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💥 Ignite your company culture with the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast!
We bring together incredible leaders, trailblazing entrepreneurs, and expert visionaries to share the secrets to their success, explore real-world challenges, and reveal what it truly takes to lead with energy, passion, and purpose as a 🌟VIBRANT🌟 Leader.
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[00:00:00] Announcer: This is the Build A Vibrant Culture Podcast, your source for the strategies, systems, and smarts you need to turn possibility into purpose. Every week we dive into dynamic conversations as our host, Nicole Greer, interviews leadership and business experts. They're here to shed light on practical solutions to the challenges of personal and professional development. Now, here's your host, a professional speaker, coach and consultant, Nicole Greer.
[00:00:32] Nicole Greer: Welcome everybody to the Build A Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer and they call me The Vibrant Coach. And I am here with another amazing guest. I have Melissa and her last name is Dinwiddie. I love your last name. It's so cool. Uh, I want to know the heritage or where Dinwiddie comes from, I think it's fantastic. All right, and let's talk about who Melissa is. Um, She used to believe that she wasn't creative, yet every "impossible" she pursued became a reality. At 16, she took her first dance class dreaming of Julliard, and listen to this, three years later, she got in. In her late twenties, she picked up calligraphy and envisioned an art career, and a year later she landed her first client and thrived as a calligrapher and artist in Silicon Valley where she's originally from, and she did that for 15 years. In her late thirties, she dreamed of singing jazz, and a year later she was performing in the San Francisco Bay Area. From performing for 6,000 people at Arco Arena to writing an acclaimed book on creativity, her journey has been about transforming impossibilities to realities. She's toured as a calligraphy teacher and a singer / songwriter, and led creativity retreats globally. What truly fulfills her is helping others create their impossibles, especially in creativity and innovation. She's collaborated with top teams at companies like Facebook, Google, Uber, and Salesforce, and her unique background has shaped a system that unlocks innate creativity, even in the most analytical minds. She uses an accessible framework, which we're going to talk about today, and she assists stressed out leaders --hello, stressed out leaders!-- under tight deadlines to foster a culture where breakthrough innovations are the norm. This transformation boosts job satisfaction and enhances team communication and collaboration.
[00:02:23] So her big powerful question is, are you ready to create the impossible? Please welcome to the show, Melissa Dinwiddie. How are you?
[00:02:31] Melissa Dinwiddie: I'm great. I'm just delighted to be here, Nicole. Thanks for having me.
[00:02:34] Nicole Greer: Yeah, it's a pleasure, it's a pleasure. So tell me about your last name. It's just fun to say Dinwiddie.
[00:02:39] Melissa Dinwiddie: Isn't it fun? You are saying it absolutely right. And it actually is from Scotland. It's from actually the sort of the Borderlands, right? Where Scotland and England were constantly fighting back and forth over is it England? Is it Scotland? It's right in that area.
[00:02:55] Nicole Greer: That's so fantastic. I just love saying it. Dinwiddie. It's great. It goes so good with your creative and innovative. It's just fun like you are. Yeah. So fantastic. So I'm curious about Julliard. What was that like?
[00:03:08] Melissa Dinwiddie: Well, uh, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's a nice little feather in my cap, but, I was actually only there for a year because I got injured while I was there, and I have to say that my experience at Julliard was not very fun. I did not have a good experience there.
[00:03:27] Nicole Greer: Oh no.
[00:03:28] Melissa Dinwiddie: Yeah. Well, part of the reason I didn't have a good experience there was because I got injured while I was there. But also, you know, when I was at Julliard, it was not long after the movie _Fame_, uh, was, was a big deal, you know? Yeah. And so I had this, you know, visions of the dancers and the actors and the musicians all, you know, hanging out in the lunchroom and bursting out into, I don't know, like dance
[00:03:56] Nicole Greer: Interpretive dance.
[00:03:56] Melissa Dinwiddie: Or Yeah, exactly.
[00:03:58] And, and, and it wasn't like that at all. My year was a little bit different in that there was a little bit of, of crossover between the, the groups, but they were pretty cliquey and isolated, and that was, uh, rather surprising and shocking to me. And also coming from, I, I had spent a year at UC Berkeley before going to Juilliard and at UC Berkeley, back then you signed up for classes six months at advance using these Scantron forms.
[00:04:28] Nicole Greer: I remember.
[00:04:29] Melissa Dinwiddie: Oh yeah, the Scantron forms and you know, you never get the classes that you wanted. And so what you did is you would just crash the classes that you wanted. You just sit there, you know, for days or weeks until enough people dropped out that you would, if you hung in there, you would get to take the classes that you actually wanted. But Julliard was quite different. It was ironically, quite provincial, uh, you know, in this huge city of Manhattan, you were assigned the classes that you had to take and you didn't get to take any, uh, any elective classes except for maybe one class that you were assigned to. And it was very, uh, very rigid. And the year that I was there, there
[00:05:12] Nicole Greer: Tough for a creative.
[00:05:14] Melissa Dinwiddie: Tough for a creative and a Californian. And the, the, um, director of the dance division was brand new and she didn't like Californians. She didn't like modern dancers, of which I was one. And, uh, and, and also I had a space on my schedule because I had been to college for a year before going to Julliard. And I also had passed out of the music theory class 'cause I had seven years of piano and so I had extra weird space on my schedule. And so I just decided, well, I'll just see. I'll ask the art history teacher if I could take her class. Anyway, long story short, I got in a lot of trouble for, you know, taking things into my, into my own hands.
