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Amplify with Jess Ekstrom is a top rated business podcast designed to help you amplify your ideas, influence and income. We have a special focus on amplifying women's voices, but this show is open to everyone. Tune in every other Tuesday to hear from Forbes Top Rated Speaker, Jess Ekstrom as she talks to speakers, authors and entrepreneurs who are crushing it in their own way.
Natalie Nixon: [00:00:00] One of the prompts that we give, and this what we're calling the Motor Revolution, is to purposely get lost, is to purposely go a different route, walk a different, if you go on a daily walk, walk in a slightly different way. This saturation of technology is incredibly helpful. I mean, who doesn't like a good dictation app to save time and is free to?
Send a text message, but it is requiring us to show up as humans in a very different way, which is going to take time.
Jess Ekstrom: Welcome to Amplify with Jess Ekstrom. If you're ready to amplify your ideas, your influence, and your income, then you're in the right place. Raise your hand if you've ever felt like sometimes that creative spark fizzles out.
Maybe the pressure of work or daily life makes creativity feel more like a chore than a joy. I mean, come on. It's been a long day already and you don't exactly [00:01:00] have the energy. Plus, isn't that what chat GPT is for today? I am so excited to bring on Natalie Nixon, a creativity expert dubbed the Creativity Whisperer to the C-Suite.
We will talk about how to tap back into your inherent creativity and how creativity drives real ROI. We'll also dig into the relationship between AI and human creativity, and yes, even how role-playing with your past self can unlock new ideas. Okay, so I know creativity can feel like a slog and the way I get my inspiration sometimes I just need to watch my kids.
I wanna start this, you know, dive into creativity through the lens of kids. 'cause that's what I'm seeing right now. You know, I have a 2-year-old, I have a 10 month old. My 2-year-old specifically is like, she could imagine, I mean, she takes a napkin off the floor and. Is like a [00:02:00] bird. Oh, now it's money. And she has a coffee shop and it is like unstoppable.
This creativity that she, and, and it's so amazing to see it as a witness, but it also like poses a question for myself, like, when does creativity almost get like disciplined by rules in the adult mind? Mm-hmm. I'm curious if you have insight on that, like when. When do we, I don't wanna say stop being creative, but when does that change throughout childhood into adulthood?
Natalie Nixon: Well it there, there is a lot of research around this. We could, we can look back to Sir Ken Robinson, who sadly passed away some years ago, but he was just renowned, especially from his TED Talk, of really helping us to understand how much we can learn from children's early years just as your children are exhibiting the ability to, for recombination of ideas, right?
That's a lot of what creativity is. The ability to connect the dots between seemingly disparate ideas and realms. And when we are children, our [00:03:00] imaginations are so fertile. No one is yet, uh, putting a stopper on that it tends to happen when we get educated. Mm-hmm. And we'll talk a little bit more in a moment, but I just wanna also say Jess.
That. Hold on to all that your daughters are teaching you in terms of creativity, because a lot of what is required for us to practice that toggling between wonder and rigor to solve problems is having what I call wonder mentors and rigor mentors. And so children are the ultimate best. Examples of wonder mentors, because they're always modeling for us the ability to be in awe, to have surprise, to, to be deeply audaciously curious and to make something out of nothing.
So I just wanted to make sure we put a pin on that and invite the listeners also to think about who their wonder mentors might be, who their rigor mentors might be. But as Sirkin Robinson really [00:04:00] explained, we see a direct correlation. Between the way we tend to educate and then a stifling of creativity.
So he shares a, a really popular example of you go into a kindergarten class and you ask the students, how many of you want to be an artist when you grow up? And like 75% of the H raise maybe a scientist. And you know, hands are raising and again. As you know, Jess, I don't conflate the arts with creativity, but this is a common way we think about creativity.
You get to middle school and that number declines. Maybe like 40% of the students say they wanna be artists, and then by high school, it's a minority of students who are expressing their desire to be art artists. Now part of that is we get messaging. Absolutely from society, from our parents, we get, um, we, most of us tend to be educated in a way to err on the side of certainty.
And what's the answer? Just think about in most public school [00:05:00] education, it, you, you are really getting educated to get better at test taking and, and what, and what's the answer? And I, and I've shared, um, in different forms, the ways that I was educated between. Preschool up through 12th grade was an incredible.
Example of the spectrum and, and ways we get educated in our country. So I started out in crunchy granola Cooperative Nursery school. It was super, super cool. I then went to Philly Public. Schools from kindergarten to third grade, where my parents were increasingly getting frustrated because my mom was having to teach me my multiplication tables.
