June 12, 2023 • 43 mins
Have you ever felt something, then immediately “disqualified” yourself from feeling it? As if you don’t have the right to feel what you’re feeling?
Chase Jarvis is a very successful man. He’s also kind, and thoughtful, and actively exploring his own ideas of himself. If you’ve heard Chase speak before, this is a very different kind of conversation.
We make a lot of invisible things visible in this episode, from the creativity of every day, to the grief of getting what you want, to how a near-death experience can both shape your entire life AND be something you refuse to think about.
5 things you’ll learn in this episode (at least 5!)
- The difference between Big C Creativity and little c creativity (and how it relates to hard times)
- How the roles we’re “allowed” to inhabit get fed to us, starting in childhood
- Is there a grief spectrum? If so, where do you land on it?
- Are you allowed to feel grief, when objectively speaking, other people have it a lot worse?
- If someone sobs in your presence, that might be a very good thing.
Content note: this episode contains a lot of swearing.
Notable quotes:
“Am I worthy of becoming the person that I want to become?” - Chase Jarvis
About our guest:
Chase Jarvis is an award-winning artist, entrepreneur, best-selling author, and one of the most influential photographers of the past 20 years. His expansive work ranges from shooting advertising campaigns for companies like Apple, Nike, and Red Bull; to working with athletes like Serena Williams and Tony Hawk, to collaborating with renowned icons like Lady Gaga and Richard Branson. He is the Founder of CreativeLive, where more than 10 million students learn from the world’s top creators and entrepreneurs; CreativeLive was acquired by Fiverr in 2021. His recent book Creative Calling debuted as an instant National Best Seller.
More at chasejarvis.com
About Megan:
Psychotherapist and bestselling author Megan Devine is recognized as one of today’s most insightful and original voices on grief, from life-altering losses to the everyday grief that we don’t call grief. She helms a consulting practice in Los Angeles and serves as an organizational consultant for the healthcare and human resources industries.
The best-selling book on grief in over a decade, Megan’s It’s Ok that You’re Not OK, is a global phenomenon that has been translated into more than 25 languages. Her celebrated animations and explainers have garnered over 75 million views and are used in training programs around the world.
Additional resources:
The long dark night of the soul is commonly understood as a time of spiritual dryness and existential doubt and loneliness. For more on the “long dark night of the soul,” Check the wiki page.
Chase’s book - Creative Calling
Chase references Ram Dass, and the quote, “We’re all just walking each other home.”
Want to talk with Megan directly? Apply for one of her limited 1:1 consultations here, or join our patreon community for live monthly Q&A sessions: either way,
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
One of the hardest things I've gone through as an
adult is continuing to tie, you know, my identity to
this thing, and then you realize that now that that
thing is done, like, oh shit, I've got to get
up and look in the mirror, and it's just I
got nothing to talk about. I was just fucking tired,
(00:20):
and I had never really expressed.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
If you ask.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Anyone, hey, do you know Chase, the word that comes
up is probably not tired.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
This is it's okay that you're not okay. And I'm
your host, Megan Divine. Have you ever felt something, some feeling,
and then immediately disqualified yourself from feeling it, Like you
don't have the right to feel what you're feeling because
your life is objectively pretty good. This week on the show,
award winning photographer and co founder of Creative Live Chase
(00:52):
Jarvis in a two part conversation on creativity and the
grief involved in getting exactly what you want and whether
you're allowed to feel that way subtlely in everybody. All
of that coming up right after this first break. Before
(01:14):
we get started, one quick note. While we cover a
lot of emotional relational territory in our time here together,
This show is not a substitute for skilled support with
a licensed mental health provider or for professional supervision related
to your work.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Hi friends.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
So on the surface, this week's guest might seem like
a really strange choice for this podcast. I'm not gonna lie.
When a friend suggested that I invite Chase Jarvis onto
the show, I was like, I'm sure he's lovely, bud.
Why why would I have him? There are so many
ways to describe what Chase has done. He's an award
winning photographer. He's the co founder of Creative Live, the
(01:55):
world's largest live streaming education company, and he's the author
of a book called Creative Calling. And Creative Live was
recently acquired by fiver and acquired here is sort of
code for sold for a lot of money. So Chase
knows not only about creativity and how important it is
to our lives and our well being, he also knows
(02:17):
what it's like to have really big dreams come true,
to feel that success that you've worked for for such
a long time, like arrive. You know, something really big
that we don't talk about very often, the grief involved
in getting exactly what you want. I've been talking about
this topic a lot lately. It was Okay, here's how
(02:40):
it started. I was giving a keynote earlier this year,
and I was listing like a long list of things
that you can grieve, because I was talking about the
everyday grief that we don't call grief. So in this
long list of things that you can grieve, like your
childhood home being turned into condos, missing out on milestones
during the pandemic, the grief of getting you what you want,
(03:01):
and sort of on and on and on. At the
end of the keynote, the comment box was flooded with questions,
and all of the questions were some variation of what
do you mean the grief of getting what you want?
Please say more? Like it was this almost like throwaway
statement I made in this long list, but that was
(03:22):
the thing that people really latched onto, Please say more.
This conversation with Chase Jarvis is my please say More.
It is a deep f bomb laden insights unfolding in
real time conversation about creativity, identity, success, and yes, grief.
(03:46):
Chase Jarvis is a very successful man. He's also kind
and thoughtful and actively exploring his own ideas of himself. Now,
if you've heard Chase speak before. This is a very
different kind of conversation than he usually gets to have
(04:08):
no content notes. First of all, it will become apparent
very very quickly. There's a lot of swearing in this episode.
You've got two people who tend to be kind of
sweary in their regular lives, and you put them together
and you get a show with a lot of swearing. Okay,
that out of the way. A little definition here too.
(04:28):
You're gonna hear Chase talk about small sea creative and
big sea creative, which is an interesting distinction. So many
people say they aren't creative, as if creativity the big
sea that Chase is talking about in today's episode. Creativity
is this rarefied thing that only belongs to artists and
artists in air quotes here. But what if all the
(04:49):
little daily moments of like choosing an outfit and making
a meal, what if we saw those acts as acts
of creation or creativity, which is the small sea creativity
Chase is talking about in the show today. So more
about that in the episode. Don't worry about it. But
I wanted you to have a little a little like
what are they talking about moment here? So let's get
(05:10):
into it, and be sure to tune in again this
week for a special bonus episode with even more personal
storytelling from the he very much belongs on this show,
Chase Jarvis. All right, So I described all of your
accolades in my introduction so that I didn't make you
have to sit through it. But yet you are very
(05:32):
you are very welcome. Now. You and I have friends
in common, and we spend a lot of time talking
about our mutual friend. And I want to say that,
on the surface, you might seem like an odd guest
for this show, but one of the things that I
learned as I was preparing for our conversation was how
much you enjoy demystifying things. Yes, and I feel like
(05:56):
that is my favorite thing in the whole world. So
you've made a life of making the invisible visible? Does
that feel like an accurate description for you?
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Just stop stop, keep coming with this stuff?
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Feel good? Someone's feel seen excellent.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
I find what I think as I look, and this
is like an awareness that has evolved and is a
realization that I am a curious person and I have
wanted to know things, or learn things, or pursue things,
or even become aware enough to decide whether to pursue
(06:32):
something or not. And what I realized is that by
turning sort of that research or that process inside out,
or by sharing it in either real time or almost
real time, that I was able to build connections with
other people, and some very very very close, some you know, parasocial.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
And I got a lot of value out of that.