[00:05:56] Nicole Greer: Keeping an open mind. Yeah, crazy.
[00:05:59] Melissa Dinwiddie: Yeah.
[00:06:00] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Well that's what a classic story of a square peg in a round hole. A round hole in a square peg or something like that. I don't know. Yeah.
[00:06:07] Melissa Dinwiddie: I was the wrong shape peg.
[00:06:08] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah. And I've, I've been the wrong shape peg many times. I get that. Totally. Well, I, I just want to say I'm grateful. Look at the book you sent me. It's so beautiful, _The Creative Sandbox Way: Your Path to a Full-Color Life, _uh, by Melissa Dinwiddie. I, I just want to hear about, um, how you can be more creative, because, you know, when I go places and I work with teams just like you, you know, you'll have individuals say, oh, I'm not very creative.
[00:06:34] Melissa Dinwiddie: it's, it's sort of an epidemic, isn't it? Most people think that about themselves and, like you read in my biography what people don't believe when they hear about my background. I spent a big chunk of my life believing that I was a non-creative person.
[00:06:54] Nicole Greer: Oh, that's crazy.
[00:06:55] Melissa Dinwiddie: It is completely crazy, but what's really crazy is how many human beings think that about ourselves. And the reason I think that that is so, Nicole, is that we, we equate creativity and the ability to draw. You know, we, we put those, those two things together. Right, and or the ability to, you know, play Mozart on the piano or something like that. And they're not the same thing. Creativity and the ability to draw, they're not the same thing. And yet we all have been sort of taught this, whether through osmosis or because a teacher said, oh, you know, zebras aren't blue, or the sky isn't green, or whatever when we were a little kid. We'd get these creativity scars growing up and that turns into like, oh, therefore I must not be creative. So we have to sort of peel those layers off and unlearn what we have been told. The lies that we have been told about not being creative. And that's really what my book is so much about is helping people tap into the innate creativity that all of us were born with.
[00:08:11] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah, that's, you've got a big page in there. It says, creativity is our birthright.
[00:08:15] Melissa Dinwiddie: Yep. It is.
[00:08:16] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And you actually call it very directly, you say, it's the lie of I'm not creative. And I agree with you. We, many of us were wounded in, in elementary school by critiques of our attempts at being artistic. Or I don't know what the right word is right there. Maybe you can help me. But, uh, it was like, you're, you know, you're not very good at perspective when you draw or whatever, you know? But I also think there's another thing going on. Uh, dare I say this, but like, it kind of lets you off the hook. I'm not very creative. You guys figure it out, let me know what, how I can help. It's like, it's like a little, it's like A little blocker or something, that gets you off the hook, you know? But I see creativity as thinking. It's a thinking thing. Yeah.
[00:09:00] Melissa Dinwiddie: Yeah, really, I see it as just solving problems, connecting dots. There's so many ways that humans are creative and use creativity. You know, I, I have to make dinner. What's in the refrigerator?
[00:09:18] Nicole Greer: Right!
[00:09:19] Melissa Dinwiddie: That's creativity. Right.
[00:09:21] Nicole Greer: Right.
[00:09:22] Melissa Dinwiddie: Yeah, exactly. You know, how can I MacGyver things?
[00:09:26] Nicole Greer: Yeah!
[00:09:26] Melissa Dinwiddie: That's like revealing how old I am, right? Uh, but how can we solve the problem that we are facing right now in this moment? That's creativity. It doesn't necessarily have to do with art. It can. And it's one way that I love to use my creativity, but it's not the only way to be creative. My book happens to be, when I wrote it, it was aimed primarily at people who wanted to, who want to, uh, do more artistic things than they are doing. They feel frustrated that they're not doing more art or they wish that they could do more artistic, musical, crafty things, perhaps. Uh, the book is especially aimed at those folks, but the principles inside the book are universal principles.
[00:10:23] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And that, that's what I'm picking up. Uh, on page 17, you talk about there are 10 guideposts that help us kind of tap into that creative problem solving thing. And, um, you know, I'm all about building this vibrant culture, and I think that the word vibrant, it means full of energy. And the proverbial light bulb that goes off over your head. You know, that's what we're trying to talk about. Like, people get what I call "lit." They're like, oh, this is exciting. We're doing something new. Um, and so your 10 guideposts I think are fantastic. Can we kind of talk about those for a moment?
[00:10:56] Melissa Dinwiddie: Absolutely, yes.
[00:10:58] Nicole Greer: Okay. Okay. Yeah. So one of them is, "there is no wrong."
[00:11:02] Melissa Dinwiddie: Yep. Guidepost number one. So, you know, these came about because at, at the time when I developed these guideposts, they, they started off as a handful of I called them little rules. So confession time, I am nothing if not a rule follower and I'm a good girl at heart. And I, at the time was really creatively blocked. And I had spent at the time, probably at least a decade, maybe 15 years as a professional artist. And my business model was making a lot of art on commission for clients. And the challenge with that is that for me, it really kind of poisoned my relationship with my creativity and I ended up, uh, making no art for myself because I felt like everything I made had to make money and had to be amazing.
[00:12:00] And so I never made anything for myself. And I was really miserable and I wanted to get back to making art for the joy of it, for fun, for, you know, personal fulfillment. And so I knew that the way back, the route back to that was through play. I had to get back to that like little kid mind space, being a 4-year-old, making art for, for joy.
