What having a creative outlet outside of your professional career can teach you.

About two years ago, an old friend that I hadn't seen in years reach out to me. "Laura, let's catch up!". Simple. Old friends getting together for an afternoon of wine and talk. But this time was different, plan or unplanned, Thomas really wanted to make sure our friendship would not banish again.

We met at a restaurant in 2014, we worked together there. We didn't have a lot in common but our passion for food and simple things was enough to become good friends. We spent our time talking and fantasizing about traveling and eating amazing food in phenomenal restaurants around the world. We dreamt of bucolic views in Portugal and Italy, he always made me tell stories about how Spain was; its food, its people, its traditions and its places.

So I accepted his invitation and spent a lovely evening talking about our lives, our challenges and our dreams, which hadn't change much: travel, eat good food and spend quality time with those we love. But something stood out from that evening, something I will always remember, he said "Laura, you would look great in camera", of course, I blushed and took that idea out of my head immediately, didn't I?

Fast forward several months from that summer night in 2018, that little seed he planted with his comment and a lot of energy poured onto a new project; one of my favorite creative outlooks was up and running, or maybe crawling, but there it was: a youtube channel.

I am not here to talk about the channel itself. I am here to talk about the lessons that getting rid of my biases about creativity taught me.

Value resides in the most inhospitable places

When I started my passion project I did it because I wanted to be out of my comfort zone. I had never been in front of the cameras, ok maybe once, so that terrified me, and what did I do? I took the bull by the horns and by doing that, we created value for others, which was my main purpose, to share their stories I wanted to give them exposure to empower others to do the same, to share their dreams, and as a by-product, we created curiosity in possible customers didn't know them already and were willing to check them out after seeing our videos. I also got a lot of value out of it in the form of skills; practice public speaking, journalism skills, producing, researching about a topic I love, learn how to edit videos. This helped me in my personal career, in fact, I was able to get a new job in which the skills I learned are being used.

You will find friends that want to help you out beyond that one project

At the beginning of the project I asked a couple of friends if they would be willing to participate on the show every once in a while, the truth is by proposing an alternative to the status quo of my friendships I deepen my relationship with several friends, that became amazing partners in the project. I had never thought before that beyond spending time together we could collaborate in such a way.

It only takes an idea that you want to materialize and ask around to find out that there are like-minded people near you that are willing to invest time and that find value in the project you are interested in. From there that idea can evolve and those partners might want to be part of the subsequent projects.

In other words, let others know what you like to discover a side of them you didn't know about.

Iteration is good and so necessary

Everything is a process, to master anything in life you first need to consciously want to know about it, learn it, and then practice it to acquire mastery of that specific thing. By practice, I don't mean always do the same thing but explore new things within the topic you have at hand, bring past experiences, change your ways, evolve and embrace your curiosity towards learning, keep the good and improve the not so good be open to feedback: Iterate. In my mind things would be great from the beginning we would create perfect videos, well... let's just say when you have an HVAC unit behind your interviewee the audio is not the best quality and you will only understand that when editing the video, so we make something different each time to see if it works better or not.

To be empowered by others you have to empower yourself first.

To have something that you want you to have to desire it first and take action, even if it is a small step such as visualizing yourself having that something and bouncing ideas off of a friend. You need to give yourself the authority to do something, it comes from within and is a circle that grows when others "empower" you AKA they support you to keep going, to keep iterating even when you think you have nailed it, to keep believing in yourself - that's is true empowerment.

Creativity does not mean unrealistic or irrational

I have to say I once believed that being creative was something like, and please don't take it wrong, being delusional, to exhort yourself to a level of imagination in which you would lose all touch with reality and there you would be creative. That rationality and creativity could never be together. Guess what! I was wrong too. Even our brain is a clear example of how powerful is to pair analysis with creativity, logic with intuition, ideas with art...

Creativity: the ability to create

And, wasn't that exactly what I was trained for being an Engineer? To create something new, to fabricate solutions to problems, to engine new things and make something else better, but without creativity, imagination and ingenuity the process of creating was off the table, it would simply not exist because everything would have already be done, as we all know this is not true.

You are not only your career or the degree you chose at 18.

When I was 18 I decided to go to Engineering School, so I feel at that moment I had to leave any nuance of my artistic self die, I was entering a rational, perfect, efficient world, and being dreamy would not help me achieve excellence. WRONG.

We as humans have so many facets of ourselves, and it is not only fair but incredibly important that we explore all of them, that allow ourselves to be unapologetically us. For a very simple reason, when you feel good in your shoes that has a great impact in your career, in your 9-5 and ultimately in how you relate to people. Which ultimately is what all is about.

You can reinvent yourself one and a million times in a lifetime and is a wonderful thing to do. To explores your own limits, to allow yourself to try new things and to have success or failure at it and at least be able to say, I tried it so I know.

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These are some of the lessons I discovered while allowing myself to go against some opinions and try something new, something I was not trained to do, and something that has brought me immense moments of happiness, some frustration, and a lot of growth.

With this little article, I only intended to make you think about that something you have thought before you would like to do and have never even try to speak about, that something that you see in other people and really like. You may succeed or you may fail but you will never know until you try, and know that by doing that you could also be propelling your professional career without even noticing.

Please leave your comments or any thoughts you have. I would also love to talk about any passion project you would like to talk about! If you are curious to see mine here it is: The Kitchen Pass

First posted on LinkedIn on May 1st, 2020