April 14, 2024 • 55 mins
Season 2, Episode 14 of the Chasing Thoughts podcast features Anjl Rodee! If Bob Ross, Leo Buscaglia, and Dory the fish had a baby, it would be Anjl Rodee.
In this rollicking episode of the Chasing Thoughts podcast, Anjl Rodee, the mastermind behind BrushCapades, dishes out some serious wisdom about creativity and improv. She boldly declares, "We are ALL artists- the only living creature that creates!" With a twinkle in her eye, she reveals that creativitiy is also a proven remedy for anxiety, depression, and those pesky sleepless nights.
But wait, there's more! Anjl isn't just your run-of-the-mill artist. Oh no, she's led workshops for the big shots—Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, and even the tech giant Google have all had a taste of her creative magic. And let me tell you, it's not just about slapping paint on a canvas with her. She's like your personal creativity cheerleader, teaching you to fall head over heels in love with painting, sprinkle in some meditative self-kindness, and hey, why not have a good laugh while you're at it?
BrushCapades isn't just a run-of-the-mill company either. Nope, it's a shining beacon of hope in the world of art, all thanks to Anjl's genuine passion for making creativity accessible to every Tom, Dick, and Harry out there. So, if you're ready to unleash your inner artist, have a good chuckle, and maybe even discover a thing or two about yourself along the way, then buckle up, because Anjl Rodee is about to take you on one heck of a creative joyride! 🎨✨
In this episode, not only can you learn about Angl and her work, but we also delve deep into the exploration of The Authentic Self through Creativity and Improv. Angl joins us on a journey exploring self-discovery through the transformative power of creativity and improvisation. Through insightful conversations and engaging anecdotes, listeners are invited to witness the magic that unfolds when we embrace our true selves and allow creativity to guide us. Whether you're a seasoned artist or someone looking to reconnect with their authentic essence, this episode offers invaluable insights and inspiration to ignite your creative spark and live authentically. Tune in for a thought-provoking conversation that will leave you inspired and empowered to embrace your true self through the art of creativity and improvisation.
Angl Rodee
https://www.instagram.com/brushcapadesinc/
https://www.facebook.com/Brushcapades
https://www.facebook.com/anjlr
https://www.instagram.com/anjlkr/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Chasing Thoughts podcast.
(00:03):
Chasing Thoughts was founded by strangers, two life coaches who met on TikTok and shared
the desire to create a different kind of life coaching podcast.
Instead of talking about how to do it right, the Chasing Thoughts podcast explores embracing
our true essence to find a deeper sense of purpose and fulfillment.
(00:23):
Life coaches Keith and Mindy take a unique approach that transcends popular notions of
perpetual happiness in striving relentlessly to become one's ideal self.
Listen in as Mindy, Keith and their guests take a deep dive into their own minds and
souls to investigate the beauty of imperfection, challenge their beliefs, and embrace the richness
(00:44):
of living a truly authentic life.
Hi, my name is Keith and I'm a strategic interventionist and stoner-spirited life coach.
Hi, my name is Mindy and I am an authenticity empowerment coach.
Welcome to Chasing Thoughts.
Hello everybody and welcome to season two, episode 14.
(01:11):
And today we are talking to Angel and Keith and I are so excited because she is a professional
artist and comic and both of us love comedy.
Keith has done improv, we're both super creative so we just can't wait to hear your stories.
So tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be the person that you are.
(01:33):
Wow, so many paths, not that many, but I feel like every job that I've had I've taken because
I thought that sounds like fun and how lucky am I that that has gotten to be a thing.
And so when I came about that way, I don't know if you guys have ever heard of comedy
sports, it's comedy played as if it's a sport.
(01:56):
It's like whose line is it anyway only with two teams and a referee.
And that was my gateway into comedy.
I just moved to Seattle and the guy that owns the Seattle franchise of comedy sports was
a fellow Packer fan and we sat at the bar together and that's how I went in that direction.
(02:18):
Yeah, so that's the comedy thing and art.
I have been an illustrator and an artist my whole life.
I've worked in advertising, my first job out of college was illustrating coloring books
for golden books.
After advertising I did a stint in publishing and then I got headhunted into paper plates.
(02:42):
You may have eaten off my work.
It's a thing.
And while I was doing that, I first heard of paint night and I thought as an entertainer
and an illustrator, I am so uniquely qualified to do that and it sounds like fun.
So I called paint night to let them know how good I would be at it and they told me
(03:04):
I could do it on Tuesday nights at a bar far away from my home and I thought I'm just going
to buy easels.
So oh my gosh, that's what I did genius that I am.
But no, it turned out it turned out to be the best just the best move.
I bought 24 easels and some paint and practiced on some friends and then I called Groupon.
Would you give me a spot?
(03:24):
They said, yep.
So that's how I started and I was in Seattle and doing the FUNZ paint and sip things on
weekends and one in four people in Seattle works at Amazon and Microsoft is also there
in Google.
And they said, do you do corporate events and the improv person in me said, yes, yes,
(03:48):
I do.
Oh, they started showing up during the day.
And I noticed really quickly that when people are going to a paint night, they bought the
ticket, they know what they're going for and they're excited to be there.
When it is a work function, your boss tells you where to be at four o'clock in the afternoon.
There is equal amounts of excitement and total fear and panic.
(04:13):
And don't expect excuses coming in the door.
Don't expect much out of me.
My third grade teacher told me I will never be an artist.
My sister got all the talent.
I can only do stick people.
And I thought, oh, that's so sad because this is supposed to be so fun and good for you.
And maybe because my mom was a therapist, but I started delving really quickly into that
(04:35):
and why it bothered me so much that people didn't get excited.
And so my events kind of quickly turned into a TED talk about why you should do creative
things because we are all artists and it's inherent to what we are as a creature and
do it because it's good for you, not because you're good at it.
(04:57):
So I feel I teach people how to paint a thing, but more than that, I hope I am educating
them on how inherent and how important it is to do creative things.
Yeah, my story.
Yeah.
And I love everything you said.
And I also hear in there something that I really love, which is if you're bad at something
(05:19):
bad, that doesn't mean that you're supposed to or not supposed to do it.
That being good or bad is not part of the equation of what we get to do for our human
experience on this planet.
And it's the marker, though, that people use, isn't it?
You know, I'm an amateur.
I'm such an amateur.
And I said, you know, a professional is somebody who gets paid to do a thing.
(05:40):
An amateur is somebody who does it for the pure love and enjoyment of the thing.
Oh my gosh, what a lovely thought.
That is what I try to instill in people.
You know, I'm not using any skills we didn't have when we were five and learned how to
write our name.
My favorite art shape is the parentheses.
You put enough parentheses together, you've got the Mona Lisa.
He will tell you the same thing.
(06:02):
Yeah.
And art is like yoga.
I like to tell people you're way better on day 800 than you are on day one.
But it's good for you on day one.
Yep.
Yep.
So true.
And I feel like that sort of commitment to the process isn't as well known as popular
as it was 40 or 50 years ago.
(06:24):
But culturally, people seem to be more afraid of that and hanging in there until you're
good at something.
And that's the only way to do it.
It kind of doesn't help that social media, everybody puts their best stuff forward.
I have plenty of bad art.
Plenty of it.
And love the bad art because it gets me one step closer to the good art.
(06:47):
Another thing I like to tell people is how inherent expression is to us and creativity.
And we're the only living creature that does it.
We've got cave art that is 60, what, you know, tens of thousands of years old.
Group of agriculture, less than 5,000 years old.
It has been more important for us to express ourselves than to eat on the regular.
(07:08):
Think about that.
And we've all been selling art to each other less than 500 years.
That's a blip in time.
But that is the marker that people use.
Won't be in the gallery.
Then I shouldn't be doing this.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
And those are my favorite things too, like the Lascaux caves where you have the hand
prints.
(07:28):
And it's 50,000 years ago, and especially like the small hands, the kids that they actually
put their hands on the walls and did whatever they did.
And it's like a connection, this energetic connection with something 50,000 years ago
with a person, a living being that just, that blows my mind.
(07:49):
That just gave me goosebumps.
That person is still here in some faction, aren't they?
Man, that's huge.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's why I, oh, go ahead, Mindy.
Sorry.
Oh, you go ahead, Keith.
That's what like creativity to me, like that's the thing that I am so interested in, especially
(08:10):
from you with what you do and how you've just naturally gone into the like, I'm just going
to do what I love, which seems to be a pattern with all the guests that we have, you know,
and then on top of that, like you have this sort of like Robin Williams type energy where
like you just kind of flow from one thought to the next, which I love.
(08:32):
So I would love to dive into like the whole creative process.
I think that gets, you know, bashed out of us, you know, as soon as we start school where
it's sit down and shut up and do what you're told, you know, so we lose that creative side.
Yep.
It got bashed out of me for a little bit when I was a formative age of an adult who was
(08:52):
an artist.
My mom asked that person to guide me in my artistic journey and they did a thing and
told me to do the same thing.
And then they laughed at my efforts.
I did not paint again until I was over 40 years old.
I learned how to illustrate in Photoshop because undo and delete and layers and not
(09:15):
the same thing, not the same connection to the art, to the thing you're creating, you
know, oh man.
Yeah, that's, that's huge for me as well.
That's something that I wanted to ask you about because I am the person that you described,
right, that I go to a workshop and they're like, we're good, even if it's just like making
(09:36):
a manifesting board cutting pictures out of a magazine, I'm like, oh, I don't want to do
this.
Mine's going to be the worst.
I have never felt artistic.
And then I found that like building websites and graphic design helped me be creative.
And eventually I started experimenting with, this is really funny, but I like to like find
(09:57):
things in nature like sticks and rocks that I find really beautiful.
And then I paint them or I wrap certain parts in embroidery thread or I just do weird.
And my process while I was just at the table working with my hands put me in a state of
flow and relaxation that I didn't get with the graphic design, even though I felt like
(10:19):
it was accessing my creativity.
And so I still wonder like, what's actually happening there that my brain waves are going
to a different set of brain waves like that relaxed theta flow state.
Yeah.
And I don't understand that it's so cool.
I don't understand the science exactly, but I know that it is impossible for your brain
(10:41):
to have anxiety to work on a to-do list when you are creating because you are doing three
different things.