[00:12:27] But I had forgotten how to play because of all the years of making art for other people. So I thought, okay, what can I do to get back into that 4-year-old mind space? I have to create some like little, little rules for myself. And the first rule was "There is no wrong." Now, over the years, these little rules expanded into what are now the 10. I now call them guideposts because most creatives don't like rules, right? And they now form the backbone of my book, the Creative Sandbox Way. And some of the rules at the time, the now guideposts started off rather, um, wordy, shall we say? Like one of them started off as when you get to the point where the piece isn't done, you know it needs something, but you're afraid to add to it, go ahead and ruin it. And now that one is take the riskier path.
[00:13:24] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:13:25] Melissa Dinwiddie: So that's, that's what that guidepost turned into. I made them a little more pithy.
[00:13:31] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And so when you say there is no wrong, uh, I totally heard what you said about creating, not judging it or whatever. How do you, apply that to like, teams of people in an organization? There is no wrong. Because people are like, no, wait a minute.
[00:13:45] Melissa Dinwiddie: Yeah.
[00:13:45] Nicole Greer: to be a wrong Melissa. How might we use this as part of our process? Right?
[00:13:50] Melissa Dinwiddie: Right. So, these guideposts are not to be applied in every situation in life. You don't apply them to brain surgery. You don't apply them to how you speak and communicate to human beings where there is a wrong way.
[00:14:09] Nicole Greer: Absolutely.
[00:14:10] Melissa Dinwiddie: You apply them to, for example, idea generation.
[00:14:14] Nicole Greer: Right, right.
[00:14:15] Melissa Dinwiddie: Brainstorming. That is where you want to bring in these guideposts, because where they apply is what I call the creative sandbox. This is a dedicated sort of, in the terms of creativity, you want to carve out a dedicated space and time, the creative sandbox where you can play with these rules, play with these guideposts. In the context of say, an office setting, you might say "we're going to take an hour or 15 minutes or whatever in this particular meeting room, and we're going to occupy the creative sandbox right here and apply these guideposts right now for 10 minutes or for an hour or whatever it is. And that's where these guideposts apply. So it's a space and a time. And outside that space and time, then of course there is a wrong.
[00:15:16] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah. Well, as you're talking about it, I'm thinking about a time that, um, a lot, many of my listeners know that my background is, I used to be in the restaurant business and then I was in property management, and then I started my own thing. Uh, but I was assigned to this apartment community up in Maryland. And it was, it was a mess that I did not create, and I was asked to come in and help. And so, uh, I had these kinds of apartments right across the street developed by the same guy who sold half of the property. Uh, this one had the racquetball court and the swimming pool and the tennis courts and all the stuff.
[00:15:48] And my half had nothing. And so we had to get in the creative. I didn't know I did it, but I got in the creative sandbox and did it that way. And I was like, okay, what could we do that would compete with all these amenities that they have across the street? And so like we were walking dogs and delivering firewood and just doing all sorts of crazy things. And people loved it. They're like, we don't even ever go to the racketball court. We would love to have all these services where you come to us instead of us having to come to the clubhouse. And so, you know, and when we first brainstormed, like you said, there was no wrong, like, what could we do? Like let's throw the spaghetti on the wall, per se, you know? And uh, and we ended up just really loving on people to death, and that's how we leased apartments. But, you know, but at first there was no wrong and there were some things like, no, we can't do that. That would be wrong. So I love that. And I love how you just said when you're using these guideposts, you're in the sandbox, so I love that.
[00:16:42] All right. Number two is "think process, not product." Talk a little bit about that.
[00:16:47] Melissa Dinwiddie: Yeah. Okay, so think about if you are in a space where you're making art, you're making music, you're creating some kind of artistic product, uh, what happened for me as an artist when I was making art for clients, it was all about the product. It was all about pleasing the client, making sure that they were happy. I was so focused on the outcome that I wasn't enjoying the process at all. And I got into art as a professional, I became a professional artist because I loved the process. I fell in love with making letters as a calligrapher with the feel of the brush on paper. With, uh, the process of creating. And I completely lost track of that when it became all about the outcome. And as I said, it just completely poisoned my relationship with my creativity.
[00:17:46] So in order to get back to that 4-year-old mind space, I had to think about what is it like for a little kid literally playing in a sandbox? They don't care about the outcome. They don't think about, am I going to make money from this? They don't think about, am I going to get a gold star? Am I going to impress somebody? You know, it's not about that. It's about how does the sand feel, you know, flowing through my fingertips. Is there water? You know, is there water coming through the hose, going into the sand, or I've got a little plastic toy, I've got a bucket, I've got a shovel. What's happening? You know, they're all in the moment and in the process. So when I first started getting back to making art for me, I remember the exact moment. I had some canvases wrapped in plastic. I had never really painted on canvas before, on stretch canvas. I'd been sitting on this canvas for like a year, and I thought, I'm going to try this. I unwrapped the canvas out of the plastic and I pulled out some paint and some inks and some brushes, and I started messing around and playing with it.
