April 28, 2026 • 31 mins
It’s no secret I’ve been stuck in my creativity lately (and my fertility).
So as a way to reignite my life force energy, I’m going back to the basics. I’m forgetting about my audience and moving toward what makes me happy.
Which has me thinking:
If you’re creating your art for an audience, is it really art?
Is creativity with a specific end in mind really creativity at all?
Join me as I think this through in real time and follow along as I try once again to find the creative spark that often gets buried by what we think other people want.
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, and welcome to you to write your story pipecast.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Good job.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Really pick up the pieces of your life, pull them
back together with the.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Word you write.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
All the beauty and peace and the magic that you'll
start too fun when you write your story, you get
the words and said, don't you think it's down to
let them out and write them down and cold?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
It's all about.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
And write, write your story. Write you write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hi, friends, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon. I'm your host, and on today's episode,
I want to talk about the healing powers of creativity, which,
to be fair, is something that I've talked about at
great length in so many different ways, at so many
different times. This is not a brand new topic coming
from me. But I'm feeling inspired to talk about this
(00:56):
topic in a new way in this time because I
feel like I am wrestling with it in a really
personal way, and as is true with any time you
work through something in a personal way, new insights are
coming through for me. So I want to share some
of these insights that are coming through in case they
might be helpful for you. And you know what, in
the spirit of the theme of today's episode, even if
(01:18):
they are not helpful for you, they're going to be
helpful for me. Hearing myself say this stuff out loud
is going to be so helpful for me. It's going
to be so clarifying for me to hear myself say
the things that I have been thinking. And this is
one of the principles that you'll hear me talk about today,
this coin flip that we have to do when we
(01:38):
think about creativity. What I'm going to talk about today
is how we get confused about what is and what
isn't creativity. And one of the insights that keeps coming
through for me is very counterintuitive, which is to stop
thinking about your audience and start thinking about yourself. And
I think sometimes we're so afraid to do this. And
some of the other little coin flips that I'll share
today are like flipping this coin on its head, like
(02:00):
let's think about it from this other direction. So many
of these things that I'm going to share today are
going to sound weird at first, but then when you
really think about it, and when you really pull back
the curtain on it, you realize, oh gosh, like, yes,
this is what creativity is. It's what it means it
opens up the door for more creative energy to flow through.
And creative energy is a life force energy. This is
(02:20):
what fuels you. It's what makes you feel alive. If
you are not creating, you are doing the opposite of creating,
which is like uncreating or dying. If you are not creating,
you will feel depressed. You will feel anxious, you will
feel sluggish, you will feel down, you will feel hopeless
about the future. And I have felt any and all
of these things at so many various points in my life.
So this is not a criticism. This is me talking
(02:42):
to myself saying, you will feel sluggish and depressed and
like you don't want to get out of bed and
do your life in the morning if you are not
creating something. And we get very confused about what it
means to be creating. So I want to clarify that
to even kick us off, but to just kind of
frame the episode of Little Bit. I'm going to talk
about what it means to be truly creative. I'm going
(03:04):
to share some insights that are coming through for me
as I wrestle with this concept, and I'm hoping that
this will open up my creativity and then maybe by proxy,
it'll open up your creativity as well. And to start. Okay,
I'm going to start here because this is going against
all of my instincts for how to organize and craft
a great message for you. But that's what this episode
(03:25):
is about, is about coming home to our creativity, realizing
that this is not necessarily for you, it's for me,
and therefore it is in a way for you. It's
for us, but it's for me. So I'm going to
say this, which is that I feel the impulse, the
urge right now to start over on this episode because
I feel like, oh, I could have said that better.
I could say it more clearly, I could be more succinct,
(03:48):
I could, you know, set the episode up better. I'm
not going to do that because what I'm trying to
talk about today, what I'm trying to solidify for myself,
is to flip this idea on its head that we
when we make something, when we create something, we're creating
it for someone else. In a way, you are, and
I'm sure that those who consume your art are those
(04:10):
who you know benefit from the things that you've made
and created, whether that's your family or your consumers, your customers,
your community, whatever it is. Those people do appreciate what
you've created. But ultimately, first and foremost, the act of
creativity is about creating and recreating yourself. It is about
(04:31):
your own life force, energy flowing freely, and if you're
constantly editing yourself and stopping yourself. I've talked about this forever.
When it comes to writing, you sit down at the
keys and you you write a sentence, and you're like,
that's dumb. Start over, nobody's going to read that for sentence.
That's not a good enough hook, And you start back
at the beginning, and you do that to yourself over
and over and over again. Eventually, it's like having one
(04:53):
foot on the gas and one foot on the brake
at the same time, and your body will just shut down.
You know that life for energy will stop flowing if
you're constantly correcting yourself, criticizing yourself, editing yourself. So instead
of editing myself, I'm going to keep on moving. It
maybe wasn't the perfect intro to a podcast episode, but
it does get the point across that I'm trying to
(05:14):
make to myself, at least for today, which is this
is not always about the audience. The audience matters. I'm
not saying there's never a moment to think about the audience.
But in a true act of creativity, it is not
about the audience. It is about the self. And if
that sounds selfish to you, keep listening, because I think
it's less selfish than you might think it is. We've
(05:35):
been very conditioned to think about other people, but a
true active creativity is first a thought about the self.
So if we can flip this idea on its head
that when I make something, I'm making it for someone else,
and instead choose to think about ourselves, we can begin
to ask ourselves the question what could I make that
would heal me? What could I make that would make
(05:58):
me feel free? What could I make that would excite me?
What could I make that would just really motivate me
to get out of bed in the morning. I have
long thought about the insane parallels between creativity and the
most evolutionary human act of creativity, which is growing a
(06:20):
baby inside of your belly. That mothers are this perfect
visual picture of creativity. You are growing a human life,
a something out of nothing. You are making something out
of literally nothing inside of your own body. And pregnancy
and birth to me are the most amazing metaphor for
(06:42):
what it means to create something, to make something, to
go into the void of nothingness, and to create something
out of that nothingness, and to birth that something into
the world. And one of the parallels that I have
often thought about is this idea that a pregnancy starts
with doing something that you would have done otherwise, Like
(07:06):
a pregnancy starts not because of a performance you do
for an audience. I mean, hopefully you're getting my drift here.