You are manually doing it.
You are watching yourself doing it and creating itself.
Your brain doesn't have the capacity.
It's an instant mood calmer.
And like I said, no to do.
(11:03):
It's meditating with a parting gift is what I like to say.
When I try to meditate, I spend 15 minutes trying to shut off the to-do list, not successfully.
But I can paint for two hours and it goes by like that.
What is that?
That is the thing.
That is the connecting to just ourselves at the core of our core.
(11:24):
And it's something we don't really do anymore.
And we have technology ways to not do it with the digital stuff.
And I'm not knocking it, but it doesn't give you the same benefit that the physical doing
of the thing, it really connects us to just our base humanity structure.
(11:49):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Super, super important.
Yeah.
So when somebody comes to you or they're in your workshop and they're really stuck in
their head, what do you do?
How do you get them into their body and the flow of peace?
Do you know what I do?
I make them show their peace to everybody.
And I try to make everybody do it at the same time because I see that look on your face
(12:10):
is what everybody does.
The whites of their eyes.
And I'm like, no, everybody do it.
I liked when we first started painting, I have them get rid of the white of the canvas
because that white is the thing that feels pure and that you're going to muck up with
your horrible artwork.
So let's just paint half of it blue and the other half green.
And then we're just going to storytell on top of that a green puffball can become a
(12:33):
tree and a red box can become a barn.
So we get rid of the white and not long after that is when people start going, I don't think
this is going well, even though we're not very far in.
So I make everybody show their stuff.
And then I sit back and everybody without fail starts doing this.
Janice, I love how you painted your water.
(12:54):
Bill, your sky is so gorgeous and they start complimenting each other's thing.
And I say, do you notice that your brain is genuinely doing this?
Mine sucks, but everybody else has something so creative and so amazing, even though none
of their art looks like mine.
If there are did look like mine, I've done them a disservice.
But so the other thing there is how important vulnerability is and how naturally we support
(13:19):
each other.
And well, if everybody's thinking that there sucks, then maybe mine doesn't either.
You know what I mean?
Maybe mine has its own.
So there's strength in numbers, I like to think.
So that is how one way I get them there.
And again, just one brush stroke at a time.
And sometimes somebody will turn their art around and say, I just can't blend it like
(13:42):
you did.
I said, you are a natural Matisse.
Matisse didn't blend any of his colors either.
And your personality is on your page and your your paint is bolder than mine.
You've got a bold personality or yours is calmer than mine.
Oh my gosh, I wish I had a little bit of that.
Yeah, the I like to tell people it's Dory the fish energy because everyone says I sound
(14:03):
like like Alan.
So I like to say that Bob Ross and Leo Buscaglia and Dory the fish had a baby.
It would it would be me.
Did I finish one sentence in there?
I hope I did.
I absolutely love that because like that that's a part of me that I hold back.
(14:26):
And I want, you know, even in even doing like this type of stuff, I want to connect more
with the creative side.
But then I have that, you know, 45 years of like, no, you're not perfect.
You're not good enough, you know, all of that stuff.
So I'm trying to connect more with the creative side.
So I love just watching you tell the story, the amount of creativity that is in that is
(14:49):
just amazing.
I just got goosebumps down the back, Keith.
I totally understand what you're saying.
It's another thing that I think art does because we are so aware of the voice going, this sucks.
This is not good.
I am not good.
But a little piece of art is a great place to practice a little bit.
Now, you know what?
I'm nailing this.
There's paint on the canvas.
(15:09):
I'm nailing this activity and just to help with the neuroplasticity of turning, you know,
we can decide what our message is.
Know my art is a little all over the place.
Also it's playful.
My art is playful.
My personality is probably playful.
And that is why my art is playful.
And it's such a great, tangible, not personal, because it's hard to turn around and say,
(15:35):
I'm amazing after 45 years of saying I'm not so amazing.
But if you can practice those skills a little bit with the little bit of art that you're
doing there, so important, so good.
Just so many benefits.
I am so biased.
I just want to say what I really love about that is like as a coach, I'm always trying
(15:57):
to get my clients to tell their story and own their story.
And that's what I hear you saying too is that every art piece is going to be unique because
every person is unique.
Yes.
And owning that in this very physical form of painting that it's bold, it's messy, it's
whatever it is.
(16:19):
That's really cool.
That's what I love about it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So yeah, I was going to say like the same thing.
Like almost like art is a way to explore the lesser sides of our person, the sides of
our personality that we hide and allow it to come out.
Because like you said, after 40 years of telling ourselves how much we suck, we have to practice
(16:44):
that other thing.
So like when you said a red blob becomes a barn, I would put a red blob on the thing
and be like, I suck.
Like this is horrible.
But it's what it can become.
So practicing those lesser sides of our personality that we want more of, that's amazing.
I've never thought of that before.
Yeah.
(17:05):
Yeah.
Another magic mirror is your phone.
When you're working on art and you start meeting yourself up, take a picture of it.
Because everyone without fail says to me, the photo looks so much better than the actual
art.
It's the same thing with emotional distance.
I don't understand the science of that either.
I just know it's a thing.
I know that if today you're thinking my painting will be really good 60 feet away from me,
(17:28):
tomorrow it's going to be 40 feet and the next day it's going to be 20 feet.
You know what I mean?
That's such a good thing to keep in mind as well.
It's just taking a step back from the planet even and not taking that perceived failure
so seriously.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(17:49):
What you said actually makes me want to paint and see what part of my personality, how is
that expressed in a natural way?
If I let go of it having to be a certain way.
I wonder if people innately understand that they are directly reflected on their canvas.
(18:12):
It is physically uncomfortable to paint a very calm scene if your energy is a little like
this.
It is physically uncomfortable to do the opposite as well.
That is fine because if all the art looked alike, what would you bid on at Sotheby's?
We'd all be bidding on that same painting and it'd be a super popular painting.
(18:35):
Different things speak to different people.
It's what makes art so interesting is you can see Van Gogh's soul, can't you?
When you look at his paintings, oh my God, it hits you when you enter the room and true
of other artists too.
He's my jam.
Some people look at him and go, it's just so messy.
(18:57):
They don't get the same feels that I do.
That doesn't mean that thing is not able to, it makes me feel.
My favorite piece of art that I own was probably done by an eighth grader.
I found it in a Goodwill.
It's Elvis and his skin is a bright green and he's with, I think it's Marilyn Monroe.
Her hair is impossibly yellow and they're standing in front of a purple background and
(19:20):
his guitar has all kinds of squigglies on it.
This painting gives me more joy than my cat, is she here?
I love it so much.
That's priceless to me.
And other people can look at it and go, angel, an eighth grader.
Yeah, maybe.
(19:40):
I don't know.
I love it so much.
And how awesome is that?
It's not important actually that the doing is the important thing.
It's just an interesting take on.
It is so interesting how something, I mean, if we met on a tennis court today and we'd
never played tennis, we would not have high expectations of ourselves.
(20:01):
We'd be okay with whatever happens, but we don't feel that way about art.
Isn't it interesting?
I need to stay away from that.
That's not my, I don't have that skill.
It's so interesting to me.
Yeah.
I love the way that you described, and this is my experience too, that art can communicate
something that can't be communicated in words.
(20:22):
It's all energetic communication.
And it's so funny because I actually, I'm in Bend, Oregon, so I'm not that far from
Seattle, but I was over in Portland this weekend and I was at their Saturday market, and I
was walking and I saw a piece of art.
And that's what it said.
It's like, I need to be with you.
(20:42):
Like we're meant to be together.
And I felt like there was nothing I could do about it.
And I went to talk to the guy and I'm like, oh, I'm going to come back.
And I thought like, let it out of your system.
You don't want to spend all this money on a piece of art.
Or no, you do.
I went back and bought it.
Yeah, because you spoke to me.
Yeah.
(21:02):
Isn't that just affirming in all the ways, in all the ways?
Yeah.
God, it's really cool.
Yeah, I love that.
Like a whole weird collection where I have some like Josh Simpson glass pieces that
I got from my wife and I love.
But before my grandmother passed, there was this painting that when we would go visitor,
(21:26):
I always loved.
It was just a sort of little house in the woods.
And I love paintings like that because it makes me wonder what's down the trail.
And then my mind can just like go into that thing, trying to like, I mean, just basically
creating a story off of this painting that was just there.
(21:47):
So yeah, so I have things that are like, I have one where it's my unit from the military
jumping into Albania.
And then I have like right next to that, like a Winnie the Pooh where they're all just like
in this open meadow and everything that that was like so meaningful to my kids that I kept.
So yeah, it's pretty cool.
(22:08):
Art is going to make you feel something, whether it's a Da Vinci level of talent or something
done by an eighth grader.
And that is awesome and trying to force that thing by only putting it out if it's good
or whatever.
It's just not a good thing.
It's just such a great connective thing to yourself first.
(22:32):
And it is going to connect with somebody else.
It just is going to.
It can't not.
Such a great and important thing.
And it makes me so sad that music and art programs are the first things to be cut in
school programs.
It's it's so important for just all the ways from self worth to self discipline to expression
(23:01):
to it.
It's also funny that that's the thing that people when they have extra income like to
spend money on the opera and museums.
Yeah, it's just ironic.
Hmm.
Yeah.
I agree with you.
That's the one thing that I hold out a hope for is that we're getting to a place where
(23:26):
not everybody has to work and there's more than enough resources for all of us.
If we can learn to share, we could have another renaissance.
Right.
And everybody could have time and money to devote to art and it can drastically change
the way everybody shows up and what our world is.
I have high hopes because everything swings.
(23:48):
Nothing is a constant, right?
It's just the meaning of the word life.
So we're here.
That's going to happen.
I have high hopes.
Yeah.
So do you do the paint nights online now or just your corporate events?
I took a look at your website and I know COVID made it.
So you had to switch gears.
It did.
It did.
(24:08):
It's all online now because I just very recently moved back to my hometown in Wisconsin.
So I'm not in Seattle anymore.
I actually do fly back there for events.
So I do do some in person.
I just fly there to go and do them.
Haven't done any in person here.
I have public classes on Tuesday nights.
(24:29):
So if people want to join that aren't a part of a work group, I have them join on Tuesday
nights.
Yeah.