[00:19:02] I've got to tell you, Nicole, the product was butt ugly. It was. was really, I mean, it looked like mud. It was so awful. But I remember the sensation of painting on that canvas. I felt like I was floating an inch off of the ground. It was so exciting to me to be painting on canvas, be doing this thing that gave me so much joy, and I got to the end of that. I maybe spent an hour, 45 minutes. I don't even remember how long, but I got to the end of that, I looked at that canvas and I thought, this is so God awful, but the experience of it was so fun, and that is what I want to remember. So I don't care about the outcome, I don't care about the product. What I want more of is this process, this feeling.
[00:19:57] So whatever you're doing, whether it's, you know, working in HR or making a, I dunno, coding or working in your garden, or whatever it is. Think about that process, that experience, the relationship that you're having as you're having conversations with people, whatever that is, that's what you want to focus on, and that's what the concept of "think process, not product" is all about.
[00:20:26] Nicole Greer: Yeah, and you know, when you trust the process, it's almost like the product takes care of itself. Now, I did hear you say you made a butt ugly painting. However, however, it's kind of like my whole life. I mean, restaurant business and then being property management, now I deal with teams and try to give people good service still. If you think about customer service, um, people are like, you know, oh, you're a customer service rep. And it's like, well, if you love people and you love talking and you love making small talk, you love finding out about people, you're curious, you know, these are things that bring you joy. 'Cause I know the word joy is all throughout your book. Um, I'm just giving customer service.
[00:21:05] And, and I'll just share with those listening because I want to make sure you understand how this fits into your business or into your culture. So, um, there's a place out in, uh, Las Vegas called Zappos. And one of their core values is you need to be a little weird. So I love that about them. So they're super creative, this crew. Uh, but I read a thing one time about a guy at Zappos and, um, he was on the phone like for four hours with this one customer. And you know, he's like, I was just enjoying the process and she was asking me 4 million questions and I just kept answering them, you know? And so she buys stuff all the time from Zappos. And people were like, you spent four hours on a customer service call? Well, yeah, because that's what was needed. And I was enjoying the process, you know? And he got a result. He sold her a lot of shoes. So there you go.
[00:21:50] Melissa Dinwiddie: Well, and I will tell you about that, that one painting at the end of that one session, that first session with that canvas, yes, it was incredibly ugly, but I came back to that canvas the next day, and I don't remember how many days I spent with that canvas, but it ended up --after multiple sessions and multiple layers-- it ended up being one of my favorite paintings because through the process eventually I ended up with a wonderful product.
[00:22:23] Nicole Greer: And the thing is too, I think sometimes the process, it's gotta be messy. You know 'cause back to the original thing about creativity. Well, I'm not very creative. It's like people don't want to look like they're failing. Or they don't want to put something out first that people are like, Oh, I don't think that's quite right, you know? And they don't want that feedback. But one of my philosophies I would put in, uh, my guideposts is everything gets to be messy if it needs to be, because, we just gotta make a mess and then we can clean it up. But at least we know that didn't work. Right? Fail forward.
[00:22:52] Melissa Dinwiddie: Absolutely. Or as I like to say, we need the crap to fertilize the good stuff.
[00:22:59] Nicole Greer: Oh my gosh. I'm going to put that in my pocket.
[00:23:01] Announcer: Are you ready to build your vibrant culture? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with their strategies, systems, and smarts to increase clarity, accountability, energy, and results. Your organization will get lit from within! Email her at nicole@vibrantculture.com and be sure to check out Nicole's TEDx talk at vibrantculture.com.
[00:23:31] Nicole Greer: Number three. Okay, now this one might throw people off because again, where you're trying to apply this to our culture, "think quantity, not quality." So talk about that one.
[00:23:41] Melissa Dinwiddie: Now again, this is relevant to your creative sandbox, and I think the metaphor that people most understand is if you think about a photographer. Most people have had maybe headshots or maybe they got married and they had a photographer at their wedding. You don't have a photographer come and take three photos. I mean, that would be insane. You have the photographer come and take a bazillion photos and out of those bazillion photos, you get a handful of really good photos. But if you limit your photographer to only a handful of photos, you are not going to get any good ones, right? So you have to take a whole bunch of photos to get a handful of good ones.
[00:24:25] And it's the same with anything. You've got to let yourself do a lot in order to get a handful of good stuff. There's a really great story in the book. I believe it's the book _Art and Fear,_ about a ceramics professor who divided his class into two groups randomly. Everybody on one side of the classroom was going to be graded solely on quantity, and everybody on the other side of the classroom would be graded solely on quality. The quantity folks, I think it was like 50 pounds of pots would get an A, 40 pounds would get a B, 30 pounds would get a C, et cetera. And the other side of the classroom, it was just like the best pot would get an A. Boom. That's it. So which side do you think made the better pots and got the better grades? It was the quantity group because the quality group was so obsessed with, you know, making the perfect pot, they didn't make very many pots and they didn't learn anything. Whereas the quantity group was cranking out all these pots and learning from their mistakes, and so they ended up making more pots, making a lot of really crappy pots, but learning from those crappy pots and making better pots as a result. And they were having a lot more fun too.
[00:25:48] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah. And getting their prototype right. You know?
[00:25:51] Melissa Dinwiddie: Getting their prototype right.
[00:25:53] Nicole Greer: And you know, odds are you're not going to get it right the first time right out of the gate. I mean, like, if you were to go, go inside some manufacturing firm somewhere and look at their process, that's why they have R&D. They make a lot of crappy pots in R&D.
[00:26:07] Melissa Dinwiddie: Exactly, and I mean, this is a really hard lesson for most of us, most adults because we have spent our entire lives learning how to present as we have it all figured out. You know, don't let anybody see...
