Reflections: Bold 6

REFLECTIONS : BOLD 6 Confident cool cats celebrating creative collaboration

REFLECTIONS : BOLD 6 Confident cool cats celebrating creative collaboration

GRA 501 Creative Envir & Collab Leader Spring 2015 Professor: William Heywood Anne Alisa Gillman Breck Byington Jonathan Scott Wing Megha Parashar Shobeir Mazinani Yixin (Milo) Cao

Mission Statement Our ultimate goal is to develop methods for cultivating and portraying internal confidence in a creative leadership capacity. We will be pursuing two lines of research to achieve this goal. First, confidence and management which will build our ability to express and exude confidence.

Second, creativity and confidence to encourage more Eureka moments and knowing how to confidently recognize and follow these moments. As a team, we will take risks and push mental boundaries to ensure we end this semester as a much more confident, and truly BOLD6.

Code of Ethics Respect Mutual respect shown through honesty and trust.

Communication Effective, honest, open-minded and empathic dialogue.

Flexibility Open-minded creativity and understanding within the group and self.

Supportive Emotional and physical appreciation for one another to reach common goal as a whole.

Persistence To encourage and be motivated.

2 • Reflections: Bold 6

Creativity Statements

3

Anne Alisa Gillman Liea

Creativity thrives in a world of endless possibilities. No judgments or restrictions exist here.

It is powered by positive self-talk, mindfulness and a pen and paper.

It is not always easy to tap into this world. It takes time, practice and confidence in your ideas. It is my creative mission to keep practicing positive self-talk, being nonjudgmental of creative thoughts, and mindfulness so my creativity will continue to grow and get stronger as the years go on.

4 • Reflections: Bold 6

Breck Byington Samson

My creative mission is to always be curious, and use my curiosity to inspire and support those around me. To constantly utilize my knowledge to better understand the world and people around me and to further help and support as many as I can.

To allow myself to follow joy and inspiration above all else.

5

Jonathan Scott Wing Quinn

I am a force of creativity, passionate about and dedicated to meaningful positive change within myself, and the world at large.

By engaging life with a spirit full of wonder, curiosity, empathy and adventure, I revel in working on projects that encourage mindful changes in the world.

6 • Reflections: Bold 6

Megha Parashar Dreamy Cloud

‘मेरी रचना � अथ� बहुत हैं जो भी तुमसे लग जाय लगा लेना ...’

– रामनाथ अव�थी

‘My composition has many meanings, interpret it how you want to…’

– Ramnath Awasthi I believe we are all born creative; it is just about finding that uniqueness in yourself that makes you different from another person.

Finding that difference and embracing it is what makes one truly creative.

For me creativity is about being able to look at things differently, approach it in my own way and seek happiness in that.

7

Shobeir Mazinani Marcel

Sunrises again and again. Spring comes and revives the earth. Their repetition is unique and fresh.

I see creativity as a nice breeze in the repetitive world that gives everything a new refreshing look.

The fearless questioning me, who doesn’t care if the torrent of the questions make him look stupid, is the creative me. The scientist that wakes up to the music of the birds and looks at the limitless opportunities to make something new from the ever-glorious sunrise.

8 • Reflections: Bold 6

Yixin (Milo) Cao Ajun

I can see how creativity process and understanding are various from person to person by learning the creativity models of Barron, Rossman and Osborn in this class.

My point of view on my creativity is just like the metaphor which I drew. I always use all of my senses to perceive the environment, the happenings around me, and observe the needs. When I hear sounds, see sceneries, touch the texture of different materials, my mind may perceive different information, which were primarily received from the five senses. This process produces thousands of primary ideas about understanding and analyzing of people’s needs.

It is particularly important to the analyzation and the transformation of ideas into a more considerable and clear

9

concept. Everyone have their own methods to process the information in our mind. For me, sometimes I need to be concentrated and explore the needs of audiences by empathy; sometimes I need to discuss with other people to formulate some objective solutions; and sometimes I need to be an attentive listener to accept the comments and critics.

