# 102 | Nurturing Your Creativity as an Interior Designer

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If we can redefine creativity as, you know, this something that gives us joy. We're doing it simply for the sake of doing it. It's, it's not necessarily, there doesn't need to be like you build a shelf because you need a place to put your stuff. Right. But doing something purely for the sake of creating.

It's challenging to those of us who want to just get the laundry done and have the kids to their sports and check the boxes. And so when it, to me, when I think about overall wellness and health, that is something that fits in there.

Welcome to the Designers Oasis Podcast, a space for interior designers who are ready to define success on their own terms, whether that means running a firm at scale, or building a boutique business that fits your life. I'm Kate, be Dewald, interior designer, CEO and Mom. And I'm joined by my co-host and designer's, Oasis, community manager.

Becca Meyer. Together, we are here to help you redefine success in a way that actually aligns with your values and your skillset. If you are ready to stop square peg round, holding yourself into someone else's version of success, you are in the right place. And because we know you're more than just one thing, we talk about it all.

Interior design, business, parenting, mental health, wellness and mindset. All the behind the scenes realities of building a business that supports your life, not the other way around. No formulas, no one size fits all advice. Just honest conversations, thoughtful perspective shifts and practical guidance to help you build your business that feels sustainable and truly yours.

Thanks for being here.

Hello back. Hi, Kate. Welcome back. Thanks. Yeah, how you doing? I'm good. I'm good. Yeah. I'm really excited about today's episode, so we're starting this episode today. In giggles. Yes. We've been giggly all morning. Yes. And so we're trying to like put on a straight face to get our podcast started. Yeah. We had to start like three times and so I'm trying to be serious and like get into work mode.

Okay. But that's just kind of the shenanigans that goes on behind the scenes. It's fun. Right. I really miss. Having somebody to work with in person over the last few years. Yeah. And now I've got you and Morgan and I still get to see Megan even though she's not in person. Yeah. But it, I. I, I think I'm meant to be working with people.

Yeah. Not a lot. Me too. I think so actually it's really connected to this topic. It like brings Oh yeah. Energy. Like helps you kind of think about things differently and Yeah. My friend Karen, and I shout out to Karen Wingard. She's a good friend of mine and interior designer here in Denver. We're talking about doing.

Design coworking days. Yeah. Where we, it's like she's working on her clients. I'm working on mine. Yeah. Anyway, we're gonna try to do that and see how that pans out. Well, you know, I started a little coworking in the membership. Oh, tell me about that. Okay. It was alright. Not in person. So if you're new, Becca is our, hi, I am Kate from, and this is my close Becca, and she is our community manager here at Designers Oasis.

And so you've been busy. Tell me about what you have been doing to help support our members. Oh, well, just. In in the manual, what we were just talking about, we just started a few weeks ago doing a like coworking. It's on Zoom, so it's not quite as fun as being in person. Oh right. But just each of us identify as something that we wanna work on and it's a little accountability and it's quiet work time.

And I just, I love being in community with people and I think. I, I really like that about what you're doing with designers Oasis. 'cause I think just community helps us spark the creativity. I, I didn't even plan that. Nice segue. Nice segue. Well, I think that we've known this intuitively for a long time, but I, you know, I, I love data and research and understanding the science behind why things are or are not.

And I think that we're starting to see. A lot of research about the benefits of community and wellness and so that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I, being a DHD really benefit from, I'm the old school classic inattentive type. Hmm. Not, not necessarily hyperactive, but so like. Getting settled in my desk at, to get into my flow into my work state, like takes a long time for me.

In any case, for me personally, even just having somebody in the room with me, and there's a word for this, you probably know it as an educator. Yeah, I know. Body doubling. Oh yeah. Yes. Body doubling. Body doubling. Just having somebody in the room with me can somehow, like miraculously keeps me. Set and focused and keeps me from wanting to break away.

So yeah. Anyway. What are we gonna talk about today? Well, so this is really on topic, so I wanted to talk about. Nurturing creativity and why it's so important. And so, and then how we can, how we can do that. Ruth, I love your timing. So you barked last time and now you waited for, you were sleeping so peacefully.