[00:26:23] Nicole Greer: don't let 'em see you sweat.
[00:26:25] Melissa Dinwiddie: Don't let 'em see you sweat. Don't let 'em see that we're doing anything that's less than perfect, you know? But we have to let ourselves make crap in order to get to the good stuff. We have to. It's the only way to get to the good stuff.
[00:26:40] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And a lot of times, Melissa, I'll share, uh, with groups, you know, they're like, I'm trying to get my team to do something new. Trying to get 'em to change. I get so much resistance. And I'm like, okay, well I'll tell you why. The reason is is that we're all trained for 12 years in American schools to get A's.
[00:26:56] Melissa Dinwiddie: That's right.
[00:26:57] Nicole Greer: And none of us want to get an F. So your story about the professor in the school, even though they're making pots, it's the same difference whether you're doing algebra, making pots, studying about history, whatever. I mean, we're supposed to get an A.
[00:27:10] Melissa Dinwiddie: You're right. You're absolutely right. And I, I think the whole academic system really does us all a deep disservice honestly.
[00:27:18] Nicole Greer: Yeah. You know, I don't know that much about Montessori, I need to go look at it, but I shared one time about that and somebody's like, oh, I sent my children to Montessori school. They're very creative. I'm like, oh, I need to check that out. But anyways, apparently it's where they play to learn, which is what we're talking about in the sandbox, right?
[00:27:35] Okay, number four is "think tiny and daily." Ooh, I love this one. Talk about that, tiny and daily.
[00:27:40] Melissa Dinwiddie: Yeah. So in, in my own life, how this manifested was when I was trying to get back into a creative practice and bringing art back into my life in a regular, consistent way, my vision, my dream was, you know, I wanted to be making art like all the time. I had these big, big goals, right? These big, uh
[00:28:04] Nicole Greer: BHAGs! Big hairy audacious goals!
[00:28:07] Melissa Dinwiddie: Big, hairy, audacious goals. But like, okay, once a week I'm going to spend every Saturday all day long or even, you know, two hours on a Friday or whatever. And it never happened. And so finally I just started thinking small and I said, okay, 15 minutes a day. 15 minutes a day. If I can't spend 15 minutes a day, then I'm making an excuse. And actually it was an art coach, who coached people who were aiming for gallery exhibiting art careers, like fine art gallery careers, and she coached her coachees. If you can't put 15 minutes a day into your art, you're making an excuse. And I was like, oh my God, that's me. I'm making an excuse. All this "like, I don't have time." Yeah. I was like, oh my God, she's nailed me. So I made a commitment to myself for one month. It was a February in fact, and it was a short month. It's like if I can't do 28 days, then I, that is some serious excusing, so...
[00:29:14] Nicole Greer: Right, I need therapy.
[00:29:15] Melissa Dinwiddie: So I decided I'm just going to try it for one month and it changed my life. So, yeah, I just 15 minutes a day minimum. And what I discovered was really fascinating. Not only was that 15 minutes really, uh, quite amazing in the, the internal shift that it gave me.
[00:29:37] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:29:38] Melissa Dinwiddie: But I often worked longer than 15 minutes
[00:29:42] Nicole Greer: Yeah, because you got in flow or something.
[00:29:44] Melissa Dinwiddie: 'Cause I got in flow. And also there's something really profound about, even if, even if all I did was 15 minutes, the, the act of doing it every single day helped me feel in touch with my creative spirit because I was doing something every single day. I was adding to my body of work every single day.
[00:30:12] And I didn't realize that that was going to happen, but that was very powerful. And, and as I said, like often I would spend much more than 15 minutes, even though I would say like, I don't have time for this. I can only spend 15 minutes and then I would end up spending longer. So it just had an incredible, incredibly powerful impact on my life. And it's something that you can do, you know, it doesn't have to be, you know, drawing or painting or music. It could be...
[00:30:40] Nicole Greer: It could be writing that business book.
[00:30:43] Melissa Dinwiddie: Absolutely!
[00:30:44] Nicole Greer: It could be putting your standard operating procedures formally into place.
[00:30:50] Melissa Dinwiddie: Exactly.
[00:30:50] Nicole Greer: It could be a, a litany of things. And I'll just say this about what you're saying, if I may. I talk to so many people who want to start a business. Who want to be entrepreneurial. And they're like, but I've got this job. And How do you start a business if you got a job? And I'm like, well, uh, 15 minutes a day, Melissa Dinwiddie. And, and starting a business is a creative endeavor, let me tell you.
[00:31:12] Melissa Dinwiddie: It sure is.
[00:31:13] Nicole Greer: That's right. So sit your butt in a chair and write your vision statement for 15 minutes, then come back to it for three days till it's done. And then write your mission statement. Figure out your core values. Get a vision for the first year. You know, what's your strategic plan? Start writing the website. I mean, all this stuff can be done in 15 minutes a day. So entrepreneurially, that is a great guidepost, think tiny and daily. Wow. Yeah. So good. All right. And then this one I love too. Number five, "just start anywhere".