And I realized, you know, the.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Sort of the the world is a thing, right, and
you poke it and it can like respond, And I,
you know, in sharing my process excavating and deconstructing the
world around me to decide what is I wanted to
do or in areas of interest, that I sometimes got
quite a powerful resonance with a community of other people,
of like minded folks and sometimes not sometimes the opposite
(07:22):
of me, But I found both really valuable.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
I read somewhere that you said that you've made a
career in awareness.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Oh don't let my wife hear you say that, because
she's an actual awareness teacher, like a meditation. She was
playing with ram Das and all the people, and she
would question my level of awareness.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Okay, no, no, not really.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
I think I find that at the end of the day,
that is really all we have is our attention, and
so to learn how to direct it is not just
a skill, but perhaps the most valuable skill that we
and it involves what is it, you know, around Bass,
we're all just walking one another home, like it's very
(08:06):
much a journey inward and that journey. I just had
this great conversation with Amanda Cruz, the actor.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
She's in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
She had a couple a bunch of different things, and
we were talking about, you know, there's sort of two
mountains in life. The first one is the one you
climb that everyone else tells you to climb, and then
you get there and you're like oh, And then there's
the second one, which is sort of realizing that you
have to go, you know, make and climb your own
mountain or that's that's one analogy or again you're coming
home to yourself. And for me, I'm on that sort
(08:36):
of second mountain, and it is realizing that I'm by
strengthening my ability to direct my attention to where I
want it, and sometimes that's an allowing is.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
So valuable and I think that's where the best stuff
in life is.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Yeah, in sort of that dissolution and awareness, I mean,
I think I have a I was going with awareness
less in the ramdas committed practice thing and more that
curiosity that you are speaking of.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah, I think that's that's also a fair extrapolation.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Yeah, yeah, I think we can reframe that and not
worry about, you know, whether or not we can define
you as having made a career and awareness. We can
go back and change that quote and say I've made
a career in curiosity and so so that's what I'm
here for. We here reframe you in a positive light,
should you ever need.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
It, Thank you, should you ever need it.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
You're speaking of pr people, We'll figure it out for you.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, well, I mean I I think I we joke
about this, but this is one of the reasons that
I find you and what you've created interesting. Is this
curiosity and take things apart and what's another way to
look at this and can we find things that help
us understand or explore the world that we create.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Foundationally, I and I came through a long and sort
of awkward, bumbling road the way many of us have
to find out that for me, this the power that
we have that we are basically creating machines human beings
are and whether you're listening to this right now and
(10:14):
you identify as someone.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Who's creative or a creator, or.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
You're like, hey, man, I just you know, I don't
think the government looks fondly on creative accounting, and I'm
an accountant, therefore I'm not creative. So wherever you put
yourself on that spectrum, I have come to believe and
I would say no that that's one of the things
that separates us from all the other species on our
planet is that we are wildly creative. We have the
ability to put two things that used to not go
(10:39):
together together in interesting and really valuable ways. And I
wrote about this in a book called Creative Calling. And
there's a couple things like, if you realize that we're
all creative, and then if you can just go.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
With me for a second here, if you're dubious.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
But and that creativity is a muscle, it's sort of
a a habit more than it is a skill. And
if you use that in small, regular, lightweight ways on
a daily basis, that you can you can develop your
creative acumen. And once you realize that the same things
(11:15):
that you make on a small daily basis, whether you're
you know, writing or making a meal for your family,
or whatever way that you look at creativity with a
small sea, that is, that's the exact same muscle that
we use creating small, daily, lightweight ways with the capital
cee creativity that we have with this one precious life.
It's the same muscle, just a different skill. And so
(11:37):
go back to young me realizing, you know, as a
kid who was you know, bound for professional soccer.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
And when I.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Decided not to do that, I was like, cool, then
I'll go to medical school, to all the medical school
shit and all of this because other.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
People wanted me to do it.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
And then, you know, through some miracle epiphany, realize that
that's the path that I.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Didn't want to go on.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
And again I only realized that through my own sort
of awkward, crappy, bumbling experience, but my whole life changed.
When I looked at it as I am sort of
the designer and the creator of the life, it began
to resonate and such. Then thus began a very long
journey to develop that muscle that I spoke about. And
(12:25):
here on my second mountain that I was just sharing,
we got analogies, fucking on analogies, crazy I'm with you. Yeah,
I think life has continued to get more interesting. And
when you realize that we are the creators of our
own experience, I found it valuable. And that's ultimately I
feel like the creative journey that I'm on, and then
I'm trying to bring as many people listen along with me,
(12:49):
is I find it fun and valuable?
Speaker 3 (12:53):
What's the goal of the creative process?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Then? For you, I think it's very What is this?
Is it? Socrates or Aristotle? Sort of know thyself.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
We are surrounded by people, our parents, our friends, our
career counselors, aunts, uncles, grandparents, peers, competitors. We're surrounded by people,
let's just say, most of whom are well intentioned, that
are constantly telling us things, telling us about what is
or the way the world is, or way the world
(13:23):
ought to be, or what we ought to be. And
so it's no wonder that we're largely confused when we
move out into the world, right, we're like, okay, cool, Well,
you know, my parents are saying I need to get
a job, and here's what a job looks like. It's
got to be one of these ten things. And you know,
there's just all these competing ideas, and part of the
difficulty is you're close to many of those people. Those
(13:43):
people mean very well, but they can't actually define those
things for you. And so we are in a world
where we are very conditioned and we are told how
the world is or how it ought to be. And
yet it's only through our personal experience and us, you know,
moving to the world, that we can find out what's
(14:05):
actually true for us. And then there's this realization that
the things that you were told and when you have
done the work and gone inward, that those things are
actually different. Then there's this reconciliation. So for me, the
creative process is all about this process of what I
would say is creating ourselves. People say, oh yeah, and
(14:26):
then he found success, like in a fucking find success.
You know, it's not something I stumbled or I just
I had built a company and grew it and it
was acquired not too long ago, and they call you
a founder. I didn't find anything, you know, I built it,
I created it. And so you start to realize that cool.
You take all these inputs, then it's up to you
(14:48):
to actually put together, through some crazy form of alchemy,
who you want to be or become in the world.
That's when sort of this second the second journey.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I like to think of it when it starts.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
So that's the record, that's the rationale for the creative process.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
That's why I think it's valuable to know about it,
to believe in it.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
And it's not a stretch when you think about you know,
you can create whatever you want for dinner tonight, whether
it's you know, pasta or assuming. If you're listening to show,
you have the means, and I will acknowledge that not
everyone has that. But if you're looking to show, then
you do, and you know, then extrapolate that all to
the to the nth degree, and you realize that, wow,
one precious life, what are we.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Going to do?
Speaker 3 (15:32):
So it sounds like for you the creative process, exploring
your own creativity was and is a way for you
to listen to yourself.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah, to know myself.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
I'm wary of listening because when we listen, it's usually
to words, and I don't always trust the words that
we say to ourselves. They are the most important words
in the world, by the way, are the ones we
say to ourselves.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
But learning to not necessarily buy in and what I
do buy.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Into is sort of the feelings and this again sort
of body scan awareness one of my feeling versus like,
you know, again the words if you played out loud,
the words that ninety percent of people who are out
there in the world are saying to themselves, You're like, oh,
that is a tape I do not want to hear,
which isn't a huge opportunity for growth, you know, personally, culturally, whatnot.
(16:25):
But I think when you said listen, it was sort
of a metaphorical lissen right, yes, sort of correct an awareness.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
You know what this makes me think of, though, is
you know when when little kids are in elementary school
and they start drawing and the teacher says, draw a house,
and everybody draws the same house, right, Like, it's because
we have learned what the creative process expects, what the
output should be, and what a house looks like. I
was having this conversation with somebody the other day. I
(16:55):
don't know how we got on the subject, but when
I was in kindergarten, my original kindergarten teacher sent home
a note with me to my parents that you know,
Megan has a problem. She refuses to color. The lady
bug red and refuses to color in the lines and
thank everything from my parents in that moment, they were like, huh,
new teacher, please right. But this idea that as creative
(17:20):
beings small sea big ercy, that there is an acceptable
expression of the creative process. So I love that you
brought that out that, Like I usually say that the
creative process is call and response with yourself, right, like
listening to yourself and how much weeding we have to
go through to find what we're actually saying to ourselves
(17:41):
versus what we think we're supposed to paint or draw
or write or make for dinner or any of these things.
Like there is an expectation of what the creative really
confusing is.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
The people who are telling us those things are people
that we care deeply about.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
We value their opinion. They're thoughtful and very you know,
heartfelt people.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Usually some of them are rankers, but love them are assholes.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Some of them, you know, are people who have you know,
who have mal intent. But the most part you're like,
oh cool, my mom who thinks this about me and
loves me and whatever thinks I should do X, and
Grandma says why, And my career accounts are really like
they're awesome person they you know, and these careers are
very easy sort of you know, stand up for this conversation.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
But it can be any number of things.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Like when we were getting all this what I'm calling conditioning,
it's no wonder that the hardest thing to do is
to become aware of your own personal voice and your
own intuition and you know, start to think and act and.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Decide and behave for yourself first.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Like, that's a very difficult process when all of these
inputs are you know, telling you something different.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Yeah, the second guessing and the second guessing and the
second guessing and maybe I shouldn't trust myself or what
I want or you know, all of these things. Now
I want to I want to dive into one aspect
of the creative process and art that is my personal
annoyance thing. People who have listened to me for a
long time know that I rant about this a lot.
But there is this thing that happens with the creative
(19:13):
process that if you are going through something difficult or
challenging or even just confusing in your own life, like
you're supposed to make art out of it, right, That
if you take your pain and you turn it into art.