And what is it like?
Tell me a little bit more about that.
Oh, it's basically just like this and everybody has their painting or how does it work?
Yeah, literally just like this.
I put something on the easel, not that one, but as a, yeah, just paint just like this.
(24:53):
And it goes remarkably well.
I taught a class the other day with 350 people in it.
I know.
And you think, that's going to be a logistical nightmare.
I had someone even on there in the chat just in case the chat went crazy with questions.
And it just never does.
It just people are just able to do it.
(25:16):
And I like to think that a little bit of comedy before we start and then just encouragement
and a little bit of comedy in the middle.
And then people just kind of get lost in what they're doing.
And I find that kids have the most questions and not in a, I don't think I'm doing this
(25:38):
right, but how do I do a butterfly?
You know, to add to whatever we were doing.
And they're so always so anxious to show me, to show me what they are doing.
What joy?
What joy?
And then in chapter six, we are all artists and singers and dancers.
And at some point we decide our efforts are just bad or wrong or just embarrassing.
(26:01):
And then the last thing we want to do, oh my God, is share that stuff.
It would be just great if we can figure out how to hang on to that.
I can't dance in front of people either.
So I talking out of both sides of my mouth right now.
But it's a hope I have for myself.
Yeah, and you know, it's really come up in this discussion how one negative thing or
(26:28):
one positive thing that somebody says to you can change your life.
And we're all going through this.
And we don't know what we're saying or doing that has that impact.
And other people are doing that.
But you've created this space where you are intentionally telling people that those positive
things that can be changing the whole direction of their life.
(26:53):
And that's cool.
Yeah, thank you.
It is my greatest joy in life.
Yeah, I totally agree.
There are always two ways to look at a thing.
Like I said, something can be primitive or it can be playful and just finding the better
word for yourself.
(27:14):
And if you're able to give yourself the better word, other people's bad words are going to
sting as much.
That is the hope.
That is the hope.
Yeah.
I'd like to talk about comedy a little bit.
I love stand up comedy in many ways.
I think that comedy is sort of right now serving as the philosophers of our time, right?
(27:39):
They're, they're commentating on what's happening.
They're opening people's minds to different ways of seeing things, right?
It sort of reminds me of like soccer tease in the square, right?
And that's people that are like pushing limits nowadays.
And I really appreciate that.
And I think that comedy is one of the most courageous forms of art.
(28:00):
And I know you guys have both done improv.
I have not.
But I wanted to hear more about that piece of your art and how you, how you feel like
being a comedian has impacted your ability to day to day go through life.
In measurable ways, in measurable ways.
(28:20):
It's Keith will tell you the premise of improv is okay.
This is my reality.
What can I, what can I make with this instead of shutting yourself down and saying, well,
the world is shut down now.
I no longer have a business.
End of story.
Nope.
You've got now this is your, you have a new reality now.
And where can you go from here?
(28:41):
It's always a matter of looking for the positive.
Improv is always accepting what your partner gives you and figuring out a way to honor
it and elevate it.
It's there is nothing in my life that isn't related to that.
Yeah.
(29:01):
Man, I love that.
Yeah.
I'm just writing it down like always accepting what other person is giving you.
Wow.
Like that's life changing if you did that and you just said, okay, I'm going to accept
what my husband kid, you know, whoever my boss, to me and what do I want to do with
(29:21):
it?
Do I want to make it a comedy, a drama, right?
Now, now I'm on stage, but sitting there and going like, why the F did you say that?
This, that's not what you're supposed to say, right?
That's not serving anybody and it's not moving the story forward.
Yes.
Exactly that.
It's not listening.
It's not trusting.
(29:42):
It's not because we all have like trigger words like, like, you know, somebody will say something
and if I had said that I would mean this horrible thing that triggers not a thing for that person,
then they are not trying to trigger me.
They're just talking.
And if you trust that that person has honorable intentions in the world, they're very, very
(30:02):
few evil people and even the evil people have to have something going on, fear or anger
about something.
And if you understand that nobody is ever out to hurt your feelings, they're just maybe
not expressing themselves in a way that you would, but they're just trying to tell you
that they are hurting or that they are, you know, they have this pain point and they've
(30:25):
handed you the gift of the vulnerability of that pain point.
And what, you know, okay, I hear you and either I'm not understanding you, so please explain
it more or is this how I can help?
Yeah.
That's beautiful.
And that just, if you don't mind me bringing it up, Mindy, like Mindy has been hit with
(30:48):
a couple of trolls lately that based off of very like, get out of your comfort zone,
you know, type thing, taking it to the point of being degrading towards her.
And I love that kind of way of looking at it instead of taking it as a personal like
(31:13):
assault that I have to defend myself against as a thing of like, well, they're showing
me their pain.
Yeah.
Even though it's coming at, but that's really where it comes from.
Yeah.
And again, what a beautiful, trusting gift that they put their pain out there for me
to see, right?
(31:34):
Even if they intend for it that way, they showed up and they showed where they had a
wound and that's beautiful.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I thought you knew the same thing, Keith, when she was saying that, I was like, yeah,
I have a really new reframe for gratitude in those situations where, yeah, I have the
(31:59):
opportunity to accept.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And for every one guy like that, there are a thousand people who aren't commenting on
your stuff, who are watching, but aren't commenting, aren't actively interacting with you who are
like, yeah, Mindy, me too.
And I, you know, who are in accord with the things that you put out and appreciate your
(32:23):
vulnerability and stuff.
Yeah.
And like you said, if you're going to do art, which is showing up in any way in your life,
there's going to be people who love it and people who hate it.
There's nothing you can do about that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nothing you can do about it.
And it's just the way of the world.
And if your art isn't being appreciated yet, it just hasn't been seen by the right people.
(32:47):
Yeah.
That's exactly right.
Yeah.
Not only are we creative by nature, we are also filers by nature.
We put things in boxes and that's just a, you know, excuse me, if someone doesn't like
your art, they put you in a box and that's okay, that that's not your box.
(33:09):
Right.
But it's the box is suitable for them to make sense of it.
So.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
That's really, really.
Yeah.
And I love because so.
Last year I started.
Really kind of getting into, into mushrooms and the biggest lesson that I get every time I try them is.
(33:35):
I'm so stiff and this idea of flow.
You know, and everything that I've heard you describe with art is all about that.
You know, it doesn't matter what's there.
It matters what you can create from it, which, you know, being stiff, I'd be like, oh, there's
that red blob I suck.
I'm done.
(33:56):
There's nothing I could do.
That's, that's what it is.
It's just a blob, you know, and then like, I guess that's a projection of the way I see
myself too.
You know, like this is who I am.
I'm just a freaking blob.
There's nothing I can do with it, you know, but getting into that flow state, you know,
and being able to work with what you have and create.
(34:17):
It's not a matter of what's there.
It's a matter of what you can create from what's there.
Like that is amazing.
Yes.
Yes.
And your mind is so powerful.
It sees whatever you tell it to see another really favorite little watercolor sketch that
somebody that I admire has done.
It's three very colorful Victorian houses in a row and it's watercolor and pen and ink.
(34:42):
And someone said to me, why do you like that?
It's so bad.
And I'm looking at it.
There's not one straight line on the whole painting.
There's not one defined wall.
And like, how did I not even notice I just see three houses, you know, you kind of tell
yourself what you see in anything that you give attention to becomes bigger and bigger
and bigger.
(35:03):
And I saw it as these three beautiful little houses with, you know, just beautiful color
and this other person saw something that would not be up to code in very dangerous
stairways and second floors.
A piece of art that breaks all the quotes.
I love that.
This person obviously doesn't own a ruler.
(35:25):
Yeah.
I love that.
Do you have any experience with art?
Have you ever painted or done crafts or gardening?
Like what has art looked like for you in your life?
(35:46):
So this is my last.
It's not my pen cup, but this is my last.
We went to like a paint night.
Where is it?
Here we go.
That's awesome.
And then I didn't know what to do.
So I made a little ninja.
I made a little ninja.
And then the couple of dead ninjas and then a horse that got caught up.
(36:08):
Yeah, but I, you know, it's funny though,
because I did this because I thought this sucked.
So I'm going to do something dumb and make it funny.
So almost like using the humor as a protection against judging myself for it.
Be like, I didn't mean it to be good.
You know, so I just meant it to be dumb.
But I'm going to try again with like the stuff that you've been saying.
(36:32):
Also,
just appreciate about your fact that you are a storyteller because you've got a
whole arc of a story and a finish line and a tragedy and comedy.
It's all there on one mug.
Let's just talk about how brilliant that is.
That's so true.
A whole story.
That would be one of the things again that I would love because I look at that
(36:54):
and I'm like, oh, this is so beautiful.
And I see just creativity down to a horse that got caught up in the mix.
Oh my gosh.
I would pay money for that mug and I'm not blowing sunshine.
I'm, I would.
Well, it is for sale, a thousand dollars.
Okay.
I'm visiting your Etsy shop as soon as we're done here.
(37:17):
But you know what?
It's funny because that's the side of my,
that's the side of my story.
I felt like I became, and me and many have talked about this,
became like a character, like I'm the coaching character.
And in my family, they, they call me, um,
now I'm going to forget.
He was one of those like insult comics back in the day, like that was cool.
(37:41):
Well, Don Rickles.
Yes.
Don Rickles.
Okay.
That's, yeah, that's what my family calls me Rickles because.
I'm a big fan of all the things I said about my family.
I've been through it.
I've been through it.
Like rip everybody apart, but not in a mean way. You know,
just making everybody laugh.
And I, I struggle with bringing that.
Into the business side, almost like my mind.
(38:03):
Kind of dissected and, and this side is for seriousness.
And this side is for play and I want it reversed.
I want to be like a life coach.
that is ever spoken.
Okay, I would pay for that.
But I have a friend who is an artist,
(38:24):
and she is just so silly,
and her art is so serious.
And she wonders why she's struggling with sales.
I'm like, it's because you're not authentic.
I'm like, this is such a big part of who you are,
and it's missing.
I don't see it when I look at your art.
I don't see it when I see your socials.
I think just be authentic, be all of you.
Because we're all so three-dimensional,
(38:49):
and we're all so...
Nobody's black and white about it, right?
We're all so gray.
