What is resilience and why is it so important for creatives?

These are questions I have been exploring in recent Creative Genius webinars and online group coaching sessions.

Resilience is the ability to recover quickly from difficulties.

In the land of psychology, resilience is defined as the process of adapting well in the face of trauma, tragedy, threats, or other significant sources of stress.

By that definition, resilience is not the absence of stresses and difficulties but how quickly we are able to metabolise those stresses & difficulties and move on from them.

The great news for us creatives is that resilience and creativity go hand in hand.

Creativity is flexible thinking, originality, perceptiveness and being able to come up with something new.

Are you starting to catch on to why creativity might be a tool to unlock greater resilience?

I invite you to think about it like this:

Say you are experiencing an obstacle or block to your creative endeavours, for example writing, auditions, or business strategies,

The more creatively you approach your obstacles and blocks, the easier it is to overcome those obstacles and blocks - plus the more enjoyable!

If we allow ourselves to get curious and creative, those obstacles and blocks are the way forward.

Although no one is completely immune to stress, we can take time to go to the “resilience gym” and build our ability to bounce back. When we do this, we learn skills to embrace challenges that actually fuel our creativity.

One approach to building resilience is a holistic healing method called Organic Intelligence® (OI).

This is an approach that was first used to support people in managing and dissolving past and current stressors.

Organic Intelligence® promotes healing from a somatic or physiological perspective in order to reorganise and stabilise the nervous system, thereby increasing the nervous system’s ability to quickly adapt to stress AKA building the body’s resilience.

OI gives less focus to what might be causing pain or distress and instead encourages healing by asking the individual to focus on what feels good in the right now.

By reallocating attention to what feels good, OI enables people to move beyond their stresses and maximise the sources of pleasure and joy in their lives.

OI has started to infiltrate the world of creatives, too.

Lydia Flock is the founder of the holistic voice coaching company, Flockstars and is redefining the training of the singing and speaking voice with her unique method The Flock Flow.

The Flock Flow combines Organic Intelligence® and other holistic stress healing techniques with voice science and vocal pedagogy (the act of teaching).

This kind of approach uses the combined forces of resilience training and creativity.

As the first to apply Organic Intelligence® to singing training, Lydia is reimagining and reinventing her field. Lydia’s method has produced powerful results.

One past student reported,

Lydia’s easily accessible techniques helped my brain forget bad performance habits including self-doubt and fear

Another said,

I have seen a huge change in how I sing and how I feel about singing from working with [Lydia]

This is what creative voice users need – attention to the mind-body-voice connection.

Lydia’s soulful approach addresses the whole artist and so it’s not surprising to see a plethora of students who have reported increased feelings of confidence on the testimonial’s page of the Flockstars website.

She is currently in the process of publishing her research on the interaction between voicework and well-being.

Combining resilience training with creative training produces dynamic and energising results.

This is exactly what Lydia Flock is doing at Flockstars!

I wonder what would happen if more creatives incorporated resilience training into their work?

The Flock Flow could be the start of a creative revolution!

If you'd like to find out more about how Flockstars can serve you, please visit Flockstars or contact Lydia directly at lydia@flockstars.com.