Peace. Ruth is our dog. My dog, my, she's a little chiweenie mascot and our mascot. Thank you. Mm-hmm. And we gave her permission to be in last week, and she barked and now she's decided to get up and go out. Right as we're starting our, mm-hmm. Anyway, where were we? It's a D, adhd. What are we? We were talking about a DH, ADHD being the inattentive type, easily distractible squirrel.

What? No, I asked you, what are we talking about this week? Oh, like creativity. We're talking about nurturing creativity, why it's so important and, and sort of the impacts of stress on creativity, especially chronic stress. And how, like where does creativity fit? In the big picture of wellness. And I think when we think about wellness, we often think about mental health, physical health, spiritual health for a lot of folks.

And I think that creative health is feeling tapped into your own creativity, especially for people who I, who strongly identify as creatives. That should be an important, I think, factor when thinking about overall health in general and wellness. I'd like to start this conversation out with a question to you.

Do you, do you consider yourself a creative person? I, that's uhoh kind of, that's a little bit of a trick question. I, it's totally a trick question. I don't necessarily identify as a creative person, but I think that creativity can look a lot of different ways. So I know that creativity is. Him important.

But when you think about, so like I think about like my husband loves finding like new music. Oh, cool. Okay. So like, he's like very CRE in terms of just finding new music, listening to new music. I still listen to the same like nineties pop songs that I've always been listening to. Adorable. Yeah. I don't know.

And that, I don't know if that is about creativity or just like, you know, I prefer like structure systems. Spreadsheets and so mm-hmm. You know, I don't predictability. I'm not very artistic. My children are more artistic than me, and so, but I know that creativity is important for everyone. And so excited to talk about it a little bit today and, and, and think through it, even from a non-creative per.

Person perspective too. Okay. Are you gonna, you're gonna challenge me on my, yeah. So my, my goal is to have you maybe thinking about this differently by the time we leave here today. Okay. So, I mean, most of your audience would probably identify as, as well. I think that what you're saying is. It's kind of become this general truth that we've sort of adopted, that there's creative people mm-hmm.

That there's non creative people, and that somehow it's a black and white answer. And I think it really depends on how we define what is creativity. Yeah. And I think if, if we are talking about the same definition, the way I define it, it's ev everybody has. Or is inherently creative and not something that nobody can take away from you or doesn't not exist.

Yeah. It doesn't exist or not exist. It's there. It's, it's sort of like how you, how much you're tapped into it. And I, my definition, my personal definition of creativity is simply just making connections. Yeah. To things that. Nobody else has quite seen before. Maybe you have a new way of connecting things.

'cause there's really nothing new in the world right. At this point, in my opinion. Yeah, that's a, that's for another podcast. But anyway, the, the idea that. It's, it's always there. Sometimes it's stagnant and it needs to get kind of unrested and moved around and warmed up is a weird, if you're just listening and you're join in midway to this conversation, you'll be like, what?

What about talking about, well, I mean, I'm getting up on a tangent. This is a very creative outlet. For this is outside of my box. Yeah, yeah. What we're doing right now. Yes, exactly. Okay. My sister-in-law who has said to me before, she doesn't identify as somebody that considers herself very creative, and yet she sends us these beautiful, these pictures of these like giant homemade croissants that she makes and she mm-hmm.

But I'm pretty sure she grinds her own greens, like that kind of. Yeah. Level of baker, you can't tell me that's not creative. Yeah. So I think it is in how we define it, but I, I think creativity involves a sense of novelty and a sense of doing something that sort of strays from the straight wine. And being a numbers person, I can see how that could challenge the way your brain likes for things to be neatly slotted.

Yeah. Together. So, anyway. Okay. Well, so my first, well. I think we wanted to start, we've already cut gotten there is why is nurturing creativity so important? And I think that we can think about creativity as not only being something that supports you with your client work and doing design work, but also helping you solve business problems as well.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I, when you. Kinda talk to me about this topic. A thing that I was thinking about around like the importance of creativity and me being a science background girl is I've seen several studies that when kids are young, that having them be part do a musical instrument is really helpful in their academic outcomes.

The connection between like, oh yeah. Piano and math. And so of course you know I have my children in musical instruments because that's what studies. So what do your girls, what do your girls play? Well, one is in a piano, one has tried several and we haven't landed yet. That's okay. So we cut ukulele. Yes.

