Think about the last time you reached the end of a week feeling genuinely clear. I’m not just talking about when you felt caught up or just relieved it was “Friyay” and the week was over. Can you remember when you felt actually clear about what mattered, what you thought, and where things were heading? For a lot of the leaders I work with, that feeling has become surprisingly rare.

The pace hasn’t let up. The decisions keep coming. The space to make sense of it all keeps shrinking.

Organizational structures traditionally operated on the assumption that if you could identify a problem, you could build the right plan, execute it and fix the problem. But those days are long gone. In fact, Innosight research estimates that approximately 50% of current S&P 500 companies will be replaced in the next ten years.

Executing the old linear playbook faster won’t be enough and it’s burning great, talented people out. The way forward requires a willingness to adapt, reinvent, and stay nimble while we all try to make sense of a world that keeps shifting.

Leaders navigating significant change often get the same well-meaning advice: you just have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Sure, but how exactly do you do that? I believe that creativity as a practice, which busy leaders may feel they have no time or space for, could be exactly what builds that capacity.

Creativity as a practice lab for navigating uncertainty

Creative acts of self-express have the power to shift one’s focus from the linear, intellectual mindset to a more curious, experiential and expressive frame of mind. Whether it’s keeping a journal, doodling, crafting, singing or photography, creativity requires us to call upon new perspectives in how we view and engage in the world we live in. Creativity puts you in a space where you work without a guaranteed or prescribed end result, follow a nonlinear road, and stay patiently with the process long enough to see what emerges. The beauty is that creative endeavours can often be undertaken in a context where the stakes are low enough to actually learn something.

This winter I took up knitting after a 14 year hiatus. It was a lovely shawl that used 6 different colours. I had no prior experience working with multiple colours at a time. Here’s what happened. I kept getting my stitch count wrong. I forgot how to do certain stitches and had to review many Youtube videos to refresh myself on what to do. I got more confident, thought I knew the patterns and discovered I had accidentally forgotten a stitch. These glitches meant I had to pull out my yarn and start over, again and again.

I wanted to get the foundation right, so the colour gradients would work the way I hoped. Instead of prioritizing pace, I had to slow down and deeply pay attention. Once I did that, everything changed. What at first was uncomfortable and challenging, I felt more confident and capable. Instead of going backwards, I got traction and saw the scarf grow to its completion, much to my delight!

I offer this experience as a useful metaphor for how change initiatives fail. Teams move quickly in the pressure to get required results. Speed means some steps are missed, and the sunk costs of time and effort spent means there’s little desire to go back to the foundational step. Yet solutions require time, experience, assessment and iteration to yield results.

Live each day as if it’s your first day

I recently listened to a podcast interview with Suleika Jaouad, a writer I deeply admire. She was diagnosed with leukemia in her early twenties, has survived it three times, and lives with that reality every day. One thing she said stopped me cold.

Most of us have heard the exhortation to live each day as if it were your last. Suleika flips it and instead lives each day as if it were her first. She shared this reframe brings her the curiosity, openness, and wonder of a child looking at the world for the first time. All of us were born with natural curiosity, but most of us have just stopped making room for it.

The poet Rilke wrote something that speaks to the same impulse: “Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” In a world that rewards fast answers and decisive action, both Suleika and Rilke are pointing at the same quiet counter-move: stay curious, resist the rush to conclusion, and trust that clarity will find you if you give it room.

When you bring that quality of curiosity and wonder to your work, you start to notice things that aren’t on the agenda but that matter. You begin to question assumptions you always took for granted and ask whether they still hold. Curiosity and wonder, brought deliberately into your work, is the kind of thinking that keeps organizations relevant and people meaningfully engaged in the work they do.

Claim the creativity you already have

You are already more creative than you think. nyone who has negotiated a pre-schooler into shoes and out the door on time has demonstrated genuine creative problem-solving under pressure. You bring that same resourcefulness to your work every day, whether it’s in how you read a room, navigate a difficult conversation, or find a path through a problem with no obvious solution.

When the pressure gets ramped up, the inclination is to shut down what feels extraneous. Yet I believe it’s in those moments of stress or change that taking a moment to invite creativity into your life is most valuable as it gives you an opportunity to make sense of the chaos, and find meaning of what’s true for you.

You can start with small acts of creativity. Instead of scrolling your media feed to distract from the stress, grab a piece of paper and spend 5 minutes doing an uncensored brain dump of what’s on your mind. Not what you’re going to do about it, just what you’re thinking.

You could put on a favourite tune and have a private dance break. Choose a different route home and notice what’s different. Hum a favourite song on your way to your next meeting.

These small acts give you a nonlinear, reflective way to hit the pause button but give yourself a small window to try to make sense of the world and your place in it. Meaning surfaces when you slow down enough to notice it’s there. Creativity is how you make that space.

“If you are looking for a more structured way to strengthen your leadership from the inside out, Level Up Leadership executive coaching is designed for exactly that.