266: Mindful Leadership: A Female Leader's Guided Meditation to Break Through Creative Blocks

Have you ever told yourself "I'm not creative enough" to solve a business challenge? In this episode, Melissa guides female leaders and mom founders through a powerful meditation practice designed to break free from limiting beliefs about creativity. Through a combination of mindfulness techniques and guided reflection, you'll: Learn how to identify and challenge creativity-limiting beliefs Experience a body scan meditation for releasing tension Practice reframing negative thoughts about your creative abilities Discover how to access your natural problem-solving capabilities Transform your relationship with creativity and innovation The episode includes a practical meditation exercise you can use whenever you face a business challenge requiring creative solutions. Melissa shares personal stories, including her experience in business school and conversations with her son about creativity, to illustrate how we can expand our definition of what it means to be creative. Connect with Melissa: melissa.llarena [at] gmail.com About your host Melissa Llarena of the Mom Founder Imagination Hub podcast I'm a meditation practitioner and #1 Amazon bestselling author who has spent years peering into the minds of marketers and executives, both as one of them and as their trusted guide. My articles in ForbesWomen have reached over 4 million readers, but what really lights me up is the deep work I do with people who, like me, have spent years shape-shifting to succeed. My own journey through the corporate world – 10 years at powerhouses like Ogilvy (working on IBM) and P&G (yes, even Charmin!) – taught me firsthand about wearing different hats across 14+ business functions. For the past 13 years, I've had the privilege of coaching over 200 marketing and advertising executives worldwide, having raw, honest conversations about what it really costs us to morph ourselves every single day. When I'm hosting the Mom Founder Imagination Hub podcast, I get to dive deep with remarkable leaders like Beth Comstock and GaryVee, exploring how to tap into our most overlooked superpower: imagination. My psychology degree from NYU, Dartmouth MBA, and Transformational Coaching certification gave me the foundation, but it was the pandemic that showed me – and my clients – that we needed something more. In 2021, when ambition felt impossible and imagination seemed out of reach, I realized we were all exhausted from trying to power through. That's when I took a leap – pausing my coaching practice to write a book filled with soul-searching questions, while earning my meditation certification from the Jack Kornfield organization. Now, I blend all these pieces – my corporate insider experience, thousands of honest conversations, and meditation wisdom – into workshops, sessions, and immersions that truly connect. Using imaginative meditation, mindfulness practices that even the most restless executives love, and revealing journaling exercises, I help people find their way back to themselves. Because here's what I know: when we stop losing ourselves every time life or business throws us a curveball, we can finally use our energy for what really matters – creating the impact we're meant to make. TRANSCRIPT   Hello there. This is Melissa, your host behind the mom founder imagination hub podcast. This unedited episode is really geared towards any mom or female leader who has a business challenge that they must overcome with greater creativity. Someone who is seeking to find the inner innovator that. Maybe she once had once felt, but has been struggling to bring back to the forefront. My intention is for you to feel empowered. My intention is for you to feel creative enough to solve whatever you're facing. Business challenge you wish to solve this very week. Now you may not know this, but over the last 13 years, I have coached female leaders who have shared their deepest, darkest, innermost secrets, such as why they actually leave different organizations or bosses or teams, or the things that they wish they could have done. Done. Had they been given the ability to speak up or the ability to step up, you name it, I've heard it. And with these ideas in mind, I wanted to just bring forth this one limiting belief that I heard consistently in my line of work, career coaching, female leaders, primarily in the advertising and marketing function. And it was this,  this idea that I'm not creative, or I don't see myself as a creative person. The idea that whatever it is to be a creative is something that is impossible to achieve, to be, if I wasn't originally hired. on literally the creative team, oftentimes from an agency perspective. And so I want to help guide you through a meditation, also a little bit of a journaling exercise so that you can reestablish your relationship with this idea that you are creative, you get to be creative, and it is through your creativity that you can actually solve some problems. So let's go into this idea of thinking that you're really good at something. For me, I remember being in business school. It could have been maybe like the first week where I was in a group of, I think it was like four of us and we had an opportunity to review one another's resumes and I remember at this time. time before I became a career coach before I was, you know, also designated by the career development office at Tuck business school as a career coach of sorts. I knew that I was really good. Good at helping people promote their skills, their relationships, their abilities, their desires. And so I really stepped up. I remember being on a picnic table in Hanover. It was a sunny summer day, which is pretty unusual because it starts snowing. I think like the end of September in New Hampshire, but it was a beautiful sunny day and we were looking at one another's resumes and I just felt really good. I spoke. up. I had very strong opinions pertaining to ways that my peers should articulate their wins, their experiences. And to kind of quote Sheryl Sandberg, I was like totally leaning in to that experience. So that was something that I was clearly. Good