Through these process, the idea may be further deepened or leads to a new concept. When I have a thoughtful idea, I can start to explore the way of expressing the concept based on the design theories more successfully rather than just focus on the aesthetics. After I am done with the design works, which I am quite satisfied with, I always open up a channel of my mind, and listen to audiences’ opinions; and review these opinions, and keep making corresponding improvements.

Creativity can be an innate gift, but could be killed with time, I am now discovering more methods to exploit self creative potentialities.

10 • Reflections: Bold 6

Learning

11

Removing Negative Thoughts Self-Talk Cycle In 24 hours, there can be up to 50,000 thoughts that go through our head and for a lot of people; the majority of those thoughts are negative (Dvorsky). Why is this? Why does our mind tend to instinctually go to the negative?

This goes back to the idea of the ‘rock or the lion’. In the beginning of time, when our human minds were not as advanced as they are now, we had to decide whether this mound in front of us was a rock or a lion. If it was a rock, there is no danger; if it is a lion, we are dead. Since the risk is high of it being a lion that is what we assume it is to protect ourselves from potential danger. This is our typical thought process the branches over all parts of life.

We assume the negative because we think we are protecting ourselves.

This way of thinking can be changed. It takes mental discipline and practice to keep certain thoughts out of your head and put other, more positive, ones in. If you do take the time and energy to do this, you will see your life start to become better and you will be a happier and more confident person.

The first step is being aware and accepting of those negative thoughts. It is important that these negative thoughts get confronted before you can replace them with positive ones. Just shoving them further into the back of your mind will not always work. Think of your head like a chest of toys. If your toy chest is full of creepy clown toys

12 • Reflections: Bold 6

that give you nightmares and you just got this set of shiny beautiful stuffed unicorns that make you happy, you only have two options. The first is to try and stuff everything into the toy chest until it bursts open everywhere, scattering pretty unicorns and creepy clowns in a chaotic spiral around your room. Or you can simply remove the creepy clowns from the toy chest and replace them with the beautiful stuffed unicorns. An easy tool you can use to get those negative thoughts out of your head is simply writing them town, without judgment or filtering, and then tearing the sheet of paper up. By doing this you are removing the negative thoughts from the self-talk cycle and making room for more positive ones.

The self-talk cycle shows us that your self-talk not only affects your mental state but also directly influences your self-image and how you represent yourself. Your self-image then directly affects your performance or how you act in reality. This, in turn, circles back to self-talk. By removing negative thoughts from the cycle you are not only making room for more positive self-talk and mental state, but also a more positive representation of self and life style.

Power Pose People are really fascinated with body language, and particularly interested in other people’s body language.

So social scientists have spent a lot of time looking at the effects of our body language, or other people’s body language, on judgments. When people think of nonverbals, they think of how they judge others, how others judge them and what the outcomes are. But people are also influenced by their non verbals, thoughts and feelings and physiology.

13

We know that the minds change the bodies, but is it also true that the bodies change minds?

So Amy Cuddy and the lab decided to bring people into the lab and run a little experiment, and these people adopted, for two minutes, either high-power poses or low-power poses. The participants came in, they spat into a vial.

After two minutes they did the posts and then researchers gave them an opportunity to gamble, and then they take another saliva sample.

From this experiment researchers found that when people were in the high-power pose condition, 86 percent of them will gamble. When they were in the low-power pose condition, only 60 percent. From participants’ baseline when they came in, high-power people experienced about a 20-percent increase, and low-power people experienced about a 10-percent decrease. High-power people experienced about a 25-percent decrease on cortisol, and the low-power people experienced about a 15-percent increase. Two minutes lead to these hormonal changes that configured the brain to basically be either assertive, confident and comfortable, or really stress-reactive, and feeling sort of shut down. So it seems that our nonverbals do govern how we think and feel about ourselves, so it’s not just others, but it’s also ourselves. Also, our bodies change our minds.