Fun and a little bit keyboard. I think she's interested in singing, which I know you love. Ooh, yeah. Tell that girl she can come over and we will, we'll sing our little hearts out. Yeah. We've got, we, we had some C karaoke this Saturday for Valentine's. Day. Oh, cute. So yeah, you send her over here, we'll get, we'll get to singing, but I, so I know Yeah, that makes so much sense.

You know, that it is, is really important and, you know, and have, I've seen it in, in different spaces in my own life too, but how really nurturing that creativity is also helpful in other outlets, which is kind of the inverse of what you're talking about today. But, well, I don't know. I think that if, if we can redefine creativity as, you know, this something that gives us joy, we're doing it simply for the sake of doing it.

It's, it's not necessarily, there doesn't need to be like you build a shelf because you need a place to put your stuff. Right. But doing something purely for the sake of creating. It's challenging to those of us who want to just get the laundry done and have the kids to their sports and check the boxes.

And so when it, to me, when I think about overall wellness and health, that is something that fits in there.

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Anybody who's been listening to the podcast for a number of years will remember the health journey that I've been on and. How it started out with, I've talked about this a lot. It started out as a desire to imp improve my relationship with sleep. Okay. Which was a really unhealthy relationship with sleep.

And then that morphed into going alcohol free and that was all two years ago now, congrat, thanks. Yeah, it's been really great. And the experience that I've had. Going without alcohol. And then it turned into like, you know, taking care of hormonal health and all those things, and it's like, oh wow. I'm really starting to see the connection between the, the healthier I feel, the more creative I feel, and that allows me to show up as a better interior designer, hopefully a better business owner and a better leader.

And so. I, I, yeah. I'm just really curious to start talking about how we can nurture that. Yeah. So that it can help us be better business owners and designers and humans. I have one more anecdote to share, please. Okay. Tell me all the stories. I'm here for you. Well, I had a, uh, therapist once we were kind of working on how my.

My entire life was really my job for, for quite a while. A, a while and mm-hmm. Um, and so we were really working on some strategies to, meaning that your career was your Yes. Primary identifier. Yes, that's right. And just. A lot of my time, my thinking energy, my emotional capacity yes. Was like wrapped up in, in my career.

And so we, we were talking about how to start to like expand other parts of my life and I was so proud. One day I came and told her that I had been waking up and exercising in the morning and she was like, okay, that's great, but like you're trying to tie everything to like. Product productivity, like this is like a thing that you have to do.

And so she's like, what kinds of creative outlets do you have in your life? And I shared with her that like one of, one of the. Creative things that I know how to do. I don't know that I'm good at it or whatever, but is knit. And so she was like, I want you to, oh, knitting like to knit? Mm-hmm. Oh, cute. Yeah.

So she said, I want you to try one morning when you wake up early, not to do anything productive, but just to sit. Oh my gosh. And knit. It was very hard for me, but I, I just thought it was really interesting that she was like, this is, this is a way to. Kinda start to get yourself outside of this work career is everything in your life.

Uh, so anyway, that was another anecdote. So, so did you get up a net? No. Once. Should I try that again? Did think, I didn't feel, was it really uncomfortable? It was, yeah. Yeah, because I, because it's similar to what you were just talking about with like, I'd rather do the laundry. Mm-hmm. I'd rather be getting things done.

It didn't feel productive. It was hard to make my brain be like. I'm up. I should be answering emails or you know. Yeah. You know. Yeah. So, oh Lord, I don't know. So we rabbit hole. What's funny? Well, no. Yes, I crawl. I love a rabbit hole and I think other people do too. But maybe if we're losing on or audience as you speak.

Oh, sorry, is, I'm joking. What I was gonna say though is that I think that we sat down to talk about something that. It maybe felt a little bit light on oh, at first, and all of a sudden I'm realizing just how deep this topic really could get. Mm. Yeah. 'cause I think that we can tie creativity to spirituality, our connection to God source, whatever you call God if, if that's even in your vocabulary, that it can get into that.

And I certainly feel that way for myself, but I can't speak for others. So it's, it's. It's a big whole can of worms, but I love talking about it, but so I do think you should try it again. Yeah. I would love or or something. Do you ever meditate? I'll your scarf, then it feels too productive. It's just for the sake of creative.