You have somehow transformed it that that is the reason
why we have bad things, so that you can make
(19:34):
something beautiful at them. And this makes me so angry.
It makes me really angry for the people who might
want to creatively engage with their own lives, right, because
there's this focus on like, do this thing and you're
gonna feel better. But also like it's so rude to
creation itself, right, like why do you take this tool
(20:00):
of self liberation and self exploration and curiosity and force
it into that transformative narrative that all bad things happen
so that you can make good art from them. Can
we discuss.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
I'm happy to just to agree with you that that's
a shitty way of thinking about it, and we canna
move on.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
I'm with you.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
I think that's I said it all.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
You did again, creativity.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
If you look at that, it's like that is so
fundamental to the human experience that we have to allow
permission to do what we do with the things that
we do them with without a formula, without a contract.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Yeah, it just seems too.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Prescriptive, you know, the ability that this or the rationale
that if X, therefore y and that is so often
said as you as you mentioned with the grief trauma,
that that's the function that it serves, and it's not
going to be that for everybody, and it's not going
to always result in greater Sometimes it just needs to
(21:02):
just be very very personal and you need to move on.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
It is a little bit like this.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
There's a couple of ideas around creativity that I really
struggle with.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
One the concept of the striving artist. I think that
is just a.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Toxic, horrible myth from you know, I think it's from
La Bauhem. You know, it really does go back to
that the theatrical like it served a purpose in a
time to cultivate a specific narrative and we've just latched
onto that and it's very very untrue. Others others are
that creativity requires you to change a bunch of things
(21:38):
about yourself. You have to move to Paris and where's
the beret and smokes a cigarette and you know all
this This is like, you don't have to do anything different.
It's really just start to realize that you are in
the driver's seat and the things that you are interested
in being or becoming, they're free for you to choose
and only by taking action and making small daily changes
(22:04):
in how we think and how we act. That that's
the only way that anything ever gets done. So you're
either willing to do that or you aren't. I would
love to think that we should all be willing to
engage in this creative process, seeing it as such, defining
it as such. That's why making dinner actually matters, Deciding
which direction you're going to drive home actually matters, instead
(22:24):
of doing the same thing all the time, deciding what
music you're going to listen to, which is going to
put you in some particular like, these are all choices
that we have in life, and you don't have to
always choose everything. Sometimes that's fucking exhausting, but that you
are in that position that you have autonomy is a
very very powerful feeling, especially when you start to keep
promises with yourself. That's where confidence come from. Confidence is
(22:45):
not some external thing. It is a skill, but it
is a skill that is developed through making promises to
yourself and then keeping them. And to me, this is
like all this is very very very intertwined with creativity
and are the the role that we play on the
this on this planet. And this is why if you're
an accountant. I made that joke about creative accounting earlier,
(23:06):
which was clearly not very funny.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
No one laughed.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
But like that, you, every single person listening here has
a little reactor of like a life time supply. What
Maya Angelou says, creativity is the only you know, It's
something that's a special resource. The more you have, the
more you use, the more you have. And I think
thinking of it in that term is incredibly powerful. And
(23:30):
even if you're an accountant, and that why your profession
may be one thing, your life can be anything that
you decided, and it starts to make life interesting. I
feel like when you look at your own agency, and
you look at your own ability to make choices, and
you look at.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
The conditioning, you start to you can question.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Some of that stuff through you know, through grief and
trauma and all these different experiences that we've had.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
You can, you know, do this dark knight of the
soul of the journey.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
But at the end of the day, if you can
just reapply your energy to making the life that you
want in this world, that is so to me. It's
so refreshing.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Chase and I talked for a long time getting ready
for the show, and I answered a lot of questions
about grief. Before we get back to that conversation, I
want to tell you about a way that you can
ask me questions about grief, no matter what kind of
grief you're carrying. Once a month, I host a live
Q and A on Patreon. It's time to talk with
me directly, get your questions answered, and listen into the
(24:37):
answers of other people who have good questions. It's a
really sweet group and we would love to have you.
All of the information is at patreon dot com, backslash
Megan Divine, or you can find the link in the
show notes. And if you would rather talk to me privately,
there's an option for that too. The link to apply
for individual sessions is in the show notes. Okay, back
(24:59):
to my conversation with Creative Live founder Chase Jervis. I
love the idea of paying attention to your life as
a creative act, right, and that we don't need to
silo big C creativity like, oh, I'm not artistic, I'm
not creative. Right if we take out that transactional narrative
(25:22):
of what the creative process is quote unquote four and
instead sort of shift to the way that you're talking
about it, which is like, this is a relationship with
yourself and with this world that you create in ways
that are changing.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
The One of the worst stories that we can tell
ourselves is that I am you know fill in the blank.
You know that these identity words are so powerful, and
who you were yesterday has almost no bearing on who
you can be tomorrow. And yet we say, oh, I
always get angry when or I'm like these this conditioning,
these patterns are so difficult, and right now I'm hoping
(26:01):
that someone who's listening is going, oh shit, that's.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Who I am.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
I just close off when things get tough, or that's like,
that is a set of stories that you're telling yourself
that may have been true yesterday, but it doesn't have
to be true right now. When you start to realize
that that's this sort of you know, it comes back
to this, No, we can create a new narrative for ourselves.
We can become the person that our dog thinks we are,
(26:25):
or we can become the person that we want to
be by simply behaving in the way that that person
would behave And that's not betraying yourself at all. That's
actually recognizing and deciding to make a change, which is
your prerogative. You know, if creativity is what differentiates us
from all the other species, and if your life is
(26:48):
our greatest creative act, like fuck, make it a masterpiece.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
You know what I think as you're talking about this,
I mean, there's a reason why you're like you're an
in demand teacher and an in demand speaker. Like, yes,
I feel like I can conquer the world just listening
to you. And I also because of the nature of
my work and because of the focus that I keep
in this world on my own, like invisible making things,
(27:13):
making things visible. It's like life isn't always like a
ra ra I got this event, And I know that
you know this very well. And this is where we
sort of intersect with like, you know, people who have
listened to me for a long time, like what is
this person? He's great, but what is he doing here?
Speaker 2 (27:33):
What is he doing on your show?
Speaker 3 (27:34):
What are you doing here with conversations with interesting people
about difficult things and exploring really challenging periods in life.
And one of the reasons that you're here is because,
like I, I have been an artist, I have been
a creative person, small ce, big sea, like my whole life.
And I know how that has changed for me at
(27:58):
different periods, in the good times, in the hideous times,
and in the other times. And one of the things
that I would love to talk about with you, if
you're willing to go there, is like, do you think
there's room for a discussion of grief and loss? Inherent
in building a successful career and in guiding other people
(28:22):
to start looking at their own lives in different ways?
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Absolutely essential, absolutely core. It's the human experience. That's part
of the beauty of being human is that it can
be very non linear and when you know you can
both be happy and sad, or you know, you can
be angry at someone and love them like it's complex.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
First of all, we radically.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Overgeneralize so many you know, in so many ways culturally,
even those two very basic examples like that you can
be you can love someone and be angry at them
at the same time. And you know, by extension the
creative process, it's literally only through living a life that
you can start to understand who you want to be
(29:06):
or become. You know, so you're you're immune to nothing.
You have no choice but to go through it. And
it's in the going through, and it's in the you know,
know thyself that we become aware of what it is
that we want to create and notice like grief and trauma,
(29:26):
and these are not things that we can avoid. In fact,
you know, this is the very fabric of the human experience.
It seems to me that you can't possibly avoid it.
I just had this amazing conversation, as I mentioned, with
Amanda who Amanda crue As for an episode of my
(29:47):
own podcast, and we were talking about exactly this, like
what role does that part of our human experience play
and who we become? And I can't think of a
person who hasn't gone through that and come out the
other side a different person. And to me, that's again
(30:08):
this many seasons of our lives. An orange tree does
not continuously create oranges. There is a winter that winter
serves a function. I will give a personal example. I
recently had a company that I've been building. I was
founder and the CEO for on and off for twelve years.
(30:29):
Had that company acquired by a large public company. As
an entrepreneur, that's the shit, right, You have an idea,
you raise a ton of dough, You get ten million
people using the thing, and then it's acquired by a
big public company.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
You do the cycle. Raw rah.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
I'm telling you the high from that after twelve years
of doing it. The high was like maybe six or
eight days and then you're like, oh shit, now what
I was okay?