[00:31:41] Melissa Dinwiddie: You know, of all my Creative Sandbox guideposts, this is the one that I probably use the most every day. How many times have we gotten stuck? Like every single one of us gets stuck in some way all the time, right? And, oh my God, I can't, I don't know. I don't know what to do. I can't, I don't know what to write. I don't know what to, uh, whatever. Just start. Just start. So here's the metaphor that I use for this one. If you think about a rusty faucet, a rusty tap. We've all encountered that at some point in your life, right? What do you do? How do you get to the clear water? You turn it on. You don't turn it off. You just let it flow.
[00:32:26] Nicole Greer: That's right. Oh that's good.
[00:32:27] Melissa Dinwiddie: And eventually you're going to get to clear water. So I encounter this all the time when I'm writing. Just start to write. The first stuff that comes out, it's going to be terrible. It's just going to be crap.
[00:32:38] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Or you could get lucky. You never know.
[00:32:41] Melissa Dinwiddie: Well, you could, you might, but the only way that you're going to get to the good stuff is just to write. Maybe the first three pages are crappy. Who cares? Just keep writing. You have to prime the pump.
[00:32:54] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:54] Melissa Dinwiddie: And it's just like that butt ugly painting that I did years and years ago. The first layer was awful, but I needed that first layer to prime the pump, to get to, you know, the future layers that eventually turned into the beautiful painting.
[00:33:13] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, it's, that's the whole Nike Just do it thing. And it's true. Just get your running shoes on. Let's go. All right.
[00:33:21] All right. Number seven, you mentioned it, but let's go back to it: "take the riskier path." Here's what, what I'm going to say about building a vibrant culture. It's like, if you're not trying to build a culture, you still got one.
[00:33:34] Melissa Dinwiddie: That is so true.
[00:33:36] Nicole Greer: You got one.
[00:33:37] Melissa Dinwiddie: You got a culture, you got a culture.
[00:33:40] Nicole Greer: I promise. Yeah, but it's like a lot of leaders will be like, can we really change? Well, you're going to have to take the risk to say, we need to change. You're going to have to get your senior leaders in the room and say, fellas, ladies, We're going to have to do this, you know, and it might be risky. You might lose their following. All sorts of things could happen. Relationships, I don't know. But you've got to take the riskier path. Tell us about that, Melissa.
[00:34:02] Melissa Dinwiddie: Yeah, so how this, how this applies in the world of artists, of crafters, of makers, is so many people who make things. We have a piece, it is not done, but we're afraid to add to it because we're afraid we're going to ruin it. So what happens is we end up with a studio full of UFOs, unfinished objects.
[00:34:35] Nicole Greer: And every business has that too. We started this project...
[00:34:38] Melissa Dinwiddie: That's right. That's right. We gotta get rid of those UFOs. And the only way to get rid of the UFOs is to finish them.
[00:34:48] Nicole Greer: Yep.
[00:34:49] Melissa Dinwiddie: And you have to take that risk and you might ruin it. That's true. But what is the worst that's going to happen? You're going to learn something.
[00:34:58] Nicole Greer: Yeah, so good. Yeah. And so the first thing that popped in my mind, because I have this thing right here, sitting right here, uh, this caffeine-free Diet Coke, which is evil and bad for me, but necessary in the moment sometimes. Uh, you said you dated yourself when you said MacGyver, but do you remember when new Coke came out?
[00:35:16] Melissa Dinwiddie: Oh yeah!
[00:35:19] Nicole Greer: Like that was the riskier path for Coca-Cola.
[00:35:21] Melissa Dinwiddie: It sure was.
[00:35:22] Nicole Greer: And then people are like, this stuff is terrible. But then since then they've had 400 variations that have flown off the shelf. Coke Zero and all the things, right? And just yesterday, I, you know, it's scary. I was talking to my husband about this trip we're going on in July, and I said, should we get an Airbnb? Should we get a hotel? What should we do? And so, of course, what's the next commercial comes up? Is for Airbnb. So, oh! There they are, and so Airbnb comes up, but now they have this new thing. They're taking a huge risk. They're like, don't just get an Airbnb. Have an Airbnb experience. So now you can rent the Airbnb and it comes with an experience, an activity, or something that goes with it. So one was go to Paris, which I totally want to do. You and I should go, go to Paris. And one of the ladies who helped with the redesign of... help me, the big church that was on fire,
[00:36:16] Melissa Dinwiddie: Notre Dame.
[00:36:17] Nicole Greer: Notre Dame. Yeah, so one of the women that restored part of it was an artisan. She'll give you a tour, show you how, what she fixed. I'm like i'd like to go on that experience. But that's just an example of what you're saying, right? Take the riskier path. I mean, like, they might not sell any of these or they might sell a bunch. Who knows?
[00:36:35] Melissa Dinwiddie: Yeah, exactly. The only way to know is to try it.
[00:36:38] Nicole Greer: That's right. That's exactly right. All right, The next one. Jim Carlson has this book that's called how to Tame Your Gremlins. And so I've always loved that word gremlins since I read that book. But number eight in Melissa Dinwiddie's guideposts is dismiss all the gremlins. What, first of all, what's a gremlin? I think I know, but like, let's explain that real quick.
[00:36:57] Melissa Dinwiddie: So gremlins are those little, the little voices,
[00:37:02] Nicole Greer: Okay. Watch this on YouTube because she's got one to show you.
[00:37:05] Melissa Dinwiddie: Right, right, right, right, right, right, right. So they're, they're the little voices in your head, any of those self-critical
[00:37:13] Nicole Greer: Like self talk things.