Yes, I know. I know. Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny. But I think it's good. I mean, yeah, obviously I was just trying to make another connection to like why it is so important to like nurture that creativity. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely Curious, meditate. If you don't mind me asking, was this before or after you made the transition?

Away From the before? Yeah, per sort in preparation or as you were, as you were ginning? Yeah. After I was making decisions on whether or not to, you know, leave that career. Yeah. It's a big choice. I'm glad you had somebody to talk that through with Right, because so, so often we, we don't, but well, okay, so okay.

Back to, so we, we've established that we need to. Maybe reconsider our definition of creativity. And the way I personally have come about it is it's something, it's, it brings you joy. It is making something just for the sake of making something. Yeah. That doesn't involve maybe necessarily a. An outcome, a productive outcome that you can check box off of.

Yeah. You know, artists aren't over there checking off like, I made a new piece of art today. You know? Oh, maybe they're, and, and that there's a sense of novelty, I think involved. Yeah. There's, there's something that sort of strays from the, the everyday stuff. So if we start from there and then we talk about how.

It. What I've started to notice, this is totally a personal antidote, but I'm starting to read more about it and I'm getting interested in it, is this connection between overall wellness. Mm-hmm. And I'm gonna come back to the impact of stress on creativity. 'cause I wanna first talk about this relationship between your overall wellness and creativity.

Mm. And my own personal anecdote is that as I have gotten, I've improved my health over the last three years. I've seen. And increase in creativity for myself. So this is more the desire to do those things on a whim just because, or feeling like I was able to creatively solve a problem with work or whatever.

And it feels like it comes more naturally. So the, one of the things that I've been learning a lot about is the overall, the nervous system. And so we have. We have our nervous system and we have the parasympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system. I am not an expert on these things, but I will, what I can briefly tell you is that the parasympathetic nervous system is when you're in rest and digest, okay?

And that's when your body can heal and recover and restore. And we want to be in parasympathetic state. Most of the time, sympathetic nervous system is really fight or flight. So this is what we need to help keep us safe and alive. But we often have overactive nervous systems just from stressors in life.

You know, we weren't meant to live in sort of these urban environments. And so the, the lights, the buzzers, the sounds, I go into this when we talk about neuroaesthetics, but not to stray too far there. So the sympathetic nervous system is fight or flight, and we want to try and. Get our body into the parasympathetic state more often.

And there's a lot of ways we can do that. And so some of the ways that we could do this are things like physical exercise, good healthy sleep habits, eating well, being in community with people. Mm-hmm. So whether that's a book club or your in Mahjong or. What else? What else? What do we do joining our designer's race community.

Oh, sure. Right. What else do I have here? Yeah, it's, it's this idea of novelty, right? So stepping out of your routine, this is a really big one. Mm. Stepping out of your routine. Whether that's something as simple as, I'm gonna take the scenic route today. 'cause it's prettier, even though it takes an extra five minutes to get home or whatever.

Or whether it's taking a trip. Yeah. So, you know, it could be little or small. It can be, you can introduce novelty in little ways. Each and every day. So interesting. This isn't exactly getting out of your routine, but I think about like, even when you're do, when you do things that are unrelated to the work and how, like an idea will come up, you know, like when you're, you'll be like in the shower and you're like, this is where I got some super creative idea.

But I do think that like, it, it triggers your mind in a different way when you are doing something different. I, I love that, like mm-hmm. Taking a different route. Mm-hmm. It just like changes your level of awareness that I'm sure there's science to back that up. Yes, but I'm actually not confident what it is.

But yeah, I think about like working from a new coffee shop and just how that, the kind of different surroundings, just like. Spark something new for you. Yeah, you know, a hundred percent and, and I know that there's so much neuroscience that's happening right now around this and probably a little digging.

We would be able to find some research on exactly what happens to our brain when we introduce novelty and how that can help support, support us in creativity. You've mentioned the shower comment, which is sort of this universal idea of like, you know, you have these, the best ideas come in the shower.

There's reason behind that. It's because that's very often. Such busy lives that we live where we have a minute to think straight. Yeah, right. We don't have our phones attached to our hips. We don't have children asking us a good giant questions. Yeah. We are not staring at email. Right. We just have a minute to be quiet, which is, yeah.