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
I'm gonna give myself time to rest a couple of weeks,
take a vacation, and then I'm just going to get
right back to being me. Oh my god, I just
got finished with like six months of I cannot say
it was the dark Knight of the Soul.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
I actually it wasn't that dark.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
And still probably the one of the hardest things I've
gone through as an adult is continuing to tie, you know,
my identity to this thing, and then you realize that
now that that thing is done, like, oh shit, I've
got to get up and look in the mirror, and
I just I got nothing to talk about. I was
(31:37):
just fucking tired, and I had never really expressed. If
you ask anyone, hey, do you know Chase, the word
that comes up is probably not tired. So there was
this radical disconnect, you know, and I start to question,
oh shit, now am I is that it?
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Am I done. Now I'm done.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
I'm entering middle age, and now I'm like just gonna
fucking play tennis, Like what do I do now? It
was a very difficult process, and yet here I am
some nine months through this process and just starting to
like I'm dreaming again. I'm having ideas. I have energy
in a way that I haven't had energy for a
(32:18):
long time.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
That's scary stuff.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
And this is a mild example relative to say some
serious trauma or the loss of someone who is very
very close to us that we love, or and yet
we cannot avoid this.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
This is part of the human condition.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Yeah, this is why this podcast is here. This is
why I have these conversations, right because there is there's
so much grief in daily life, right, and we think
about grief as like it's just what happens when somebody
you care about dies, right, Like, yes, and there is
a much bigger experience of grief out here that we
(32:56):
just don't we don't call it that. I love talking
about out losses inside success, right because it's so easy
to look at you Chase and be like okay, like
you know, super prolific and creative and sold, creative, live
and sold fiber and like all of this real success,
(33:18):
and we don't have those conversations about how sometimes like
sometimes being successful it's just shit.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
I'm going to confess something.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
So I'm writing my next book, and I was in
this process of writing, you know, coming through this six months,
as I mentioned, and it's really been longer than that.
But the company was acquired, and first of all, I
had to drop a lot of things. I used to
have my hands in a bunch of different stuff, and
I had to get really serious and very focused about
(33:49):
Creative Live and come back and rejoin the company as
as CEO and make a bunch of changes and raise.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
A new money.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
And basically the company was going in a way that
myself and the board didn't want to go. I had
to come back make a bunch of change, his hardest
work I've ever done as an adult. And then the
company was acquired, and then I had to do some
you know, basically a process of making sure it's successful
inside the company that bought it. So that's another It
was like basically I kind of said, okay, cool, I'll.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Give you guys a year to do this.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
And then so there's sort of like two letdowns of Okay, cool,
now it's been acquired, and then like, oh gosh, okay,
now I just have to go back to work with
this new boss. And then there's the process of okay,
now cool, I'm done, done, and now I get to going.
Now that's the part I talked about, you know, resting
and being tired, and I'm like on the other side
of this right now, and I'm trying to write about
(34:40):
it as a part of my new book, and the
narrative it's just it's so trashy. I can't wait for
you to just throw rocks at this because it's so awkward.
And so I'm trying to write about the process of
sort of bend to the mountaintop, cold and fucking windy
up there, my alls cracked up to be skip the
mountain top. Don't chase court of success, chase fulfillment. If
(35:02):
our first human incarnation was like, Okay, we need to survive.
We figured out the survival part, you know, we beat
the saber two tigers on the horizon, we made we
can We got food, so we got survival check. And
then the next one was industrialization and success. We've got
to chase success. And then once you check the success box. Heyised,
Oh shit, success was actually really dangerous and hard and uh,
(35:25):
and it was not the right know end goal.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
So the end goal should be fulfillment.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
And by writing this process down and saying na, no,
skip the success part, just goes straight for the fulfillment.
I basically see a line of fucking people saying, oh,
skip the success part. Well, hold my beer, I'm actually
going to go try that, and I'll let you know.
It just sounded horrible and privileged. I couldn't find I
was aware of that, and I still could not find
a way to navigate the don't chase the success paradigm.
(35:53):
So what I'm wrestling with right now? And I just
literally scrapped like fifty thousand words of a book trying
to get that home. I just couldn't land a plane.
But it's left me with like, cool, So what do
we do? What is it that we are pursuing? You know,
success was a pretty easy thing. You just to put
it up there and you say, define what it looks like.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
And you know, you might tweak the definition to.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Yourself, but that's you know, whether it's you know, the
size of your family or the size of your bank
account or you know where you live, or that you
can provide for yourself whatever the you know, and then
just go after that.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
And that's clearly not it. So what is it?
Speaker 1 (36:31):
I'm aware that we have to live in some sort
of relationship with ourselves and us. Deciding what that relationship
looks like is a very difficult, long process.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
I don't even.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Actually encourage in trying to shortcut it. But at the
end of the day, you have to wake up and
look at yourself in the mirror. You have to wake
up and feel what it feels like to be in
your body. There's this, you know, whether it's radical acceptance
or the art of becoming comfortable in your own skin
is a profound art. Is alchemy. Actually it's not only art.
(37:12):
There's a little bit of science in there. You have
to get up and move your body, for example, you
have to feed yourself the right fuel.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
But this is a difficult task, and I think.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
We don't talk about this because it's very abstract, right,
That's the reason you have a very successful show around it,
and you've written, you know, incredibly detailed and at length
on the topics, because it's fucking complex.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Being human is not easy.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
I want to bring something back here, like I love
what you just shared, and you started off by saying
this is a grief and then didn't come back to grief.
So how do we understand what you are processing through
right now and what this is like for you? Like
where I'm not disagreeing with you because I actually I
(37:56):
totally hear the grief in there, but I want to
hear this is sort of like real time unfolding here,
Like there is a grieving process happening here.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
It's very easy to look at to point to grief
in the let's just take the case of we lose
someone who's very close to us, It's very easy to
point at that you're grieving. It hurts to lose someone
who's very special to you. Again, part of this being
a complex topic is it's not it's not a stretch.
It's easy to point at that. But you know, as
(38:27):
soon as I talk about this idea of okay, my
identity was tied up in this thing that was building,
and then the thing is no longer mine, and then
I wonder like, oh shit, who am I?
Speaker 2 (38:36):
What am I without this thing? Or this list of shit?
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Or he's you know, six foot tall and weighs one
hundred and ninety five pounds.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Whatever.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
The's like, what are these lists of attributes? And so
to me, this is like defining this as grief. To
someone who may be in the middle of the dark
knight of the soul right now, they're like, yeah, Bud,
have a nice day. It sounds like you got things
pretty buttoned up. But I guess that's part of the
reason my you know, decision to be in your show
was this is actually hard and I don't have a
(39:08):
word for it.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
I mean, you're you're the grief expert.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
I'm the person who's trying to figure it out that
why did it Why did it feel hard?
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Why did it feel empty?
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Take some actor who is rich and talented and especially
good looking, and and then when they go on a
talk show and tell you how rough they've got it,
it's like, eh, I don't know, I'll trade you. Is
what I hear out there in the world, And so
I'm not comparing myself to that. But ultimately there's definitely
(39:40):
grief in the process of you know, for that that
they experience that that person's having, And I don't know
the right I don't have the right language to define
the experience of sort of re redefining or setting a
new course or this is when I said I was tired,
it was really like, it's terrified.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
I'm afraid. Am I done? Do I have do?
Speaker 1 (40:04):
I have no more ideas because right now I just
want to sleep in.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
I want to, you know, go on walks.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
I just want to just like not have to be
somewhere at someone else's on someone else's schedule. I don't
have to be standing in front of people. I don't
want to have to be doing podcasts. I don't want
to have to I mean, you and I have talked
about this off camera, right like the burden that we
saddle ourselves with. You know, it's someone else's absolutely the
best thing.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
That could ever happen to them.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
So that we don't have language for this outside of
the traditional lanes for grief in the worlds that I operate,
maybe in the world where you operate, where.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
This is this full of nuance.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
But I think that's what I'm interested in exploring with you,
is it feels like a grief to me.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
It sounds like grief to me.
Speaker 4 (40:54):
Yeah, each week I leave you with some questions to
carry with you until we meet again.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
But this is just part one of my conversation with
Chase Jarvis, and we have got a lot more territory
to cover before we get to those questions. I love
that we kind of ended on a cliffhanger, right like,
how dare you have feelings? Next up, we're going to
continue our conversation with Chase Jarvis about compassion in grief,
questioning your role in the world, the luxury of being
(41:30):
in pain, and how his near death experience of being
caught in an avalanche is somehow both a life defining
moment and the one thing he tried really hard to
never think about again. Now, be sure to subscribe to
the show on your favorite platform so you don't miss
part two, and you don't miss any.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Of this season's excellent guests.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
If you want to tell me how today's show felt
for you, or you have thoughts on what we covered,
let me know. Tag at Refuge and Grief on all
the social platform so I can hear how this conversation
affected you. Follow the show at It's Okay pod on
TikTok and Refuge and Grief everywhere else to see video
clips from the conversation, and use the hashtag It's Okay
pod on all platforms, so not only I can find you,
(42:15):
but others can too. None of us are entirely okay,
and it's time we start talking about that together. Yeah,
it's okay that You're not okay. You're in good company.
