Stay ConnectedThe Creative Introvert Podcast is the podcast for creatives, makers, artists and entrepreneurs who prefer to work solo.
Cat Rose digs deep into the struggles creative introverts face and provides you with actionable tips every week. Topics tackled include: battling fear, increasing confidence, self-promotion without feeling sleazy, and overcoming procrastination.
Copyright: © Cat Rose Astrology
I should point out that whether you’re an introvert or not, the way you are affected by your environment still varies a lot between person to person.
And you might remember the episode in this series in which I described High Sensitivity - if you’re a HSP, you’ll likely be more affected by lights and sounds than the average bear, like myself.
Regardless of how sensitive you are to your environment, there is still going to be an optimum environment you thrive in.
This episode in the Self-Knowledge mini series is going to dig into different aspects of our environment you can start taking into account, and other little lifestyle hacks you might want to experiment with to up you creative game whether you work in an office or from home or from a coffee shop.
Let’s start with Carl Jung, grandaddy of Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. He’s responsible for much of this series, because of his theories on psychological types.
He introduced three areas or preferences, each of which are dichotomies: as in there are two ends of a pole, and your preference lies somewhere along that pole.
Introversion or extraversion are one area, sensing or intuition is another, and thinking or feeling is the third - and the one I’m going to dive into today.
The concept of doing what you love and following your passion has gotten a bit of a bad rap in recent years, and I guess before I launch into this episode I should probably address that side of the fence first.
Cal Newport would be the first person I think of touting the idea that doing what you love is in fact, overrated. In his book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, he suggests the problem is that we don’t have much evidence that this is how passion works.
“Follow your passion” assumes: a) you have preexisting passion, and b) if you match this passion to your job, then you’ll enjoy that job.
What I'd like to do in this episode of the Self Knowledge mini-series, is help you get closer to finding your passion, whether it’s making more time for one you already have or finding a new one altogether and cultivating that.
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Not exactly a topic I've talked much about or even mentioned in the Creative Introvert podcast so far. May be something to do with my INTJ android-like personality, but really I have no excuse.
We know that even the hardiest Thinking types need a little tender lovin' care - whether it's from a partner, or in the simple friendship of an old pal. Or y'know, from your pet gecko.
Whatever your source of love is, isn't the topic of today's show. what I want to talk about is the way we prefer to receive and to give love: also known as our love language.
This is a concept coined by Gary Chapman, author of the book The 5 Love Languages amongst others: your love language can be identified by asking yourself: what makes you feel loved? What do you desire above all else from others?
Or on the flip side, what hurts you, or makes you feel unloved?
It can also be seen in how we express our love and appreciation to others.
The importance of understanding our own lore language as well as that of those around us is really really important, may be the most important in this Self-Knowledge series.
After all, if you can't communicate your love and appreciation to someone else or receive it from them because you're speaking two different languages, it's going to have a pretty detrimental effect on the relationship.
Already I know this is going to me one of my favourite episodes in this self-knowledge series.
The way we experiences the world is… kind of everything. From the moment we’re pushed or pulled out of our mum’s baby-maker, we’re dealing with sensory information and how we respond to that is amazingly individual.
Even from those early years, we start exhibiting clear signs that some of us are experiencing the world in very different ways. This depends on both how we’re wired neurologically and biochemically, as well as what particular environment we’re being raised in.
More on determining factors later, but for now I want to talk about the different categories psychologists and smart people in lab coats have given us to describe how we might experience the world around us.
In every case, I’m willing to bet there is a sliding scale, just like introversion and extroversion, someone can be at the very end of the scale, or somewhere closer to the middle.
Links mentioned:I remember clearly being in school and being taught about learning styles. The teacher went through the model taught to her, which boiled down to auditory, visual or kinaesthetic.
It made sense to me that I must be a Visual learner, given that I was the designated class cartoonist, at least when there was a Rugrats character to draw.
Later, I learned that this was just one of many (supposedly there are around 70) models to describe our preferred learning style.
It's also possible - in fact very likely- you have a mixture of styles. Some may be best used in certain circumstances. For example, learning how to put an Ikea wardrobe together requires different processing than learning a language.
Plus, you can develop or change your preferences over time: in fact 1 did this through listening to podcasts. Now, I process audio - with or without accompanying images - way better than I did at school.
I still think it's useful to explore learning styles, and not just the ones you think you have a preference over. It's useful not just to help you learn stuff more effectively, but to communicate better with others,
When you know what style someone else prefers, you can accommodate them. It's something I try to take into account in my online courses, as well as when I'm coaching someone or consulting with a client.
If I pickup that they're a visual/spatial learner, I scribble down images to represent my ideas, or use visual analogies to give from to my sometimes vague and floaty concepts.
Or if they're kinaesthetic I try to slow my speech a bit. This is another weird factoid: apparently kinaesthetic types speak slower.
There are 7 styles that I like to take into account now, which gives a slightly more detailed range of preferences than I was taught at school.
I dig deeper into these learning styles in today's episode, and what knowing your learning style might mean for you.
The point of this mini-series is, quite simply to help you discover more about... you.
Self-knowledge is arguably the most critical catalyst in personal development : how you manage your energy, how you interact with others, where your strengths lie... Not to mention a key player in business success.
When you know yourself, you can make decisions more effectively, have greater clarity on where you want to go, what you want to be doing, and how you do it best: when you're at your most creative.
Ok, so if you're not sold just yet, what if I told you I could make this self knowledge super simple: breaking every aspect of the journey down into easy to digest podcast episodes?
Well, hopefully that's enough to convince you: it's happening anyway.
I'm pushing pause on interviews for a wee bit while I run this Self Knowledge for Creative Introverts mini-series and over the next 10 weeks I'll be guiding you through the ultimate self-knowledge series.
We'll tackle:
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A short one today to mark the grand re-opening of the League of Creative Introverts, my online community for like-minded creatives who are ready to get their work out into the world... but on their terms - no extroverting required!
I tackle the common questions I get about the League of Creative Introverts including...
Isn’t it a bit of a paradox? A community of introverts? Isn’t that like starting a beach for vampires?
The League will be open for one week, so you have until HALLOWEEN - er, October 31st 2017 at midnight GMT - to get yourself a spot.
In this week’s episode of the Creative Introvert podcast I talk to Jamie Arpin-Ricci, speaker and community enthusiast and author of The Introvert Writer.
What we discussed:If you’ve been listening to this podcast a while, you might have heard a bit about my story - how I left my day job as a professional pixel pusher - I mean, web designer - to pursue my childhood dreams of becoming an illustrator and above all - be able to work from HOME.
At the time, I thought it was just the youngest child, red headed rebel in me that provoked my decision to leave my stable 9-5 job in exchange for the free range, freelance life.
But for this episode in particular I want to highlight the challenges we face when attempting to build a business or pursue a new career or go rogue like I did and work for youself.
This entrepreneurial trend is only growing, and whilst we’re encouraged as introverts to pursue these lofty dreams, I want to be clear that there are some very real challenges that can and will crop up - at least they have in my experience - and more importantly - give you some tools and strategies to actually deal with them.
Hopefully it will be of more use than another article on Forbes about introverts are naturals at networking - probably written by an extrovert.
Links mentioned:7 tips for networking (written by an introvert, for introverts)
Should I go to this networking event?
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