video & visual insights
unconscious commitments
creative & conscious principle #6
Our attachments and addictions to false identities and ways of being can prevent us from realizing our goals. Hidden unconscious commitments stand in the way of conscious commitments and act as competing priorities that impact relationships, decisions, and can conflict with intended outcomes and dreams. Being unconsciously committed to feeling comfortable is to avoid being uncomfortable, where choices are followed by consequences.
What unconscious commitments do you have that may be pulling you in competing directions or in masked ways?
power of the heart
creative & conscious principle #5
"We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life." Carl Jung.
The mystery of life is full of transitions and passageways that become a frontier of choice, with who we want to become to fearlessly live a life of purpose and impact. As the world is changing faster than we can process and provoking crossroads, identity intersections, and cultural shifts, we can ignite our drifting consciousness by revisiting ourselves. Overcoming the great obstacles to our inner conscious authority is to relinquish the need for approval, performing, or pretending and to live into what has authentic purpose and inner power.
The Power Of Heart Can Be…
When purpose meets passion in life it can ignite a firestorm. Being in touch with the chambers of our heart awakens us into infinite possibilities as we align our gifts with what has meaning and fire. The sacred power of knowing what we are called forth into doing requires truth-telling, accessing intuition, and vision to cultivate purpose and life dreams. Feeding the higher version of self creates a magnetic force bringing our voice and power into the world.
go deeper
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Anais Nin.
Barriers to business or personal growth are often not technical ones, but rather cultivating a strong leadership mindset that transcends skill development to keep pace with the velocity of complex change.
Vertical learning focuses on mindset transformation, where leaders develop the ability to think and feel in increasingly more complex ways. Vertical learning broadens one’s view and heightens awareness in mental, emotional, and relational agility. Increasing mental complexity and emotional intelligence with a highly conscious state improves how leaders think and interpret situations.
The ability to successfully navigate rapidly changing and uncertain circumstances with compounded daily pressures is directly correlated to mindset thinking and inner dialogue. When our internal voice goes into overdrive with unhelpful chatter producing emotions that distort effectiveness, how we manage our leadership operating system with agility becomes a game changer allowing us to be thoughtful rather than reactive.
Practicing Emotional Agility:
· Recognize Your Patterns – Identify where you are stuck and what needs to change.
· Name Your Thoughts & Emotions – Naming can help diffuse stirring thoughts and feelings. They are simply sources of data and not the whole truth.
· Accept Thoughts & Emotions – Be open to what you are experiencing without judgment. Allow yourself to feel energy patterns and understand that they don’t control you unless you give them the power to.
· Act On Your Values – Come from a place of thoughtfulness and consider the values guiding decisions and actions.
Common Leader Mind Traps:
· I Am Not Good Enough, Smart Enough
· Making Assumptions & Judging Others
· Failure Won’t Look Good On Me
· The Constant Quest To Protect & Defend Our Ego
applied empathy
creative & conscious principle # 4
Did you know that having higher levels of empathy may come at a cost with an increased risk of inflammation?
Empathy, the powerful ability to understand the feelings of others, is often associated with compassion, high-quality relationships, and an open-ended creative process of constructing mental states and empathetic responses. It isn’t hard to imagine that social experiences can “get under our skin” and influence overall health and well-being. In a national longitudinal study of adult health, higher levels of empathy were associated with higher levels of c-reactive protein, a marker of chronic inflammation. If you have high empathy, perhaps you are absorbing the emotions and energy of those around you, thereby increasing stress or sensory processing levels. The cost of caring and the presence of human energy in a world of hustle has never been more important.
We often think of empathy as a way of being with others. However, the ability to apply empathy with self cannot be overstated.
Applied empathy with self may include:
Recognize how judgments of self, with others, and false narratives can take a toll on well-being and relationships. Through self-forgiveness and self-compassion, a universal application of letting things go, we gain inner freedom and liberation. When we realize we are not our thoughts or emotions, we can elevate to a conscious level of applied empathy, where the ego's grip to being right, positionality, and duality can be quieted.
conscious innovation
Sometimes the transformative journey forward involves periods of retreat and unlearning in order to let new light in that propels us into conscious actions and mindsets. Dissolving outdated patterns of identity can call forth stillness, integration, and even disorientation that often upshift us into new ways of becoming. This unfamiliar space of self can be filled with contradictions of coming home, yet also not be easily placed in physical world reality and conditioning. The hero’s journey of mythological adventure with rediscovering self and bringing back an integral gift is worthy, regardless of practical deed requiring time to bloom. Outer reflects inner and planting seeds from within, eventually will become known. May your call into the unknown bring back gifts that lift humanity, foster conscious connections, and inspire new ways of being that the world needs.
storytelling visualization
Bring A Wow Factor With Visual Storytelling
Storytelling visualization is the language and shorthand that elevates data and takes linear information and creates an unforgettable visual experience.