[00:37:14] Melissa Dinwiddie: self-doubting voices. They could say anything from, you know. You're ugly, you're fat, you're stupid to, what do you think you're doing? You couldn't possibly apply for that job. Or that, that piece is so hideous. You're not a real artist. Any of that negative self-talk. And here's the thing about gremlins is that they will disguise themselves as the voice of truth. The voice of wisdom and the voice of reason, like, oh, no, no, no. You can't possibly apply for that opportunity because you don't have the all the right qualifications. So don't do that 'cause you're just going to make a fool of yourself. You shouldn't get up there and raise your hand to speak because you're just going to embarrass yourself. That sounds like the voice of truth, the voice of wisdom, the voice of reason. So you should listen to it, right? Our job is really to get discerning and to recognize those gremlins when they appear. Thank them for their concern because really, they're trying to keep us safe. They're a product of evolution. From back in the day when we were running around on the veldt, you know, living in caves or whatever.
[00:38:26] Nicole Greer: Right. With our spears and our loincloths.
[00:38:28] Melissa Dinwiddie: With our spears and really trying to avoid saber tooth cats and stuff like that. But they're not helpful now in today's circumstances. But thank them for their concern and then send them off to get a pedicure.
[00:38:42] Nicole Greer: Yeah, Jim Carlson says in his book, send Him out in the Traffic to play.
[00:38:47] Melissa Dinwiddie: You could do that too. You know, your mileage may vary. Send them, you know, send 'em to play football, send 'em, whatever. Here's the thing. They are going to continue to keep popping up. They are never going to go away. The bigger you play, the more they're going to pop up. They never, ever, ever go away. So your job is to get really, really good at recognizing them. Keep acknowledging them, keep seeing them, keep discerning them and keep sending them off. I send them off to get a pedicure. They get way more pedicures than I do, and that is your job. Just to continue to get good at recognizing, and they're sneaky. They're very, very, very sneaky. They will continue to disguise themself. They have many, many disguises.
[00:39:34] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, you've heard me on the show talk about Dr. Father Thomas Keating's little book called The Human Condition. That's another good one about these gremlins. But he says, we're addicted. Addicted, that's his word, to security, approval and control. And those gremlins love, security, approval and control. You know, they're trying, like you don't have control of this situation. You're not going to get approval for this and you're not going to be safe if you do this.
[00:39:59] Melissa Dinwiddie: That's right.
[00:39:59] Nicole Greer: Those were his three things. Yeah.
[00:40:01] Melissa Dinwiddie: Their, their job is to try and keep us inside our comfort zone. And the minute we start to approach the edge of our comfort zone, that's when they pop up. And here's the thing, creativity is never inside our comfort zone. It's always outside our comfort zone. So those gremlins are always going to pop up the second we start to do anything remotely creative.
[00:40:24] Nicole Greer: Hmm. I agree. All right. So, the next one, number nine is "spring the comparison trap." Woo. And don't we do that? Just compare, compare, compare.
[00:40:34] Melissa Dinwiddie: Yeah. So I, I see the comparison trap as really a form of the gremlin voice, and it happens to be my absolute worst, most
[00:40:47] Nicole Greer: That's your favorite addiction.
[00:40:48] Melissa Dinwiddie: It is my, my favorite so-called addiction. It's the worst one for me. And so it is one I'm continually having to spring having to recognize and acknowledge and figure out ways to handle it. And one of the best ways for me, --you know, again, your mileage may vary-- but one of the best ways for me to deal with the comparison trap is when I see it, and those envy monsters start going crazy is to reach out to somebody, somebody who is close in my circle or just outside of my circle, somebody that I can reach out to. Acknowledge them, praise them, compliment them. Meet them for coffee or something. There's something about that that, in a bizarre sort of way, can sort of tamp down my comparison trap monsters. And then also keep coming back to this is my journey and whatever that person is doing has nothing to do with me and my journey. So those, those are a few different tools that I've found helpful, but figure out what works for you. You know, everybody's different and I feel like life's journey is all about finding your own manual for your person.
[00:42:07] Nicole Greer: Oh, absolutely. And what Melissa's talking about, and again, in building a vibrant culture, we have to help people. What I say is Shine and the S is an acronym. The S stands for self-assessment. Like what's up with you? You know, before you figure out what's going on with everybody else, take a look at yourself. Right? So self-assess, and I love what you're saying, self-assess what works for you. That's such good, timely advice. And in corporate America, comparison, it's like almost built in.
[00:42:35] Melissa Dinwiddie: Yeah.
[00:42:36] Nicole Greer: Because it's like who's going to get the promotion?
[00:42:38] Melissa Dinwiddie: Oh my God. Yeah. Right.
[00:42:40] Nicole Greer: Right. And so, um, you know, instead of worrying about how you compare with somebody, just worry about what can Nicole do? What can Melissa do to make her the best that she can be? So maybe she'll get the promotion. Quit focusing on who the competition is and figure out what you need to be doing. Yeah, that's a better use of your time, energy, money, everything.
[00:43:00] Melissa Dinwiddie: Yeah, yeah.
[00:43:01] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Good. All right. We're at number 10! All right. 10 guideposts, right? And don't miss, we're talking about the Creative Sandbox Way by Melissa Dinwiddie, with her Cool last name. And so number 10 is "treat yourself with compassion." So I think that's a lovely one to finish with. Uh, and a lot of people are so hard on themselves. Tell, tell me about treating yourself with compassion.