Oh my gosh. You are getting right to the heart of what. I'm so excited what we're gearing up for, which we're gonna talk about in a little bit, but we've got a spring reset that is starting in March. Yeah. Starts on March 12th. So we'll get into that in a little bit. Talk about that. But, but let's get back to, but yeah, I also think about, I know that, you know, you kind of named this as being like a wellness.

Step, or did you say it or not? But like some times I'll be so in the work zone and I know that I gotta take a walk. You know? I'm like, I gotta, but I'm like, oh, I won't finish all these things. But as soon as I do take a walk mm-hmm. The number of like new ideas that I'm like, oh, now I gotta write down all these like things, you know?

It just is so interesting how. Just like a change of pace also sparks a lot of creativity. So See, you are inherently a creative person. Yeah. I mean, spreadsheets can be creative, right? But you, when you make a, what do you make the tops rainbow color. And they're on titles? No. Like the new calculations that you could do.

What if I calculated it this way? Oh yeah. Sorry, tell me, you know, this is how we have love at first sight since we met in a park and, and, and I heard her talk about her love of spreadsheets, and I knew it was like, come to mama, let's talk. Okay. I love a spreadsheet. I love what it tells me, but I do not like to be the architect of spreadsheets.

So there's that. But what we we're talking about is how to nurture creativity and the importance of it, tying it to overall wellness and w. And you talked about getting out of routine. Yeah. Right. So, so just wanting to make sure I wrap up the list. That's, that I sort of had in my head about the different ways we can combat stress.

Well, we really didn't get into the stress component, so we now know through a lot of research that. Stress in our body creates a cascade of hormones that can impact your overall wellbeing, your mood, your ability to get good sleep, your ability to regulate your body temperature. All of these things can be affected by stress and stress.

There's like chronic stress, which is like kind of how I felt a little bit lately. What's going on? Tell me It's, tell us. Well, I mean, it's, it's. It's good stress. It's like the, it's being really busy with work with Yeah. Having some really fun and exciting projects. Trying to hit some, some really key milestones and deadlines, managing a lot of other people's money and it's like, there's a lot of pressure and a lot of stakes and a lot of relationships and, and trying to do all of that while also, you know, being a mom and all the things.

Planning for summer camps. Good lord. Can I hire that out to somebody? Well, I literally, I'm sure that's a thing. All I wanna do is just hire somebody to like, figure out what happens to my children this summer. I can't, I, they're just gonna hang out in your house all day. No, I don't want it. What were we talking about?

Stress. Stress. Yeah. Stressed. Well, I mean, I, all things to kinda ask you a question, I'm curious. What? Yeah. What are some ways that like stress is impacting your creativity to like be real on the nose with the you, like, well, I think so. So I wanted to differentiate between mm-hmm. Having the healthy stress and unhealthy stress because it's about balance.

We need some level of healthy stress to be in balance, really. That's stress. Like I worked out really hard today, or I. Shoot, I need to find a babysitter so that my partner and I could go on this date. You know, that's. Those are things that are difficult but achievable. Right. And then there is really a hindrance.

Something that's a hindrance, it's a blocker keeping you from getting to do the things that you want to do, whether that's just not having enough time to work out, or whether that's you're going through a divorce or a big loss or financial trouble. Those kinds of real heavy hitting stress, you know, we want to minimize that the best that we can.

Mm-hmm. Knowing that that's not always possible. And, and that's different than that everyday sort of like. Healthy stress levels. Mm-hmm. Um, so, but what we know is that the, the big kind of chronic stress is really, really, really hard on our overall ability to show up and be creative. Our, our brains start to sort of, we get tunnel vision and we can only see like right.

What's right in front of us. And part of being creative is being able to make these bigger connections from things that. Some that maybe nobody has quite seen yet for putting certain elements together that all of a sudden creates magic anyway. And that's hard to do when you're in that fight or flight stage.

Yeah. Because you can't really think beyond what's right in front of you. Yeah. So that's kind of the neurosciences coming out. Yeah. About how. Um, chronic stress like that impacts the brain and your overall health and ability to, to show up in a, in a creative way. So, we wanna be healthy, if we wanna be creative, and creativity is really important to helping solve challenges for our clients and challenges for ourselves in work and life and, and career.