I'm being like sort of cryptic in case you have
kids listening in the background. But a pregnancy begins because
you did something that felt good to you, You did
something that was pleasurable, You followed your own sense of pleasure,
and not because you did some sort of performance, not
(07:28):
because you jumped through some kind of hoop, not because oh,
you had to check this box, so you went and
checked it. A pregnancy begins because you followed your own
sense of desire and pleasure. And I think every creative
act starts that same way. Sometimes we get confused about
what's creative and what's not creative because we think creativity
has to do with the activity that you're doing. So
(07:49):
we think creativity is music. It's it's writing, you know,
it's writing a book, it's writing a song, it's doing
a dance, it's doing a performance on a stage. And
many of those things, acting, writing, music, whatever, those things
are acts of creativity, or they can be. But the
task itself is not necessarily a creative task. So stay
(08:11):
with me here. I've been noticing this almost like a
Venn diagram, like an overlap of an activity you do
that can be creative and the activity itself. I'm not
doing a very good job of explaining this, but like,
let's just take Instagram for example. You can use Instagram
(08:39):
as a platform for a creative outlet. You can anybody can.
Anybody can come to the platform. They can use the
platform to create reels, create videos, create whatever they want
to create that they can share with the world, and
that can be a creative outlet for them. Plenty of
people are using Instagram to create content. Some people who
are creating content might also be using it as a
(09:03):
creative outlet. That's where the Venn diagram comes in, that
they do cross over at a certain point. But just
because you're creating content on Instagram doesn't mean that you're
doing a creative act. Same thing with a romantic partnership. Okay,
you could have a romantic partnership where the two of
you together are really invested and interested in creating something
brand new, a partnership that's never existed before, a friendship,
(09:26):
a long term companionship. You're interested in creating a life
together and having experiences together and sharing those experiences. You're
very intentional about it. You come to it with a
sense of awe and wonder and openness and curiosity, and
it can be creative. There are also many people who
are in romantic partnerships that are not bringing that creative
energy to the romantic partnership. So just because you're in
(09:48):
a romantic partnership doesn't mean that you're doing a creative thing.
Am I making sense? Just because you're writing a book
does not mean you're doing a creative thing. Just because
you're writing a song does not mean you're doing a
creative thing. Just because you're doing a dance doesn't mean
you're doing a creative thing. You could do a dance
and just be doing the moves and it could be,
you know, mostly meaningless to you. Just because you're doing
(10:09):
yoga does not mean that you're doing something creative or spiritual.
I believe that creativity is such an innate part of
what it means to be human that we will seek
outways to be creative, even under the most dire of circumstances.
But that doesn't mean that everybody is using their creativity,
accessing it, feeding their creative energy, putting it towards something.
(10:31):
In fact, many of us, unconsciously, I believe, and I
have done this so much in the past six years.
We are blocking our own creative energy because we are
terrified of how powerful we are. We're terrified of what
we can create. We're terrified of being fully seen. We're
terrified of how vulnerable it is. We're terrified of how
(10:52):
open it requires us to be. And so instead we
end up just sort of checking the boxes, following the rules,
jumping through the hoops, doing the things that we're supposed
to do, because it is a safer choice. So the
choice to live creatively is not a choice to write
a book or not write a book. It's not a
choice to be a musician or not be a musician.
It's not a choice to you know, be in a
(11:14):
romantic partnership or not be in romantic partnership. It is
a choice about how we choose to approach our lives.
And this is becoming so clear for me lately because
my first book that I ever wrote was called Packing Light,
came out in September of twenty thirteen. It was the
story of me leaving my corporate job, selling everything that
(11:36):
I owned, going on this epic road trip with a
friend of mine who wanted to be a musician. She
and I both had these secret creative lives that we
were leading on the side. I wanted to be a
writer and publish a book. She wanted to be a musician.
So we both sold everything, We gave it all up,
We went on this epic road trip across the country.
We raised money along the way by busking and by
keeping a blog, and you know, we did the thing.
(11:58):
She did her music, and I published a book eventually
and we wrote about our experiences. And my takeaway from
that trip at twenty six years old was really about
taking a risk to do the creative thing that you've
always wanted to do. It was about the physical things
and sometimes the emotional things that hold us back from
(12:18):
doing what we wanted to do, and in some ways
I still stand by that message. It is similar to
the message that I'm going to unpack today in this episode,
and in other ways, I think it really wasn't about
leaving the corporate job to do the creative thing. It
was about throwing myself into a situation that required me
(12:41):
to live in a different kind of a way. It
required me to live more open. It required me to
let go of my safety nets. It required me to
be curious. It required me to ask questions, It required
me to rely on the help of strangers. It required
me to, yeah, let go those safety nets, let go
of my savings account, let go of my car, let
go of my physical possessions, my apartment, to not know
(13:04):
what was coming in the future, it threw me into
the unknown. And so the takeaway at twenty six was,
maybe go for it. Take that risk, you know, take
the leap, take the job, jump into the new thing,
you try, try your hand at that creative endeavor. Write
the book. Finally, write the book you've always wanted to write.
And while I do stand by that message in certain ways,
(13:27):
I also think it doesn't really matter if you ever
go do the physical thing that you have always wanted
to do. I mean, in some ways it does, because
they're so intrinsically connected. But it's here's what I'm saying.
It doesn't matter if you write the book. It doesn't
matter if you quit your job and becoming a musician.
It doesn't matter if you get married to this person
or don't get married to this person. It doesn't really matter.
(13:48):
What matters is the approach at which you come at
your life. And this is where the idea that the
insights that I was talking about have come from. This
idea of, for example, stop thinking about your audience. If
you're going to do a thing like content creation on Instagram,
for example, stop thinking about your audience and start thinking
(14:09):
about yourself. As long as you're thinking about your audience,
you are not engaging in creativity. You are engaging in
something very different. You're engaging in content creation, which it
can have a creative element to it, but it's not creativity.
If you're creating something to serve an audience, that is
(14:30):
content creation. That is not creativity. And I don't know.
I mean, we could enter into a conversation about this,
and maybe you could argue that there are parts of
that that are creative, and I would agree with you.
But until your creative outlet is really about changing you,
growing you, healing you, developing you, seeing you more clearly,
(14:53):
until it's about that, in my view, it's not really
a creative outlet. It's just a thing you're doing. So
same thing with writing a book. And I think this
is the reason why over the past six years I
have veered away from working in the directly in the
publishing industry. I still do some work with authors who
choose to publish, and that's lovely, but there's a difference
between someone who's like, Okay, I've got a platform here,
(15:16):
I've really got a thing going. A book could make
us a lot of money, so or you know, there's
this publisher who wants me to write this thing, so
I guess I'm going to go check that box, because yeah,
I guess it sure would be nice to have a book.