High stakes stories, whether it is data, concepts, or a brilliant idea lodged in your brain, can be brought to life through unwinding the techno jargon and delivering clear visual messages that drive inspiration and action.
Polish up your pitch and visual story. Peel away the layers of data obscuring the essence of your vision with digital storytelling, animation, graphics, and visual elements that enhance engagement and desired outcomes.
completing unfinished business
Creative & Conscious Leadership Principle #3
In a fast-paced world, where logic and reason can often take center stage, it can be easy to hide in the shadows of our ego defrauding the inner reality and truth. Exploring what is below the surface and our own inner intelligence can be the biggest investment and power move with addressing the stuff that is getting in our way, consciously or unconsciously. The uncomfortable nature to feel your feelings without judgment and to stop intellectualizing or suppressing is a mindfulness practice and gift to yourself for healing pathways of self-forgiveness and self-love.
When our shadows, unresolved issues, and unprocessed emotions get in the way of being effective and hold us back. Courage to look again and not rearrange the external world for answers, but know the answers reside from within. Conscious awareness of patterns, conflicts, limiting beliefs, wounds, and behaviors that can keep us trapped in a cycle of suffering and conditioned limitation that creates separation from true self.
above the line leadership
Creative & Conscious Leadership Principle #2
Being above the line could mean…
Radical self-awareness with a conscious mindset, ability to rise above the noise to stay at your personal best, especially while under stress, can access emotional and spiritual intelligence beyond the ego's narrative, lead with creative thinking and empathy, take responsibility when below the line, and understand how to reset to move into a forgiving and humanistic state of being.
Being below the line…
Can happen quite easily where thoughts trigger emotions and spin us into twisted energy. How we also feel about our overall health and wellness can by nature impact our outlook, sense of meaning, and connection with others.
Shorter cycles of being below the line with strategies that help us reset can make a big difference. Sometimes it is simply how we talk to ourselves with kindness, grace, and forgiveness that offers permission to get above the line again. In reality, everyone is most likely doing the best they can at any given moment, including yourself.
being in authenticity
Creative & Conscious Leadership Principle #1
The quality to be real, legitimate, and true.
Genuine ability to show up as true self without any masks, own origin story and who you are with confidence including imperfections, live life according to values, vision, and goals versus pleasing external societal pressures, words and actions align, have emotional self-awareness and regulation, and ability to cut through pretense and get to the heart of connection.
Genuine can be perceived as honest and sincere with others and authentic can be perceived as a way of being true to self. In a world that is full of pressure to be something we are not; how does authenticity show up for you and is your inner and outer authentic nature aligned?
high sensory brain processing
The Leadership Awakening Summit hosted by 25 global speakers was a powerful week of educational learning and a reminder that the foundation of who we are from a humanistic standpoint is the engine and oxygen of high-quality exchange.
If you haven’t had a chance to catch some of the other speakers here is a summary of high sensory intelligence. High Sensory Brain Processing is a genetic trait in 20-30% of the population and activates neuron brain cells and the prefrontal cortex wiring the brain to:
· Easily detect emotions in self and others, displaying high empathy.
· Increase emotional vividness and intensity of emotions, thereby feeling much more deeply.
· Be highly observant of surroundings and track on much more environmental and sensory data.
· Produce a finely tuned and sensitive nervous system, absorbing energy, sounds, and sensations more easily.
· Increase depth of processing with a highly active mind and a vast toolbox of brain network connections.
· Become perceptive to subtleties with intuitive intelligence and can see beyond physical and factual.
Other aspects of the trait include being conscientious, creative leadership, and potentially half of the population with the trait can also be sensation seeking. As many of the global speakers shared, this trait when aligned to purpose and passion in the world can ignite unimaginable contributions.
meaning in our lives is influenced by wellness
A variety of associations can be correlated with having meaning in our lives. Research shows that experiences of meaning-making can be attributed to the topic of well-being through conscious growth development. Our well-being can shift during life transitions and as we transform. As we reach higher growth stages, we can access and experience well-being and mindfulness, which is correlated with increased meaning in our lives. Learn about the three aspects of a self-transforming mind, a self-authoring mind, and a socialized mind, that impact higher freedom of choice and wellbeing consciousness.