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So, you know, just back to those, what can we do to, you know, knowing that stress is inevitable, right? We do not live in a bubble where we're not gonna experience stress. I mean, you cannot turn on the news and expect to live in a world without stress. Yeah. And that's just the world we live in, but how can we manage it in a healthy way?

Yeah. And so I think we talked a lot about this. We talked about sleep, we talked about healthy exercise. I. Girl, I just love to stretch, just stretches lay on the floor and stretch my body and that's great. I mean, even earlier you were like, I just need to stand while we talk. Yes. Standing and talking, walking, all of that, limiting alcohol.

Alcohol really has takes a a major toll on your body's stress responses. And if you go back, I don't know the episode number, but we will put it in the show notes back to my episode on my decision to cut alcohol for my life. For months, and I did it for dry January of last year, I wanna say. So it's been about two years and the, and it just continued and it's been a really great life choice for me personally.

But because there's a relationship between alcohol and stress, then there becomes this relationship the way I see it, between creativity as well. Yeah. So if you've been sober, curious, and I like to, I don't really use the word sober, I use the word alcohol free. 'cause I live in Colorado. I would say that, I think they call that California sober.

Yeah. Or, but in my case, Colorado Sober. Colorado. Sober, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So Anyw, who, what else? Meditation. Meditation is real, was like something I. Shunned and like turned away from for so long. I was like, not me. I'd rather have an extra hole in my head. I just, this thought of sitting and being still and quiet sounded like pure and torture, and I love it now.

And you use an app or, yeah. Oh, okay. I will tell you some of my favorite apps, my all time favorite is Insight Timer. I like this because you can create your own timers and bells and they have bells to choose from and lengths of time. So what I have is I have like a 10 minute, 15 minute, 30 minute. I have a 60 minute one.

I've never used it. Never. Its impressive. I've never done a 60 minute sit. Yeah. But the first bell is one sound. Yes. And then there's one bell. Every interval for, and you can choose the intervals. And I chose one minute. There's a bell every minute with a different sound. And then the end bell has its own sound.

So you sort of know when you're checking, but it's, yeah, there's something about the bells bringing you back to center. Mm. And helps, you know, 'cause thoughts come and go and that's okay. We don't want judge them. We just want them to, to keep on moving and then come back to center. And those bells really help that with that centering for me personally.

Yeah. So I like that. And I like the inside timer, but they also have. They have guided meditation, sleep stories, all that. Yeah. They have a, it's really just more morphed into a, a wellness app, so I really like that one. Yeah. I use my aura ring, so I, I wear the aura ring and I use that to track my physical health and stats, so that's been fun.

My readiness factor. Oh yes. Well. You'll know 'cause I just vented to you before the show. Oh yes. About what a stressful day I had yesterday. And so naturally my sleep is at a 59%. So terrible night of sleep. And my readiness factor is 69. That's not good. Won't matter. Not good at all. But here we are. So what, this recording anyway.

Yeah, I know. Well stay vie, right. Wait, that's the wrong. He like, life goes on. Somebody don't, it's fine. Done judge. Okay. Anyway, so that's been a really fun. Tool to use to sort of help with that. And then another one I liked is the tapping solution, which is a really great tapping, tapping solution. Okay. So there's really short, so if you're at all familiar with tapping, it's, oh, I'm gonna butcher this if I try to describe it, I think.

But it's where you take two fingers and you're tapping on these different tapping points and then you're saying out loud certain things and they do guided tapping. So you can, so maybe you're having like a really terrible day, but you're wanting to turn the day around. You can do a two minute tap. You tap all these tapping points, which are on your hand, forehead, so on and so forth, and then.

I don't, I don't know how this shit works, works, but every time I'm like, okay, I'm fine. I'm better. I'm over it. That's great. What problems? No problems here. Just tapped. Tap your problems away. Well, I know you talked a lot about kind of general wellness, but I know there are some other ways to think about really nurturing creativity and so I know we had talked about a little bit of getting out of routine.

I know you had shared earlier just like. Engaging with Arts? Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. Your Brain on Art is a really great book. Highly recommend. We'll put a link in the share notes. So Your Brain on Art is this phenomenal book that helps you understand the neuroscience between your relationship to the arts. And what they're talking about is whether you're engaging with the arts, meaning you are.