And someone who feels like driven from the inside, there's
a message that's trying to come through me that I
need to translate to get out and if I don't
(15:36):
do it, it's going to eat me alive. There's a
difference in the energy between working with those two clients.
And there's nothing morally wrong or or there's no more
a hierarchy here about which is better or worse. It's
just they're two different things. And creating a product to
sell in the marketplace because you recognize it's going to
make you a lot of money is one thing, and
(15:57):
doing your creative work, that undeniable pull that is inside
of you to do that thing is something totally different.
They're two different things, and one is for an audience
and the other one is for you. So sometimes you
do something for you and it finds an audience. In fact,
many times it does that. That's what this podcast is
for me. When I sit down to record an episode,
(16:20):
I do sometimes get because I've been doing it for
long enough, I get caught in the trap of thinking
about like, Okay, what do people want for me? What
are people really what's the problem they're wrestling with? You know,
I really need to think through what they But at
the end of the day, like think of how ridiculous
that is. At the same time, it's fine if that's
the objective for creating the podcast is just to meet
a need for people, But then that's not a creative outlet.
(16:43):
Then it's just a predictable thing. It's a formula I
follow where people want to know how to bathe their dog,
and so I do a podcast about how to bathe
dogs better, and I share all the products with you
in my links, and I'm you know, I'm a dog
influencer now and that's what my podcast is about. And
there's nothing wrong with it. That's fine. It's just not
a creative outlet. A creative outlet is where you enter
(17:03):
into something that requires you to let down all of
your guard It requires you to let down all of
your preconception. It requires you to let go of all
your safety nets. It requires you to be utterly vulnerable
in front of at least one other person, in front
of at least yourself, and to enter into the unknown,
and to get curious and to stay open even in
(17:26):
the face of great fear, and to move with intention,
and to find yourself lost at moments, and to not
know your way out, and to be in the middle
of the woods, and to cry and to wonder what
it all means. That is the act of creativity. Your
life is an insane act of creativity, and it is
not about an audience. It Please stop thinking about the audience.
(17:49):
If you're wanting to do something creative. Please stop thinking
about your audience. Your audience does not matter. This is
for you. It is about your own pleasure, your own desire,
your your own sense of meaning, your own sense of self,
your own saving you from your own self, from your
own darkness. You know. It is about making you, making
meaning of your own life. It is not about making
(18:12):
something for an audience. There is a time and a
place for making something for an audience. But if you're
making something for an audience, it's not about creativity. It's
about marketing. It's about content creation. It's about product development,
which is fine. Those things are all lovely too. Creativity
is something utterly different. Taking this idea of creativity not
being for an audience one step deeper, I want to
(18:35):
also say that the minute that your creativity becomes systematized,
it's also no longer creativity. Because if creativity is about
dropping your guard, dropping your safety nets, dropping your your
previously known sense of self, being utterly vulnerable in front
of yourself and potentially other people and not knowing how
(18:56):
things are going to turn out, the minute that you
have systematized that creativity, it's suddenly not creativity anymore. So.
Taking this idea of giving up on your audience or
shifting your attention away from your audience back to yourself.
Taking it one step deeper and thinking about what I
said at the beginning of the episode about how creativity
(19:19):
is not about an activity you do. It is a
way of seeing your life. It is a lens through
which you look at your life. Looking at your life
through a lens of creativity and choosing to take the
focus off of your audience and back onto yourself might
sound at first like a selfish thing to do, but
think of the implications here. Think of how this might
change the way that I approach my life. If I
(19:39):
wake up every day and I think about what other
people need from me, who other people expect me to be,
how other people expect me to behave, what other people
are going to think or say or do if I
act in a certain way, what I can do in
order to make so and so happy or to make
so and so feel good about themselves. Again, I'm not
(20:01):
saying that there's never a moment to think through like
what might make that person feel really nice today. There
is a time and a place for that. But looking
at our lives through the lens of creativity. We can
take our focus off of the audience. Your life is
not a performance for an audience. Your life is not
(20:27):
a performance for an audience. If we see our lives
through the lens of creativity, and we believe that to
be creative is to be human, that the most human
thing we can do is see our lives as an
act of creativity, then we take the attention off of
the quote unquote audience of our lives. Who's the audience
of your life? You know, take the attention off of
(20:47):
the audience of your life and back onto yourself. You
ask yourself when you wake up in the morning, what
could I do today that would heal me? What could
I do today that would inspire my creative flow, that
life force energy that moves roy, that motivates me throughout
the day. What could I do today that would bring
me great joy, that would bring me great pleasure, that
would you know, fill up my cup, that would fuel
(21:10):
my desire? Or as my friend Mary always says, what
is calling to my highest attention today? And when she
first taught me to ask myself that question, man, the
way that that broke through my programming and my patterns
was so crazy. At the time ten years ago that
she taught me to ask that question, I was just
out of my abusive relationship, and that thought to ask
(21:32):
myself what's calling to my highest attention today was the
most provocative idea that I could have even, you know, considered,
because I was used to walking on eggshells and dancing
around this volatile human being and making sure that you know,
our lives ran smoothly, which was no easy task. And
then I'm out of the relationship, and suddenly I can
stop considering how might he react, what might he do?
(21:54):
How's he going to behave if I act this way?
And suddenly I could start thinking about what is calling
to my highest attention today? What is calling to my
highest attention today? And now, ten years later, even still
the idea of considering, when I wake up in the morning,
what might bring me pleasure today, what might bring me joy?
What would really fuel my desire, what would really fuel
my inspiration today is still an extremely provocative way to
(22:18):
think about things, because I have been fully indoctrinated, fully
encultured to see that my role as not just a woman,
but as a woman, as a wife, as a mother,
is really about making sure everyone else is okay? Checking
on everyone else? How is everyone else feeling? What can
I do to serve and you know, and help other people?
(22:39):
How can I show up and be a servant? How
can I show up and be a helper? How can
I reach out to someone who might be in need?
There is a time and a place for thinking about that,
And yet before we can do any of that, if
our lives are going to be fueled by creativity, we
have to ask ourselves the question what would bring me
great joy today? What would bring me great pleasure today?
(23:00):
Because you think about it, this active creativity, the metaphor
of pregnancy and motherhood, is about following your desire. This
is the birthplace. This is the conception of creativity, that
moment when something out of nothing is created, when she
follows her desire. So it is not lost on me,
(23:22):
and it is no accident in my book that I
have been in this creative rut in my life where
I don't feel I feel I don't really feel up
for writing, I don't really feel like doing the creative acts,
the creative things. I feel stagnant in my creative energy.