1340 Services And Programs
the ultimate leadership tune-up
Inspire the human spirit with creative and conscious awareness to lead the future.
The Center for Creative & Conscious Leadership is focused on human potential and development to harness the power of possibility through creative inquiry and conscious-centered leadership. We aspire for a critical mass of conscious leaders who seek transformational experiences, desire to build world-class educational programs, grow conscious cultures, and contribute to groundbreaking research, change, and leadership from the inside out for a better planet.
Whole Brain Thinking
whole brain thinking
Often times we are processing data and information in our brains without being consciously aware. As we know, this can lead to unconscious bias and motivations while making decisions that often we are not even aware of and can activate outcomes not intended. Awareness of the full spectrum of our left and right hemisphere and how our conscious and subconscious mind can work together offers leaders whole brain thinking with a broader range of innovative approaches in today’s world. The ability to be consciously aware and evaluate with reasoning is a key quality to help drive inclusive and conscious debate.
Creative Scientist
your creative scientist
Unleash
The intuitive randomness of human creativity allows for us to gain competitive advantage with tapping imagination, thinking in contrary directions, understanding that problem-solving doesn’t culminate in a singular truth, and the ability to fuse together new realities.
This is personally defined for each leader as creative agency is about diversity of application.
As we think of the future and the dualities of AI and human energy, remote and in-office, or wellness and productivity, I believe creative thinking is at the intersection of all these critical and changing topics with how to lead the future with creative solutions.
Video 9
Video Note From
dr. michele mercer
There has never been a more important time on the planet to explore who we are becoming individually and collectively.
A universe of meaning for me right now is exploring what it means to be a conscious leader, human connections that drive transformative growth, and deep and meaningful connections. In a world that has an accelerated pace of pushing ourselves beyond the brink and daily lives filled with endless transactions and distractions, the ability to preserve a bit of our humanity includes genuine care for the discovery of our personal best and considering life beyond our automatic existence with a creative spirit and lens.
Video 8
the four archetypes
Come explore a universe of meaning, personally defined through the four archetypes.
The Warrior - Where There Is Strength
The Healer - What Needs Attention
The Creator - Reshaping With Vision
The Changemaker - Leading With Impact
Universe Of Meaning
a universe of meaning, personally defined
One-Day Workshop
In a world that is pushing human energy beyond the brink that is filled with chaos, complexity, contradictions, and confusion, taking a pause to apply reasoned analysis to a life imagined, is a simple yet powerful investment.
The integration of happiness along with coping in post normal times may require us to go beyond the obvious ways of being and knowing using a broad spectrum of recasting to tackle understanding of self as a spiritual metamorphosis and as a culturally situated phenomenon.
Inside Job
it’s an inside job series
Five-Part Conscious Leadership Series
“We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.” Carl Jung
A lot can happen in the fast lane, but we often can’t deepen in purpose and clarity without time to move over to the shoulder or take an exit that allows us to shift out of automatic existence and traverse in new and unimagined ways forward.
Come join this one-of-a-kind 2024 conscious leadership workshop series!
A Universe Of Meaning, Personally Defined
The Healthy Masculine & The Healthy Feminine
The Evolution Of Human Energy In A World Of Automation
Life As A Creative Ecology
Becoming Emotionally Fit: Elevating Relational Health
5x5 Tune-Up
5 laws of creative & conscious leadership
Business transformation can’t exist without individual transformation.
Organizations that practice conscious leadership perform 10x better. Harvard Business Review
Distinct from other conventional leadership approaches, we work at the intersection of business, behavioral science, creative leadership, and spiritual intelligence.
Video 7
a future with conscious leadership
The Ultimate Leadership Tune-Up
An epic proposition is here calling forth an ever expanding vision for the future, fueled by each leader as a force multiplier. There has never been a more important time on the planet for conscious leadership, where leaders can prosper and thrive from the inside out.
The most important question before us and the ecosystem is can we reach a state of global consciousness and awakening in time to avoid a collapse of human energy, as our individual existence will become one with the force of the universe.
Video 6
Video Note From
dr. michele mercer
How is your life a creative journey, personally defined?
What experiences and development do you seek?
How do you set the intention to make it happen?
The lessons we learn along the journey help us get closer to what we are meant to be doing in the world.
Our experiences do not define who we are, our worth, or our value.
Share empathy with yourself and others, as everyone is most likely doing the best they can at any given moment.
She Will Card 1
you are more than enough, exactly as you are.
