005: 5 Creative Steps to Less Stress

Mindfulness and meditation is great in theory but sometimes when we actually put it into practice, it’s not quite as zen as we imagined that it would be.

The benefits that meditative practices can have on your life are nearly endless. But most people face challenges when incorporating meditation into their everyday life. Things like kids climbing all over you or a phone call that disrupts you mid-practice. The truth is, that’s completely normal.

In this episode, I am giving you an overview of my free guide, 5 Creative Steps to Less Stress & More Joy. You’ll hear me chat about the benefits of meditation, why you shouldn’t expect perfection with meditation and how these exercises can be used to ground yourself (or as a tool when you’re overly stressed out).

What you’ll find in this episode:

A reminder on the three steps to mindful creation
The endless benefits of meditation for your life
How the challenges of incorporating meditation into your everyday life is completely normal
An overview of what’s in the 5 Creative Steps to Less Stress & More Joy guide
Why this is not a time to expect perfection
Why this exercise can be used when you’re stressed or to just ground yourself

Read the transcript of the episode below:

I'm not sure if you can be alive today and not have heard about the incredible benefits of mindfulness and meditation. It's all great in theory, but sometimes in practice, it's not quite as Zen as we imagined that it would be. Today is episode five. We are talking about five creative steps to less stress.
Welcome to the committed to create podcasts. I'm Lisa Funk and I am so excited to hang out with you here. As we talk about the power of creating with our hands and our minds, I like to keep it real, remind you that you are not alone and share specific ways that creativity and mindfulness can help us live even more meaningful and joyful lives.
I am so glad that you're here.
Hello and welcome back. I am so glad that you're here over at my house. Hanging out on my big blue couch. Remember we're just hanging out. I'm excited today to talk to you about five steps, five creative steps to less stress and more joy. First I wanted to introduce some segments. So I thought it would be fun every once in a while, before we get started with our main topic of the podcast episode to include some different segments.
So it wouldn't be multiple segments every time, just one. And it would be different possibly every time. And sometimes maybe we won't have one. But some of the segments might be something like creating with kids or what I'm currently creating or a mindful moment, things like that. And today I want to do a segment that's called mindful creativity.
All right. So this segment mindful creativity check-in. I want to do a little recap from episode three. That was called join the movement where I invited you to do five minutes of mindful creativity every day. Now this is not a test. This is not a pass or fail. This is not something you're going to be graded on, where if you don't do it every single day, then you're failing. No, the point of this is to make it easy and doable. And to remind you that even five minutes of mindful creativity can make a huge difference. So I want to remind you what the three steps of mindful creation are. The first is to focus on the process, not perfection.
The second step is to be present in the creating. And the third step is to not judge the product. I know that it takes a little bit of practice to retrain our brains, to not focus on those things, to not want it to be perfect and to judge it and we get those, we get that kind of mean brain in there telling us that it needs to look better and we should give up.
But the point of mindful creation is to kind of release our attachment to those things and enjoy the process. So you might be thinking with. Five minutes, only five minutes a day. What is it that I could create? And the truth is that the goal here, again, isn't to create some masterpiece or some product that you're then going to showcase or sell, or you have a way, this is just including some more creativity throughout your day, without the goal of.
It being super productive and super important with a ton of pressure on it. This might be grabbing a piece of paper and a crayon and scribbling. This might be hand lettering, your grocery list or cutting your kids' sandwiches into fun shapes. You name it. This could be something really small. I recommend having a queue each day, if possible, where you might take those five minutes to do some mindful creation.
And again, this doesn't mean that you need to be by yourself or that you need to get a babysitter. This could be when your kids are sitting down, maybe after breakfast and you just pull out some crayons and some paper to doodle with them, or it could be after you put your kids down for a nap, or maybe right after you get home from work or whatever time works for you.
So I would love to hear if you've tried this. And what you are doing for five minutes of mindful creativity, you can leave a review for the podcast with what you're doing. That's a great way to share it. I read all of the reviews and I'm so grateful for them. Or you can tag me online on Instagram at hand lettered design to show me, and if I ever share your review publicly on Instagram stories or on the podcast, send me an email or a DM, and then you get to pick out a free online lettering course. So I will normally do that either at the end of the podcast or sometime in the middle and then occasionally on Instagram as well. And you can follow me there at hand letter design. All right. So that was our mindful creativity check in.
All right. So today's episode is called. Five creative steps to less stress. You may have noticed. I've mentioned it before at the end of the other podcast episodes, because it's a free guide, a free download that you can find at committedtocreate.com slash less stress. I'll put it in the show notes for you so you can easily have a link to it.
So I want to give you a little background on why I created this for you. I'm not sure if you've ever tried to meditate, but to me, it's one of those things that sounds really amazing in theory, it's also one of those things that you're hearing about constantly in regards to mindfulness and meditation and improved mental health.