I was getting bored. I didn't wanna go into the advanced classes. My other friends weren't there. Then I, my father figured out that if we went to, um, a neighboring suburban public school, the education was much more rigorous. And I, and I was, I was a great student. I was good at getting the gold stars. I was [00:06:00] good at, you know.
Figure out what the teacher wanted and delivering on that. I was a good girl. Then I earned a scholarship to an incredible elitist Quaker private prep school in Philadelphia called Germantown Friends School. And there my grades plummeted because the culture of learning was so different. The culture of learning in this private school environment was more about asking forgiveness, um, not permission, and it was more about falling in love with the process.
And I. I, I didn't know what to do with it. Probably my first two years of school, I really also, it was a campus, I had to change classrooms. I was playing, uh, strange sports that involved sticks like Phil Hockey, lacrosse. There was a lot of new coming at me, but my point is by the ninth and 10th grade, I started just to soar and flourish.
And this idea of being in an educational learning environment that really focuses on process actually cultivates. Creativity. The other thing that this [00:07:00] learning environment was very good at doing was the balance of body, mind, spirit. So because it was a Quaker school, we were required to go to Quaker meeting for which all the Quakers were a minority in school and a minority in the United States as a religious group.
But. Meaningful worship requires you to sit still in silence, uh, for 40 minutes by the time you're in high school. And the Quaker's belief is that the light of God is in all of us. And when you feel moved to speak, you stand up and you share, you share something, a thought, a feeling, whatever the physical piece was that we were required to do sports after school.
Throughout the school year, up until like 10th grade, then you had to do two required sports, which was phenomenal because it really taught me to always be tap into how I was feeling and to be physically active no matter what that might look like for a person. But to this day, I'm pretty good at balancing exercise and movement as well as, you know, mental focus.
And then of course the academics were, were really [00:08:00] rigorous, so why? My, my question is, why do we have to be in these more elite learning environments to have. Educational cultures that are about falling over the process. It's less about the answer about how you got to the answer. Being able to express all the multitude ways that we learn.
There's a bell curve in the ways that we teach. I have a background as a professor. I was an academic for 16 years. In my twenties. I have as a middle school English teacher, so I know a little bit about education and in the bell curve of how we teach in that middle chunk, it's highly verbal. The challenge is that we learn experientially, we learn visually, we learn kinesthetically, we learn orally, but the ways that we teach is pretty narrow.
So unfortunately there's a lot of unlearning that we need to do in order to tap into that creativity that was just bubbling over. And the ways that you're seeing your young children,
Jess Ekstrom: you know, and I think [00:09:00] you touched on their like environments that can. Amplify creativity, and then there's environments that can stifle it.
I'm curious with AI being able to do a lot of like, Hey, create the headline, write the damn email. Like it, it's like I feel I almost have been using it. It's kind of like when you're, um, driving in your town and it's like, I know how to get to the coffee shop, but I'm gonna put it in my GPS just in case.
I'm like, I know I can write this email, but why do it if I can just put it into chat, GPT? And I do feel like that is, you know, if I'm. Using A GPS, it's limiting my now sense of direction using ai I'm feeling like is limiting a little bit of my creativity. You know, I think there was this like tweet or something a while ago where it was like, I don't want [00:10:00] ai.
To like write my emails and do my creative work so I can do laundry and dishes. I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so I can write my emails and do my creative work. Yeah. Nice. I know that, uh, you just got back from the Adobe conference, your Adobe partner. What is, what's your take on the relationship, the seesaw between AI and creativity?
Natalie Nixon: So I have a, a pragmatic, optimistic view of the technology. At the end of the day, this technology is re, will still require us. To shift our behaviors in the way we're using technology so that we don't become a slave to it, and so that we don't lo lose the value of serendipity in our lives. So I love the example you use of tapping into a MAP app to get from point A to point B.
Sometimes there's so much value in getting lost. Sometimes there's so much value in taking, taking the long way home. And I like you. I know how to [00:11:00] get to the dance studio where I have a ballroom lesson later this afternoon, but I am kind of more like, where's the most traffic happening right now? Yes, right.
That's cool. But I find that that the shift in behavior that I am needing to practice now is to be much more intentional about being conscientious when I am being a bit lazy and leaning too much into it and making myself. Turn it off and forcing myself to take the long way home to mm-hmm. Like get lost on purpose and, and.
I know we'll talk about this, but in my upcoming book, move Think, rest Some I. Each chapter ends with exercises and reflection questions, and one of the prompts that we give, and this what we're calling the Motor Revolution, is to purposely get lost, is to purposely go a different route, walk a different, if you go on a daily walk, walk in a slightly different way this.