WOC Canvas
women of color canvas
Bringing education and advocacy with creative and conscious leadership strategies as women of color change the face of the future. Exploring the conscious and unconscious minds, awareness of cognitive processing, and the ability to remain open with how beliefs impact decisions, innovation, and creativity will be at the forefront of navigating the future.
SHE WILL canvas explores how being personally defined, being a pattern interrupt, and being an intersectionality of identities, IS the strategic advantage.
Building communities and conversations that transform conscious choices, behaviors, and actions in the world.
Video 5
diversity, equity, inclusion, & belonging
On Being A Woman Of Color
Being In Doubt. Being Sponsored. Being The Only. Being Promoted. Being Othered.
Shine on, show up as your personal best, amplify all voices, bring others into the conversation.
Video 4
Video Note From
dr. michele mercer
Come join for a short 30 minute segment on Oct 6th on high sensory intelligence as a woman of color and conscious leadership. The leadership Awakening Summit is October 2nd-6th and is five day of free webinars on varying topics!
https://the-hsp-awakening-virtual-summit.heysummit.com
Video 3
dazzle the world with your unique identity
WSWOC - High Sensory Intelligence + Women Of Color
Promo video clip of summit.
High Sensory Intelligence
high sensory intelligence
Leadership Awakening Summit
High Sensory Intelligence is a trait with an origin founded 35 years ago by Dr. Elaine Aaron, who is a clinical research psychologist, and defines it as a distinct personality trait that is within 25% of the population and consists of four core aspects.
Overview
leadership awakening summit
This segment at the summit will be focused on awakening the conscious leader within us. We will focus on the unique challenges and benefits of being HSWOC in the workplace, tips that can support how to navigate an intentional growth journey, learn about four conscious leadership practices you can adapt, and consider how the five pillars of creative and conscious leadership can elevate leader capacity with mindset transformation to meet the demands of unprecedented complexity.
October 2023
Shine Series
SHINE series
Women’s Leadership Lounge
Through intimate trio breakouts and deeper processing, women discuss critical leadership topics and take micro actions to build upon strengths and address what is getting in the way. Highly interactive cohort connections while elevating learning and leadership development.
Includes workbooks, experimental activities, weekly accountability partner, and can be customized for audience needs.
Video 2
women’s leadership lounge
The Women’s Leadership Lounge fosters intimate cohort communities, leadership development, and coaching for female leaders and entrepreneurs to advance mission-based work while lifting one another up. The lounge series is an investment in women’s growth through purposeful and meaningful connections in leadership, business, and personal well-being for new female leaders, mid-level, and senior executives.
Adding women to any equation builds a return on investment and improves outcomes. Women help shatter group think, improve communication dynamics, and add high value with interpersonal relations resulting in a competitive advantage to any business. Businesses with more women in leadership deliver 1.4x sustained profitable growth. Businesses with more women in leadership deliver 1.7x stronger leadership.
SHINE Series - New Female Leaders and Mid-Level Leaders, 8 Weeks. Dive into leadership habits that help you to rise up. Claim your achievements, power, and story, quiet your inner critic, release any masks, leverage the power of your brand, access brave leadership, and choose to honor self-care and purpose.
Module 1 - Bragging Rights & Owning Your Power
Module 2 - Bridging The Confidence Gap
Module 3 - Being Your Authentic Self
Module 4 - Building Your Best Brand
Module 5 - Bringing Your Courageous Self-Forward
Module 6 - Balancing Self-Care & Aligning Purpose
LOUNGE 100 Series - Senior Female Leaders, Mid-Level Leaders, One-Day Workshop, 6 Month Lounge Series. Invest in your growth and the voice in your heart to realign what matters most along the journey. If you desire and seek meaning that transcends the external life, Soul Purpose workshop and The Lounge Series will awaken new possibilities from the inside out, distinguish between ego and the authentic self, explore personal purpose with impact, and bringing one’s living vision to robust life. Gain inspiration, transformation, connection, and mindfulness.
Ten Principles
5 laws + 10 principles of creative & conscious leadership
The ten principles of creative and conscious leadership are aligned to the five laws and are designed to guide and support an integral level of leadership growth and development. It is easy to stray and drift from our true self with an on-demand and transactional world. Revisiting our core essence and higher self can be reminded through the principles.
video 1
1340 overview
The Ultimate Leadership Tune-Up. Education and advocacy with creative and conscious leadership.
1340 facilitates the art + science of human potential, leadership development, and the opportunity for personal transformation.
Micro leadership tune-ups, custom design, content development, curate workshops and conferences, coaching, and visual communications.