Yahoo News Jo Malone shares the empowering message we all need right now
Many years ago, when I had cancer, I had to undergo isolation for four months because I was very, very sick. I had no sense of smell at the time, so I couldn’t work because I was so ill on chemotherapy. I had to go out with a mask. In a funny way, I’ve done this before. What I’m sharing with you here is how I got through it, and how I used creativity to help me. I never stopped believing that I’d survive. I would dream of a day when I was given the all-clear and I walked towards that every single day. What we’re being asked to do today is nothing compared to what those frontline workers are doing. What you must and can do is occupy your mind and stay focused.
In times of crisis, there is always an opportunity to create. No own owns creativity, but everyone has a right to it. No one can take your share; it belongs to you. Over the past few years, I’ve been privileged enough to travel the world, sharing my story of how to create something from nothing, grow it and reinvent yourself and do the whole thing again. Those things are very important to us as a company, but they’re also things that will be very important as we come through the eye of the storm here. We are going to need successful businesses at the end of this. There are many people holding on like a white-knuckle ride right now thinking, ‘how can I survive?’ Creativity will get you through today. I don’t say that glibly – I have seven members of staff on my team. They are my responsibility and I need to make sure that they’re safe. But, we also need to keep our eyes fixed on what will happen when this is over – and it will be over.
I find inspiration from life. I suffer from anxiety… it’s a trait of creative people. A lot of other creatives will feel the same. Creativity is a world that’s accepting of my good and bad traits. When you’re inspired, you create energy and electricity and it’s something to do something with. You could feel inspired by reading a story about someone else’s life; for me, Jesse Owens is one of my heroes. When I get to heaven, if I could and sit and have dinner with a group of my choosing, he’d definitely be at my table. He refused to live the life that life told him he should live. He came from Alabama and was from a very poor background, but he loved to run. He found a pair of shoes and tied them onto his feet with pieces of string. He just had a gift. Humans all have gifts; everyone has something about them that is just this jewel. Now’s the time to find that jewel in yourself. Sometimes, we can be so busy and so intent on tomorrow, we forget. Jesse’s gift was running, mine is making fragrance, but all of us have something.
The maintenance of creativity is not just about being inspired today, it’s about what you do with it. What are you going to do with that energy? Because if you don’t do anything with it, you won’t change your life. Start with a purpose. What is your purpose? Embrace blue-sky thinking – we need it right now and it doesn’t matter what it is. Start with something – it might be that you want to learn how to make pasta, or that you want to learn to play the guitar or to build a business. Set your blue-sky purpose up, your big dream, your goal. During my life, I have always set my mind towards my bigger goal - then I walk towards it. It has served me so well over 35 years. I’ve always thought I wanted the impossible, but now’s the time to put the impossible on a piece of paper, because the whole world is in an impossible situation right now. Welcome to life, this isn’t going to change.
Next, you need to put a plan round it, because it’s all very well having these great ideas, but if you don’t have structure and discipline, you’re not going to make it happen. So, what is the plan? What is the blueprint? What is the step-by-step you need to get there? This is the time that all of us can put the corners in like we’re doing a puzzle. We need discipline in creativity – you don’t want to control it – but you do need the discipline that says, ‘I’m going to continue to work towards it.’
The next step is to pursue inspiration. It is proven that if you seek or do something for 21 days for 20 minutes every day, it becomes a habit. Your neural pathways in your head – and I know this having had my head scanned so many times because of the cancer – trigger the hippocampus part of the brain. I constantly pursue the thought of inspiration and imagination. If everyone sought inspiration for 20 minutes every day for the next 21 days, I guarantee that you would see people’s lives change. Mental health issues will become more manageable – they wouldn’t disappear – but they might ease because you’re focusing that energy.
The next thing you need to do, and this is important, is to pulse that energy. If you don’t do that, if you use all that energy up in one go, then you’ll lose heart. You have to limit yourself to that set amount of time every day because you need the same energy to continue over a long period of time. Imagination and creativity will feed into other parts of your life too – you won’t be able to confine it, and you want that kind of infectiousness. You’ll become a solution-thinker rather than a problem-solver. Your mind will start to work in a different way.
After you’ve done that, you need to plan for tomorrow. Always think about how to keep this moving, and this is especially hard when you’re isolated. With technology, create creative think tanks – either with people you love or respect or strangers – and come together like a book club, but for creativity.
The last stage, and again this is really important, is to give yourself a pat on the back and pamper yourself. Recognise that today you invested in creativity. It doesn’t matter how old you are, where you come from or what your business is, millions of people across the world have this big energy and nothing to do with it. Channel it into something positive, not negative.
It’s worth remembering that, if you look back, all the great entrepreneurs often started their businesses in recession or tough times. Entrepreneurs think of gaps in the market, they see a need to fill it and they start to feel inspired – and this period gives us to time to reflect in a way we didn’t have time for before. Around the time of Apple and Steve Jobs, there’s a whole heap of entrepreneurs who all started within five years of one another, because things were tough. I started my business in a recession and everyone said I wouldn’t succeed. They were wrong.
During this time of isolation, I’ve thought up two new businesses - whether I'll do anything with them, I don’t know. Either way, it keeps my mind active and evolving. I’m also a big list-maker. I have my daily disciplines – for example my breathing tape twice a day and pilates sessions. Lists are great in that then when you look back at what you’ve done over 24 hours it’s not a blank canvas – you can see that you've done something with your day.
Scent is important at this time, too. No one is able to visit anyone at the moment, but the minute we smell a certain scent we’re transported to a time and a place. It’s very emotional. You smell something and it reminds you of a certain person and a setting, so it makes you feel connected to something or someone. Scents tell stories and they make us feel human again. They help us to remember the life that was and the life that will be. Everything is so sterilised, from the constant washing of hands to the things we can do, but we don’t have to stop living a dream – and scent unlocks those memories.
Humanity will change after this. I’m in awe of those frontline workers risking their own health for ours. But it’s not just the NHS workers – it’s also the people in the supermarkets, the police, the people driving buses and trains, all these people serving their community. Say thank you to those people for what they’ve done. We walked the dog this morning and saw a man cleaning the street. It’s people like him too. You don’t have to be close, we need to be two metres away, but you can say, 'thank you for what you’re doing'. After this, there will be an outpouring of thanks. We will have such an appreciation.
This is a chapter of our lives, this is not the book. We have to grin and bear it as best we can without becoming angry, bitter and selfish and, one day, someone will turn that page and say it’s over. At that moment, we have to be ready to live life again. When I was fighting cancer, I was preparing to live life like there was no tomorrow. I had the dress in the wardrobe that I would wear. I knew the restaurant I would go to for a bowl of pasta and a glass of wine. I knew the cinema I would head to. I had a plan and the minute it was over I did every one of those things and ticked them all off, including attending Elton John’s White Tie and Tiara Ball where I danced and danced. Don’t be judgemental of other people at the moment – people are scared and they’re reacting in awful ways, but 90 per cent of people are behaving with such humanity and love. Let’s focus on those.
We cannot live for the next three months with bitter herbs in our mouths – we need a bit of honey to make it bearable. We’ll learn to be better human beings and hopefully we won’t let these lessons slip through our fingers.
As told to Ella Alexander.
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