Brain-picking with Coach Cami | Recap
On Thursday, August 12th, it was a delight to join the first brain-picking group session with Coach Cami on ADPList. I am used to being in group sessions with hundreds of people, usually staying muted, and simply dropping my questions in the chat. This session however felt personal, intimate, and held space to share and be vulnerable.
Cami Travis-Groves is a transformational coach with a background in graphic design, who helps creatives to identify blockages, re-engage their creativity, and hone their strengths so that they can become their best and brightest selves. Sitting in a comfy yellow chair with her cat on her lap and no agenda, she opened the floor for questions, listened, and simply shared her experiences, insightful visuals, and advice. Many of her answers resonated with me and inspired me to recap the session so you can feel inspired too.
How do you know if a job is a good fit? Should I base my decision on logic or my gut feeling?
Cami strongly recommends making a decision based on both, brain and gut. You have gazillions of neurons in your brain that can logically answer if a job is a good fit, but you also have millions of neurons in your gut and they should be listened to as well.
“Lean into your body’s knowing.”
If you have to decide on a job, try to fill in this table by identifying the best and worst scenarios for if you do or don’t take the job. Once you do a written and visual brain dump, it will become obvious to you what your path should be, Cami says.
Also ask yourself: How do you see yourself being in the world in 5, 10, or 20 years? What are the big picture things you want to accomplish? Do you want to move a needle into a specific industry? Try to use that as your north star as you move forward with your applications.
What can I do on days when I don’t feel motivated or driven to take on the day?
It’s hard to be on and up every day, right? You can’t just flip the switch. Cami says that it is important to acknowledge what it is you are feeling. Check in with your heart. Check in with your gut. Those are big centers of information and intuition. Grab a journal and ask your gut, what is it that you’d like me to know. And then just pause, listen, and write down whatever comes up.
It’s also important not to feel like you have to tamp down negative emotions, all emotions are good. Welcome them all in. If you feel a negative emotion that you don’t want to dwell on, she recommends setting a timer to feel really crappy for six and a half minutes. In that time roll in it and ask yourself, what is it that I need to learn from this feeling? Where is it coming from? What is it trying to tell me?
“Feelings are called feelings because you’re supposed to be feeling them.”
Another piece of advice of hers is to take a look at your self-care. It is neither selfish nor narcissistic to take care of yourself. Check in with yourself physically, emotionally, and express yourself creatively and spiritually to create a solid core. Once your core is solid, you have a much greater capacity to take care of your loved ones, you can do better-paying work, and have the capacity to take care of your community.
How can I maintain my consistency or level of energy every day?
Cami suggests making a list of everything that you do in a day, or in an average week, and circle the things that meet three criteria:
- Things that bring you energy
- Things you are good at or come easy to you
- Things that people might pay for
Things that meet all three are your zone of genius. Spending lots of time in your zone of genius is sustainable because it gives you energy. If you notice that the majority of the things on your list are draining your energy, then it’s not sustainable because you end up with less energy than when you started. That way you can become aware of the people and situations that drain you and the situations, activities, and people in your life that give you energy.
How do I stay disciplined and hold myself accountable?
When you make promises to yourself like finishing a course by a certain time and you haven’t done it, you’ve broken a promise to yourself. You start to mistrust yourself or even distrust yourself. Once broken, it is very hard to earn trust back sometimes. So start slowly, by making smaller promises to yourself and then keeping these promises.
Set yourself small goals and break gigantic tasks down into baby steps. By breaking things down into baby steps and celebrating them at the end, you are making progress, building confidence, and winning trust in yourself over time.
How to be kind to yourself?
Cami recommends everybody to write a love letter to themselves. In this letter, write everything that you never were told as a child, how cute you are, how sweet, how sweet-natured, how loving, lovable, worthy, and amazing. Then you layer on things that you want to be told as an adult, how talented you are, how skilled, how thoughtful. Maybe even stick it in an envelope and mail it to yourself. The moment you get it, you open it up and read it to yourself in a mirror. Your brain is listening and hearing these words will change your brain wiring.
The second is to create a Good-Juju folder. Start a file on your computer with every positive feedback you’ve ever gotten in an email. Anytime you’re lacking in confidence, you go to that folder and you start reading. And pretty soon after reading those notes enough times, you won’t need to reference it very often, but it’s always there. How many good emails and notes and messages do you have that you can start your Good-Juju folder with?
As a starting designer, I constantly come up with new questions. As a career changer, I sometimes simply need support. Being able to connect, talk, and learn from industry professionals is finally possible and accessible to all. More than 2500 designers love to share their knowledge on ADPList, a platform where people can find, book, and meet mentors around the world.
So if you haven’t had a chance to give it a try, feel free to head over to adplist.org and let me know if you have any questions!