We are serious, and we're funny.
And I really feel like the more bits of you that put out,
that's more for people to resonate with.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know what I was thinking, Keith, is...
(39:10):
It's almost like you could be the coach,
and you roast people.
I think that roasts are so awesome,
because it's exactly what you're talking about.
It's humor without anybody's ego taking offense, right?
And everybody knows the rules of that art.
And that's very much my inner voice.
Like when I talk to my future self and stuff,
(39:31):
she sort of roasts me all the time, right?
Like to get me going, and I personally like it, right?
But when I explain it to other people, they say,
why are you talking mean to yourself?
And I'm like, oh, no, that's our banter, okay?
We could all do the same thing with your clients, right?
Like find a way to, you know, roast them and make light of,
(39:52):
like, point out where growth is and stuff.
And that would be cool.
I'd go see somebody like that.
I would too.
Maybe have them start with roasting themselves and get that comfort level,
and then with each other.
And I think as long as...
And with improv, Keith, you can also tell me there's,
like I said, that level of trust that if you fall,
(40:13):
the other guy's going to catch you.
So if he says something, you know it's done in love,
always done in love.
I teach a caricature class because it's all done in love,
teaching people how to draw caricatures.
And I give explanations like this.
I'm like, now we're going to draw eyebrows.
I'm an expert.
I draw mine on every day.
I love that.
(40:40):
Yeah.
Because it makes me think.
So in Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning,
he mentioned something and all the things that people take of that book,
this is one of the things that I don't hear too much about.
But he said humor can make an insurmountable issue,
like problem more manageable.
(41:00):
So being able to laugh at the situations we get ourselves in
or just laugh at how you are about to just give up
and just call it a day and be able to laugh at that is so powerful.
Humor is such a beautiful gift that we've been given to live with.
(41:23):
And again, I think that's something that is sort of trained out of us
as we're growing up.
You know, like even like the Bible talks about, you know,
when I was a child, I did childish things, but then I put away childish things.
But I was just thinking about the other day, you know,
at one point Jesus said we need to be like children, come to him as children.
(41:47):
I'm like, I want to be a kid again.
You know, like I want to laugh at the fact that I woke up
and just because I was sleeping, I threw my back out, you know, like
that's a painful but very funny thing, you know, and just have that childlike mentality
plus of seeing the wonder that's all around us.
(42:09):
Like life itself has become white noise in the background of what we have to do next.
Oh, and I think that's what's driving so much of the pain and suffering in our societies.
Yeah, a disconnect from awe and wonder, right?
Yes.
Yeah. So good.
(42:31):
Yeah.
The comedy that I do when I'm not doing improv, my stand up is music.
I am a musician and I write parodies mainly about menopause.
Oh, no, yes.
So hot, hot child in the city is now hot flash in the city.
(42:53):
Don't worry, be happy. Now just list all 34 pain points of menopause.
I love that so much because I don't get on my soapbox a lot about this in our podcast,
but menopause is one of those things.
I'm turning 45 next month, so I'm starting to experience it.
And when I talk to my doctor and other women, I'm like, wait, what's going to happen?
(43:17):
Like this is the thing that happens at 50% of the population and no one's talking about it.
It's a frigging mystery to me.
In this day and age, it's great.
So yeah, people need to be making parodies and joking and talking about menopause
because it's a thing that half of us experience that changes fundamentally
like our feelings and our emotions and our bodies and our identities.
(43:41):
So that's just going to blow your brain.
This is going to blow your brain.
We all experience it except for the, the, the, no, we, the,
I think there are only two pain points that are different for men.
theirs is called andropause.
It's a thing they don't even know because they don't, you know what they call it?
Getting older.
(44:02):
We've got a disease named for it.
Yeah.
And how much I've never heard of that either.
Look it up.
Man, it's a thing.
I've deep dived because us deep dived deep dove.
I went deep because in writing, I actually did research in, in writing some of the stuff
(44:24):
and doing little comedy bits around it.
Oh my gosh, a cure for menopause back in the, in the day, a couple of hundred years ago.
One of them, I won't mention all of them because they're not family friendly golf.
Golf.
Golf.
I don't golf was prescribed.
(44:46):
So bizarre.
Yeah.
So are you doing online and in person?
Yeah, pretty much in person.
Yeah.
Well, Sam, it's hard to do online, I'm sure, because you, you're playing with the audience.
You need some back and forth, right?
It's a dialogue, even though it seems like a one way dialogue, the way that they're laughing
(45:07):
and responding to you as part of how you know where to go.
Yes, absolutely.
That is absolutely the thing.
And I thrive on the, the interaction, even in my classes, sometimes corporate groups
are so used to attending meetings with the camera off and muted.
I'm like, is anyone in there?
Hello.
(45:28):
Like, is this landing?
Are you guys okay?
Does anyone need a hug?
Do you remember the first time that you did stand up?
Yes.
I was quite young and a DJ on the radio back when that was a thing.
Nice.
And it was at a larger nightclub and the opening acts, there was a snowstorm and they weren't
(45:56):
ready yet.
They weren't set up at the time.
So they said, just get up there and just talk.
It's kill time.
Right.
So that was as much improv, I guess, as it was stand up.
But, um, yeah, that was quite funny.
Yeah.
You walk away feeling good about it.
(46:17):
I'm sorry to say that again, Mindy.
Did you walk away feeling good about it?
Always. Yeah. I think because I was a musician as a teenager, I don't really have a stage
rights. That's not really a thing for me.
I don't mind messing up in front of people, which also makes me perfect for improv.
So I don't have much stage fright.
(46:39):
So I'm just happy to stay in front of people and make it a goof of myself.
Yeah.
Yeah, that was going to be my question. Like, do you get like all the nerve?
Cause I feel like if I was going to try something like that, I would have to be wheeled out on a
gurney with medics, like right there.
You know, constantly monitoring my blood pressure and stuff.
But like, how do you deal with those nerves?
(47:03):
They're not even a thing. And I don't know if it's because, um, like if you go to karaoke,
uh, do people love the people who can sing near as much as they love the people that are just out there
wailing and they're horrible? No, those are the people that, you know, we are just naturally supportive
(47:25):
creatures, right? There is an improv exercise, a warm up that we do where everyone stands in a big circle
and a meteor goes, what are you afraid of? What are you afraid of? And people go, the dark spiders,
whatever the thing may be. And as we keep going around, people start saying that my dad never loved me,
that my, you know, things that they're really, that I'll end up in a cardboard box that I will fail the thing.
(47:51):
And at that point is when I start going, I want to go hug that person and, and let them know I have some of the same
fears. That's our connector. And I am not scared of a connector. I think that's why I don't have stage fright,
honestly, because I know that, um, no, people aren't going to let me fall. And, and so if I'm up there messing up is when
(48:15):
people are like, you got this. It's, it's, it's naturally who we are for the most part, you know, trolls aside.
That was like one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.
Yeah, just like feeling the emotion come up in that like that is incredible.
(48:38):
And I think a lot of people don't trust the world and they don't think anybody has their back and they might not even have
their own back. Right. And absolute and those are the trolls.
Yeah, yeah, people are there, it's fitting their fear out. Yeah.
Yeah, but yeah, knowing people have your back and knowing the imperfection and fear are the things that we all share.
(49:08):
Right.
So, right.
So cool. Yeah.
Yeah, that's awesome.
So do you ever do classes for like groups that they contact you like a women's group or this fall or ones then 300.
Oh yeah, I just woke up at, I did a podcast with a wonderful guy in Taiwan a few weeks ago. He's a high school teacher and he contacted me
(49:37):
after the class and he said, would you consider waking up at 3am to teach my high school kids because I really like them to experience what you do.
So, I absolutely did I set an alarm and I got up and I taught six kids in Taiwan.
How does how to do it. Absolutely I will do that I am a yes and person, and the more value I think it will give I work things
(50:06):
totally valuable but when somebody literally reaches out and says, I've got a group. Yeah, I'm there. I am there. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, that's so cool.
Yeah, yeah. It wasn't your whole went with the kids in Taiwan because they were all muted and as they're working all I saw with the tops of their heads.
(50:29):
Drawing and I'm like, oh, is there a language barrier should I talk slower that's really hard for me to do.
And one of the kids turned out their name was Jack because as we were drawing.
The teacher said, that looks like you Jack and so I kept mentioning Jack every now and again like instead of drawing Jack's hair, we'll do it this way and they the kids would all giggle whenever I'd say the word Jack so I kept doing it.
(50:54):
And he wrote to me the next day he said, because they were just so quiet and he couldn't get them to ask me any questions afterwards or anything they were 1415 years old I think and afterwards he wrote to me said they loved you so much, and they were wondering if you
consider coming, you know, getting back online and teaching them again, like, off 14 models it's hard for them to, you know, yeah, talk.
(51:19):
So I've been bragging about that class for a week now and probably will continue for a while. It was unpaid it was in the middle of the night, and it meant so much to me, I have never saying no to those sort of things.
Yeah.
Well, I just find what you do and who you are completely inspiring so thank you so much for coming on the show. You have really inspired me to get to know that part of myself more.
(51:52):
Right and uncover what's going to be known in that creative.
Oh, awesome. Awesome. This has been really inspiring for me to I don't, I don't often feel like I come off as authentic because I am so Dory the fish.
(52:15):
But I feel like this was this was just lovely. It's just lovely talking to both of you. Thank you.
Yeah, I absolutely love who you are. Like you said, like you don't feel like you come off authentic but it's the funny thing is like when I'm when I allow myself to be how I see you, where whatever thought comes in that's what's
(52:39):
coming out like that's when I feel my most true my most authentic self and like Mindy had said I am so inspired because I love I love writing.
Like for me that's that's my artistic accounts, but I have pushed it off for so many years because I'm not as good as this person or that person or, you know, like,
(53:08):
not that I ever want to be that person, you know, I just want to be me but there's things.
Yeah, so this has been one of the most inspiring episodes. Just for who you are, you like I feel lit up with with just light and a fire right now it's so incredible so thank you so much.
(53:31):
Yes, you're welcome and try the art anyway I love writing, but words can be super limiting, right because words mean such tiny little things.
So just try it try the try the way before you came on me and Mindy we're talking about like once we work with clients and we take on that energy and ways to sort of get that out of our system.
