Syncreate: A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities


Book Description

Consider this book your ally as you move deeper into the adventure of creativity. Syncreate is about the synergy of co-creation; it embodies the spirit of collaboration. Think of it as an approach to creative project management that can be used by anyone from students to artists and individuals to organizational teams. The Syncreate approach distills the creative process into three main components: Play, Plan, and Produce. These stages can help us to achieve our macro-level, big picture goals as well as our daily, micro-level activities. "Developing better right-brain functionality can be incredibly difficult without some kind of easy-to-follow process. Enter Syncreate, a simple but sophisticated twelve-chapter guide for individuals, teams and communities who want to more successfully steer their creative journey." -Hugh Forrest, South by Southwest (SXSW), Chief Programming Officer "Syncreate is a clear and nicely organized gem of a book, from multidisciplinary talented and experienced guides and role models. You will become creatively empowered, individually and in community. Highly recommended." -Ruth Richards, M.D., Ph.D., Author of Everyday Creativity and the Healthy Mind: Dynamic New Paths for Self and Society "The Syncreate process looks at everything important: the individual, team and community process of creativity in a practical, yet poignant manner. It would be hard for anyone to finish this text and not play, plan and produce." -Diana Rivera, M.A., P.C.C, Ph.D., Creative Empowerment Coach and Facilitator




Finding the Phoenix


Book Description

A journal of self-discovery, Finding the Phoenix, by author Dr. Karel James Bouse introduces seven tools for transformative self-discovery, including how to deconstruct one’s lenses, consciousness and identity; use expressive arts to access hidden elements of the self; connect with nature from a mystical perspective; find the meaning of your dreams; use Neo-shamanic techniques for interdimensional self-exploration, demystify anomalous experiences and phenomena; and construct a personal mythology to discover your life purpose. Used synergistically, these tools facilitate a deep, personal investigation that bridges and integrates the conscious with the unconscious, and the mythic with the mundane. Bouse provides you with background information based in academic, scientific, and professional psychological research, and detailed exercises as you follow the fictional “Lucy” through a series of workshops designed to help you find the phoenix of your authentic self. Finding the Phoenix offers a combination of thoughtful instructions, rich personal narrative from the perspective of Lucy, and experiential exercises designed to evoke insight, creativity, and personal development.




Everyday Creativity and the Healthy Mind


Book Description

As human beings we all have creative potential, a quality essential to human development and a vital component to healthy and happy lives. However this may often remain stifled by the choices we make, or ways in which we choose to live in our daily lives. Framed by the “Four Ps of Creativity” – product, person, process, press – this book offers an alternative understanding of the fundamentals of ordinary creativity. Ruth Richards highlights the importance of “process”, circumventing our common preoccupation with the product, or creative outcome, of creativity. By focusing instead on the creator and the creative process, she demonstrates how we may enhance our relationships with life, beauty, future possibilities, and one another. This book illustrates how our daily life styles and choices, as well as our environments, may enable and allow creativity; whereas environments not conducive to creative flow may kill creative potential. Also explored are questions of ‘normality’, beauty and nuance in creativity, as well as creative relationships.




Prep, Push, Pivot


Book Description

Advance your career with this insightful playbook for underrepresented women In Prep, Push, Pivot, award-winning career coach and author Octavia Goredema delivers an indispensable career coaching guide for women looking for a new job, dealing with job loss, pivoting to a new career, or returning to the workforce after an extended absence. You'll discover practical strategies you can implement at crucial times during your career, ensuring your considerable talents and skills are used to their full potential. In this important book, you'll: Discover your true worth, cement your career values, and carve out a realistic and aspirational career plan Learn how to position yourself for a promotion, navigate a break in your career, and integrate your role as a mother or caregiver with your professional life Deal with monumental career changes, contribute to the development of the women around you, and benefit from an array of professional resources in your journey forward Perfect for women who are ready to overcome any obstacles that await them, Prep, Push, Pivot is a thoughtful road map to help women chart their professional and personal success.