Saturation of technology is incredibly helpful. I mean, who doesn't like a good dictation app to save time and [00:12:00] is free to send a text message, but it is requiring us to show up as humans in a very different way, which is going to take time. The other part of the technology that I am very excited that's going to increasingly be coming out is the, is the type of AI that is more dialogic.
Cool. And the way that it's asking us questions back, right? So it's not just us pushing questions into the platform, but asking us. Why do you think about it that way? Mm-hmm. What's another way you could approach it, which helps you to practice a bit more reflection? A bit critical thinking. Yeah. Thinking a bit more metacognition.
So that's interesting, right? So we can require of this techno technological evolution to pour into us ways that we can amplify how to be more, more humanly creative.
Jess Ekstrom: Yeah, because you have said, you know, we're not going through a tech revolution, we're going through a human revolution. Um, so I would love to know what you mean by [00:13:00] that, and also what are some ways that you personally are using AI to like, uh, amplify your creativity instead of stifling it?
Natalie Nixon: Yeah, so when I say we're, we're going through a human revolution, not a tech revolution, what I mean by that is because we can get answers more quickly.
Jess Ekstrom: Mm-hmm.
Natalie Nixon: What that's opening us up to is spaciousness and li and liminal space more specifically. And I actually, we've been focused on the runway. We've been focused on the speed.
But what happens after the quick result, we now have more time. We have more time to ponder, we have more time to be in deeply engaged conversation. We have more opportunities to collaborate, and that's the human revolution that we can co-create because of this technology. So all of this focus on speed.
And yesterday and quick, quick, quick. Yes. And because of that, it now [00:14:00] means that we have an opportunity to show up more uniquely human. It also means we have to, we, we can't, we can't avoid the discomfort that we still have with ambiguity and with liminal space. So in the book, move, think Rest. I do a lot of.
Writing and talking about liminal space and how we can't be afraid of it. And let's go back to the example of artists. Once again. If you've ever had gone to an artist open studio or gone to an open rehearsal and you ask the artist, what are you working on? Like, what, where, where's this going? How many of us have had that moment when artists like leans back and says with smile, I dunno, I don't really know where, where I'm headed with this.
And they're so, okay. With the not knowing, they sit and wrestle with the uncertainty of not knowing. And when you actually think back to every great inflection point in your life, in your career, probably. [00:15:00] It came out of sitting, standing at the precipice of that cliff of not knowing, right? It's in the not knowing ambiguous moments and times that the more interesting questions emerge, that we're forced things a little differently, that we are required to ask for help and humble ourselves to do that.
So that's what I mean by the human revolution, that this technology. Is affording us and the ways that I'm using the technology is I ask it to ask me questions. 'cause I don't have all the, the apps that are, that are that dialogical yet. Like what am I not considering that I like to ask what, what are, what are two other questions I should be thinking about?
Right? Again, using, using the speed of these apps to open up time and space, I give myself pretty much daily every, I make myself take. Anywhere from a 62nd to a five minute long daydream break, which, mm-hmm. Which, [00:16:00] which involves me standing by a window and just staring out into space. When the weather gets warm, I'll sit outside of my front stoop and I'll watch Annette crawl on the concrete, or a dragon fly buzzing around the hydrangeas.
I. Love to daydream and there's a lot of research about the value of the spaciousness and the default mode network in in our brain that think gets activated when we allow ourselves to daydream. It actually catalyzes much more vibrant co cognitive thinking later.
Jess Ekstrom: My mom and I love my mom. Uh, if she's listening to this, we have this argument together so she knows where it's going, but like we get in this argument because she is wonderful and helps watch my kids, but she is also like.
They need, like they need to have a toy or they need to have this, they need to have that. Or if they're in the car seat, they need to have something that they're playing with and I'm like, or they could just look out the window and imagine that the [00:17:00] trees are becoming, you know, clouds. Like we need to give ourselves and kids space to be bored because like we're in, and I say this to myself where I'm like, man, when was the last time I was bored?
We have so many options now of where to spend our time. Where the daydream breaks, which I love that have to be intentional. So I love that. And for anyone who wants to pre-order Natalie's book, move, think Rest, uh, it is in the chat along with her Wonder Rigor tip sheet, which is amazing. Definitely download it.
If you're listening to this in the podcast, we'll put it in the show notes. But Natalie, I wanted to end with a struggle that I have that I think a lot of. People who are creative at work or it's a part of their job to be creative. You know, for me it's being a speaker and an author and I think creativity changes for me when I started getting paid for it.