(53:54):
And I'm thinking like, I'm about to go out and buy an easel and some paints and if it's like a rough session I'm just going to slap like go Jackson Pollock on there you know, but yeah I mean I wonder if like taking 1015 minutes to paint after a session would just allow us to get that stuff and then ground ourselves back into who we are.
(54:15):
Yes. Yes, wow goosebumps again. You guys are doing such good things. Wow.
Yeah, that's a good idea that's a good tool to use to talk about the charging from session, you know, and life and that's a good idea to yeah just putting it out in art and letting it be.
I love that.
(54:37):
Yeah.
Yeah, maybe you can have us on your classes like, like special speakers, you know special art instructors we have no clue. I can teach people to draw a little ninjas and stuff. Yeah.
Yeah, I think we can collaborate. Let's talk.
Have your people call my people. It'll be my cat. She doesn't take calls. I'll answer.
(55:02):
Oh, thank you so much you guys. It has been a really great morning chatting with you.
So thank you.
I really appreciate it. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much you guys. Let's talk again soon.
Yeah. Bye. Bye.
Welcome to the Chasing Thoughts podcast.
(00:03):
Chasing Thoughts was founded by strangers, two life coaches who met on TikTok and shared
the desire to create a different kind of life coaching podcast.
Instead of talking about how to do it right, the Chasing Thoughts podcast explores embracing
our true essence to find a deeper sense of purpose and fulfillment.
(00:23):
Life coaches Keith and Mindy take a unique approach that transcends popular notions of
perpetual happiness in striving relentlessly to become one's ideal self.
Listen in as Mindy, Keith and their guests take a deep dive into their own minds and
souls to investigate the beauty of imperfection, challenge their beliefs, and embrace the richness
(00:44):
of living a truly authentic life.
Hi, my name is Keith and I'm a strategic interventionist and stoner-spirited life coach.
Hi, my name is Mindy and I am an authenticity empowerment coach.
Welcome to Chasing Thoughts.
Hello everybody and welcome to season two, episode 14.
(01:11):
And today we are talking to Angel and Keith and I are so excited because she is a professional
artist and comic and both of us love comedy.
Keith has done improv, we're both super creative so we just can't wait to hear your stories.
So tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be the person that you are.
(01:33):
Wow, so many paths, not that many, but I feel like every job that I've had I've taken because
I thought that sounds like fun and how lucky am I that that has gotten to be a thing.
And so when I came about that way, I don't know if you guys have ever heard of comedy
sports, it's comedy played as if it's a sport.
(01:56):
It's like whose line is it anyway only with two teams and a referee.
And that was my gateway into comedy.
I just moved to Seattle and the guy that owns the Seattle franchise of comedy sports was
a fellow Packer fan and we sat at the bar together and that's how I went in that direction.
(02:18):
Yeah, so that's the comedy thing and art.
I have been an illustrator and an artist my whole life.
I've worked in advertising, my first job out of college was illustrating coloring books
for golden books.
After advertising I did a stint in publishing and then I got headhunted into paper plates.
(02:42):
You may have eaten off my work.
It's a thing.
And while I was doing that, I first heard of paint night and I thought as an entertainer
and an illustrator, I am so uniquely qualified to do that and it sounds like fun.
So I called paint night to let them know how good I would be at it and they told me
(03:04):
I could do it on Tuesday nights at a bar far away from my home and I thought I'm just going
to buy easels.
So oh my gosh, that's what I did genius that I am.
But no, it turned out it turned out to be the best just the best move.
I bought 24 easels and some paint and practiced on some friends and then I called Groupon.
Would you give me a spot?
(03:24):
They said, yep.
So that's how I started and I was in Seattle and doing the FUNZ paint and sip things on
weekends and one in four people in Seattle works at Amazon and Microsoft is also there
in Google.
And they said, do you do corporate events and the improv person in me said, yes, yes,
(03:48):
I do.
Oh, they started showing up during the day.
And I noticed really quickly that when people are going to a paint night, they bought the
ticket, they know what they're going for and they're excited to be there.
When it is a work function, your boss tells you where to be at four o'clock in the afternoon.
There is equal amounts of excitement and total fear and panic.
(04:13):
And don't expect excuses coming in the door.
Don't expect much out of me.
My third grade teacher told me I will never be an artist.
My sister got all the talent.
I can only do stick people.
And I thought, oh, that's so sad because this is supposed to be so fun and good for you.
And maybe because my mom was a therapist, but I started delving really quickly into that
(04:35):
and why it bothered me so much that people didn't get excited.
And so my events kind of quickly turned into a TED talk about why you should do creative
things because we are all artists and it's inherent to what we are as a creature and
do it because it's good for you, not because you're good at it.
(04:57):
So I feel I teach people how to paint a thing, but more than that, I hope I am educating
them on how inherent and how important it is to do creative things.
Yeah, my story.
Yeah.
And I love everything you said.
And I also hear in there something that I really love, which is if you're bad at something
(05:19):
bad, that doesn't mean that you're supposed to or not supposed to do it.
That being good or bad is not part of the equation of what we get to do for our human
experience on this planet.
And it's the marker, though, that people use, isn't it?
You know, I'm an amateur.
I'm such an amateur.
And I said, you know, a professional is somebody who gets paid to do a thing.
(05:40):
An amateur is somebody who does it for the pure love and enjoyment of the thing.
Oh my gosh, what a lovely thought.
That is what I try to instill in people.
You know, I'm not using any skills we didn't have when we were five and learned how to
write our name.
My favorite art shape is the parentheses.
You put enough parentheses together, you've got the Mona Lisa.
He will tell you the same thing.
(06:02):
Yeah.
And art is like yoga.
I like to tell people you're way better on day 800 than you are on day one.
But it's good for you on day one.
Yep.
Yep.
So true.
And I feel like that sort of commitment to the process isn't as well known as popular
as it was 40 or 50 years ago.
(06:24):
But culturally, people seem to be more afraid of that and hanging in there until you're
good at something.
And that's the only way to do it.
It kind of doesn't help that social media, everybody puts their best stuff forward.
I have plenty of bad art.
Plenty of it.
And love the bad art because it gets me one step closer to the good art.
(06:47):
Another thing I like to tell people is how inherent expression is to us and creativity.
And we're the only living creature that does it.
We've got cave art that is 60, what, you know, tens of thousands of years old.
Group of agriculture, less than 5,000 years old.
It has been more important for us to express ourselves than to eat on the regular.
(07:08):
Think about that.
And we've all been selling art to each other less than 500 years.
That's a blip in time.
But that is the marker that people use.
Won't be in the gallery.
Then I shouldn't be doing this.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
And those are my favorite things too, like the Lascaux caves where you have the hand
prints.
(07:28):
And it's 50,000 years ago, and especially like the small hands, the kids that they actually
put their hands on the walls and did whatever they did.
And it's like a connection, this energetic connection with something 50,000 years ago
with a person, a living being that just, that blows my mind.
(07:49):
That just gave me goosebumps.
That person is still here in some faction, aren't they?
Man, that's huge.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's why I, oh, go ahead, Mindy.
Sorry.
Oh, you go ahead, Keith.
That's what like creativity to me, like that's the thing that I am so interested in, especially
(08:10):
from you with what you do and how you've just naturally gone into the like, I'm just going
to do what I love, which seems to be a pattern with all the guests that we have, you know,
and then on top of that, like you have this sort of like Robin Williams type energy where
like you just kind of flow from one thought to the next, which I love.
(08:32):
So I would love to dive into like the whole creative process.
I think that gets, you know, bashed out of us, you know, as soon as we start school where
it's sit down and shut up and do what you're told, you know, so we lose that creative side.
Yep.
It got bashed out of me for a little bit when I was a formative age of an adult who was
(08:52):
an artist.
My mom asked that person to guide me in my artistic journey and they did a thing and
told me to do the same thing.
And then they laughed at my efforts.
I did not paint again until I was over 40 years old.
I learned how to illustrate in Photoshop because undo and delete and layers and not
(09:15):
the same thing, not the same connection to the art, to the thing you're creating, you
know, oh man.
Yeah, that's, that's huge for me as well.
That's something that I wanted to ask you about because I am the person that you described,
right, that I go to a workshop and they're like, we're good, even if it's just like making
(09:36):
a manifesting board cutting pictures out of a magazine, I'm like, oh, I don't want to do
this.
Mine's going to be the worst.
I have never felt artistic.
And then I found that like building websites and graphic design helped me be creative.
And eventually I started experimenting with, this is really funny, but I like to like find
(09:57):
things in nature like sticks and rocks that I find really beautiful.
And then I paint them or I wrap certain parts in embroidery thread or I just do weird.
And my process while I was just at the table working with my hands put me in a state of
flow and relaxation that I didn't get with the graphic design, even though I felt like
(10:19):
it was accessing my creativity.
And so I still wonder like, what's actually happening there that my brain waves are going
to a different set of brain waves like that relaxed theta flow state.
Yeah.
And I don't understand that it's so cool.
I don't understand the science exactly, but I know that it is impossible for your brain
(10:41):
to have anxiety to work on a to-do list when you are creating because you are doing three
different things.
You are manually doing it.
You are watching yourself doing it and creating itself.
Your brain doesn't have the capacity.
It's an instant mood calmer.
And like I said, no to do.
(11:03):
It's meditating with a parting gift is what I like to say.
When I try to meditate, I spend 15 minutes trying to shut off the to-do list, not successfully.
But I can paint for two hours and it goes by like that.
What is that?
That is the thing.
That is the connecting to just ourselves at the core of our core.
(11:24):
And it's something we don't really do anymore.
And we have technology ways to not do it with the digital stuff.
And I'm not knocking it, but it doesn't give you the same benefit that the physical doing
of the thing, it really connects us to just our base humanity structure.
(11:49):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Super, super important.
Yeah.
So when somebody comes to you or they're in your workshop and they're really stuck in
their head, what do you do?
How do you get them into their body and the flow of peace?
Do you know what I do?
I make them show their peace to everybody.
And I try to make everybody do it at the same time because I see that look on your face
(12:10):
is what everybody does.
The whites of their eyes.
And I'm like, no, everybody do it.