Soulbbatical


Book Description

Part memoir, part manifesto, Soulbbatical is an invitation to become Chief Soul Officer of your own life—and to open up a whole new world of possibility. “An honest, emotionally gut-wrenching, and ultimately soul-satisfying memoir.” —Kirkus Reviews Former Harley-Davidson executive Shelley Paxton did just that. She walked away at the peak of her twenty-six-year marketing career and embarked on a profoundly personal journey to reconnect with her true purpose and deepest desires. She called it her “Soulbbatical,” and it not only changed her life, it became her calling. Paxton had a wildly successful life by most definitions—iconic brands, executive titles, and a globe-trotting career that took her to over sixty countries. She had one of the coolest jobs in the world, yet couldn’t shake the feeling that she had lost herself along the way. Something was missing. Here, she takes you on a sometimes harrowing, often hilarious journey through the illness, divorce, addiction, and tragedy that finally woke her up. Suddenly she was rebelling for her best life, and embracing a new mission: to encourage others to live their most authentic, courageous, and purposeful lives—today. Soulbbatical is an unconventional, exhilarating, and totally badass road map to discovering what you really want—and getting it. Because no matter how far you’ve strayed from your soul’s true path, it’s never too late for transformation.




Love as a Business Strategy


Book Description

To increase revenue, improve customer experience, and develop higher-performing teams, it's time for leaders to stop looking for quick fixes to complex business problems and start building a culture of love. Yes, love. Anchored by Softway's own transformational journey, Love as a Business Strategy offers a new, people-first framework for achieving any business outcome-written by folks that aren't fans of run-of-the-mill business books. As a matter of fact, Love as a Business Strategy is so chock-full of real-world examples of mistakes, heartbreak, and redemption that it reads more like a juicy exposé than a business book. Love as a Business Strategy steers clear from piety and theoretical concepts and instead shares grounded stories of resilient people running a real business. A business, as you'll come to find out, that was on the brink of disaster before 'love' took hold. Love As A Business Strategy doesn't preach or mislead, rather it lays out the blueprints for better business outcomes-like better employee engagement, enhanced patient experiences, and increased efficiency-then walks you through it step-by-step. A better way of doing business is possible. The workplace revolution has arrived. Love as a Business Strategy will help you ditch the status quo, embrace humanity, and achieve lasting success.







The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop


Book Description

The Antiracist Writing Workshop is a call to create healthy, sustainable, and empowering artistic communities for a new millennium of writers. Inspired by June Jordan 's 1995 Poetry for the People, here is a blueprint for a 21st-century workshop model that protects and platforms writers of color. Instead of earmarking dusty anthologies, imagine workshop participants Skyping with contemporary writers of difference. Instead of tolerating bigoted criticism, imagine workshop participants moderating their own feedback sessions. Instead of yielding to the red-penned judgement of instructors, imagine workshop participants citing their own text in dialogue. The Antiracist Writing Workshop is essential reading for anyone looking to revolutionize the old workshop model into an enlightened, democratic counterculture.




Everyday Business Storytelling


Book Description

A practical, easy-to-use guide to transform business communications into memorable narratives that drive conversations—and your career—forward In Everyday Business Storytelling: Create, Simplify, and Adapt A Visual Narrative for Any Audience, visual communication and storytelling experts Janine Kurnoff and Lee Lazarus leverage decades of experience helping executives at the world's top brands—including Colgage-Palmolive, Nestlé, T-Mobile, Medtronic and Meta—bring clarity and meaning to their business communications. Whether you're building a presentation, crafting a high-stakes email, or need to influence the conversation in your next meeting with an executive, or have to communicate with data, Everyday Business Storytelling offers an insightful exploration of how to develop compelling business narratives that meet diverse audience needs. You'll discover how to use a simple, repeatable framework to transform your ideas, data, and insights into an authentic, persuasive story. Within this professional development book, you'll also find clever data visualization and visual display techniques to help humanize your stories and build an audience connection, leading to improved presentation skills and better data literacy. Whether you're looking to enhance your executive presence, align teams, become an expert at converting data analysis into data insights, or want to communicate change and influence audiences, Everyday Business Storytelling is for you. Everyday Business Storytelling is an indispensable guide to making your communications stick in the minds of your audience and drive change. It enables you to display confidence and communicate with clarity regardless of how complex your message is. If you're a busy, talented businessperson looking for tactics to improve your executive presentations, one-pagers, emails, or virtual meetings, this communication book is for you.




Presenting Virtually


Book Description

Provide practical tips that help business communicators address basic problems they run into when creatingand delivering presentations in a virtual format.Teach proven principles in short, skimmable chapters and sections that are easy for busy managers andprofessionals to digest and apply in the moment.Create the content foundation for a supplemental training offering from Duarte TBD, which may be an onlinecourse OR a series of short virtual workshops with lessons and simple practice activities drawn from eachchapter.