That's it for this week. Everybody, remember to subscribe to
the show and leave a review. Your reviews help make
this show easier to find, which furthers our mission of
(42:36):
getting more people to have interesting conversations about difficult things.
The other benefit of leaving a review. Your reviews are
really special to me and I read every single one
of them. Want more on these topics. Look, grief is everywhere.
As my dad says, daily life is full of everyday
grief that we don't call grief. Learning how to talk
about all of that and learning how to listen for
(42:58):
it are import and skills for everybody. Get help to
have those conversations with trainings, professional resources, and my best
selling book, It's Okay that You're Not Okay, plus the
guided Journal for Grief at Megandivine dot Co. It's Okay
that You're Not Okay. The podcast is written and produced
by me Megan Divine Executive producer is Amy Brown, co
(43:19):
produced by Elizabeth Fozzio. Logistical and social media support from Micah,
post production and editing by the ever patient Houston Tilly.
Music provided by Wavecrush and Background Noise Today provided by
the endless drone of background helicopters
One of the hardest things I've gone through as an
adult is continuing to tie, you know, my identity to
this thing, and then you realize that now that that
thing is done, like, oh shit, I've got to get
up and look in the mirror, and it's just I
got nothing to talk about. I was just fucking tired,
(00:20):
and I had never really expressed.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
If you ask.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Anyone, hey, do you know Chase, the word that comes
up is probably not tired.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
This is it's okay that you're not okay. And I'm
your host, Megan Divine. Have you ever felt something, some feeling,
and then immediately disqualified yourself from feeling it, Like you
don't have the right to feel what you're feeling because
your life is objectively pretty good. This week on the show,
award winning photographer and co founder of Creative Live Chase
(00:52):
Jarvis in a two part conversation on creativity and the
grief involved in getting exactly what you want and whether
you're allowed to feel that way subtlely in everybody. All
of that coming up right after this first break. Before
(01:14):
we get started, one quick note. While we cover a
lot of emotional relational territory in our time here together,
This show is not a substitute for skilled support with
a licensed mental health provider or for professional supervision related
to your work.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Hi friends.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
So on the surface, this week's guest might seem like
a really strange choice for this podcast. I'm not gonna lie.
When a friend suggested that I invite Chase Jarvis onto
the show, I was like, I'm sure he's lovely, bud.
Why why would I have him? There are so many
ways to describe what Chase has done. He's an award
winning photographer. He's the co founder of Creative Live, the
(01:55):
world's largest live streaming education company, and he's the author
of a book called Creative Calling. And Creative Live was
recently acquired by fiver and acquired here is sort of
code for sold for a lot of money. So Chase
knows not only about creativity and how important it is
to our lives and our well being, he also knows
(02:17):
what it's like to have really big dreams come true,
to feel that success that you've worked for for such
a long time, like arrive. You know, something really big
that we don't talk about very often, the grief involved
in getting exactly what you want. I've been talking about
this topic a lot lately. It was Okay, here's how
(02:40):
it started. I was giving a keynote earlier this year,
and I was listing like a long list of things
that you can grieve, because I was talking about the
everyday grief that we don't call grief. So in this
long list of things that you can grieve, like your
childhood home being turned into condos, missing out on milestones
during the pandemic, the grief of getting you what you want,
(03:01):
and sort of on and on and on. At the
end of the keynote, the comment box was flooded with questions,
and all of the questions were some variation of what
do you mean the grief of getting what you want?
Please say more? Like it was this almost like throwaway
statement I made in this long list, but that was
(03:22):
the thing that people really latched onto, Please say more.
This conversation with Chase Jarvis is my please say More.
It is a deep f bomb laden insights unfolding in
real time conversation about creativity, identity, success, and yes, grief.
(03:46):
Chase Jarvis is a very successful man. He's also kind
and thoughtful and actively exploring his own ideas of himself. Now,
if you've heard Chase speak before. This is a very
different kind of conversation than he usually gets to have
(04:08):
no content notes. First of all, it will become apparent
very very quickly. There's a lot of swearing in this episode.
You've got two people who tend to be kind of
sweary in their regular lives, and you put them together
and you get a show with a lot of swearing. Okay,
that out of the way. A little definition here too.
(04:28):
You're gonna hear Chase talk about small sea creative and
big sea creative, which is an interesting distinction. So many
people say they aren't creative, as if creativity the big
sea that Chase is talking about in today's episode. Creativity
is this rarefied thing that only belongs to artists and
artists in air quotes here. But what if all the
(04:49):
little daily moments of like choosing an outfit and making
a meal, what if we saw those acts as acts
of creation or creativity, which is the small sea creativity
Chase is talking about in the show today. So more
about that in the episode. Don't worry about it. But
I wanted you to have a little a little like
what are they talking about moment here? So let's get
(05:10):
into it, and be sure to tune in again this
week for a special bonus episode with even more personal
storytelling from the he very much belongs on this show,
Chase Jarvis. All right, So I described all of your
accolades in my introduction so that I didn't make you
have to sit through it. But yet you are very
(05:32):
you are very welcome. Now. You and I have friends
in common, and we spend a lot of time talking
about our mutual friend. And I want to say that,
on the surface, you might seem like an odd guest
for this show, but one of the things that I
learned as I was preparing for our conversation was how
much you enjoy demystifying things. Yes, and I feel like
(05:56):
that is my favorite thing in the whole world. So
you've made a life of making the invisible visible? Does
that feel like an accurate description for you?
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Just stop stop, keep coming with this stuff?
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Feel good? Someone's feel seen excellent.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
I find what I think as I look, and this
is like an awareness that has evolved and is a
realization that I am a curious person and I have
wanted to know things, or learn things, or pursue things,
or even become aware enough to decide whether to pursue
(06:32):
something or not. And what I realized is that by
turning sort of that research or that process inside out,
or by sharing it in either real time or almost
real time, that I was able to build connections with
other people, and some very very very close, some you know, parasocial.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
And I got a lot of value out of that.
And I realized, you know, the.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Sort of the the world is a thing, right, and
you poke it and it can like respond, And I,
you know, in sharing my process excavating and deconstructing the
world around me to decide what is I wanted to
do or in areas of interest, that I sometimes got
quite a powerful resonance with a community of other people,
of like minded folks and sometimes not sometimes the opposite
(07:22):
of me, But I found both really valuable.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
I read somewhere that you said that you've made a
career in awareness.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Oh don't let my wife hear you say that, because
she's an actual awareness teacher, like a meditation. She was
playing with ram Das and all the people, and she
would question my level of awareness.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Okay, no, no, not really.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
I think I find that at the end of the day,
that is really all we have is our attention, and
so to learn how to direct it is not just
a skill, but perhaps the most valuable skill that we
and it involves what is it, you know, around Bass,
we're all just walking one another home, like it's very
(08:06):
much a journey inward and that journey. I just had
this great conversation with Amanda Cruz, the actor.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
She's in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
She had a couple a bunch of different things, and
we were talking about, you know, there's sort of two
mountains in life. The first one is the one you
climb that everyone else tells you to climb, and then
you get there and you're like oh, And then there's
the second one, which is sort of realizing that you
have to go, you know, make and climb your own
mountain or that's that's one analogy or again you're coming
home to yourself. And for me, I'm on that sort
(08:36):
of second mountain, and it is realizing that I'm by
strengthening my ability to direct my attention to where I
want it, and sometimes that's an allowing is.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
So valuable and I think that's where the best stuff
in life is.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Yeah, in sort of that dissolution and awareness, I mean,
I think I have a I was going with awareness
less in the ramdas committed practice thing and more that
curiosity that you are speaking of.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah, I think that's that's also a fair extrapolation.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Yeah, yeah, I think we can reframe that and not
worry about, you know, whether or not we can define
you as having made a career and awareness. We can
go back and change that quote and say I've made
a career in curiosity and so so that's what I'm
here for. We here reframe you in a positive light,
should you ever need.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
It, Thank you, should you ever need it.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
You're speaking of pr people, We'll figure it out for you.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, well, I mean I I think I we joke
about this, but this is one of the reasons that
I find you and what you've created interesting. Is this
curiosity and take things apart and what's another way to
look at this and can we find things that help
us understand or explore the world that we create.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Foundationally, I and I came through a long and sort
of awkward, bumbling road the way many of us have
to find out that for me, this the power that
we have that we are basically creating machines human beings
are and whether you're listening to this right now and
(10:14):
you identify as someone.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Who's creative or a creator, or.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
You're like, hey, man, I just you know, I don't
think the government looks fondly on creative accounting, and I'm
an accountant, therefore I'm not creative. So wherever you put
yourself on that spectrum, I have come to believe and
I would say no that that's one of the things
that separates us from all the other species on our
planet is that we are wildly creative. We have the
ability to put two things that used to not go
(10:39):
together together in interesting and really valuable ways. And I
wrote about this in a book called Creative Calling. And
there's a couple things like, if you realize that we're
all creative, and then if you can just go.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
With me for a second here, if you're dubious.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
But and that creativity is a muscle, it's sort of
a a habit more than it is a skill. And
if you use that in small, regular, lightweight ways on
a daily basis, that you can you can develop your
creative acumen. And once you realize that the same things
(11:15):
that you make on a small daily basis, whether you're
you know, writing or making a meal for your family,
or whatever way that you look at creativity with a
small sea, that is, that's the exact same muscle that
we use creating small, daily, lightweight ways with the capital
cee creativity that we have with this one precious life.