I liked when we first started painting, I have them get rid of the white of the canvas
because that white is the thing that feels pure and that you're going to muck up with
your horrible artwork.
So let's just paint half of it blue and the other half green.
And then we're just going to storytell on top of that a green puffball can become a
(12:33):
tree and a red box can become a barn.
So we get rid of the white and not long after that is when people start going, I don't think
this is going well, even though we're not very far in.
So I make everybody show their stuff.
And then I sit back and everybody without fail starts doing this.
Janice, I love how you painted your water.
(12:54):
Bill, your sky is so gorgeous and they start complimenting each other's thing.
And I say, do you notice that your brain is genuinely doing this?
Mine sucks, but everybody else has something so creative and so amazing, even though none
of their art looks like mine.
If there are did look like mine, I've done them a disservice.
But so the other thing there is how important vulnerability is and how naturally we support
(13:19):
each other.
And well, if everybody's thinking that there sucks, then maybe mine doesn't either.
You know what I mean?
Maybe mine has its own.
So there's strength in numbers, I like to think.
So that is how one way I get them there.
And again, just one brush stroke at a time.
And sometimes somebody will turn their art around and say, I just can't blend it like
(13:42):
you did.
I said, you are a natural Matisse.
Matisse didn't blend any of his colors either.
And your personality is on your page and your your paint is bolder than mine.
You've got a bold personality or yours is calmer than mine.
Oh my gosh, I wish I had a little bit of that.
Yeah, the I like to tell people it's Dory the fish energy because everyone says I sound
(14:03):
like like Alan.
So I like to say that Bob Ross and Leo Buscaglia and Dory the fish had a baby.
It would it would be me.
Did I finish one sentence in there?
I hope I did.
I absolutely love that because like that that's a part of me that I hold back.
(14:26):
And I want, you know, even in even doing like this type of stuff, I want to connect more
with the creative side.
But then I have that, you know, 45 years of like, no, you're not perfect.
You're not good enough, you know, all of that stuff.
So I'm trying to connect more with the creative side.
So I love just watching you tell the story, the amount of creativity that is in that is
(14:49):
just amazing.
I just got goosebumps down the back, Keith.
I totally understand what you're saying.
It's another thing that I think art does because we are so aware of the voice going, this sucks.
This is not good.
I am not good.
But a little piece of art is a great place to practice a little bit.
Now, you know what?
I'm nailing this.
There's paint on the canvas.
(15:09):
I'm nailing this activity and just to help with the neuroplasticity of turning, you know,
we can decide what our message is.
Know my art is a little all over the place.
Also it's playful.
My art is playful.
My personality is probably playful.
And that is why my art is playful.
And it's such a great, tangible, not personal, because it's hard to turn around and say,
(15:35):
I'm amazing after 45 years of saying I'm not so amazing.
But if you can practice those skills a little bit with the little bit of art that you're
doing there, so important, so good.
Just so many benefits.
I am so biased.
I just want to say what I really love about that is like as a coach, I'm always trying
(15:57):
to get my clients to tell their story and own their story.
And that's what I hear you saying too is that every art piece is going to be unique because
every person is unique.
Yes.
And owning that in this very physical form of painting that it's bold, it's messy, it's
whatever it is.
(16:19):
That's really cool.
That's what I love about it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So yeah, I was going to say like the same thing.
Like almost like art is a way to explore the lesser sides of our person, the sides of
our personality that we hide and allow it to come out.
Because like you said, after 40 years of telling ourselves how much we suck, we have to practice
(16:44):
that other thing.
So like when you said a red blob becomes a barn, I would put a red blob on the thing
and be like, I suck.
Like this is horrible.
But it's what it can become.
So practicing those lesser sides of our personality that we want more of, that's amazing.
I've never thought of that before.
Yeah.
(17:05):
Yeah.
Another magic mirror is your phone.
When you're working on art and you start meeting yourself up, take a picture of it.
Because everyone without fail says to me, the photo looks so much better than the actual
art.
It's the same thing with emotional distance.
I don't understand the science of that either.
I just know it's a thing.
I know that if today you're thinking my painting will be really good 60 feet away from me,
(17:28):
tomorrow it's going to be 40 feet and the next day it's going to be 20 feet.
You know what I mean?
That's such a good thing to keep in mind as well.
It's just taking a step back from the planet even and not taking that perceived failure
so seriously.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(17:49):
What you said actually makes me want to paint and see what part of my personality, how is
that expressed in a natural way?
If I let go of it having to be a certain way.
I wonder if people innately understand that they are directly reflected on their canvas.
(18:12):
It is physically uncomfortable to paint a very calm scene if your energy is a little like
this.
It is physically uncomfortable to do the opposite as well.
That is fine because if all the art looked alike, what would you bid on at Sotheby's?
We'd all be bidding on that same painting and it'd be a super popular painting.
(18:35):
Different things speak to different people.
It's what makes art so interesting is you can see Van Gogh's soul, can't you?
When you look at his paintings, oh my God, it hits you when you enter the room and true
of other artists too.
He's my jam.
Some people look at him and go, it's just so messy.
(18:57):
They don't get the same feels that I do.
That doesn't mean that thing is not able to, it makes me feel.
My favorite piece of art that I own was probably done by an eighth grader.
I found it in a Goodwill.
It's Elvis and his skin is a bright green and he's with, I think it's Marilyn Monroe.
Her hair is impossibly yellow and they're standing in front of a purple background and
(19:20):
his guitar has all kinds of squigglies on it.
This painting gives me more joy than my cat, is she here?
I love it so much.
That's priceless to me.
And other people can look at it and go, angel, an eighth grader.
Yeah, maybe.
(19:40):
I don't know.
I love it so much.
And how awesome is that?
It's not important actually that the doing is the important thing.
It's just an interesting take on.
It is so interesting how something, I mean, if we met on a tennis court today and we'd
never played tennis, we would not have high expectations of ourselves.
(20:01):
We'd be okay with whatever happens, but we don't feel that way about art.
Isn't it interesting?
I need to stay away from that.
That's not my, I don't have that skill.
It's so interesting to me.
Yeah.
I love the way that you described, and this is my experience too, that art can communicate
something that can't be communicated in words.
(20:22):
It's all energetic communication.
And it's so funny because I actually, I'm in Bend, Oregon, so I'm not that far from
Seattle, but I was over in Portland this weekend and I was at their Saturday market, and I
was walking and I saw a piece of art.
And that's what it said.
It's like, I need to be with you.
(20:42):
Like we're meant to be together.
And I felt like there was nothing I could do about it.
And I went to talk to the guy and I'm like, oh, I'm going to come back.
And I thought like, let it out of your system.
You don't want to spend all this money on a piece of art.
Or no, you do.
I went back and bought it.
Yeah, because you spoke to me.
Yeah.
(21:02):
Isn't that just affirming in all the ways, in all the ways?
Yeah.
God, it's really cool.
Yeah, I love that.
Like a whole weird collection where I have some like Josh Simpson glass pieces that
I got from my wife and I love.
But before my grandmother passed, there was this painting that when we would go visitor,
(21:26):
I always loved.
It was just a sort of little house in the woods.
And I love paintings like that because it makes me wonder what's down the trail.
And then my mind can just like go into that thing, trying to like, I mean, just basically
creating a story off of this painting that was just there.
(21:47):
So yeah, so I have things that are like, I have one where it's my unit from the military
jumping into Albania.
And then I have like right next to that, like a Winnie the Pooh where they're all just like
in this open meadow and everything that that was like so meaningful to my kids that I kept.
So yeah, it's pretty cool.
(22:08):
Art is going to make you feel something, whether it's a Da Vinci level of talent or something
done by an eighth grader.
And that is awesome and trying to force that thing by only putting it out if it's good
or whatever.
It's just not a good thing.
It's just such a great connective thing to yourself first.
(22:32):
And it is going to connect with somebody else.
It just is going to.
It can't not.
Such a great and important thing.
And it makes me so sad that music and art programs are the first things to be cut in
school programs.
It's it's so important for just all the ways from self worth to self discipline to expression
(23:01):
to it.
It's also funny that that's the thing that people when they have extra income like to
spend money on the opera and museums.
Yeah, it's just ironic.
Hmm.
Yeah.
I agree with you.
That's the one thing that I hold out a hope for is that we're getting to a place where
(23:26):
not everybody has to work and there's more than enough resources for all of us.
If we can learn to share, we could have another renaissance.
Right.
And everybody could have time and money to devote to art and it can drastically change
the way everybody shows up and what our world is.
I have high hopes because everything swings.
(23:48):
Nothing is a constant, right?
It's just the meaning of the word life.
So we're here.
That's going to happen.
I have high hopes.
Yeah.
So do you do the paint nights online now or just your corporate events?
I took a look at your website and I know COVID made it.
So you had to switch gears.
It did.
It did.
(24:08):
It's all online now because I just very recently moved back to my hometown in Wisconsin.
So I'm not in Seattle anymore.
I actually do fly back there for events.
So I do do some in person.
I just fly there to go and do them.
Haven't done any in person here.
I have public classes on Tuesday nights.
(24:29):
So if people want to join that aren't a part of a work group, I have them join on Tuesday
nights.
Yeah.
And what is it like?
Tell me a little bit more about that.
Oh, it's basically just like this and everybody has their painting or how does it work?
Yeah, literally just like this.
I put something on the easel, not that one, but as a, yeah, just paint just like this.
(24:53):
And it goes remarkably well.
I taught a class the other day with 350 people in it.
I know.
And you think, that's going to be a logistical nightmare.
I had someone even on there in the chat just in case the chat went crazy with questions.
And it just never does.
It just people are just able to do it.
(25:16):
And I like to think that a little bit of comedy before we start and then just encouragement
and a little bit of comedy in the middle.
And then people just kind of get lost in what they're doing.
And I find that kids have the most questions and not in a, I don't think I'm doing this
(25:38):
right, but how do I do a butterfly?
You know, to add to whatever we were doing.
And they're so always so anxious to show me, to show me what they are doing.
What joy?
What joy?
And then in chapter six, we are all artists and singers and dancers.
And at some point we decide our efforts are just bad or wrong or just embarrassing.
(26:01):
And then the last thing we want to do, oh my God, is share that stuff.
It would be just great if we can figure out how to hang on to that.