I feel just run down. I'm ill, my body is
not well. I have not been well in I don't know, years, maybe,
(23:45):
but for sure, at least the last eight months I
have not been well. I have been getting sicker and
sicker in my own home. So it is not lost
on me that not only am I stagnant and lacking
in my creativity in my life, but I'm also stagnant
and lacking in my fertility in my life. I'm there
is a parallel between these two things. And I'm not
(24:07):
saying it's just as simple as like, oh, unlock your
creativity and all suddenly get pregnant. I don't know if
that will happen, but I do see that there is
a strong parallel between these two things. And maybe the
hunger that I feel to have another baby is actually
just a hunger to awaken my creativity.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
And maybe you.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Feel something similar too. Maybe you feel an absolute hunger.
Maybe you're convinced you don't want to have kids, that's fine,
but you feel a hunger to wake up your own creativity.
And let me tell you that shifting the attention off
of what other people want from you, and off of
what other people need from you, and onto what would
bring me great joy today, what would bring great pleasure today.
It might feel extremely uncomfortable at first. You might feel
(24:44):
like you're being selfish or self centered or something, or
that you're like putting off your responsibilities. I have all
these things that are calling my attention or that you
need me to accomplish them today. But I can tell
you from experience that I have dutifully completed my to
do list every day of my life for about as
long as I can remember. And what has it ever
(25:04):
gotten me? I don't know if you've ever had this
sense that you've done everything right and you still haven't
gotten what you've wanted. Do you ever feel like that?
I feel like that some days. I've done everything right.
I've jumped through all the hoops, I've done all the things,
I checked all the boxes. I'm so type a about it.
I've done everything that anyone has ever asked for me,
at the level of ultimate perfection. What more could you
possibly want from me? And I felt the answer to
(25:27):
that question this past week was nothing. I've never wanted
anything from you. What do you want? And that takes
me all the way back to the days of Packing Light,
that first book that I released, because the question that
fueled that whole adventure when I was twenty six years old,
was the question, what do you want? What do you
(25:48):
really want? What do you want out of your life?
What do you want your days to feel like? What
do you want to become? What do you want to make?
Who do you want to be? What do you really want?
And that question is the birthplace of desire. That question
is the awakening of your creativity. That question is the
awakening of who you truly are and who you were
(26:09):
put on this planet to be. What do you want?
And I think you know we can be out there
in the world. It's a weird time to be alive
right now. And maybe every generation has felt like this,
but I really do feel like it's a bizarre time
to be alive. There's a lot of chaos in the world.
There's a lot of confusing shit going down. There's just
so much that, you know, I don't even need to
get into it. It's not the point of the episode,
(26:32):
but it can feel like, at least for me, since
twenty twenty, since the pandemic happened, since it feels like
we've been in this bizarre timeline where there's killer bees
and there's like Trump trying to get a third term,
and there's shootings left and right, and are they staged
or are they real? And lord knows what. I don't
know what's going on behind the scenes, but it feels
(26:52):
like a very bizarre time to be alive. And it
would be really easy to get swept up in the
survey of the chaos in you know, like fighting your fight,
getting angry about this, feeling really strongly about this political
view or that political view, or you know, there again
a place for all of that. Is it creativity? I
(27:13):
don't think so. I don't believe it is. I believe
creativity starts with what do you really want? And then
as we define what we want, as we crave what
we want, as we move toward what we want, we
begin to see the seed, the start of what it
would take to bring that thing to fruition. And so
we have to start with us. We have to start
(27:35):
with what brings me joy, what brings me passion, like
what makes what ignites my passion in my life, what
gets me really excited, what gets me out of bed
in the morning. And there may be things that you
have to do in a day or have to get done.
You know, I've got two kids, I got to feed
them breakfast. That's there's no getting around it. You know,
I do have to do that. But some things I
put on my to do list don't have to get done.
(27:56):
Some things I put on my to do list, like
getting through the laundry or get in the bathroom cleaned,
or getting every dish done, or getting the house back
in order. Like sometimes the playroom can just stay messy.
Sometimes the kids room can just stay messy. Sometimes the
laundry can stay unfolded. Sometimes those things that you think
are mustews in a day don't need to be must uws.
And you can just come back to what's calling my
(28:17):
highest attention today. And maybe for you, the most creative
thing you could do today is take a freaking nap.
Maybe for you, the most creative thing you could do
today is read a book or listen to a podcast
or completely check out and you know, or go bowling
or go, I don't know, go for a walk, or
go meet up with a friend, or go get the
most delicious coffee that you've ever had. Go splurge on
(28:39):
something amazing even though you feel like you can't really
afford it. Oh, something we've done recently that's I feel
like is such a divine act of creativity and defiance
against the just the lull that I have felt in
my life lately. As book tickets to Italy. My mother
in law offered to take us to Italy and so
she's paying for ourcommodations once we get there. And you
(29:01):
know what, it felt slightly irresponsible putting those tickets on
the credit card, going Okay, we're going to just have
to pay them off slowly over time. But the way
that my heart skipped a beat thinking about going to Italy,
thinking about taking my kids on that trip, I'm like,
all in, That's what I'm talking about, Like, what could
really fuel you today? And it will look different for
(29:23):
you than it will for me, But what could really
like awaken that life force energy in you again? And
that's my challenge for you today. It's my challenge for
you this week is to think through what's calling to
my highest attention today, what's calling to my highest attention
this week? What would really get me going? Like, what
would really drive me, what would motivate me, what would
(29:44):
make me feel really good? And avoid the trap that
doing what makes you feel good is somehow selfish human
life exists on this planet because people just did what
they felt like doing. People just did what felt good,
and babies show up and human life exists, and yes,
there are things that have to get done. And the
(30:05):
older we get, the more those obligations seem to weigh
on us. And yet the more important it is to
awaken our own creativity and to use it as a
tool for healing our own souls. So do not get
caught in the trap or in the lie that the
really important stuff is paying the bills and keeping your
(30:26):
bank account above zero. Although I do understand that that's important,
that's the thing that has to happen too, But also
there is space, There is space to ask yourself what
would really bring me alive today? So you know, for me,
that looks like booking these Italy tickets slightly against, slightly
against my better judgment. Although I say that, I say that,
(30:48):
and I don't really mean it. When I say better judgment,
I mean, you know, that really responsible part of me,
that hyper responsible part of me that thinks, like, oh gosh,
we should probably be putting this away for a rainy day,
because the Lord knows what's going to happen in the world,
and we should probably save our pennies. But there's that