at, and I felt like I could speak up then of course, for you, like there has to be maybe even in recent memory where there's something that you're really fricking  good at. And you may have had your own inner source of confidence to speak up, raise your hand, share your area of expertise. And it is in that spirit with that. Energy that I would love, love, love during this episode to remind you that you get to feel that way about your creativity and your sense of innovativeness. And you get to feel as much as a contributor to a creative challenge as anyone else on your team or in your surroundings. So I'll give you a chance to kind of, you know, really think through that moment when you felt super, super confident, and I will give you an opportunity to do so in a very mindful way, but I just want to caveat this. Right now, I am going to overtly ask you to become aware of a situation where you felt so confident. And as much as I would like to be almost like Jiminy Cricket in your back pocket and remind you how you do have these moments,  in regular life, this is challenging. And oftentimes, We forget. And so I would invite you even from like a career perspective. This is just like a pro tip here, but even from a career perspective, as tactically as your resume, make sure that you have at least one of a story or a moment that you just love to freaking tell related to something that you believe you're really good at and why might that be important because God knows You are nervous during a job interview. So I would encourage you, or even like a pitch, if you own a business. So I would encourage you to have that quote unquote Easter egg, at least one of them on your resume. So now let's just take a moment to reflect. So take an opportunity  to sit comfortably.  You might be on the floor.  You might be on a chair.  You might even lie down.  I encourage you to just take a chance to breathe in  and breathe out  and just be present  to think of one of those moments  when you were doing something because you knew  that you were really, really good at it.  I'll give you a moment to think this through  and keep breathing in.  Now, if you're new to meditating or considering this idea of taking a mindful pause and just focusing on the breath,  that was just a minute.  Now there's no competition. We're not going for some sort of endurance here, but I just want to share with you the short period of time  that it took for you to reflect mindfully.  about one of those moments when you did something that you felt you were good at.  And I say that because you can always return to a good memory  throughout the day  as you encounter moments that are a little harder to wrap your mind around.  Okay. So hold that moment in your pocket. Not so much like Jiminy Cricket, but please do hold that moment in your pocket  because  That moment symbolizes that there are so many things that you just don't bring to the top of your mind that serve as reminders of the skills and qualities that you bring to the table. And sometimes it's just hard to constantly recall those upon command. But as I showed you right now, you were able to do so just by returning. To your breath  now  as it relates to something that you may not feel as much confidence in  these thoughts are Really? What what we call fear based or fear driven  beliefs  and The insight here is  that they're not always true just because you think it  Just because you repeat it, just because other people think it and repeat it about you,  it doesn't necessarily mean that it's true  all the time in every instance.  Now,  constructive criticism is a wonderful thing. People say it's a gift, but I gotta be honest, I rather other things.  But net net,  the point I want to make here is that,  You can actually take a fear based or fear driven belief.  and reframe it or change it in a way that pulls you towards a desired goal.  And therein lies the practice of mindfulness in the simple awareness, almost like you're a Third person looking at a scene where you're giving yourself a little distance between the belief, the thought or emotion. And you're also opening up the opportunity for you to respond, instead of just knee jerk react, right?  And so let's play with this idea.  Let's imagine that in third grade, you had some sort of drawing that in your mind, you thought was some amazing Picasso, but in your teacher's mind, she just thought it was just not cool. I don't even have a bad thing. I want to say about a third graders drawing, but let's just imagine she didn't put it up on the hallways. So didn't get like the,  the attention that you would have hoped.  In her opinion, your art was not so wonderful. In your opinion, in that moment, you thought it was really beautiful.  And isn't it interesting? Because it is you who carries that thought. in your mind for a long time thereafter that moment.  And so, because you have your teacher's criticism or you have your own thoughts about how creative that drawing was,  that would have informed your idea of what it was to be creative. That would have informed your thinking around whether you were creative. And this could be something that has happened decades ago, but it's something that maybe you've heard.  on repeat in your mind from that single instance, right? And so I want to just offer you the opportunity. If you have a creative challenge upfront that you want to solve this week, I just want to invite you to give yourself the best fricking chance you could possibly give yourself and not count yourself out. Just because some third grade teacher said, Your artwork sucked. When it comes to creativity, I want to share with you this story. I was having lunch or some meal with one of my kids and my son was like, Creative? I'm not creative. When I think of creativity, I just think of paint brushes. And so I had that conversation with him and I said, Wait a minute.  You are so inquisitive, your questions are creative, like being curious and asking questions and piecing together different words, ending that statement with a question mark and having different responses and reaction to what you say is a freaking creative thing. And I say freaking because we don't use those words in my house. Point of the matter is this.  