I can't dance in front of people either.
So I talking out of both sides of my mouth right now.
But it's a hope I have for myself.
Yeah, and you know, it's really come up in this discussion how one negative thing or
(26:28):
one positive thing that somebody says to you can change your life.
And we're all going through this.
And we don't know what we're saying or doing that has that impact.
And other people are doing that.
But you've created this space where you are intentionally telling people that those positive
things that can be changing the whole direction of their life.
(26:53):
And that's cool.
Yeah, thank you.
It is my greatest joy in life.
Yeah, I totally agree.
There are always two ways to look at a thing.
Like I said, something can be primitive or it can be playful and just finding the better
word for yourself.
(27:14):
And if you're able to give yourself the better word, other people's bad words are going to
sting as much.
That is the hope.
That is the hope.
Yeah.
I'd like to talk about comedy a little bit.
I love stand up comedy in many ways.
I think that comedy is sort of right now serving as the philosophers of our time, right?
(27:39):
They're, they're commentating on what's happening.
They're opening people's minds to different ways of seeing things, right?
It sort of reminds me of like soccer tease in the square, right?
And that's people that are like pushing limits nowadays.
And I really appreciate that.
And I think that comedy is one of the most courageous forms of art.
(28:00):
And I know you guys have both done improv.
I have not.
But I wanted to hear more about that piece of your art and how you, how you feel like
being a comedian has impacted your ability to day to day go through life.
In measurable ways, in measurable ways.
(28:20):
It's Keith will tell you the premise of improv is okay.
This is my reality.
What can I, what can I make with this instead of shutting yourself down and saying, well,
the world is shut down now.
I no longer have a business.
End of story.
Nope.
You've got now this is your, you have a new reality now.
And where can you go from here?
(28:41):
It's always a matter of looking for the positive.
Improv is always accepting what your partner gives you and figuring out a way to honor
it and elevate it.
It's there is nothing in my life that isn't related to that.
Yeah.
(29:01):
Man, I love that.
Yeah.
I'm just writing it down like always accepting what other person is giving you.
Wow.
Like that's life changing if you did that and you just said, okay, I'm going to accept
what my husband kid, you know, whoever my boss, to me and what do I want to do with
(29:21):
it?
Do I want to make it a comedy, a drama, right?
Now, now I'm on stage, but sitting there and going like, why the F did you say that?
This, that's not what you're supposed to say, right?
That's not serving anybody and it's not moving the story forward.
Yes.
Exactly that.
It's not listening.
It's not trusting.
(29:42):
It's not because we all have like trigger words like, like, you know, somebody will say something
and if I had said that I would mean this horrible thing that triggers not a thing for that person,
then they are not trying to trigger me.
They're just talking.
And if you trust that that person has honorable intentions in the world, they're very, very
(30:02):
few evil people and even the evil people have to have something going on, fear or anger
about something.
And if you understand that nobody is ever out to hurt your feelings, they're just maybe
not expressing themselves in a way that you would, but they're just trying to tell you
that they are hurting or that they are, you know, they have this pain point and they've
(30:25):
handed you the gift of the vulnerability of that pain point.
And what, you know, okay, I hear you and either I'm not understanding you, so please explain
it more or is this how I can help?
Yeah.
That's beautiful.
And that just, if you don't mind me bringing it up, Mindy, like Mindy has been hit with
(30:48):
a couple of trolls lately that based off of very like, get out of your comfort zone,
you know, type thing, taking it to the point of being degrading towards her.
And I love that kind of way of looking at it instead of taking it as a personal like
(31:13):
assault that I have to defend myself against as a thing of like, well, they're showing
me their pain.
Yeah.
Even though it's coming at, but that's really where it comes from.
Yeah.
And again, what a beautiful, trusting gift that they put their pain out there for me
to see, right?
(31:34):
Even if they intend for it that way, they showed up and they showed where they had a
wound and that's beautiful.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I thought you knew the same thing, Keith, when she was saying that, I was like, yeah,
I have a really new reframe for gratitude in those situations where, yeah, I have the
(31:59):
opportunity to accept.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And for every one guy like that, there are a thousand people who aren't commenting on
your stuff, who are watching, but aren't commenting, aren't actively interacting with you who are
like, yeah, Mindy, me too.
And I, you know, who are in accord with the things that you put out and appreciate your
(32:23):
vulnerability and stuff.
Yeah.
And like you said, if you're going to do art, which is showing up in any way in your life,
there's going to be people who love it and people who hate it.
There's nothing you can do about that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nothing you can do about it.
And it's just the way of the world.
And if your art isn't being appreciated yet, it just hasn't been seen by the right people.
(32:47):
Yeah.
That's exactly right.
Yeah.
Not only are we creative by nature, we are also filers by nature.
We put things in boxes and that's just a, you know, excuse me, if someone doesn't like
your art, they put you in a box and that's okay, that that's not your box.
(33:09):
Right.
But it's the box is suitable for them to make sense of it.
So.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
That's really, really.
Yeah.
And I love because so.
Last year I started.
Really kind of getting into, into mushrooms and the biggest lesson that I get every time I try them is.
(33:35):
I'm so stiff and this idea of flow.
You know, and everything that I've heard you describe with art is all about that.
You know, it doesn't matter what's there.
It matters what you can create from it, which, you know, being stiff, I'd be like, oh, there's
that red blob I suck.
I'm done.
(33:56):
There's nothing I could do.
That's, that's what it is.
It's just a blob, you know, and then like, I guess that's a projection of the way I see
myself too.
You know, like this is who I am.
I'm just a freaking blob.
There's nothing I can do with it, you know, but getting into that flow state, you know,
and being able to work with what you have and create.
(34:17):
It's not a matter of what's there.
It's a matter of what you can create from what's there.
Like that is amazing.
Yes.
Yes.
And your mind is so powerful.
It sees whatever you tell it to see another really favorite little watercolor sketch that
somebody that I admire has done.
It's three very colorful Victorian houses in a row and it's watercolor and pen and ink.
(34:42):
And someone said to me, why do you like that?
It's so bad.
And I'm looking at it.
There's not one straight line on the whole painting.
There's not one defined wall.
And like, how did I not even notice I just see three houses, you know, you kind of tell
yourself what you see in anything that you give attention to becomes bigger and bigger
and bigger.
(35:03):
And I saw it as these three beautiful little houses with, you know, just beautiful color
and this other person saw something that would not be up to code in very dangerous
stairways and second floors.
A piece of art that breaks all the quotes.
I love that.
This person obviously doesn't own a ruler.
(35:25):
Yeah.
I love that.
Do you have any experience with art?
Have you ever painted or done crafts or gardening?
Like what has art looked like for you in your life?
(35:46):
So this is my last.
It's not my pen cup, but this is my last.
We went to like a paint night.
Where is it?
Here we go.
That's awesome.
And then I didn't know what to do.
So I made a little ninja.
I made a little ninja.
And then the couple of dead ninjas and then a horse that got caught up.
(36:08):
Yeah, but I, you know, it's funny though,
because I did this because I thought this sucked.
So I'm going to do something dumb and make it funny.
So almost like using the humor as a protection against judging myself for it.
Be like, I didn't mean it to be good.
You know, so I just meant it to be dumb.
But I'm going to try again with like the stuff that you've been saying.
(36:32):
Also,
just appreciate about your fact that you are a storyteller because you've got a
whole arc of a story and a finish line and a tragedy and comedy.
It's all there on one mug.
Let's just talk about how brilliant that is.
That's so true.
A whole story.
That would be one of the things again that I would love because I look at that
(36:54):
and I'm like, oh, this is so beautiful.
And I see just creativity down to a horse that got caught up in the mix.
Oh my gosh.
I would pay money for that mug and I'm not blowing sunshine.
I'm, I would.
Well, it is for sale, a thousand dollars.
Okay.
I'm visiting your Etsy shop as soon as we're done here.
(37:17):
But you know what?
It's funny because that's the side of my,
that's the side of my story.
I felt like I became, and me and many have talked about this,
became like a character, like I'm the coaching character.
And in my family, they, they call me, um,
now I'm going to forget.
He was one of those like insult comics back in the day, like that was cool.
(37:41):
Well, Don Rickles.
Yes.
Don Rickles.
Okay.
That's, yeah, that's what my family calls me Rickles because.
I'm a big fan of all the things I said about my family.
I've been through it.
I've been through it.
Like rip everybody apart, but not in a mean way. You know,
just making everybody laugh.
And I, I struggle with bringing that.
Into the business side, almost like my mind.
(38:03):
Kind of dissected and, and this side is for seriousness.
And this side is for play and I want it reversed.
I want to be like a life coach.
that is ever spoken.
Okay, I would pay for that.
But I have a friend who is an artist,
(38:24):
and she is just so silly,
and her art is so serious.
And she wonders why she's struggling with sales.
I'm like, it's because you're not authentic.
I'm like, this is such a big part of who you are,
and it's missing.
I don't see it when I look at your art.
I don't see it when I see your socials.
I think just be authentic, be all of you.
Because we're all so three-dimensional,
(38:49):
and we're all so...
Nobody's black and white about it, right?
We're all so gray.
We are serious, and we're funny.
And I really feel like the more bits of you that put out,
that's more for people to resonate with.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know what I was thinking, Keith, is...
(39:10):
It's almost like you could be the coach,
and you roast people.
I think that roasts are so awesome,
because it's exactly what you're talking about.
It's humor without anybody's ego taking offense, right?
And everybody knows the rules of that art.
And that's very much my inner voice.
Like when I talk to my future self and stuff,
(39:31):
she sort of roasts me all the time, right?
Like to get me going, and I personally like it, right?
But when I explain it to other people, they say,
why are you talking mean to yourself?
And I'm like, oh, no, that's our banter, okay?
We could all do the same thing with your clients, right?
Like find a way to, you know, roast them and make light of,
(39:52):
like, point out where growth is and stuff.
And that would be cool.
I'd go see somebody like that.
I would too.
Maybe have them start with roasting themselves and get that comfort level,
and then with each other.
And I think as long as...
And with improv, Keith, you can also tell me there's,
like I said, that level of trust that if you fall,
(40:13):
the other guy's going to catch you.
So if he says something, you know it's done in love,
always done in love.
