Unlock Your Hidden Creative Side To Thrive in Hospitality - Shelley Brown

Could a creative practice help you avoid burnout? Today, we're learning from someone who has been there and shares how to stay healthy and balanced as hospitality providers. Today is Saturday, and on Saturdays, I like to focus on wellness and personal development here on Hospitality Daily, which is why I'm really excited to reintroduce you to our guest today, Shelley Brown, who's a professional speaker and storyteller who started her career in the hospitality industry. We met her a couple of months back in an episode that I'll link to in the show notes. Shelly inspires me a lot and I appreciate her perspective, and today she talks about how we can avoid burnout through creativity, by sharing her own story.

I was really, really suppressed creatively because I wanted to be a bad ass. I wanted to be the top salesperson. I wanted to run the most marathons. I looked around the world to try to find my identity like I was at a clothing store because being this creative person was considered kind of weird, especially in the corporate world where I really wanted to achieve. And so I didn't realize that when you truly use your gifts and you truly use who you are, you're going to do a heck of a lot better in anything that you do. But because I was surrounded by people that were more linear thinkers and I was such a divergent thinker I just I just spent so much time trying to fit in and when you try to fit in, you overcompensate, you underperform, you get stressed out, you get burnt out and you get fired, you quit, whatever. But the mindfulness practice for me opened up so much space for me because it helped me stop worrying about the past, regretting the past, worrying about the future and ruminating and overthinking about all this stuff. So when you do that, you open the space for presence. And I started doing photography, and then photography turned into collage and then collage turned into drawing and then drawing turned into painting and I didn't know that that was in there. And I'm in my 50s, I did not know. And I even asked my mom I'm like did I draw when I was a kid? And she was like no, nothing beyond like the regular art class. And now I paint and my stuff's for sale and it kind of blows my mind.

I want to link to some of your art in this story, but it's really interesting. You mentioned that, Shelley, because growing up my younger brother was the artistic one and my parents would look to him to create or paint or he wasn't is a great artist. But for myself, that was not me. I was into science and I was a nerd, and so I feel like what was interesting for me recently, and something that's given me a lot of life, is trying some creative pursuits, right, even podcasting, as simple as it sounds. I produce all my own shows and I play around with the audio set and I mess around with different music settings, and I've just recently gotten a little more into photography. So when I have a chance to do interviews in person, I'll take photos of the environment, and I'm finding it's bringing so much life to express a creative side, even though that was never me growing up. And I guess my question for you is what would you encourage our listeners, who maybe don't think of themself as creative, to maybe try some of this kind of stuff? That's such a great question.

And I'm so happy that you have found some creative endeavors, because I don't believe that people are not creative. I mean, people will say to me outright I'm not creative. And the thing is, we have such a myopic definition of what creativity is. I mean what you do, josiah, with podcasting and playing with the sound and all the things that you do, that is creative, that is creativity. So I think the biggest advice is broaden your perspective on what creativity could look like, because anything that you're interested in could be a form of creativity for you if you're willing to explore it and get curious about it and play with it. And it doesn't have to look like art, it doesn't have to look like music, it doesn't have to look like the standard things that we label as creative, and you are proof of that. Yeah, it's been a fun journey and I definitely have my antenna up looking at the.

I definitely have my antenna up looking for people that are leaning into this, and I know a guy who became the head of a regional tourism organization and he loves photography. He kind of incorporates that he's like I moved to this new place, it's gorgeous, I'm going to take photos, I'm going to share it, and it's really cool to see him expressing that. But I feel like it also is an important part of our mental health and you know so there's kind of this. It brings a lot of life but potentially could also build some resilience, and I think when I was talking to Alex, that was kind of a theme that came up is make sure you have something outside of work to, you know, so that the pressures of work, especially in hospitality, where you might have people yelling at you every now and then you just have some way to blow off steam.