Powerful people tend to be more assertive and more confident, more optimistic. They actually feel they’re going to win even at games of chance. They also tend to be able to think more abstractly. These are significant advantages for creativity and leadership.

14 • Reflections: Bold 6

Affirmations As a team we began by being vulnerable enough to tell each other that we struggled with confidence in our own unique ways. We then went on to better understand how to help not only ourselves, but those in our group, the other member of our class, those that are near to use, and even those that we will lead in in future.

We’ve learned that a crucial step in advancing as a team is to be open and exposed as that is the only we to grow and allow oneself to learn from another.

We also learned that humor and joy are integral to a successful team in that their positivity and creativity begin.

Affirmations are a direct way to focus our mental dialog to a positive one that reflects one’s goals or values.

Affirmations are a strong positive statement that states something is already so, read aloud or internally that reflect one’s goals, aspirations, o r values. To convert our mental dialog from either neutral or negative to one of deliberate, positive, and potentially action inducing is the intent of affirmations. By helping to focus attention throughout the day on aspects such as being and finding confidence, as these are statements to create self-change.

Affirmations, as science has attempted to determine, help to reprogram the subconscious to believe certain things about oneself. As mental dialog often has the effect of making one believe negative things about oneself (such as we’ll fail, we’re not good enough, no one will

15

appreciate what we do), affirmations counter that and can replace them with positive, focus beliefs. As with much of design, for must first follow an idea, affirmations are that idea or concept that help to blueprint out how to achieve the desired goal. Affirmations have been cited as creating a buffer for stress and increasing performance during stressful situations (Psychology Today) taking a few moments out before a stressful situation to go over affirmations allows one to perform better in those situations. We have adapted to protect our self integrity or self-image this has resulted in avoidance of situations that can compromise that self integrity, though these situations are often how one grows and learns about themselves and reinterprets the self image. Affirmations are a tool to combat this fear of harming our self-image in an effort to allow perceived threatening experiences. Though affirmations are not about ignoring negative thoughts or feelings, the negative needs to be accompanied by the positive to truly grow.

Confidence Boosters There are so many times when all of us have felt underconfident. Be it being on the stage to present something, or sitting in a group talking to people trying to voice your opinion. When any of us are faced by an unacceptable situation, a situation we don’t want to be in, our mind plays tricks on us and fear sets in. It is hard to overcome that fear at that moment. But it isn’t impossible.

Overcoming our fear allows us to make ourselves more comfortable and acceptable of a new situation. There are many ways that can be initiated to overcome the fear, one of them being confidence boosters. Confidence

16 • Reflections: Bold 6

boosters are just about anything that you would do to boost your confidence. These can be small talks, exercises, volunteering, practicing continuously, eating good food, embracing failure, learning new things, accepting compliments, giving compliments and even smiling.

Some of these could be affirmations, physical exercises or even power posing.

Adding these to your daily lives can bring about a significant change in not just how confident you feel but also how you portray confidence.

It brings up your self-confidence and allows you to see yourself and others in a new light. We as a group looked at giving and taking compliments to boost confidence.

Being able to compliment someone is a meaningful way of allowing them to think the best about themselves.

Complimenting is equivalent to doing a good deed.

Meaningful compliments help elevate the mood of the person. Not only does this activity help the person feel more confident but also makes you think of yourself as a better person. At the same time accepting compliments allow us to feel good about ourselves. Escaping praises and compliments is a sign of being under-confident. Accepting compliments helps us see in ourselves the qualities that we failed to see. And it also helps us relieve ourselves of the worry that we have about what people think about us.

Lastly the best thing about compliments as confidence boosters is that you can look back at what people said for you when you are feeling low and help yourself feel better.

17

Exercising When the topic of exercise comes up, most of us think about how we should be doing more of it, and that if we only had more time we could loose some weight, look better in our clothing, and lead healthier physical lives.

While this is all true, looking at how exercise influences the mind is just as important, and it can be a powerful means for those of us who are looking to build self confidence.