I teach a caricature class because it's all done in love,
teaching people how to draw caricatures.
And I give explanations like this.
I'm like, now we're going to draw eyebrows.
I'm an expert.
I draw mine on every day.
I love that.
(40:40):
Yeah.
Because it makes me think.
So in Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning,
he mentioned something and all the things that people take of that book,
this is one of the things that I don't hear too much about.
But he said humor can make an insurmountable issue,
like problem more manageable.
(41:00):
So being able to laugh at the situations we get ourselves in
or just laugh at how you are about to just give up
and just call it a day and be able to laugh at that is so powerful.
Humor is such a beautiful gift that we've been given to live with.
(41:23):
And again, I think that's something that is sort of trained out of us
as we're growing up.
You know, like even like the Bible talks about, you know,
when I was a child, I did childish things, but then I put away childish things.
But I was just thinking about the other day, you know,
at one point Jesus said we need to be like children, come to him as children.
(41:47):
I'm like, I want to be a kid again.
You know, like I want to laugh at the fact that I woke up
and just because I was sleeping, I threw my back out, you know, like
that's a painful but very funny thing, you know, and just have that childlike mentality
plus of seeing the wonder that's all around us.
(42:09):
Like life itself has become white noise in the background of what we have to do next.
Oh, and I think that's what's driving so much of the pain and suffering in our societies.
Yeah, a disconnect from awe and wonder, right?
Yes.
Yeah. So good.
(42:31):
Yeah.
The comedy that I do when I'm not doing improv, my stand up is music.
I am a musician and I write parodies mainly about menopause.
Oh, no, yes.
So hot, hot child in the city is now hot flash in the city.
(42:53):
Don't worry, be happy. Now just list all 34 pain points of menopause.
I love that so much because I don't get on my soapbox a lot about this in our podcast,
but menopause is one of those things.
I'm turning 45 next month, so I'm starting to experience it.
And when I talk to my doctor and other women, I'm like, wait, what's going to happen?
(43:17):
Like this is the thing that happens at 50% of the population and no one's talking about it.
It's a frigging mystery to me.
In this day and age, it's great.
So yeah, people need to be making parodies and joking and talking about menopause
because it's a thing that half of us experience that changes fundamentally
like our feelings and our emotions and our bodies and our identities.
(43:41):
So that's just going to blow your brain.
This is going to blow your brain.
We all experience it except for the, the, the, no, we, the,
I think there are only two pain points that are different for men.
theirs is called andropause.
It's a thing they don't even know because they don't, you know what they call it?
Getting older.
(44:02):
We've got a disease named for it.
Yeah.
And how much I've never heard of that either.
Look it up.
Man, it's a thing.
I've deep dived because us deep dived deep dove.
I went deep because in writing, I actually did research in, in writing some of the stuff
(44:24):
and doing little comedy bits around it.
Oh my gosh, a cure for menopause back in the, in the day, a couple of hundred years ago.
One of them, I won't mention all of them because they're not family friendly golf.
Golf.
Golf.
I don't golf was prescribed.
(44:46):
So bizarre.
Yeah.
So are you doing online and in person?
Yeah, pretty much in person.
Yeah.
Well, Sam, it's hard to do online, I'm sure, because you, you're playing with the audience.
You need some back and forth, right?
It's a dialogue, even though it seems like a one way dialogue, the way that they're laughing
(45:07):
and responding to you as part of how you know where to go.
Yes, absolutely.
That is absolutely the thing.
And I thrive on the, the interaction, even in my classes, sometimes corporate groups
are so used to attending meetings with the camera off and muted.
I'm like, is anyone in there?
Hello.
(45:28):
Like, is this landing?
Are you guys okay?
Does anyone need a hug?
Do you remember the first time that you did stand up?
Yes.
I was quite young and a DJ on the radio back when that was a thing.
Nice.
And it was at a larger nightclub and the opening acts, there was a snowstorm and they weren't
(45:56):
ready yet.
They weren't set up at the time.
So they said, just get up there and just talk.
It's kill time.
Right.
So that was as much improv, I guess, as it was stand up.
But, um, yeah, that was quite funny.
Yeah.
You walk away feeling good about it.
(46:17):
I'm sorry to say that again, Mindy.
Did you walk away feeling good about it?
Always. Yeah. I think because I was a musician as a teenager, I don't really have a stage
rights. That's not really a thing for me.
I don't mind messing up in front of people, which also makes me perfect for improv.
So I don't have much stage fright.
(46:39):
So I'm just happy to stay in front of people and make it a goof of myself.
Yeah.
Yeah, that was going to be my question. Like, do you get like all the nerve?
Cause I feel like if I was going to try something like that, I would have to be wheeled out on a
gurney with medics, like right there.
You know, constantly monitoring my blood pressure and stuff.
But like, how do you deal with those nerves?
(47:03):
They're not even a thing. And I don't know if it's because, um, like if you go to karaoke,
uh, do people love the people who can sing near as much as they love the people that are just out there
wailing and they're horrible? No, those are the people that, you know, we are just naturally supportive
(47:25):
creatures, right? There is an improv exercise, a warm up that we do where everyone stands in a big circle
and a meteor goes, what are you afraid of? What are you afraid of? And people go, the dark spiders,
whatever the thing may be. And as we keep going around, people start saying that my dad never loved me,
that my, you know, things that they're really, that I'll end up in a cardboard box that I will fail the thing.
(47:51):
And at that point is when I start going, I want to go hug that person and, and let them know I have some of the same
fears. That's our connector. And I am not scared of a connector. I think that's why I don't have stage fright,
honestly, because I know that, um, no, people aren't going to let me fall. And, and so if I'm up there messing up is when
(48:15):
people are like, you got this. It's, it's, it's naturally who we are for the most part, you know, trolls aside.
That was like one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.
Yeah, just like feeling the emotion come up in that like that is incredible.
(48:38):
And I think a lot of people don't trust the world and they don't think anybody has their back and they might not even have
their own back. Right. And absolute and those are the trolls.
Yeah, yeah, people are there, it's fitting their fear out. Yeah.
Yeah, but yeah, knowing people have your back and knowing the imperfection and fear are the things that we all share.
(49:08):
Right.
So, right.
So cool. Yeah.
Yeah, that's awesome.
So do you ever do classes for like groups that they contact you like a women's group or this fall or ones then 300.
Oh yeah, I just woke up at, I did a podcast with a wonderful guy in Taiwan a few weeks ago. He's a high school teacher and he contacted me
(49:37):
after the class and he said, would you consider waking up at 3am to teach my high school kids because I really like them to experience what you do.
So, I absolutely did I set an alarm and I got up and I taught six kids in Taiwan.
How does how to do it. Absolutely I will do that I am a yes and person, and the more value I think it will give I work things
(50:06):
totally valuable but when somebody literally reaches out and says, I've got a group. Yeah, I'm there. I am there. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, that's so cool.
Yeah, yeah. It wasn't your whole went with the kids in Taiwan because they were all muted and as they're working all I saw with the tops of their heads.
(50:29):
Drawing and I'm like, oh, is there a language barrier should I talk slower that's really hard for me to do.
And one of the kids turned out their name was Jack because as we were drawing.
The teacher said, that looks like you Jack and so I kept mentioning Jack every now and again like instead of drawing Jack's hair, we'll do it this way and they the kids would all giggle whenever I'd say the word Jack so I kept doing it.
(50:54):
And he wrote to me the next day he said, because they were just so quiet and he couldn't get them to ask me any questions afterwards or anything they were 1415 years old I think and afterwards he wrote to me said they loved you so much, and they were wondering if you
consider coming, you know, getting back online and teaching them again, like, off 14 models it's hard for them to, you know, yeah, talk.
(51:19):
So I've been bragging about that class for a week now and probably will continue for a while. It was unpaid it was in the middle of the night, and it meant so much to me, I have never saying no to those sort of things.
Yeah.
Well, I just find what you do and who you are completely inspiring so thank you so much for coming on the show. You have really inspired me to get to know that part of myself more.
(51:52):
Right and uncover what's going to be known in that creative.
Oh, awesome. Awesome. This has been really inspiring for me to I don't, I don't often feel like I come off as authentic because I am so Dory the fish.
(52:15):
But I feel like this was this was just lovely. It's just lovely talking to both of you. Thank you.
Yeah, I absolutely love who you are. Like you said, like you don't feel like you come off authentic but it's the funny thing is like when I'm when I allow myself to be how I see you, where whatever thought comes in that's what's
(52:39):
coming out like that's when I feel my most true my most authentic self and like Mindy had said I am so inspired because I love I love writing.
Like for me that's that's my artistic accounts, but I have pushed it off for so many years because I'm not as good as this person or that person or, you know, like,
(53:08):
not that I ever want to be that person, you know, I just want to be me but there's things.
Yeah, so this has been one of the most inspiring episodes. Just for who you are, you like I feel lit up with with just light and a fire right now it's so incredible so thank you so much.
(53:31):
Yes, you're welcome and try the art anyway I love writing, but words can be super limiting, right because words mean such tiny little things.
So just try it try the try the way before you came on me and Mindy we're talking about like once we work with clients and we take on that energy and ways to sort of get that out of our system.
(53:54):
And I'm thinking like, I'm about to go out and buy an easel and some paints and if it's like a rough session I'm just going to slap like go Jackson Pollock on there you know, but yeah I mean I wonder if like taking 1015 minutes to paint after a session would just allow us to get that stuff and then ground ourselves back into who we are.
(54:15):
Yes. Yes, wow goosebumps again. You guys are doing such good things. Wow.
Yeah, that's a good idea that's a good tool to use to talk about the charging from session, you know, and life and that's a good idea to yeah just putting it out in art and letting it be.
I love that.
(54:37):
Yeah.
Yeah, maybe you can have us on your classes like, like special speakers, you know special art instructors we have no clue. I can teach people to draw a little ninjas and stuff. Yeah.
Yeah, I think we can collaborate. Let's talk.
Have your people call my people. It'll be my cat. She doesn't take calls. I'll answer.
(55:02):
Oh, thank you so much you guys. It has been a really great morning chatting with you.
So thank you.
I really appreciate it. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much you guys. Let's talk again soon.
Yeah. Bye. Bye.
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