And I wonder what advice you have around that. It's like, I think, you know, [00:18:00] before I was getting paid to be an author, almost like my writing was had more flow. It was better because I really wasn't worried about selling it. And now it's like you write. You have this lens of like, will this sell or I speak and come up with ideas and I'm like, will this get booked by a company?
So my creativity goes through this like filter that I think is almost preventing me from truly original ideas. And so I'm curious what your take is on that.
Natalie Nixon: Before I answer, I just wanna say, I love, love, love that you're encouraging, uh, the boredom moments and spaces for your kids. And there's a whole section in MOOC think that's where I talk about the value of boredom and why we have boredom.
It actually is invitation to the imagination. Piece that you, that you, that we've been talking about. So a couple of hacks when we get into these spaces of recognizing, first of all, Brava, that you're recognizing, oh, [00:19:00] I'm not quite approaching this in with the same originality or freshness. When the stakes were different.
Not that stakes were lower or higher, but they were just different. And one thing to do is to give yourself the grace to imagine your former self. And your present self and just do two versions of it. Right? Hmm. And to, and just to do a reframe in langu in your mind and say, okay, clearly I am getting paid for this.
I have certain deliverables. This is one way I think about it. Okay, let me go back to myself. X years ago I was working in this type of environment and, you know, whatever the other constraints were. How would that person, that version of me have done this, do a version of that? And then look at the two. You might decide to go with that version of your former self.
You might decide to do a mashup. Right?
Jess Ekstrom: I was trying say what a way to use AI is saying, Hey. To a ash up of these together.
Natalie Nixon: Yeah. AI with some, [00:20:00] a mix, a, a remix of these two versions. But what you've done is you, you've done what I like to call a, a mental experiment, right?
Jess Ekstrom: Mm-hmm.
Natalie Nixon: Done. Love this
Jess Ekstrom: like role play with your past self play.
Yeah.
Natalie Nixon: Right. Natalie? Good. What to do? I really good. My, you're, you're not forsaking. Who you have now become, you're not and and you're not forsaking who you were, what, what, what got what your past self and the way you thought through things got you to this bar. So you're integrating it. So those sorts of mental experiments can be a lot of fun and can be super generative to the work.
And another example of something I heard from, I love listening to the work of Jen Centro, who is our. Love Jen Centro. You know, you are a badass, you're a badass at making money. And one, and I, I listened to, to Jen's, um, she now has the, like, the daily, uh, sound bites of advice. And [00:21:00] one of the things she said, again, it's, it's just a shift in language which shifts your energy and it shifts the pressure that you feel yourself, you know.
I'm gonna bet on myself that I can earn seven figures this year. You know, I, I'm making a bet on myself. Right. That, that way it's like, you know, it's, it's, it's fun. It could work out. Yay. It might not work out okay. But it's, it's a bet, right? So, you know, shifting up, mixing up the language in ways so that we have fun with it and take away the pressure is, is really helpful.
Jess Ekstrom: Yes, because one of my favorite quotes by you is in creativity in life, plenty of ideas end up on the cutting floor. That's not failure. It's flow. I'm like. I need that on a billboard painted in my office. But Natalie, you are amazing. Everyone. Pre-order, move, think rest. We will put it in the show notes. But where else can people find you?
Uh, learn from you, book you to speak, tell [00:22:00] us.
Natalie Nixon: Oh, thank you Jess. I really appreciate your generosity. If people go to figure eight. Thinking, and that's the number eight, figure eight thinking.com. Definitely sign up for the Ever Wonder Newsletter where you get all sorts of gems. This year in 2025, in addition to launching, move, think rest.
Be launching Figure eight Thinking's first Micro course. Which is called what to do when you don't know what to do. So it's all about moving from ambiguity to clear action. And it's a micro course, so it's something that you'll be able to listen to. There'll be worksheets, the company, and so look out for that.
But you gotta join the newsletter to get previews of that. And we're gonna have ambassadors for the move, think, rest mode. I call it move Think rest MTR Motor for that motor movement. But start by visiting Fi figure thinking. Definitely follow me on LinkedIn and on Instagram.
Jess Ekstrom: Yes, you are my favorite follow on LinkedIn and I'm so glad to call you a friend in real life.
Natalie, thank you so much.
Natalie Nixon: You're welcome. Thank you, Jess.[00:23:00]
Jess Ekstrom: Thanks for listening to Amplify. If you're a fan of the show, show us some podcast love by giving us a rating and review. This episode is brought to you by Mic Drop Workshop, where you can learn how to become a better speaker. How to land paid speaking gigs. And become a keynote speaker. This episode was edited and produced by Walk West.
I'm Jess Tro reminding you that you deserve the biggest stage, so let's find out how to get you there. I'll see you again soon.