It was a reframe, right? So maybe, maybe it's true. Maybe my son is not creative from a arts and craft perspective.  But if you look at creativity and you open up your ability to interpret what it could mean, what it could look like, sound like, et cetera,  therein lies the ability to reframe  a consistent, persistent thought that you just imagined to be completely factual in every instance. So again, this is so normal, especially when it's a thought where you have been criticized, or it's like a warning, you know, like, don't go down hallway because you'll slip on a banana peel. I don't know. I made that up, right? And then you just think that all your life, there's always a banana peel down that hallway. Like these are just things that are open and available opportunities for you to question, open up in your mind's eye and reconsider if it is not serving you for the task at hand. And so that's why I wanted to just kind of open up this thought experiment, right? So here we go. Let's just imagine you were told you're not creative in the past. Let's just imagine really deep dive that this is something that's been persistent, like you've heard it from everyone around you, that you are not creative, you're not innovative, but here you are this week, maybe you have your own business and you need to solve a challenge creatively, because thinking linearly has not worked in the past. I think I have like a, I don't even know, maybe like 572 examples of that. I'll give you an example.  So let's just imagine you want to open up your lead flow. And what does that mean? That means that you want more people on the phone with you so that you can have these sales conversations. Linear thinking might be, okay, I'm going to start with, you know, ad spend. Whereas creative thinking might be, wait a minute, who else might have this audience? How can I collaborate with them such that they win, we win. Right. And so again, It's really about  almost like placing doubt in something that you feel is a no longer working for you because you have to solve this challenge as a business owner, or be something that you want to kind of like  disentangle. So that you can actually find out what the truth is of your reality. Like, are you creative? But maybe the situation has not been right for your flavor of creativity. Okay. So let's not get too far here because I see myself re imagining the whole episode, but I want to be sure that I take you to the meditation. So here we go. I want you to really think through.  today about how you could increase your awareness of your beliefs around being creative, innovative, a problem solver, so that you can mindfully see them for what they are, which is malleable, In the moment. So again, a strongly held belief that you may have had is one that might not hold truth in every scenario. It might no longer be serving you in today's episode, right? So for me, this idea of math, math is something that, you know, I could say, Oh, I've sucked that math. Do I have proof? I don't. Absolutely.  But might I also have proof that tells me a different story? And the answer to that is yes. Isn't that interesting? The only way for me to have, you know excelled in a mathematical school. Or mathematical pursuit, for example, back to business school on the topic of capital markets. The only way I was able to actually knock it out of the ballpark, this exam that I recall kind of  acing and feeling really confident and good about was because I was able to just almost for for that set of hours just totally mute the fact that one time I wasn't so good at math and this time I was able to be that person who always rises to a challenge, right? And so again, it's about just placing a little bit of doubt in this strongly held belief, because there might be a situation or a moment where  that belief is just totally, totally false. Now you can't bullshit yourself, like, I mean, I guess you could try, but I'm pretty sure you'll figure it out soon enough. But what you can do is at least get an inch or two closer to To a belief that takes you where you want to go. So let's go now and do a little bit of a meditation. And this meditation is going to be different than just, you know, sitting down with our thoughts and focusing on our breath, because what I have noticed is that. A lot of people assume that meditating means we have no thoughts. We're emptying everything that's in our mind and we're doing a bit of a mental cleanse. While that might be true because we have a ton going on in our minds, it's also an opportunity to just simply be that witness To the thoughts that are already in our head, but we might just not notice because we've got a lot of things going on. So that's what this is going to be. So I will guide you through a set of questions. We will go through one thought that you might have or believe is true pertaining to whether you're creative or innovative, and then we'll see where you come out on the other end. You ready for it?  Okie dokie. So let's do this.  Close your eyes,  assuming you're not driving,  and I want you to  just find a comfortable way to either be sitting,  standing, or lying down.  This is the interesting bit.  If your belief is that you need to sit for meditation, or that there's even a right way to meditate,  I'm literally going to show you that that is just a belief that might be right for you, but it doesn't always have to be the case.  All right.  So just  find a way for you to be comfortable  and we'll do a little bit of a body scan.  So imagine from the top of your head,  a sense of calmness pouring down your scalp.  And you're just breathing naturally.  Now imagine  your breath  clearing out any tension you may feel  from your forehead  down to your cheeks. Make sure your left cheek feels relaxed  and your right cheek.  Continue  allowing your breath pass through your neck  and feel the ease.  as best you can.  Continue along your upper back,  the breath going down,  just adding ease wherever it passes.  Down to your mid back,  then to your lower,  breathe out.  