266: Mindful Leadership: A Female Leader's Guided Meditation to Break Through Creative Blocks

Have you ever told yourself "I'm not creative enough" to solve a business challenge?

In this episode, Melissa guides female leaders and mom founders through a powerful meditation practice designed to break free from limiting beliefs about creativity. Through a combination of mindfulness techniques and guided reflection, you'll:

• Learn how to identify and challenge creativity-limiting beliefs
• Experience a body scan meditation for releasing tension
• Practice reframing negative thoughts about your creative abilities
• Discover how to access your natural problem-solving capabilities
• Transform your relationship with creativity and innovation

The episode includes a practical meditation exercise you can use whenever you face a business challenge requiring creative solutions. Melissa shares personal stories, including her experience in business school and conversations with her son about creativity, to illustrate how we can expand our definition of what it means to be creative.

Connect with Melissa: melissa.llarena [at] gmail.com

About your host Melissa Llarena of the Mom Founder Imagination Hub podcast

I'm a meditation practitioner and #1 Amazon bestselling author who has spent years peering into the minds of marketers and executives, both as one of them and as their trusted guide. My articles in ForbesWomen have reached over 4 million readers, but what really lights me up is the deep work I do with people who, like me, have spent years shape-shifting to succeed.

My own journey through the corporate world – 10 years at powerhouses like Ogilvy (working on IBM) and P&G (yes, even Charmin!) – taught me firsthand about wearing different hats across 14+ business functions. For the past 13 years, I've had the privilege of coaching over 200 marketing and advertising executives worldwide, having raw, honest conversations about what it really costs us to morph ourselves every single day.

When I'm hosting the Mom Founder Imagination Hub podcast, I get to dive deep with remarkable leaders like Beth Comstock and GaryVee, exploring how to tap into our most overlooked superpower: imagination. My psychology degree from NYU, Dartmouth MBA, and Transformational Coaching certification gave me the foundation, but it was the pandemic that showed me – and my clients – that we needed something more.

In 2021, when ambition felt impossible and imagination seemed out of reach, I realized we were all exhausted from trying to power through. That's when I took a leap – pausing my coaching practice to write a book filled with soul-searching questions, while earning my meditation certification from the Jack Kornfield organization.

Now, I blend all these pieces – my corporate insider experience, thousands of honest conversations, and meditation wisdom – into workshops, sessions, and immersions that truly connect. Using imaginative meditation, mindfulness practices that even the most restless executives love, and revealing journaling exercises, I help people find their way back to themselves. Because here's what I know: when we stop losing ourselves every time life or business throws us a curveball, we can finally use our energy for what really matters – creating the impact we're meant to make.

TRANSCRIPT

  Hello there. This is Melissa, your host behind the mom founder imagination hub podcast. This unedited episode is really geared towards any mom or female leader who has a business challenge that they must overcome with greater creativity. Someone who is seeking to find the inner innovator that. Maybe she once had once felt, but has been struggling to bring back to the forefront.

My intention is for you to feel empowered. My intention is for you to feel creative enough to solve whatever you're facing. Business challenge you wish to solve this very week. Now you may not know this, but over the last 13 years, I have coached female leaders who have shared their deepest, darkest, innermost secrets, such as why they actually leave different organizations or bosses or teams, or the things that they wish they could have done.

Done. Had they been given the ability to speak up or the ability to step up, you name it, I've heard it. And with these ideas in mind, I wanted to just bring forth this one limiting belief that I heard consistently in my line of work, career coaching, female leaders, primarily in the advertisin