C literally physically creating something, whether that's pottery or whether that's playing an instrument or you're cooking a beautiful meal, or whether you're observing it. So being at the theater or a music concert, something like that. What happens in the brain, it, it really lights up these centers of the brain that are conducive to overall mental wellness and, and mental health that it affects it in a positive way.

The science of there. Go read the book and so. Putting yourselves in the path of these things is really important. So now you can buy those concert tickets guilt free and say, this is for my mental health. You book that trip and say, this is, I'm sorry, this is a business expense because it's gonna expand my creativity, which is gonna help me be a better business owner.

I'm not sure that will. Fly with the irs. Oh, but or my bookkeeper. Like, cute, but no. Yeah. But you got, the idea is that it doesn't matter whether you're physically creating something or you are viewing listening. It all really has an impact on, on our brain in a positive way that can help us to become better problem solvers and to think in a more creative way.

So putting, putting yourself in the, in the. Putting yourself in the path of awe is another one. And that's actually a concept. I have a little card up there that is one of these principles or patterns in Neuroaesthetics. So Neuroaesthetics is something that I talk a lot about on the relationship between your mental health and and the arts.

But putting yourself in the path of awe is this idea and concept of engaging with things that bring this sense of feeling of awe, which is. That there's, we belong to something bigger, that there's sort of like this, the picture that they show up here is, I, I believe Stonehenge. Right. Experiencing Stonehenge would make you feel the sense of awe.

It's just like, wow, how did this even happen? Right. Or going to a, a show where it's just like there's incredible music or lights. Like those are things that can help contribute to overall sense of creativity. Yeah. That's great. What are you doing to put yourself in the path of awe these days? Well, I mean, you've reminded me to a show we're gonna go see.

Yes. Oh my. Bless me. Oh my God. Okay, so that you, right, we were talking about this earlier, but we didn't quite get to it. Being in a parasympathetic state, there are ways that you could do that. In one of those ways is laughter. And being with friends and certainly not you and I are gonna go to That's right.

A comedy show. So yeah. That'll be fun. So that'll be, that'll be fun. Yeah. See, it's your mental health. You don't need to go to that. You don't hear that here. Missing, missing something at the kids' school for it. That's okay. That's okay. Dad will do it. Dad. I can go. It'll be great. It's gonna be fun. What else?

Dancing, singing. Dancing and singing. I mean, we did that this week. I happens with our caftan karaoke, but, well, I mean, I do it daily, but, and get a lot of eye rolls from the children. That is the best part. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Very embarrassing. Good. So I'm trying to think of what else I do to put myself in the path of awe.

I need to think about it more, you know? It's kind of cool when you start to think about things like travel and music. Yeah. And the arts and free time as like, I mean, this is what makes a rich life, in my opinion, right? This is would, or my kids, you'll understand this 'cause you have kids, girls are the same age.

Sometimes our kids will ask me questions like, mom, are we rich? And I'm like, yes, yes. Mm-hmm. We are very, very rich. And then I love to have that conversation about what is that, what does that mean? I mean, I have an incredibly rich life of, I mean, gratitude, God just right there. Gratitude is another thing.

Having a really strong gratitude practice can help become a part of this. Yeah. Desire to get, nurture your creativity and, and get closer to that. Yeah. So. Oh, I feel like we should get some paints out or something after this lunch break. Color by number. Oh my god. You want? You want, okay, we'll see. We'll get you a color by number.

I want a big sloppy canvas with some paint and a paint suit. I tell, can I tell you a funny story? Please do. Okay, so I would, but to a couple of these like paint, wine, paint, sip. Thanks. It's so stressful, Kate stepping. I'm like, wait, a miss the step? What a, and they're like, just do whatever. That's unacceptable.

I cannot undo whatever. That's wild. She here. Would you ever go to a rage room? I could, I could try anything. Once I had a roommate once tell me that I experienced emotions on a scale of four to six. She experiences them from a one to 10 girl. Yes, I am like your friend. I have this funny story with my husband.

When he and I were first dating, he called me from the bus stop. 'cause at the time he was working in Boulder and would take the bus back and forth from Denver to Boulder and then. Uh, whatever, take, take the next bus to his, his house. Anyway, he was missing his connection, his connecting bus, and it was cold and it was windy, and the bus was supposed to come, and then it didn't.