Just by getting up and breaking a sweat for 20 minutes, your body releases endorphins, which relieve stress, and lifts mood, thereby building up your confidence.

It can also act as a change of mindset, helping to shake off negative thoughts and feelings by having your mind and body focus on something together, pulling you out of a rut or negative mindset. Regular exercise can also become an anchor in your life, in that it can become something that we look forward to as a part of our routine, which makes us feel like we are in control of our lives. That control can then lead the way to challenging yourself or others in competition which sets up a dynamic situation whereby exceeding expectations increases self confidence. That competition, if externalized to people you are competing with or against, increases socialization leading people to make new friends and establish new bonds, both of which lead to increased levels of confidence. The last

18 • Reflections: Bold 6

great benefit of exercise in relation to confidence is that it increases both attention and concentration in your daily life, meaning that your work and personal life will become that much richer with your newfound ability to focus and live in the moment.

Gratitude

Gratitude is a universal virtue that Buddha considered as the core for a noble man.

Sadi, the persian poet, thinks if you see someone is not grateful for his life’s blessings you should be careful with him because he would not be kind and appreciative of your presence and acts either. Despite the universality of the concept it was ignored in psychology literature until the last decade. It has been tested and shown that gratitude affects not only the interpersonal relationships but also it puts a positive spin on a persons view of the world and his/ her general psychological well-being.

In our group, we saw the effect of gratitude in two folds.

One through the nurturing and appreciative environment that governed our interactions (as its importance was reflected in our mission statement) and second on the personal level. The positive effect of gratitude in our group showed itself in the gradual confidence build up that eventually presented itself in the final presentation day. On the more personal level, counting the things you

19

are thankful for puts you in a positive and optimistic mindset that can increase your well-being. On top of that, we believe that everyone should write a letter of appreciation to themselves and in that letter brag about their achievements and pat themselves in the back.

Eventually in the rainy days of life, open this letter up as many times as it is necessary to boost and regain your confidence in the face of hardship.

Bibliography “01 - Socrates on Self-Confidence - Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness.” Youtube video, 24:12. Posted by “Spookybuk,” May 23, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=S24FxdvfOko. Algoe, S. B., Gable, S. L., & Maisel, N. C. (2010). It’s the little things: Everyday gratitude as a booster shot for romantic relationships. Personal Relationships, 17(2), 217–233. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6811.2010.01273.x Andresen, Katya. ‘3 Surprising Ways To Feel More Confident At Work’. Entrepreneur.N.p., 2014. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.

Cain, Susan. Quiet. New York: Crown Publishers, 2012. Print.

Cuddy, A. (2012, June). Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are [Video file] Retrieved from http://www. ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_ who_you_are?language=en

Dudley, D. (2010, September). Drew Dudley: Everyday leadership [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted. com/talks/drew_dudley_everyday_leadership Dvorsky, George. “Sentient Developments: Managing Your 50,000 Daily Thoughts.” Sentient Developments: Managing

20 • Reflections: Bold 6

Your 50,000 Daily Thoughts. Sentient Developments, 19 Mar. 2007. Web. 25 Apr. 2015.

Fogg, BJ. (2012, November 10). BJ Frogg: Forget big change, start with a tiny habit [Video file]. Retrieved from https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdKUJxjn-R8 Froh, J. J., Sefick, W. J., & Emmons, R. a. (2008). Counting blessings in early adolescents: An experimental study of gratitude and subjective well-being. Journal of School Psychology, 46(2), 213–233. doi:10.1016/j.jsp.2007.03.005 Gawain, Shakti. Creative Visualization. Navato, Calif.: Nataraj Pub./New World Library, 2002. Print.

Geller Scott, “The psychology of self-motivation.” Youtube video, 15:53. Posted by “Tedx Talks,” Dec 5, 2013. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sxpKhIbr0E. Goodman, Nadia. ‘How To Project Confidence’.