Studies show that a meditation practice is proven to reduce stress, increase well-being connectedness and empathy. It improves focus and relationships. It makes you more creative. I love that one improves memory and ability to make decisions helps overcome addictions improves immune system and reduces physical and emotional pain.
I mean, the benefits are endless. That's amazing. Right. And I've even had incredible experiences with meditations when I've been led through them, maybe at the end of a yoga class when everything was set up right. You know, there was the right music and my children weren't there, or maybe at other types of retreats or classes, but when it came to incorporating it into my everyday life, it was a little bit challenging.
Either to do it at all or to stick with it regularly. And I should add that that is extremely normal. I have four young children who are almost always awake when I am. Honestly, they wake up at five and I'm pretty tired and ready to go to bed soon after they do. And they also enjoy climbing on me anytime I'm trying to meditate.
Now, I do believe that meditation, even under these circumstances can be extremely beneficial and I will get into that more in future episodes. I do recommend still trying it, but I know that traditional meditations and mindfulness practices don't always feel super natural or appealing to many people, maybe that's you.
So I thought, how can we combine creativity and mindfulness, ding, ding, my favorite thing and the whole premise of this podcast into a practice for lessening stress, which is what this guide is all about. So one excellent practice for coping with anxiety or stressful situations is to ground yourself with your five senses.
Using grounding techniques helps us to create space and to just refocus on the current moment, I think that learning a grounding practice is a great way to take a first step into a meditation or a mindfulness practice. And I have found that not only is this exercise helpful to get us out of negative experiences, like an anxiety attack or a depressive episode, but it can also really help us to just increase our joy by.
Fully experiencing and enjoying the present moment. I created this five steps guide that you can print out and use with any writing utensil that you've got. You don't need anything fancy, no fancy brush pens or coloring pencils or anything. You can use a pencil, a crayon, you name it. Now, could you do a grounding exercise without this guide?
Of course you can. You can totally focus on grounding yourself with your five senses on your own. Inside of your brain, but I think that having something physical in your hands that you're following along with helps you to keep your otherwise overloaded and easily distractable brain on track. So today here on the podcast, I want to give you an overview of what's included in this five creative steps to less stress guide that I've made for you.
I want to include an overview here of the concepts. Of course you can go and download it and print it out, which I recommend that you do, because you might be wondering how did you make grounding with our senses into a creative activity while some of this is definitely visual. That will be helpful to see once you print it out, I'm going to explain the basic concepts here. Just a little side note. When you download it, it comes with a printable PDF and an instructional video. That's going to walk you through visually examples of each of these steps. So do not worry. You're not going to have to remember everything that I'm talking about.
Now, once you download it, you'll have guidance and support and instructions on exactly what to do. So, like I said, this is a grounding exercise to really center yourself using your five senses. But because we are combining creativity with this practice, each sense, each of our five senses is going to be connected to a creative little exercise.
Okay. So this is not an opportunity to judge yourself as you're doing this creative practice. I want you to just do it. No one is ever going to see this. This is not a time to expect perfection. This is just grounding yourself with each of your five senses. Doing a very, very simple creative practice. Now, once you download it with the video, I'll walk you through it all.
I'm just briefly going to explain how it works here. So step one is using your sight. And so for this creative step, I ask you to look around, see what you notice with your eyes, grab a pencil or any writing utensil, and just really roughly sketch what you see. This is a great. Practice to just look around you.
And again, this is not going to be hung on a wall of any museum. This is not going to be submitted to an art teacher. This is just a practice of looking at things, noticing the shape and using your hand to just sketch and draw roughly, you don't even have to look at what you're sketching, but it's moving from your brain into your hand onto the paper.
And it really forces you to focus on what you are seeing around you. So that is the first sense is the sense of sight and what you are seeing. So for step two is what do you hear? And I've created a little graph for you, and this one's a little bit harder to explain. It's a little bit easier to see visually, but the graph on the one side is the volume of what you're hearing.
And on the other side of the graph is the frequency at which you are hearing it. And so I challenge you in this one, too. Stop and listen to the different sounds that you're hearing. There might be a line that's really low on the graph and that's kind of stable. That might be like the hum of your computer fan.
And then there might be another line that's a little bit higher in volume on the graph that might be your children and their lovely noises. There could be many different lines of the different things that you're hearing. It kind of forces you to get quiet and to use your ears and to listen to what you are presently hearing.
And it's kind of just a fun, little creative visual to look at what you are listening to. Step number three is what are you touching? And on this step, I have a little diagram of a human and you get to shade in or circle the different parts of your body that are coming into contact with something. So you're really going to get inside of your body and sense what you are feeling.