hyper responsible part of you, and then there's the creative
part of you. And that's the part that I'm learning
(31:09):
to listen to. That's the part of myself that I'm
learning to listen to. I believe it's important. I believe
it with every fiber of my being. Find a small
way to listen to that creative part of you today, tomorrow,
the rest of this week, and I'll see you back
here next week when you write your story. Podcast
Hi, and welcome to you to write your story pipecast.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Good job.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Really pick up the pieces of your life, pull them
back together with the.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Word you write.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
All the beauty and peace and the magic that you'll
start too fun when you write your story, you get
the words and said, don't you think it's down to
let them out and write them down and cold?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
It's all about.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
And write, write your story. Write you write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hi, friends, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon. I'm your host, and on today's episode,
I want to talk about the healing powers of creativity, which,
to be fair, is something that I've talked about at
great length in so many different ways, at so many
different times. This is not a brand new topic coming
from me. But I'm feeling inspired to talk about this
(00:56):
topic in a new way in this time because I
feel like I am wrestling with it in a really
personal way, and as is true with any time you
work through something in a personal way, new insights are
coming through for me. So I want to share some
of these insights that are coming through in case they
might be helpful for you. And you know what, in
the spirit of the theme of today's episode, even if
(01:18):
they are not helpful for you, they're going to be
helpful for me. Hearing myself say this stuff out loud
is going to be so helpful for me. It's going
to be so clarifying for me to hear myself say
the things that I have been thinking. And this is
one of the principles that you'll hear me talk about today,
this coin flip that we have to do when we
(01:38):
think about creativity. What I'm going to talk about today
is how we get confused about what is and what
isn't creativity. And one of the insights that keeps coming
through for me is very counterintuitive, which is to stop
thinking about your audience and start thinking about yourself. And
I think sometimes we're so afraid to do this. And
some of the other little coin flips that I'll share
today are like flipping this coin on its head, like
(02:00):
let's think about it from this other direction. So many
of these things that I'm going to share today are
going to sound weird at first, but then when you
really think about it, and when you really pull back
the curtain on it, you realize, oh gosh, like, yes,
this is what creativity is. It's what it means it
opens up the door for more creative energy to flow through.
And creative energy is a life force energy. This is
(02:20):
what fuels you. It's what makes you feel alive. If
you are not creating, you are doing the opposite of creating,
which is like uncreating or dying. If you are not creating,
you will feel depressed. You will feel anxious, you will
feel sluggish, you will feel down, you will feel hopeless
about the future. And I have felt any and all
of these things at so many various points in my life.
So this is not a criticism. This is me talking
(02:42):
to myself saying, you will feel sluggish and depressed and
like you don't want to get out of bed and
do your life in the morning if you are not
creating something. And we get very confused about what it
means to be creating. So I want to clarify that
to even kick us off, but to just kind of
frame the episode of Little Bit. I'm going to talk
about what it means to be truly creative. I'm going
(03:04):
to share some insights that are coming through for me
as I wrestle with this concept, and I'm hoping that
this will open up my creativity and then maybe by proxy,
it'll open up your creativity as well. And to start. Okay,
I'm going to start here because this is going against
all of my instincts for how to organize and craft
a great message for you. But that's what this episode
(03:25):
is about, is about coming home to our creativity, realizing
that this is not necessarily for you, it's for me,
and therefore it is in a way for you. It's
for us, but it's for me. So I'm going to
say this, which is that I feel the impulse, the
urge right now to start over on this episode because
I feel like, oh, I could have said that better.
I could say it more clearly, I could be more succinct,
(03:48):
I could, you know, set the episode up better. I'm
not going to do that because what I'm trying to
talk about today, what I'm trying to solidify for myself,
is to flip this idea on its head that we
when we make something, when we create something, we're creating
it for someone else. In a way, you are, and
I'm sure that those who consume your art are those
(04:10):
who you know benefit from the things that you've made
and created, whether that's your family or your consumers, your customers,
your community, whatever it is. Those people do appreciate what
you've created. But ultimately, first and foremost, the act of
creativity is about creating and recreating yourself. It is about
(04:31):
your own life force, energy flowing freely, and if you're
constantly editing yourself and stopping yourself. I've talked about this forever.
When it comes to writing, you sit down at the
keys and you you write a sentence, and you're like,
that's dumb. Start over, nobody's going to read that for sentence.
That's not a good enough hook, And you start back
at the beginning, and you do that to yourself over
and over and over again. Eventually, it's like having one
(04:53):
foot on the gas and one foot on the brake
at the same time, and your body will just shut down.
You know that life for energy will stop flowing if
you're constantly correcting yourself, criticizing yourself, editing yourself. So instead
of editing myself, I'm going to keep on moving. It
maybe wasn't the perfect intro to a podcast episode, but
it does get the point across that I'm trying to
(05:14):
make to myself, at least for today, which is this
is not always about the audience. The audience matters. I'm
not saying there's never a moment to think about the audience.
But in a true act of creativity, it is not
about the audience. It is about the self. And if
that sounds selfish to you, keep listening, because I think
it's less selfish than you might think it is. We've
(05:35):
been very conditioned to think about other people, but a
true active creativity is first a thought about the self.
So if we can flip this idea on its head
that when I make something, I'm making it for someone else,
and instead choose to think about ourselves, we can begin
to ask ourselves the question what could I make that
would heal me? What could I make that would make
(05:58):
me feel free? What could I make that would excite me?
What could I make that would just really motivate me
to get out of bed in the morning. I have
long thought about the insane parallels between creativity and the
most evolutionary human act of creativity, which is growing a
(06:20):
baby inside of your belly. That mothers are this perfect
visual picture of creativity. You are growing a human life,
a something out of nothing. You are making something out
of literally nothing inside of your own body. And pregnancy
and birth to me are the most amazing metaphor for
(06:42):
what it means to create something, to make something, to
go into the void of nothingness, and to create something
out of that nothingness, and to birth that something into
the world. And one of the parallels that I have
often thought about is this idea that a pregnancy starts
with doing something that you would have done otherwise, Like
(07:06):
a pregnancy starts not because of a performance you do
for an audience. I mean, hopefully you're getting my drift here.