Entrepreneur. N.p., 2013. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.

Huffington, Arianna Stassinopoulos. Thrive. Print.

Karlsberg, Robert, and Jane Adler. Expert Performance: Charting Your Course To Higher Performance. 1st ed. Expert Performance Systems, 2015. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.

Kelley, David, and Tom Kelley. Creative Confidence. Print.

Kelly,D. (2012, March). Kelly David: How to build your creative confidence [Video file]. Retrieved from http:// www.ted.com/talks/david_kelley_how_to_build_your_ creative_confidence?language=en Kohli, Mansi. “Health Me Up: How Exercise Boosts Confidence.” Health Me Up: How Exercise Boosts Confidence. Health Me Up, 20 Nov. 2011. Web. 12 Apr. 2015 Li, C. (2014, September). Charlene Li: Giving up control: Leadership in the digital era [Video file]. Retrieved from

21

http://www.ted.com/watch/ted-institute/ted-ibm/ charlene-li-giving-up-control Lamar, Kendrick. I. Interscope, 2014. online.

Lively, Kathryn. ‘Affirmations: The Why, What, How, And What If?’. Psychology Today. N.p., 2015. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick ; The Confidence Man ; The Piazza Tales ; Billy Budd. London: Octopus, 1984. Print.

Meng Tan Chade, “Search Inside Yourself.” The RSA, 22:39.

April 23, 2014. https://www.thersa.org/discover/videos/ event-videos/2014/04/search-inside-yourself/.

Millburn, Joshua. ‘’Follow Your Passion’ Is Crappy Advice | The Minimalists’. The Minimalists. N.p., 2012.

Web. 28 Apr. 2015.

Morieux, Y. (2013, October). Yves Morieux: As work gets more complex, 6 rules to simplify [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/yves_morieux_as_work_ gets_more_complex_6_rules_to_simplify Orff, Carl. O Fortuna. 1936. online.

Prelude 12/21. Key Lime Pie, 2006. CD. Pursuit of Happiness,. ‘Positive Psychology And The Science Of Happiness’. N.p., 2015. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.

Ragan, E. . (2012). THANK YOU , DEAR : EXAMINING THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN GRATITUDE AND RELATIONSHIP WELL-BEING Presented to the Faculty of Social Sciences University of Denver In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy by Erica P . Ragan A. University of Denver.

Robinson Ken, “Ken Robinson on Finding your Element.”

The RSA, 2:41. July, 9 2013. https://www.thersa.org/discover/

22 • Reflections: Bold 6

videos/rsa-shorts/2013/07/Ken-Robinson-on-FindingYour-Element/.

Smith, Jacquelyn. ‘How To Be More Confident At Work’.

Forbes. N.p., 2012. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.

Smith, L. (2011, November). Larry Smith: Why you will fail to have a great career [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www. ted.com/talks/larry_smith_why_you_will_fail_to_have_a_ great_career?language=en Swift, Taylor. Shake It Off. 2015. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.

Ted,. Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are. 2015. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.

Torres, R. (2013, October). Roselinde Torres: What it takes to be a great leader [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www. ted.com/talks/roselinde_torres_what_it_takes_to_be_a_ great_leader Ursiny, Timothy E. The Confidence Plan. Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks, 2005. Print.

Vanderkam, Laura. ‘Why Insecurity May Be The Key To Success’. Fast Company. N.p., 2013. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.

Williams, Ray. ‘Do Self-Affirmations Work? A Revisit’.

Psychology Today. N.p., 2015. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.

Wood, A. M., Froh, J. J., & Geraghty, A. W. a. (2010). Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration.

Clinical Psychology Review, 30(7), 890–905. doi:10.1016/j. cpr.2010.03.005 Wood, A. M., Joseph, S., & Maltby, J. (2009). Gratitude predicts psychological well-being above the Big Five facets.

Personality and Individual Differences, 46(4), 443–447. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2008.11.012

23

24 • Reflections: Bold 6