And then there is a little table. That has a column for which body part, what it's touching and how that feels. So it's just getting your pen onto paper. Could you think all of this in your mind? Yes. And eventually after you've done this enough times, it will be easier to do this without necessarily always needing a pen and paper, but I find that it's so helpful to have this exercise, hands-on exercise, to guide you through. The next step is number four. What do you taste? And on this page, you'll see that I have all of these different descriptive words of adjectives of what you might be tasting in your mouth. And this could be the last thing you ate. I have on here. Bitter, sweet, dry, bland, rich, spicy, salty, tasty, savory, and more.
And the exercise, the creative exercise with this step is to take your pen or marker or whatever you're using and to trace the lettering of what taste you are experiencing. And step number five is what do you smell? And for this creative step, I have a step-by-step instructional guide of drawing, both a rose, and a birthday cake and you might be thinking, why would I be learning how to draw a rose and a birthday cake for the sense of smell? Well, the reason why I've chosen a rose and a birthday cake for the sense of smell is because when I have learned how to center myself with breathing techniques, it's helpful to imagine breathing in a nice deep breath.
Like I would breathe in like put my nose into a beautiful rose and smell it and then breathe out a nice long breath as if I'm blowing up the birthday candles. So as you are tracing the rose and drawing your own roses and tracing the birthday cake with the candles and drawing it yourself, it's a reminder to breathe in deeply and breathe out deeply and focus on what you are smelling.
So again, you can print this out on our website. I'm going to put the link in the show notes. And I also have a video there where I show you how I did my sketching and how I filled out each of these creative steps to give you an example. This is a wonderful activity to do when you are stressed and your thoughts are spinning and you're anxious or you're depressed, but it's also a beautiful practice to incorporate regularly into your day, like right after breakfast or another time when you might have a cue.
To incorporate it as a mindfulness practice. I also believe that this would be a great exercise to try with kids, whether they're stressed or anxious about something or as a regular practice, to just train them on how to ground themselves and be aware of their bodies and their senses and to experience the present moment.
Once you do this activity a few times with the PDF guiding you, you will be able to continue using these prompts on your own with a piece of paper and a pencil. And sometimes even in your head when pen and paper aren't available. I hope that this has been helpful for you today. If you're someone who loves meditation, I think that you will definitely love incorporating this creativity aspect into it, you know, kind of mix it up.
And if you're someone who has never really been able to get into traditional or common meditation or mindfulness practices, I really hope that you will give this a try. I would love it if you let me know how it goes by tagging me on Instagram when you share it at hand lettered design is where I mostly am on Instagram or at committed to create, or tell me how it's going in a review on iTunes.
Speaking of which your ratings and reviews mean so much to me, I am so excited to share one with you today. This review is from S underscore Walker. She says, so it's okay to doodle. Why was I always reprimanded in school for doodling all over my assignments now I know I'm not crazy. Lisa, thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your true self with me.
I now have captured a positive mantra to create for the process. Not perfection. And how many times have I missed the beauty of the process? I could go on and on with snippets of wisdom from just four episodes. Can I take your suggestion and use them to let her positive things to myself every day side note?
Yes. Yes. She says Lisa's laughter and expressive speech makes me feel like I'm sitting next to her on the blue couch. If you haven't listened yet, what are you waiting for? Thank you so much for that review, please send me an email hello@handletterdesign.com and I will get you any choice, your choice of any of our online lettering courses.
I am so grateful for all of your reviews. I will be sharing one each week and someone Instagram as well. And whenever I share one email me or DM me on Instagram and I will hook you up with a course. Again, I want to thank you all for being here. I hope that you will find the joy that comes from creating your hands and your mind.
I am so excited for you to head to the website. You've got to go, you've got to download this free guide. It really makes a difference to see it in person. So head to committed to create.com/less stress by the way, when you type that out, less stress, that last part, there will be three S's in a row. Just so you know, your eye will be like, wait, what?
So committed to create.com/less stress, go get it. It's free. It's going to come with a video that walks you through it. It doesn't take long to do it, and it really helps remember all of those amazing benefits of mindfulness and meditation. Yeah, we want those where we can do it our way with some creativity mixed.
And again, I'm so glad that you're here. I can't wait to be with you again next week. .

Links:

003: Join the Movement

Ready for a fun activity to feel less stress? Come get our FREE Guide - 5 Creative Steps to Less Stress & More Joy while it's still available!

I hope that my podcast has left you feeling inspired and excited to create the life that you want. If you’ve enjoyed listening to this podcast, I’d love for you to subscribe so you can continue to hear more. Want to get to know me better? Connect with me on my website or on Instagram to keep up with everything that is going on with me and my business.

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005: 5 Creative Steps to Less Stress

Podcast

046: Removing the Pressure

045: Creative Constraint