I'm being like sort of cryptic in case you have
kids listening in the background. But a pregnancy begins because
you did something that felt good to you, You did
something that was pleasurable, You followed your own sense of pleasure,
and not because you did some sort of performance, not
(07:28):
because you jumped through some kind of hoop, not because oh,
you had to check this box, so you went and
checked it. A pregnancy begins because you followed your own
sense of desire and pleasure. And I think every creative
act starts that same way. Sometimes we get confused about
what's creative and what's not creative because we think creativity
has to do with the activity that you're doing. So
(07:49):
we think creativity is music. It's it's writing, you know,
it's writing a book, it's writing a song, it's doing
a dance, it's doing a performance on a stage. And
many of those things, acting, writing, music, whatever, those things
are acts of creativity, or they can be. But the
task itself is not necessarily a creative task. So stay
(08:11):
with me here. I've been noticing this almost like a
Venn diagram, like an overlap of an activity you do
that can be creative and the activity itself. I'm not
doing a very good job of explaining this, but like,
let's just take Instagram for example. You can use Instagram
(08:39):
as a platform for a creative outlet. You can anybody can.
Anybody can come to the platform. They can use the
platform to create reels, create videos, create whatever they want
to create that they can share with the world, and
that can be a creative outlet for them. Plenty of
people are using Instagram to create content. Some people who
are creating content might also be using it as a
(09:03):
creative outlet. That's where the Venn diagram comes in, that
they do cross over at a certain point. But just
because you're creating content on Instagram doesn't mean that you're
doing a creative act. Same thing with a romantic partnership. Okay,
you could have a romantic partnership where the two of
you together are really invested and interested in creating something
brand new, a partnership that's never existed before, a friendship,
(09:26):
a long term companionship. You're interested in creating a life
together and having experiences together and sharing those experiences. You're
very intentional about it. You come to it with a
sense of awe and wonder and openness and curiosity, and
it can be creative. There are also many people who
are in romantic partnerships that are not bringing that creative
energy to the romantic partnership. So just because you're in
(09:48):
a romantic partnership doesn't mean that you're doing a creative thing.
Am I making sense? Just because you're writing a book
does not mean you're doing a creative thing. Just because
you're writing a song does not mean you're doing a
creative thing. Just because you're doing a dance doesn't mean
you're doing a creative thing. You could do a dance
and just be doing the moves and it could be,
you know, mostly meaningless to you. Just because you're doing
(10:09):
yoga does not mean that you're doing something creative or spiritual.
I believe that creativity is such an innate part of
what it means to be human that we will seek
outways to be creative, even under the most dire of circumstances.
But that doesn't mean that everybody is using their creativity,
accessing it, feeding their creative energy, putting it towards something.
(10:31):
In fact, many of us, unconsciously, I believe, and I
have done this so much in the past six years.
We are blocking our own creative energy because we are
terrified of how powerful we are. We're terrified of what
we can create. We're terrified of being fully seen. We're
terrified of how vulnerable it is. We're terrified of how
(10:52):
open it requires us to be. And so instead we
end up just sort of checking the boxes, following the rules,
jumping through the hoops, doing the things that we're supposed
to do, because it is a safer choice. So the
choice to live creatively is not a choice to write
a book or not write a book. It's not a
choice to be a musician or not be a musician.
It's not a choice to you know, be in a
(11:14):
romantic partnership or not be in romantic partnership. It is
a choice about how we choose to approach our lives.
And this is becoming so clear for me lately because
my first book that I ever wrote was called Packing Light,
came out in September of twenty thirteen. It was the
story of me leaving my corporate job, selling everything that
(11:36):
I owned, going on this epic road trip with a
friend of mine who wanted to be a musician. She
and I both had these secret creative lives that we
were leading on the side. I wanted to be a
writer and publish a book. She wanted to be a musician.
So we both sold everything, We gave it all up,
We went on this epic road trip across the country.
We raised money along the way by busking and by
keeping a blog, and you know, we did the thing.
(11:58):
She did her music, and I published a book eventually
and we wrote about our experiences. And my takeaway from
that trip at twenty six years old was really about
taking a risk to do the creative thing that you've
always wanted to do. It was about the physical things
and sometimes the emotional things that hold us back from
(12:18):
doing what we wanted to do, and in some ways
I still stand by that message. It is similar to
the message that I'm going to unpack today in this episode,
and in other ways, I think it really wasn't about
leaving the corporate job to do the creative thing. It
was about throwing myself into a situation that required me
(12:41):
to live in a different kind of a way. It
required me to live more open. It required me to
let go of my safety nets. It required me to
be curious. It required me to ask questions, It required
me to rely on the help of strangers. It required
me to, yeah, let go those safety nets, let go
of my savings account, let go of my car, let
go of my physical possessions, my apartment, to not know
(13:04):
what was coming in the future, it threw me into
the unknown. And so the takeaway at twenty six was,
maybe go for it. Take that risk, you know, take
the leap, take the job, jump into the new thing,
you try, try your hand at that creative endeavor. Write
the book. Finally, write the book you've always wanted to write.
And while I do stand by that message in certain ways,
(13:27):
I also think it doesn't really matter if you ever
go do the physical thing that you have always wanted
to do. I mean, in some ways it does, because
they're so intrinsically connected. But it's here's what I'm saying.
It doesn't matter if you write the book. It doesn't
matter if you quit your job and becoming a musician.
It doesn't matter if you get married to this person
or don't get married to this person. It doesn't really matter.
(13:48):
What matters is the approach at which you come at
your life. And this is where the idea that the
insights that I was talking about have come from. This
idea of, for example, stop thinking about your audience. If
you're going to do a thing like content creation on Instagram,
for example, stop thinking about your audience and start thinking
(14:09):
about yourself. As long as you're thinking about your audience,
you are not engaging in creativity. You are engaging in
something very different. You're engaging in content creation, which it
can have a creative element to it, but it's not creativity.
If you're creating something to serve an audience, that is
(14:30):
content creation. That is not creativity. And I don't know.
I mean, we could enter into a conversation about this,
and maybe you could argue that there are parts of
that that are creative, and I would agree with you.
But until your creative outlet is really about changing you,
growing you, healing you, developing you, seeing you more clearly,
(14:53):
until it's about that, in my view, it's not really
a creative outlet. It's just a thing you're doing. So
same thing with writing a book. And I think this
is the reason why over the past six years I
have veered away from working in the directly in the
publishing industry. I still do some work with authors who
choose to publish, and that's lovely, but there's a difference
between someone who's like, Okay, I've got a platform here,
(15:16):
I've really got a thing going. A book could make
us a lot of money, so or you know, there's
this publisher who wants me to write this thing, so
I guess I'm going to go check that box, because yeah,
I guess it sure would be nice to have a book.
And someone who feels like driven from the inside, there's
a message that's trying to come through me that I
need to translate to get out and if I don't
(15:36):
do it, it's going to eat me alive. There's a
difference in the energy between working with those two clients.