[00:43:22] Melissa Dinwiddie: Yeah. So I have a golden formula, which I express as a mathematical formula.
[00:43:30] Nicole Greer: Right.
[00:43:30] Melissa Dinwiddie: Which is self-awareness, and we were just talking about self-awareness.
[00:43:35] Nicole Greer: You and I are so aligned. So good.
[00:43:37] Melissa Dinwiddie: Yep. Self-awareness plus self-compassion equals the key to everything good. And I've really come to believe this. So self-awareness is like, what is going on with you? What is working, what is not working? What's going well, what's not going well? Just really understanding yourself as well as you can and being as aware as possible of everything about yourself and how you are relating to your life and your surroundings and everything. So that's the self-awareness piece.
[00:44:16] Self-compassion is actually three components, and this is as defined by Dr. Kristin Neff, who is the world's foremost authority and expert on self-compassion. And she has a book called Self-Compassion.
[00:44:31] Nicole Greer: She's gotta be on this show. I'm getting her number.
[00:44:34] Melissa Dinwiddie: She's amazing. And I was introduced to her probably 15 or more years ago now, and it was life changing. So self-compassion is boiled down to three components. The first is mindfulness, which is the ability to really step outside of your experience, step outside of the distress and look at it from outside.
[00:44:55] So that's the first component. The second component is an awareness of common humanity. And that's really like you're not the only person who's ever experienced whatever you're going through right now. So common humanity is the second component. And the third component is self-kindness. The ability to like self-soothe, to forgive yourself for being human, really. So those three components together are self-compassion. And when you can practice self-compassion, which I also see as, I call myself an intentional imperfectionist, which I see as the same thing as practicing self-compassion. When you're able to do that, it is completely life changing. It has been for me. It's like being on the other side of the fence and, it has completely transformed my life and I know that it has transformed just so many people's lives. So self-awareness plus self-compassion really is the key to everything good.
[00:46:01] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And I got this little thought as you were speaking about being an imperfectionist, is that how you said it? Imperfectionist. I love that! Um, one of the things that I talk to leaders about all the time, especially in a coaching situation is, you know, I've got a lot of people trying to be perfect. And again, it's that 12 years of you have to get an A. And then if you had parents that sat you down at the table. You didn't get up till, you know, and then they went over your algebra with you and oh my gosh, all the things! I do need therapy maybe. But anyway, so, no, but here's the thing. They try to do everything themselves. I'm like, no, you're the leader. You got this team and they're supposed to be helping you, and you can't have all the strengths. And so surround yourself with people who like to do the stuff you're not good at. You know? And that's how you can really practice self-compassion. A business example of that is like, I'm terrible at that. I've got to find somebody who will do it for me. And there's no shame in that. That's like genius. And what's your last thing? Equals...
[00:47:03] Melissa Dinwiddie: equals the key to everything good.
[00:47:06] Nicole Greer: There you go. The key to everything good. Ah, awesome. All right. Melissa, you have just made my day being on the Build A Vibrant Culture podcast. And everybody look at this book, you've got to get a copy of this book, _The Creative Sandbox Way: Your Path to a Full Color Life_, and that is the same as being vibrant. Please don't miss that.
[00:47:28] Melissa Dinwiddie: Yes!!
[00:47:28] Nicole Greer: I know! Right? Okay. And don't miss this little sticker on here. It says an interactive playbook. So this is not just another read, this is like a kind of book, you're going to have it on your desk and you're going to play with it. You're going to put this aside, come back. Maybe this is your 15 minutes a day thing that she was talking about. Right? Okay. All right, so Melissa, if people want to get up with you, they want to have you come talk to them, speak at their conference, you know, do whatever. How do they get ahold of you?
[00:47:57] Melissa Dinwiddie: Well, the best place to find me is my website, which is my name, MelissaDinwiddie.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn at Melissa Dinwiddie. You can find me on YouTube at Melissa Dinwiddie. You can follow me on Instagram. This one breaks the pattern. I'm on Instagram at a_creative_life. So it's a creative life with underscores in between the words.
[00:48:27] And then also, Nicole, I have put together for your podcast listeners a free one page checklist that gives you a quick, practical way to unlock fresh ideas and spark innovation fast, especially if you think you're not the creative type. And I made a special URL for that. It's a Bitly link. It's bit.ly/BVCPthankyou. That's an acronym for BUILD Vibrant Culture podcast. Thank you. And I also have a QR code. Let's see. There we go.
[00:49:13] Nicole Greer: Okay, so go to the YouTube get the QR code. That's so good! Excellent.
[00:49:18] Melissa Dinwiddie: And that is my impact innovation checklist.
[00:49:22] Nicole Greer: Oh, we need it.
[00:49:23] Melissa Dinwiddie: You will have to put in your name and email address. You do not get added to any kind of mailing list, just so that you know, but I think you do have to answer a question like how did the speaker do on this session or something like that? I can't remember exactly. But it'll just automatically give you that checklist.
[00:49:44] Nicole Greer: We're so grateful. So grateful. Thank you Melissa Dinwiddie for being on the Build A Vibrant Culture podcast. We are going to go get creative. All right everybody go down right now. Just takes a hot second and say, I liked this, I liked this. And leave a little love note for Melissa. And we'll see you next time on the Build A Vibrant Culture podcast. Thanks, Melissa!
[00:50:03] Melissa Dinwiddie: Thank you!
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