Finding Creativity on the Other Side of Comfort
By Roger Porter and Olga Brandeis
With the New Year peaking over the horizon, I’m filled with kinetic energy for what is to come. This year, my business in commercial real estate finance has taken on new clients, developed my team’s skill set, and grown in ways I only dreamed of a few years back when we first launched. It was a year of tremendous progress in how I run my business, and I’m thrilled to let the energy of that growth guide me into a whole new year. Looking back on the year, I see how I expanded my vision for what I could achieve in my mind and made key decisions in the physical world to allow the expansion to manifest as growth in my business. The expansion continues into the new year!
But expansion calls for more than intention – it requires a coordinated effort between the vision in the mind’s eye with strategic actions in the physical world. Just as a plant must grow in proportion with its pot, I expanded the business in lockstep with my vision. I have also discovered that expansion doesn’t come out of nowhere. It needs a spark to kick off the process: creativity. I discovered this when I wrote Part I of a three-part series about empowering women to invest in commercial real estate.
Draw On Your Creativity To Expand Professionally
“Creativity is the conduit to soul connection, a feeling of purpose and meaning,” I wrote in that blog post. When we are connected to our larger purpose, expansion is inevitable. Creativity is not only the lifeblood of expansion, it is the bedrock of our faith in things working out for us. If we tune in to our creativity, we are boundless in energy and strength, leading to the kind of expansion that is at once hopeful and productive.
How do we tune in to our creativity? Rick Rubin, a celebrated music producer – co-founder of Def Jam Recordings and former co-president of Columbia Records, gives us the roadmap in his deep well of creative truths with “The Creative Act: A Way of Being.” Rubin’s meditation on creativity isn’t just about inspiring you to create, but digs deeper to uncover the soul behind the creation. “We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output. The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world,” writes Rubin. We must discard labels and step into the embodiment of creating as doing. Just as love needs action, artistry needs the very act of creating.
For the year ahead, I empower folks to draw on their creativity to expand in their professional lives – from a business, organization or skill set, to expansion within a commercial real estate portfolio and other investments. For example, if you’re a doctor who wants to launch their own practice, the idea will flourish through creativity and expansion to make it manifest in the world. One way they can achieve this is to acquire a loan for the acquisition of a medical office building where they can have their practice and rent out the additional spaces.
As a commercial real estate broker for over 20 years, I understand the importance of having the right team in place, which is crucial to the successful financing of the deal. I’m an effective connector and negotiator who guides this process to ensure expansion. Whether the client needs one piece or a whole dedicated team of the best sales/leasing broker, CPA, attorney, lender, insurance agent, I’m the mortgage broker who makes it work for the client. And although creativity is the path to expansion, I’ve discovered three practices that will keep you grounded during the growth process.
Practice An Abundant Mindset
The first is a practice of an abundant mindset. This practice is about opening your mind to growth and change. In the new year, I challenge my readers to broaden your perspective to its widest possible scope. “In the abundant mindset, the river never runs dry,” writes Rubin. “Ideas are always coming through. And an artist is free to release them with the faith that more will arrive.” In essence, free your mind and ideas will flow. The more rooted you are in to an abundant mindset, the more expansion you will experience in the new year.
Mindfulness tip: Take some time to sit alone, it can be out at a coffee shop or in your quiet space. Close your eyes, take a deep breath and truly allow your mind to visualize a different, new chapter for you. Allow color, vibrant or muted, into the scene, let your mind create vignettes of your ideal work, business, or personal environment. Take a few moments to do this. See how you feel afterwards. You have now planted new seeds in your mind’s garden.
Practice Setting Productive Habits
The next practice lives in the doing – setting productive habits. But it isn’t just about any kind of habits – focus on building out habits that produce results. One approach is to focus on shifting your perspective to the incredible things you can accomplish and building habits around that perspective shift. Then remove limiting beliefs such as “I’m not good enough” or “I’m too old to accomplish that.” The perspective shift and elimination of limiting beliefs lays the foundation for creating good habits that will allow you to realize your expansion. As Rubin puts it: “Good habits create good art. The way we do anything is the way we do everything. Treat each choice you make, each action you take, each word you speak with skillful care. The goal is to live your life in the service of art.”
Mindfulness tip: Practice, even for a day, catching yourself when a limiting thought or belief crosses your mind. Flip the thought to a positive one and see how your body responds. Are you smiling yet?
Practice Watching Your World Expand
Finally, as Rick Rubin notes in his book, build a practice that is a way of being to watch your world expand. We can’t simply let our ideas live in our heads, we must practice it in every way we live our lives for the ideas to materialize in the physical world. This sets our soul ablaze with passion, tenacity and strength. “All that matters is that you are making something you love, to the best of your ability, here and now,” writes Rubin. The daily practice of creativity is the way of being that lets us expand beyond our horizon. “The imagination has no limits. The physical world does. The work exists in both.” When we find the balance, we achieve the way of being.
Mindfulness tip: Try doing one thing at a time on your to-do list with full focus and care. Take pride in doing that one task on your list and celebrate the win.
For the coming year, I have expansion in my vision for my business. That expansion lives on the other side of comfort – if only we take the necessary steps to learn new skills and root in to our creative being. For me, it begins with my practice of creativity and mindful tenets it requires to keep it alive. “Art is choosing to do something skilfully, caring about the details, bringing all of yourself to make the finest work you can,” Rubin concludes his book. “It is beyond ego, vanity, self-glorification, and need for approval.” Just the same, I continue to see the results in my abundant mindset, productive habits, and way of being. This way of being ignites the passion I have for my work and my love for helping my clients with financing. When they want to expand their portfolio or refinance, I help them achieve their goals with their commercial real estate assets and ensure that each financing closes successfully.
What about you readers? How will you expand your life in the new year? Reach out to let us know and keep the conversation going.