And there's nothing morally wrong or or there's no more
a hierarchy here about which is better or worse. It's
just they're two different things. And creating a product to
sell in the marketplace because you recognize it's going to
make you a lot of money is one thing, and
(15:57):
doing your creative work, that undeniable pull that is inside
of you to do that thing is something totally different.
They're two different things, and one is for an audience
and the other one is for you. So sometimes you
do something for you and it finds an audience. In fact,
many times it does that. That's what this podcast is
for me. When I sit down to record an episode,
(16:20):
I do sometimes get because I've been doing it for
long enough, I get caught in the trap of thinking
about like, Okay, what do people want for me? What
are people really what's the problem they're wrestling with? You know,
I really need to think through what they But at
the end of the day, like think of how ridiculous
that is. At the same time, it's fine if that's
the objective for creating the podcast is just to meet
a need for people, But then that's not a creative outlet.
(16:43):
Then it's just a predictable thing. It's a formula I
follow where people want to know how to bathe their dog,
and so I do a podcast about how to bathe
dogs better, and I share all the products with you
in my links, and I'm you know, I'm a dog
influencer now and that's what my podcast is about. And
there's nothing wrong with it. That's fine. It's just not
a creative outlet. A creative outlet is where you enter
(17:03):
into something that requires you to let down all of
your guard It requires you to let down all of
your preconception. It requires you to let go of all
your safety nets. It requires you to be utterly vulnerable
in front of at least one other person, in front
of at least yourself, and to enter into the unknown,
and to get curious and to stay open even in
(17:26):
the face of great fear, and to move with intention,
and to find yourself lost at moments, and to not
know your way out, and to be in the middle
of the woods, and to cry and to wonder what
it all means. That is the act of creativity. Your
life is an insane act of creativity, and it is
not about an audience. It Please stop thinking about the audience.
(17:49):
If you're wanting to do something creative. Please stop thinking
about your audience. Your audience does not matter. This is
for you. It is about your own pleasure, your own desire,
your your own sense of meaning, your own sense of self,
your own saving you from your own self, from your
own darkness. You know. It is about making you, making
meaning of your own life. It is not about making
(18:12):
something for an audience. There is a time and a
place for making something for an audience. But if you're
making something for an audience, it's not about creativity. It's
about marketing. It's about content creation. It's about product development,
which is fine. Those things are all lovely too. Creativity
is something utterly different. Taking this idea of creativity not
being for an audience one step deeper, I want to
(18:35):
also say that the minute that your creativity becomes systematized,
it's also no longer creativity. Because if creativity is about
dropping your guard, dropping your safety nets, dropping your your
previously known sense of self, being utterly vulnerable in front
of yourself and potentially other people and not knowing how
(18:56):
things are going to turn out, the minute that you
have systematized that creativity, it's suddenly not creativity anymore. So.
Taking this idea of giving up on your audience or
shifting your attention away from your audience back to yourself.
Taking it one step deeper and thinking about what I
said at the beginning of the episode about how creativity
(19:19):
is not about an activity you do. It is a
way of seeing your life. It is a lens through
which you look at your life. Looking at your life
through a lens of creativity and choosing to take the
focus off of your audience and back onto yourself might
sound at first like a selfish thing to do, but
think of the implications here. Think of how this might
change the way that I approach my life. If I
(19:39):
wake up every day and I think about what other
people need from me, who other people expect me to be,
how other people expect me to behave, what other people
are going to think or say or do if I
act in a certain way, what I can do in
order to make so and so happy or to make
so and so feel good about themselves. Again, I'm not
(20:01):
saying that there's never a moment to think through like
what might make that person feel really nice today. There
is a time and a place for that. But looking
at our lives through the lens of creativity. We can
take our focus off of the audience. Your life is
not a performance for an audience. Your life is not
(20:27):
a performance for an audience. If we see our lives
through the lens of creativity, and we believe that to
be creative is to be human, that the most human
thing we can do is see our lives as an
act of creativity, then we take the attention off of
the quote unquote audience of our lives. Who's the audience
of your life? You know, take the attention off of
(20:47):
the audience of your life and back onto yourself. You
ask yourself when you wake up in the morning, what
could I do today that would heal me? What could
I do today that would inspire my creative flow, that
life force energy that moves roy, that motivates me throughout
the day. What could I do today that would bring
me great joy, that would bring me great pleasure, that
would you know, fill up my cup, that would fuel
(21:10):
my desire? Or as my friend Mary always says, what
is calling to my highest attention today? And when she
first taught me to ask myself that question, man, the
way that that broke through my programming and my patterns
was so crazy. At the time ten years ago that
she taught me to ask that question, I was just
out of my abusive relationship, and that thought to ask
(21:32):
myself what's calling to my highest attention today was the
most provocative idea that I could have even, you know, considered,
because I was used to walking on eggshells and dancing
around this volatile human being and making sure that you know,
our lives ran smoothly, which was no easy task. And
then I'm out of the relationship, and suddenly I can
stop considering how might he react, what might he do?
(21:54):
How's he going to behave if I act this way?
And suddenly I could start thinking about what is calling
to my highest attention today? What is calling to my
highest attention today? And now, ten years later, even still
the idea of considering, when I wake up in the morning,
what might bring me pleasure today, what might bring me joy?
What would really fuel my desire, what would really fuel
my inspiration today is still an extremely provocative way to
(22:18):
think about things, because I have been fully indoctrinated, fully
encultured to see that my role as not just a woman,
but as a woman, as a wife, as a mother,
is really about making sure everyone else is okay? Checking
on everyone else? How is everyone else feeling? What can
I do to serve and you know, and help other people?
(22:39):
How can I show up and be a servant? How
can I show up and be a helper? How can
I reach out to someone who might be in need?
There is a time and a place for thinking about that,
And yet before we can do any of that, if
our lives are going to be fueled by creativity, we
have to ask ourselves the question what would bring me
great joy today? What would bring me great pleasure today?
(23:00):
Because you think about it, this active creativity, the metaphor
of pregnancy and motherhood, is about following your desire. This
is the birthplace. This is the conception of creativity, that
moment when something out of nothing is created, when she
follows her desire. So it is not lost on me,
(23:22):
and it is no accident in my book that I
have been in this creative rut in my life where
I don't feel I feel I don't really feel up
for writing, I don't really feel like doing the creative acts,
the creative things. I feel stagnant in my creative energy.