It's the same muscle, just a different skill. And so
(11:37):
go back to young me realizing, you know, as a
kid who was you know, bound for professional soccer.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
And when I.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Decided not to do that, I was like, cool, then
I'll go to medical school, to all the medical school
shit and all of this because other.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
People wanted me to do it.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
And then, you know, through some miracle epiphany, realize that
that's the path that I.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Didn't want to go on.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
And again I only realized that through my own sort
of awkward, crappy, bumbling experience, but my whole life changed.
When I looked at it as I am sort of
the designer and the creator of the life, it began
to resonate and such. Then thus began a very long
journey to develop that muscle that I spoke about. And
(12:25):
here on my second mountain that I was just sharing,
we got analogies, fucking on analogies, crazy I'm with you. Yeah,
I think life has continued to get more interesting. And
when you realize that we are the creators of our
own experience, I found it valuable. And that's ultimately I
feel like the creative journey that I'm on, and then
I'm trying to bring as many people listen along with me,
(12:49):
is I find it fun and valuable?
Speaker 3 (12:53):
What's the goal of the creative process?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Then? For you, I think it's very What is this?
Is it? Socrates or Aristotle? Sort of know thyself.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
We are surrounded by people, our parents, our friends, our
career counselors, aunts, uncles, grandparents, peers, competitors. We're surrounded by people,
let's just say, most of whom are well intentioned, that
are constantly telling us things, telling us about what is
or the way the world is, or way the world
(13:23):
ought to be, or what we ought to be. And
so it's no wonder that we're largely confused when we
move out into the world, right, we're like, okay, cool, Well,
you know, my parents are saying I need to get
a job, and here's what a job looks like. It's
got to be one of these ten things. And you know,
there's just all these competing ideas, and part of the
difficulty is you're close to many of those people. Those
(13:43):
people mean very well, but they can't actually define those
things for you. And so we are in a world
where we are very conditioned and we are told how
the world is or how it ought to be. And
yet it's only through our personal experience and us, you know,
moving to the world, that we can find out what's
(14:05):
actually true for us. And then there's this realization that
the things that you were told and when you have
done the work and gone inward, that those things are
actually different. Then there's this reconciliation. So for me, the
creative process is all about this process of what I
would say is creating ourselves. People say, oh yeah, and
(14:26):
then he found success, like in a fucking find success.
You know, it's not something I stumbled or I just
I had built a company and grew it and it
was acquired not too long ago, and they call you
a founder. I didn't find anything, you know, I built it,
I created it. And so you start to realize that cool.
You take all these inputs, then it's up to you
(14:48):
to actually put together, through some crazy form of alchemy,
who you want to be or become in the world.
That's when sort of this second the second journey.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I like to think of it when it starts.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
So that's the record, that's the rationale for the creative process.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
That's why I think it's valuable to know about it,
to believe in it.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
And it's not a stretch when you think about you know,
you can create whatever you want for dinner tonight, whether
it's you know, pasta or assuming. If you're listening to show,
you have the means, and I will acknowledge that not
everyone has that. But if you're looking to show, then
you do, and you know, then extrapolate that all to
the to the nth degree, and you realize that, wow,
one precious life, what are we.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Going to do?
Speaker 3 (15:32):
So it sounds like for you the creative process, exploring
your own creativity was and is a way for you
to listen to yourself.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah, to know myself.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
I'm wary of listening because when we listen, it's usually
to words, and I don't always trust the words that
we say to ourselves. They are the most important words
in the world, by the way, are the ones we
say to ourselves.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
But learning to not necessarily buy in and what I
do buy.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Into is sort of the feelings and this again sort
of body scan awareness one of my feeling versus like,
you know, again the words if you played out loud,
the words that ninety percent of people who are out
there in the world are saying to themselves, You're like, oh,
that is a tape I do not want to hear,
which isn't a huge opportunity for growth, you know, personally, culturally, whatnot.
(16:25):
But I think when you said listen, it was sort
of a metaphorical lissen right, yes, sort of correct an awareness.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
You know what this makes me think of, though, is
you know when when little kids are in elementary school
and they start drawing and the teacher says, draw a house,
and everybody draws the same house, right, Like, it's because
we have learned what the creative process expects, what the
output should be, and what a house looks like. I
was having this conversation with somebody the other day. I
(16:55):
don't know how we got on the subject, but when
I was in kindergarten, my original kindergarten teacher sent home
a note with me to my parents that you know,
Megan has a problem. She refuses to color. The lady
bug red and refuses to color in the lines and
thank everything from my parents in that moment, they were like, huh,
new teacher, please right. But this idea that as creative
(17:20):
beings small sea big ercy, that there is an acceptable
expression of the creative process. So I love that you
brought that out that, Like I usually say that the
creative process is call and response with yourself, right, like
listening to yourself and how much weeding we have to
go through to find what we're actually saying to ourselves
(17:41):
versus what we think we're supposed to paint or draw
or write or make for dinner or any of these things.
Like there is an expectation of what the creative really
confusing is.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
The people who are telling us those things are people
that we care deeply about.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
We value their opinion. They're thoughtful and very you know,
heartfelt people.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Usually some of them are rankers, but love them are assholes.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Some of them, you know, are people who have you know,
who have mal intent. But the most part you're like,
oh cool, my mom who thinks this about me and
loves me and whatever thinks I should do X, and
Grandma says why, And my career accounts are really like
they're awesome person they you know, and these careers are
very easy sort of you know, stand up for this conversation.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
But it can be any number of things.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Like when we were getting all this what I'm calling conditioning,
it's no wonder that the hardest thing to do is
to become aware of your own personal voice and your
own intuition and you know, start to think and act and.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Decide and behave for yourself first.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Like, that's a very difficult process when all of these
inputs are you know, telling you something different.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Yeah, the second guessing and the second guessing and the
second guessing and maybe I shouldn't trust myself or what
I want or you know, all of these things. Now
I want to I want to dive into one aspect
of the creative process and art that is my personal
annoyance thing. People who have listened to me for a
long time know that I rant about this a lot.
But there is this thing that happens with the creative
(19:13):
process that if you are going through something difficult or
challenging or even just confusing in your own life, like
you're supposed to make art out of it, right, That
if you take your pain and you turn it into art.
You have somehow transformed it that that is the reason
why we have bad things, so that you can make
(19:34):
something beautiful at them. And this makes me so angry.
It makes me really angry for the people who might
want to creatively engage with their own lives, right, because
there's this focus on like, do this thing and you're
gonna feel better. But also like it's so rude to
creation itself, right, like why do you take this tool
(20:00):
of self liberation and self exploration and curiosity and force
it into that transformative narrative that all bad things happen
so that you can make good art from them. Can
we discuss.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
I'm happy to just to agree with you that that's
a shitty way of thinking about it, and we canna
move on.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
I'm with you.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
I think that's I said it all.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
You did again, creativity.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
If you look at that, it's like that is so
fundamental to the human experience that we have to allow
permission to do what we do with the things that
we do them with without a formula, without a contract.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Yeah, it just seems too.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Prescriptive, you know, the ability that this or the rationale
that if X, therefore y and that is so often
said as you as you mentioned with the grief trauma,
that that's the function that it serves, and it's not
going to be that for everybody, and it's not going
to always result in greater Sometimes it just needs to
(21:02):
just be very very personal and you need to move on.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
It is a little bit like this.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
There's a couple of ideas around creativity that I really
struggle with.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
One the concept of the striving artist. I think that
is just a.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Toxic, horrible myth from you know, I think it's from
La Bauhem. You know, it really does go back to
that the theatrical like it served a purpose in a
time to cultivate a specific narrative and we've just latched
onto that and it's very very untrue. Others others are
that creativity requires you to change a bunch of things
(21:38):
about yourself. You have to move to Paris and where's
the beret and smokes a cigarette and you know all
this This is like, you don't have to do anything different.