Notice your arms,  breathe through your left arm,  breathe in,  breathe through  your right arm. Again, Releasing any, any tension  as thoughts will find their way in and out. Just know that is totally.  normal.  Just breathe in,  then  sink into your seat further  and sink deeper.  I'm going to give you a couple of minutes  as you're relaxed as possible  with this ease  to answer this one question.  What thoughts pop up when you think about yourself as a creative being or innovative thinker?  Consider  One of those thoughts,  perhaps the one thought that feels the most defining  or the one thought that  might have been secretly holding you back through the years,  have that one  thought pertaining to creativity or innovation.  And whether you're capable of being creative or innovative in light of a challenge, hold that one thought, keep that one thought  in mind.  Now, silently to yourself, I invite you to ask yourself  a set of questions  all pertaining to that one  thought, that one limiting belief pertaining to whether you are creative or innovative.  The first question  said in two ways,  is it really true?  Might it be real, but not really, really true. Thank you.  as it relates to that one limiting belief pertaining to creativity.  I want to ask you, what is it like to live with this belief?  What has it been like to live with this belief?  In light of this limiting belief, I want to invite you to just notice how it feels in your body.  Notice  how your body and heart might be suffering with this belief inside  might help to think of an instance of when this belief got in your way  from a relaxed position. And then ask yourself silently,  what does the  vulnerable place inside of you  need right now in relation to how you feel? this belief feels,  how it's held you back.  And now as we're closing  this mindfulness practice,  who would you be without this belief? Who would you be  without this thought?  Who would you be this week without this belief or thought?  Would you be that person who assembles the team to solve the creative challenge?  Would you be able to solve this creative challenge On your own,  would you  be the perfect person,  maybe even the only person who can solve this challenge because  you're creative in just the right  way.  As we close this meditation, I just want to invite you to, to really soften your original belief.  Whatever that limiting belief  was,  place a little doubt in it  or swap it completely for one that  That you can hold. So again, it's not about BSing yourself,  but maybe it's  less declarative, less  fact sounding,  less  debilitating.  Maybe it's  just about opening up  who you get to be, like your identity and who you are.  I am  someone who's possible creativity. I am a problem solver. I can figure this out.  And just giving yourself some space so that you can play with an open heart so that when you approach the challenge this week,  there's no need to run away.  Instead,  you're able to explore with what actually is available to you. You're able to.  Try your hand at something you may have never  thought you could do, but maybe you realize that you're really freaking good at.  And so I invite you, if you have a piece of paper or journal, not that you needed to at this very moment, but if you do  just scribble some ideas. scribble some ideas of how you intend to approach this week's business challenge more creatively.  I know you can do it. And when it comes to mindfulness and when it comes to meditating, there's so many ways to approach it.  And I really think that  There's so many tools that do not require anyone other than yourself. And there's also so many different ways of using the tool of meditation and mindfulness. And this has been one that I have seen work really well when it comes to coaching clients in terms of their limiting beliefs. It's this idea that. By being that third party  awareness level of these thoughts and beliefs that we have passing through our minds,  it gives us an opportunity to start poking holes in some of these thoughts and beliefs that  are no longer serving us or holding us back or have us feeling like we're totally stuck. And so this week I invite you to be more.  intentional about whether or not everything that passes through your head is a fact and completely the law in terms of who you are.  And I invite you to be mindful and more open to the fact that  Your beliefs, your thoughts really influence your behaviors. So if you could imagine playing this out, if you get to a place where you believe that there are instances where you have been creative  and you look at this week's challenge with that fresh perspective and hope, then you're actually able to, and willing to, and will  behave in a different, a new way.  Versus  retreating, right? And not even raising your hand to solve that creative challenge because  you're just not creative.  So I hope this was helpful to you. I hope this serves you. I hope that it gives you an opportunity to just think about mindfulness and using the tool of meditation in a new way. It is not just about sitting down, feeling zen, and, you know, having all the negative Thoughts of the day wash out of your head. It can absolutely give you that extra sense of reality and a greater, more sophisticated level of presence so that you can be very intentional about how you use the thoughts, beliefs, and ideas that have crossed your mind or people  tell you. Because again,  A thought, a belief is not necessarily some sort of hard and steadfast  fact. It can actually be  malleable for the moment.  Have a wonderful day. If you got value out of this, I would absolutely love to hear from you. To hear from you right now. I'm super excited about email because I am on a social media break. I think I've been on one for weeks now. So go ahead and email me and put my email in the show notes. It's melissa. larinaatgmail.  com. And let me know if you got value out of this conversation. I would love to hear from you. And if there's a,  challenge or situation where you could use the presence or the ease or the thoughtfulness that introducing meditation in your life can provide, let me know. I'm happy to work with you as well. Thank you so much.