I feel just run down. I'm ill, my body is
not well. I have not been well in I don't know, years, maybe,
(23:45):
but for sure, at least the last eight months I
have not been well. I have been getting sicker and
sicker in my own home. So it is not lost
on me that not only am I stagnant and lacking
in my creativity in my life, but I'm also stagnant
and lacking in my fertility in my life. I'm there
is a parallel between these two things. And I'm not
(24:07):
saying it's just as simple as like, oh, unlock your
creativity and all suddenly get pregnant. I don't know if
that will happen, but I do see that there is
a strong parallel between these two things. And maybe the
hunger that I feel to have another baby is actually
just a hunger to awaken my creativity.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
And maybe you.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Feel something similar too. Maybe you feel an absolute hunger.
Maybe you're convinced you don't want to have kids, that's fine,
but you feel a hunger to wake up your own creativity.
And let me tell you that shifting the attention off
of what other people want from you, and off of
what other people need from you, and onto what would
bring me great joy today, what would bring great pleasure today.
It might feel extremely uncomfortable at first. You might feel
(24:44):
like you're being selfish or self centered or something, or
that you're like putting off your responsibilities. I have all
these things that are calling my attention or that you
need me to accomplish them today. But I can tell
you from experience that I have dutifully completed my to
do list every day of my life for about as
long as I can remember. And what has it ever
(25:04):
gotten me? I don't know if you've ever had this
sense that you've done everything right and you still haven't
gotten what you've wanted. Do you ever feel like that?
I feel like that some days. I've done everything right.
I've jumped through all the hoops, I've done all the things,
I checked all the boxes. I'm so type a about it.
I've done everything that anyone has ever asked for me,
at the level of ultimate perfection. What more could you
possibly want from me? And I felt the answer to
(25:27):
that question this past week was nothing. I've never wanted
anything from you. What do you want? And that takes
me all the way back to the days of Packing Light,
that first book that I released, because the question that
fueled that whole adventure when I was twenty six years old,
was the question, what do you want? What do you
(25:48):
really want? What do you want out of your life?
What do you want your days to feel like? What
do you want to become? What do you want to make?
Who do you want to be? What do you really want?
And that question is the birthplace of desire. That question
is the awakening of your creativity. That question is the
awakening of who you truly are and who you were
(26:09):
put on this planet to be. What do you want?
And I think you know we can be out there
in the world. It's a weird time to be alive
right now. And maybe every generation has felt like this,
but I really do feel like it's a bizarre time
to be alive. There's a lot of chaos in the world.
There's a lot of confusing shit going down. There's just
so much that, you know, I don't even need to
get into it. It's not the point of the episode,
(26:32):
but it can feel like, at least for me, since
twenty twenty, since the pandemic happened, since it feels like
we've been in this bizarre timeline where there's killer bees
and there's like Trump trying to get a third term,
and there's shootings left and right, and are they staged
or are they real? And lord knows what. I don't
know what's going on behind the scenes, but it feels
(26:52):
like a very bizarre time to be alive. And it
would be really easy to get swept up in the
survey of the chaos in you know, like fighting your fight,
getting angry about this, feeling really strongly about this political
view or that political view, or you know, there again
a place for all of that. Is it creativity? I
(27:13):
don't think so. I don't believe it is. I believe
creativity starts with what do you really want? And then
as we define what we want, as we crave what
we want, as we move toward what we want, we
begin to see the seed, the start of what it
would take to bring that thing to fruition. And so
we have to start with us. We have to start
(27:35):
with what brings me joy, what brings me passion, like
what makes what ignites my passion in my life, what
gets me really excited, what gets me out of bed
in the morning. And there may be things that you
have to do in a day or have to get done.
You know, I've got two kids, I got to feed
them breakfast. That's there's no getting around it. You know,
I do have to do that. But some things I
put on my to do list don't have to get done.
(27:56):
Some things I put on my to do list, like
getting through the laundry or get in the bathroom cleaned,
or getting every dish done, or getting the house back
in order. Like sometimes the playroom can just stay messy.
Sometimes the kids room can just stay messy. Sometimes the
laundry can stay unfolded. Sometimes those things that you think
are mustews in a day don't need to be must uws.
And you can just come back to what's calling my
(28:17):
highest attention today. And maybe for you, the most creative
thing you could do today is take a freaking nap.
Maybe for you, the most creative thing you could do
today is read a book or listen to a podcast
or completely check out and you know, or go bowling
or go, I don't know, go for a walk, or
go meet up with a friend, or go get the
most delicious coffee that you've ever had. Go splurge on
(28:39):
something amazing even though you feel like you can't really
afford it. Oh, something we've done recently that's I feel
like is such a divine act of creativity and defiance
against the just the lull that I have felt in
my life lately. As book tickets to Italy. My mother
in law offered to take us to Italy and so
she's paying for ourcommodations once we get there. And you
(29:01):
know what, it felt slightly irresponsible putting those tickets on
the credit card, going Okay, we're going to just have
to pay them off slowly over time. But the way
that my heart skipped a beat thinking about going to Italy,
thinking about taking my kids on that trip, I'm like,
all in, That's what I'm talking about, Like, what could
really fuel you today? And it will look different for
(29:23):
you than it will for me, But what could really
like awaken that life force energy in you again? And
that's my challenge for you today. It's my challenge for
you this week is to think through what's calling to
my highest attention today, what's calling to my highest attention
this week? What would really get me going? Like, what
would really drive me, what would motivate me, what would
(29:44):
make me feel really good? And avoid the trap that
doing what makes you feel good is somehow selfish human
life exists on this planet because people just did what
they felt like doing. People just did what felt good,
and babies show up and human life exists, and yes,
there are things that have to get done. And the
(30:05):
older we get, the more those obligations seem to weigh
on us. And yet the more important it is to
awaken our own creativity and to use it as a
tool for healing our own souls. So do not get
caught in the trap or in the lie that the
really important stuff is paying the bills and keeping your
(30:26):
bank account above zero. Although I do understand that that's important,
that's the thing that has to happen too, But also
there is space, There is space to ask yourself what
would really bring me alive today? So you know, for me,
that looks like booking these Italy tickets slightly against, slightly
against my better judgment. Although I say that, I say that,
(30:48):
and I don't really mean it. When I say better judgment,
I mean, you know, that really responsible part of me,
that hyper responsible part of me that thinks, like, oh gosh,
we should probably be putting this away for a rainy day,
because the Lord knows what's going to happen in the world,
and we should probably save our pennies. But there's that
hyper responsible part of you, and then there's the creative
part of you. And that's the part that I'm learning
(31:09):
to listen to. That's the part of myself that I'm
learning to listen to. I believe it's important. I believe
it with every fiber of my being. Find a small
way to listen to that creative part of you today, tomorrow,
the rest of this week, and I'll see you back
here next week when you write your story. Podcast
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