It's really just start to realize that you are in
the driver's seat and the things that you are interested
in being or becoming, they're free for you to choose
and only by taking action and making small daily changes
(22:04):
in how we think and how we act. That that's
the only way that anything ever gets done. So you're
either willing to do that or you aren't. I would
love to think that we should all be willing to
engage in this creative process, seeing it as such, defining
it as such. That's why making dinner actually matters, Deciding
which direction you're going to drive home actually matters, instead
(22:24):
of doing the same thing all the time, deciding what
music you're going to listen to, which is going to
put you in some particular like, these are all choices
that we have in life, and you don't have to
always choose everything. Sometimes that's fucking exhausting, but that you
are in that position that you have autonomy is a
very very powerful feeling, especially when you start to keep
promises with yourself. That's where confidence come from. Confidence is
(22:45):
not some external thing. It is a skill, but it
is a skill that is developed through making promises to
yourself and then keeping them. And to me, this is
like all this is very very very intertwined with creativity
and are the the role that we play on the
this on this planet. And this is why if you're
an accountant. I made that joke about creative accounting earlier,
(23:06):
which was clearly not very funny.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
No one laughed.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
But like that, you, every single person listening here has
a little reactor of like a life time supply. What
Maya Angelou says, creativity is the only you know, It's
something that's a special resource. The more you have, the
more you use, the more you have. And I think
thinking of it in that term is incredibly powerful. And
(23:30):
even if you're an accountant, and that why your profession
may be one thing, your life can be anything that
you decided, and it starts to make life interesting. I
feel like when you look at your own agency, and
you look at your own ability to make choices, and
you look at.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
The conditioning, you start to you can question.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Some of that stuff through you know, through grief and
trauma and all these different experiences that we've had.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
You can, you know, do this dark knight of the
soul of the journey.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
But at the end of the day, if you can
just reapply your energy to making the life that you
want in this world, that is so to me. It's
so refreshing.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Chase and I talked for a long time getting ready
for the show, and I answered a lot of questions
about grief. Before we get back to that conversation, I
want to tell you about a way that you can
ask me questions about grief, no matter what kind of
grief you're carrying. Once a month, I host a live
Q and A on Patreon. It's time to talk with
me directly, get your questions answered, and listen into the
(24:37):
answers of other people who have good questions. It's a
really sweet group and we would love to have you.
All of the information is at patreon dot com, backslash
Megan Divine, or you can find the link in the
show notes. And if you would rather talk to me privately,
there's an option for that too. The link to apply
for individual sessions is in the show notes. Okay, back
(24:59):
to my conversation with Creative Live founder Chase Jervis. I
love the idea of paying attention to your life as
a creative act, right, and that we don't need to
silo big C creativity like, oh, I'm not artistic, I'm
not creative. Right if we take out that transactional narrative
(25:22):
of what the creative process is quote unquote four and
instead sort of shift to the way that you're talking
about it, which is like, this is a relationship with
yourself and with this world that you create in ways
that are changing.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
The One of the worst stories that we can tell
ourselves is that I am you know fill in the blank.
You know that these identity words are so powerful, and
who you were yesterday has almost no bearing on who
you can be tomorrow. And yet we say, oh, I
always get angry when or I'm like these this conditioning,
these patterns are so difficult, and right now I'm hoping
(26:01):
that someone who's listening is going, oh shit, that's.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Who I am.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
I just close off when things get tough, or that's like,
that is a set of stories that you're telling yourself
that may have been true yesterday, but it doesn't have
to be true right now. When you start to realize
that that's this sort of you know, it comes back
to this, No, we can create a new narrative for ourselves.
We can become the person that our dog thinks we are,
(26:25):
or we can become the person that we want to
be by simply behaving in the way that that person
would behave And that's not betraying yourself at all. That's
actually recognizing and deciding to make a change, which is
your prerogative. You know, if creativity is what differentiates us
from all the other species, and if your life is
(26:48):
our greatest creative act, like fuck, make it a masterpiece.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
You know what I think as you're talking about this,
I mean, there's a reason why you're like you're an
in demand teacher and an in demand speaker. Like, yes,
I feel like I can conquer the world just listening
to you. And I also because of the nature of
my work and because of the focus that I keep
in this world on my own, like invisible making things,
(27:13):
making things visible. It's like life isn't always like a
ra ra I got this event, And I know that
you know this very well. And this is where we
sort of intersect with like, you know, people who have
listened to me for a long time, like what is
this person? He's great, but what is he doing here?
Speaker 2 (27:33):
What is he doing on your show?
Speaker 3 (27:34):
What are you doing here with conversations with interesting people
about difficult things and exploring really challenging periods in life.
And one of the reasons that you're here is because,
like I, I have been an artist, I have been
a creative person, small ce, big sea, like my whole life.
And I know how that has changed for me at
(27:58):
different periods, in the good times, in the hideous times,
and in the other times. And one of the things
that I would love to talk about with you, if
you're willing to go there, is like, do you think
there's room for a discussion of grief and loss? Inherent
in building a successful career and in guiding other people
(28:22):
to start looking at their own lives in different ways?
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Absolutely essential, absolutely core. It's the human experience. That's part
of the beauty of being human is that it can
be very non linear and when you know you can
both be happy and sad, or you know, you can
be angry at someone and love them like it's complex.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
First of all, we radically.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Overgeneralize so many you know, in so many ways culturally,
even those two very basic examples like that you can
be you can love someone and be angry at them
at the same time. And you know, by extension the
creative process, it's literally only through living a life that
you can start to understand who you want to be
(29:06):
or become. You know, so you're you're immune to nothing.
You have no choice but to go through it. And
it's in the going through, and it's in the you know,
know thyself that we become aware of what it is
that we want to create and notice like grief and trauma,
(29:26):
and these are not things that we can avoid. In fact,
you know, this is the very fabric of the human experience.
It seems to me that you can't possibly avoid it.
I just had this amazing conversation, as I mentioned, with
Amanda who Amanda crue As for an episode of my
(29:47):
own podcast, and we were talking about exactly this, like
what role does that part of our human experience play
and who we become? And I can't think of a
person who hasn't gone through that and come out the
other side a different person. And to me, that's again
(30:08):
this many seasons of our lives. An orange tree does
not continuously create oranges. There is a winter that winter
serves a function. I will give a personal example. I
recently had a company that I've been building. I was
founder and the CEO for on and off for twelve years.
(30:29):
Had that company acquired by a large public company. As
an entrepreneur, that's the shit, right, You have an idea,
you raise a ton of dough, You get ten million
people using the thing, and then it's acquired by a
big public company.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
You do the cycle. Raw rah.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
I'm telling you the high from that after twelve years
of doing it. The high was like maybe six or
eight days and then you're like, oh shit, now what
I was okay?
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
I'm gonna give myself time to rest a couple of weeks,
take a vacation, and then I'm just going to get
right back to being me. Oh my god, I just
got finished with like six months of I cannot say
it was the dark Knight of the Soul.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
I actually it wasn't that dark.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
And still probably the one of the hardest things I've
gone through as an adult is continuing to tie, you know,
my identity to this thing, and then you realize that
now that that thing is done, like, oh shit, I've
got to get up and look in the mirror, and
I just I got nothing to talk about. I was
(31:37):
just fucking tired, and I had never really expressed. If
you ask anyone, hey, do you know Chase, the word
that comes up is probably not tired. So there was
this radical disconnect, you know, and I start to question,
oh shit, now am I is that it?
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Am I done. Now I'm done.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
I'm entering middle age, and now I'm like just gonna
fucking play tennis, Like what do I do now? It
was a very difficult process, and yet here I am
some nine months through this process and just starting to
like I'm dreaming again. I'm having ideas. I have energy
in a way that I haven't had energy for a
(32:18):
long time.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
That's scary stuff.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
And this is a mild example relative to say some
serious trauma or the loss of someone who is very
very close to us that we love, or and yet
we cannot avoid this.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
This is part of the human condition.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Yeah, this is why this podcast is here. This is
why I have these conversations, right because there is there's
so much grief in daily life, right, and we think
about grief as like it's just what happens when somebody
you care about dies, right, Like, yes, and there is
a much bigger experience of grief out here that we
(32:56):
just don't we don't call it that. I love talking
about out losses inside success, right because it's so easy
to look at you Chase and be like okay, like
you know, super prolific and creative and sold, creative, live
and sold fiber and like all of this real success,
(33:18):
and we don't have those conversations about how sometimes like
sometimes being successful it's just shit.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
I'm going to confess something.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
So I'm writing my next book, and I was in
this process of writing, you know, coming through this six months,
as I mentioned, and it's really been longer than that.