And then another round, you know, you know how it comes, like every 15 minutes or multiple of these came by and there was no bus, and he was so mad and. I think at this point we were both using flip phones, but anyway, he, so he couldn't like check to see what was going on with the buses, so he was just stuck there.

And I think this was even pre Uber, which sounds kind of crazy. But he called me and he was, and we were just dating. He's like, so I'm down here at the bus stop and this bus is not coming. Is there any way you could come get me? And I was of course, eager. I was like, of course, I'll come get you. And I get there and he sits down in the car and he is like, I am so mad I could kick a tree.

And I'm like, that's all you've got. That's it. You finally gonna kick a tree. Okay. You know what I would look like getting into this car. Mm-hmm. And just pick a tree. That's so cute. He's so mad. You could kick a tree. Yeah. So you experience emotions in a four to six? On a four to six. Okay. Yeah. That's charming.

Where are we? I'm so, okay. So I'm really excited to tie this up with this invitation. I believe by the time this airs, we will have registration open for an event that we're gonna have this spring that I'm really excited about. So the event is called the Spring Reset, and it launches on March 12th, right?

March 12th is the Lyme event, but there's a couple other things that we, it starts on the ninth? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Okay. I knew this. So we're the, the reset event is really about recalibrating, and it's an invitation for you to join us. It's gonna be three days. You're gonna get a video in your inbox from me, and each day there will be a.

Short little guided mindset question and a prompt that you are going to find some quiet time within that day to sit down and to think about these, these questions and these prompts. And you're gonna do that for three days. And then on the fourth day, we're gonna get together for a live. Debrief. This is gonna be, we have a limited number of seats, so this is gonna be more of an intimate setting, but it's gonna be really, really impactful.

And the idea is that on, you know, that that last day we could sort of come together and talk about what did, what did we uncover? Mm-hmm. About what are those things that might be under the surface that are keeping us maybe stuck. Yeah. Or trapped in stress, or trapped in indecision. Mm-hmm. And I think that this is an invitation to get quiet.

This is an invitation to get honest with yourself in a safe space and with the support of some other folks, interior designers, business owners, that really understand the nuances of this banana cakes business. Yeah. I'm gonna tell you this 'cause when it's good, it's great. You know. Yeah. It's, it's great.

And then, but there are aspects of this industry that are extremely difficult. Yeah. And I think that that's why this community has become such a resourceful group is 'cause we have been for so long, sort of like crowdsourcing finally. Right. Forever it was, you know, kind of gate gatekeeping. Yeah. And, and I think along that's changed and I thank God.

And so I think we wanna just talk about some of the realities of that. In an honest way, in an open way, and kind of cut through some of that noise and yeah, some of the BS that, you know, I, I'm gonna address imposter syndrome once and for all. I, I have, I'm, I. I am at this place now. Well, I mean, what you just shared just reminded me of like, you know, when I was a teacher, there was a great community of other teachers.

They kind of knew what I was experiencing. When I became a principal, it, it, it's just, it can be lonely at the top and like for a solopreneur that feel that can also feel similar. Yeah. You know, it's like nobody knows what I'm experiencing and I do think that while. You know, you do have a lot of resources that are really helpful and practical for interior designers.

I do think that this idea of community and really getting down to like, yeah, this shit is hard, and like some of these things are really hard, and just knowing that somebody else is experiencing it, it, you know, does, your husband doesn't, doesn't really help. Yeah. Your sister doesn't get it right. Your mama doesn't get it.

Yeah. Even your best friend might not get it. Yeah. So I think that idea of community and also just really kind of digging into like what are those blocks and, and how do we get through 'em to really thrive? Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, I'm excited for that. So what you're gonna do is you're gonna go to designers, Oasis dot coms, word slash resets.

Reset. R-E-S-E-T. Yep. Signers oasis.com/reset to register for that. And then what else? Find us Kate Beal, designers Oasis. On all the places. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, great. Also, I'm gonna be at High Point Oh, so if you go High Point, find me, should have said DM or. Don't send me an email 'cause I don't, I won't. I will respond.

You can send me an email or she'll Alright. No, if you guys have questions, you have comments, you have requests for topics you wanna hear conversation on. Yeah. Something specific, reach out. hello@designersoasis.com. Alright, we'll see you guys soon. Bye. Bye.

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