just notice if
there’s a felt sense of a something can
be a very fuzzy experience at first and
it can take a while for something to
form but just wait maybe it’s a felt
sense of a swirling or tingling maybe
it’s tightness or fullness
maybe there’s a feeling energy of a
concern or a longing as you keep that
company whatever is their smile notice
if maybe a word comes or an image maybe
a scene from a memory or metaphor and
then ask yourself what would help me
feel just a little bit better right now
just noticing and acknowledging whatever
is there can be enough for a shift to
come so just notice what might change
our bodies speak to us in ways that
children use in play an artist’s use to
create something from nothing because
something is always there even when it
seems that there isn’t we give our mind
so much credit every day but it doesn’t
do the work alone
our bodies is the most important
relationship we have it’s the foundation
for how we live thrive and perform every
single day and we can learn how to be a
team how to be best friends again the
way we were before we lost our inherent
connection it’s not a radical idea what
if we could encourage a corporate
culture of passing where instead of
pushing the last minute out of
everything instead we could take just a
moment to pause look listen and check in
with our felt sense what new could come
what could change it isn’t something
radical it’s just a new relationship
with an old friend waiting to be found
again and again and again and again
thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
you
[Music]
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