But the company was acquired, and first of all, I
had to drop a lot of things. I used to
have my hands in a bunch of different stuff, and
I had to get really serious and very focused about
(33:49):
Creative Live and come back and rejoin the company as
as CEO and make a bunch of changes and raise.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
A new money.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
And basically the company was going in a way that
myself and the board didn't want to go. I had
to come back make a bunch of change, his hardest
work I've ever done as an adult. And then the
company was acquired, and then I had to do some
you know, basically a process of making sure it's successful
inside the company that bought it. So that's another It
was like basically I kind of said, okay, cool, I'll.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Give you guys a year to do this.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
And then so there's sort of like two letdowns of Okay, cool,
now it's been acquired, and then like, oh gosh, okay,
now I just have to go back to work with
this new boss. And then there's the process of okay,
now cool, I'm done, done, and now I get to going.
Now that's the part I talked about, you know, resting
and being tired, and I'm like on the other side
of this right now, and I'm trying to write about
(34:40):
it as a part of my new book, and the
narrative it's just it's so trashy. I can't wait for
you to just throw rocks at this because it's so awkward.
And so I'm trying to write about the process of
sort of bend to the mountaintop, cold and fucking windy
up there, my alls cracked up to be skip the
mountain top. Don't chase court of success, chase fulfillment. If
(35:02):
our first human incarnation was like, Okay, we need to survive.
We figured out the survival part, you know, we beat
the saber two tigers on the horizon, we made we
can We got food, so we got survival check. And
then the next one was industrialization and success. We've got
to chase success. And then once you check the success box. Heyised,
Oh shit, success was actually really dangerous and hard and uh,
(35:25):
and it was not the right know end goal.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
So the end goal should be fulfillment.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
And by writing this process down and saying na, no,
skip the success part, just goes straight for the fulfillment.
I basically see a line of fucking people saying, oh,
skip the success part. Well, hold my beer, I'm actually
going to go try that, and I'll let you know.
It just sounded horrible and privileged. I couldn't find I
was aware of that, and I still could not find
a way to navigate the don't chase the success paradigm.
(35:53):
So what I'm wrestling with right now? And I just
literally scrapped like fifty thousand words of a book trying
to get that home. I just couldn't land a plane.
But it's left me with like, cool, So what do
we do? What is it that we are pursuing? You know,
success was a pretty easy thing. You just to put
it up there and you say, define what it looks like.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
And you know, you might tweak the definition to.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Yourself, but that's you know, whether it's you know, the
size of your family or the size of your bank
account or you know where you live, or that you
can provide for yourself whatever the you know, and then
just go after that.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
And that's clearly not it. So what is it?
Speaker 1 (36:31):
I'm aware that we have to live in some sort
of relationship with ourselves and us. Deciding what that relationship
looks like is a very difficult, long process.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
I don't even.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Actually encourage in trying to shortcut it. But at the
end of the day, you have to wake up and
look at yourself in the mirror. You have to wake
up and feel what it feels like to be in
your body. There's this, you know, whether it's radical acceptance
or the art of becoming comfortable in your own skin
is a profound art. Is alchemy. Actually it's not only art.
(37:12):
There's a little bit of science in there. You have
to get up and move your body, for example, you
have to feed yourself the right fuel.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
But this is a difficult task, and I think.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
We don't talk about this because it's very abstract, right,
That's the reason you have a very successful show around it,
and you've written, you know, incredibly detailed and at length
on the topics, because it's fucking complex.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Being human is not easy.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
I want to bring something back here, like I love
what you just shared, and you started off by saying
this is a grief and then didn't come back to grief.
So how do we understand what you are processing through
right now and what this is like for you? Like
where I'm not disagreeing with you because I actually I
(37:56):
totally hear the grief in there, but I want to
hear this is sort of like real time unfolding here,
Like there is a grieving process happening here.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
It's very easy to look at to point to grief
in the let's just take the case of we lose
someone who's very close to us, It's very easy to
point at that you're grieving. It hurts to lose someone
who's very special to you. Again, part of this being
a complex topic is it's not it's not a stretch.
It's easy to point at that. But you know, as
(38:27):
soon as I talk about this idea of okay, my
identity was tied up in this thing that was building,
and then the thing is no longer mine, and then
I wonder like, oh shit, who am I?
Speaker 2 (38:36):
What am I without this thing? Or this list of shit?
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Or he's you know, six foot tall and weighs one
hundred and ninety five pounds.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Whatever.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
The's like, what are these lists of attributes? And so
to me, this is like defining this as grief. To
someone who may be in the middle of the dark
knight of the soul right now, they're like, yeah, Bud,
have a nice day. It sounds like you got things
pretty buttoned up. But I guess that's part of the
reason my you know, decision to be in your show
was this is actually hard and I don't have a
(39:08):
word for it.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
I mean, you're you're the grief expert.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
I'm the person who's trying to figure it out that
why did it Why did it feel hard?
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Why did it feel empty?
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Take some actor who is rich and talented and especially
good looking, and and then when they go on a
talk show and tell you how rough they've got it,
it's like, eh, I don't know, I'll trade you. Is
what I hear out there in the world, And so
I'm not comparing myself to that. But ultimately there's definitely
(39:40):
grief in the process of you know, for that that
they experience that that person's having, And I don't know
the right I don't have the right language to define
the experience of sort of re redefining or setting a
new course or this is when I said I was tired,
it was really like, it's terrified.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
I'm afraid. Am I done? Do I have do?
Speaker 1 (40:04):
I have no more ideas because right now I just
want to sleep in.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
I want to, you know, go on walks.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
I just want to just like not have to be
somewhere at someone else's on someone else's schedule. I don't
have to be standing in front of people. I don't
want to have to be doing podcasts. I don't want
to have to I mean, you and I have talked
about this off camera, right like the burden that we
saddle ourselves with. You know, it's someone else's absolutely the
best thing.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
That could ever happen to them.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
So that we don't have language for this outside of
the traditional lanes for grief in the worlds that I operate,
maybe in the world where you operate, where.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
This is this full of nuance.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
But I think that's what I'm interested in exploring with you,
is it feels like a grief to me.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
It sounds like grief to me.
Speaker 4 (40:54):
Yeah, each week I leave you with some questions to
carry with you until we meet again.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
But this is just part one of my conversation with
Chase Jarvis, and we have got a lot more territory
to cover before we get to those questions. I love
that we kind of ended on a cliffhanger, right like,
how dare you have feelings? Next up, we're going to
continue our conversation with Chase Jarvis about compassion in grief,
questioning your role in the world, the luxury of being
(41:30):
in pain, and how his near death experience of being
caught in an avalanche is somehow both a life defining
moment and the one thing he tried really hard to
never think about again. Now, be sure to subscribe to
the show on your favorite platform so you don't miss
part two, and you don't miss any.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Of this season's excellent guests.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
If you want to tell me how today's show felt
for you, or you have thoughts on what we covered,
let me know. Tag at Refuge and Grief on all
the social platform so I can hear how this conversation
affected you. Follow the show at It's Okay pod on
TikTok and Refuge and Grief everywhere else to see video
clips from the conversation, and use the hashtag It's Okay
pod on all platforms, so not only I can find you,
(42:15):
but others can too. None of us are entirely okay,
and it's time we start talking about that together. Yeah,
it's okay that You're not okay. You're in good company.
That's it for this week. Everybody, remember to subscribe to
the show and leave a review. Your reviews help make
this show easier to find, which furthers our mission of
(42:36):
getting more people to have interesting conversations about difficult things.
The other benefit of leaving a review. Your reviews are
really special to me and I read every single one
of them. Want more on these topics. Look, grief is everywhere.
As my dad says, daily life is full of everyday
grief that we don't call grief. Learning how to talk
about all of that and learning how to listen for
(42:58):
it are import and skills for everybody. Get help to
have those conversations with trainings, professional resources, and my best
selling book, It's Okay that You're Not Okay, plus the
guided Journal for Grief at Megandivine dot Co. It's Okay
that You're Not Okay. The podcast is written and produced
by me Megan Divine Executive producer is Amy Brown, co
(43:19):
produced by Elizabeth Fozzio. Logistical and social media support from Micah,
post production and editing by the ever patient Houston Tilly.
Music provided by Wavecrush and Background Noise Today provided by
the endless drone of background helicopters
Host
Megan Devine
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