How to Battle Burnout with Creativity with Alyssa Rosenheck and Soho House

It is such an honor to be a Soho House Expert when it comes to Creativity! I was recently asked to share my tips on how to counteract burnout with creativity. As a proud member, I am grateful for the community Soho House continues to cultivate and share (not to mention their swoon-worthy aesthetic) .  

I like to return to my “Why” with most things in life. And full transparency, I struggle when I turn on the news. I feel heavy and helpless when I read misinformation on social media. It is hard these days to take a casual scroll for inspiration without running into stress and feeling the weight of the world. It is very easy to spiral from there, but I am here to say PAUSE and return to our baseline — Conscious Consumption and Creativity. 

Here is the good news: We have so many tools at our fingertips to alleviate our daily stress! Creativity is one of them — one I didn’t discover until later in life. One of the quickest ways to feel connected to ourselves and others is through creativity. Creativity may be used as an antidote to stress and stress is often a precursor to burnout. Creativity connects us to ourselves by helping us identify our inner needs.  It allows us to be present, process our feelings while offering a calming and nourishing practice. 

For more information and my quick and easy steps — Watch a Two Minute Video I created for Soho House. Save this for later when you need a kind and gentle companion to self care. 

For my two main tips to consider this week…

How to incorporate more creativity into our daily lives? 

1. Work with your hands: this can be cooking, gardening, floral arranging, making a vision board, and or framing artwork in your home.

2. Learn a new skill - photography, a new instrument, learn to write a song, morning pages, poetry, painting, and or styling.

I am so grateful for your time as you watch this video, and allow creativity to make the world feel a little more nourishing for you this week! I encourage ALL of us to incorporate more creativity into our lives, and, for those who have a copy on hand of The New Southern Style, check out pages 312-315 for “childlike is the new grown up” with additional  tips on ways you can do this TODAY!

Treat yourself! I am offering signed and personalized copies of THE NEW SOUTHERN STYLE that may be purchased through our local Nashville book store, Parnassus Books. They ship nationally and this is the perfect gift that will reconnect you to your creative power and cultivate the strength of community. This is a gift that keeps giving.

Subscribe for updates, announcements & book tour locations!

Alyssa’s debut Coffee Table book, The New Southern, Out now via Abrams!

YOUR COZY COMMUNITY DRIVEN SWEATSHIRT FOR A GOOD CAUSE!! — AR Merch Store is Open for Business!

Calling all courageous souls of The New Southern community!! We are a brave, bold, and a creative force, using our voice for good in this world — and one small way to expand our mission is to WEAR it loud, proud, and with a touch of style + substance. With this in mind, I have created cozy community driven sweatshirts just for us, available NOW through February 14!!!

This will also be a level of community comfort that keeps giving where 100% of the proceeds are going to Step Up. I believe it is important for all young women to have the tools and opportunity to fulfill their potential. So — snuggle up and enjoy literally feeling warm + comfortable while putting "sweat equity" into our purpose and meaning. Who says we can't be cozy while changing the world with our unique gifts?

Creativity Connects US — and being part of The New Southern means ALL are welcome and seen. Let's continue to be courageous with our creativity, invest in our communities, take risks with our ideas, and turn our messages into movements to inspire those around us. I am proudly wearing this sweatshirt and I hope you will join me.

Love you ALL - Alyssa Rosenheck Xx

Signed and personalized copies of THE NEW SOUTHERN STYLE can be purchased through our local Nashville book store, Parnassus Books. They ship nationally and this is the perfect gift that will reconnect you to your creative power and cultivate the strength of community. Treat yourself!

Subscribe for updates, announcements & book tour locations!

Alyssa’s debut Coffee Table book, The New Southern, Out now via Abrams!

A Mini Film For YOU!!! (and How To Launch A Book in a Pandemic)

Video: Josh + Keturah Bishop, A Window In a Tunnel

If 2020 has taught us anything, it has been a lesson on hope, community, creative courage, and compassion. With all the pain we felt with lives and jobs lost, racial uprisings, tornadoes, bombings, and trauma — I still found small moments of hope. I believe it is important to celebrate and communicate what we accomplished this year during what felt like an impossible time. 

What were these moments for you? What did your moments of joy look like?

For me, I published a book in the middle of a global pandemic. I documented this for you since we were unable to physically be together, but remained connected regardless of a canceled book tour. I want this minidocumentary to serve as an expansive reminder of how resilient we are. Save it and refer back to it when you, yourself need to be reminded of your innate gifts and the community you have around you. I will look back at this moment in time with pride and resilience, and have it serve me as a wellspring of courage for future moments. How we take up space and the change we want to see in the world starts with us and comes from within.

Looking back, I wrote this book for this specific time in history. It is disguised as a design book but it is actually so much more. My images, my words, our conversations are meant to challenge old beliefs. This is a book grounded in cultural change, where we humanize and honor our differences through the lens of creativity. This book is for you, and I hope it inspires more creative courage, more hope, and more community in your own life. 

A special thank you to my team that believed in me and worked hard to support this vision and project. Enjoy, and let this video serve as a connection point to the community we’re building together!

For the holidays, I am offering signed and personalized copies of THE NEW SOUTHERN STYLE that may be purchased through our local Nashville book store, Parnassus Books. They ship nationally and this is the perfect gift that will reconnect you to your creative power and cultivate the strength of community. This is a gift that keeps giving.

Subscribe for updates, announcements & book tour locations!

Alyssa’s debut Coffee Table book, The New Southern, Out now via Abrams!

New Year New Values and FREE JOURNAL PROMPT

This has been a big year to digest. A simple way to honor all the complex emotions attached to this year is by having clarity in how we are going to show up in 2021. This month, I want to talk about GAINING CLARITY and provide encouraging tools for us to be grounded in our WORTH as we approach a brand new year (and there is something so beautiful about new beginnings).

Below, I am taking you through my three C’s with a really simple but highly effective journal prompt. This practice will serve as your own personal compass to navigate and measure decisions. When you start gaining clarity around your values and dreams, the world starts saying yes to you. Wrapping you all with so much love and warmth this week and please remember, small steps forward are courageous steps. - AR

Conscious Cleansing

To style a space thoughtfully and make it beautiful, I have to clear away the clutter — edit it out.  Starting from a blank slate, I separate which objects to keep from those items that must go. The same principle applies to our feelings.  I want us to start by taking stock of how we felt about 2020.  Invest time and practice stillness in listening to your feelings. Have you uncovered how you felt about this year? Have you registered your thoughts? Where were your triggers? What did your triggers teach you?  Have you invested in healing?  Are you full right now?

We have to REVEAL it to HEAL it, and allow ourselves the time we need to clear through the clutter and sit with our emotions. Now is the time to slow down and find stillness inside yourself to develop clarity around what emotions served you, and how you healed through the harder parts of this year. Our emotional cleansing and moments of reflective pause will plant new seeds of perspective and growth.

Creative Clarifications

So — you’ve cleaned off the mental countertops. It’s now time to clarify your motivation. 

One of the first steps I take towards executing my goals is to identify and define my values.  Why do I do this?  When my personal values and professional values are in alignment with one another, I achieve greater life fulfillment. This also yields a plan I can measure my decisions against. For example, let’s say a creative value of mine is to produce another body of work for a second book. This means I will be doing a cost/benefit analysis of all opportunities coming my way that either coincide with this value or are disruptive to this value.

Below I am providing five value categories I like to use as a starting framework: Personal, Professional, Family, Creative, and Community Values. Underneath each one, I list my top five priorities for each category. This framework yields clarity and a plan you’ll be able to measure decisions against for the new year.

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Creative Acceleration

By investing in both stillness and clarity, we are courageously sitting in the driver's seat for 2021 and creating a path forward. Even the smallest steps are courageous. Our clarity around our values is what accelerates our creativity and the vision we have that extends beyond our current set of circumstances. This momentum quickly shifts “possibilities” into limitless “probabilities”. 

Our value system is the bridge and gateway to our goals and dreams.  What is one step you can take today towards crossing that bridge?

For the perfect gift that will reconnect you to your creative power and cultivate the strength of community. This is a gift that keeps giving.

Subscribe for updates, announcements & book tour locations!

Alyssa’s debut Coffee Table book, The New Southern, Out now via Abrams!