Mantras Don’t Carry Us Through. We Do.

What if your favorite creative mantra is quietly making your work worse?

In this episode, we explore how well-worn phrases like “story is king” and “trust the process” can feel grounding—while subtly eroding responsibility, discernment, and engagement. Drawing inspiration from Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull, we look at how language meant to guide us can become a stand-in for the deeper work it’s meant to represent.

We reflect on how “trust the process” can quietly drift into “the process will fix it,” and why that shift can make even talented, well-intentioned teams more passive over time.

This conversation invites a more grounded approach:

• Turning values into visible habits
• Letting meetings, rhythms, and review practices reveal what we actually prioritize
• Creating space for early questioning instead of last-minute heroics
• Rewarding awareness, not just outcomes

Rather than relying on clever lines to carry us through, we explore what it looks like to live inside the work—testing assumptions, noticing what’s fragile, and staying present with what’s being asked of us in real time.

If you’ve ever pinned a slogan on the wall and hoped it would steady a wobbly project, this episode offers a quieter, more reliable path. One that asks us to look at our calendars, our conversations, and our choices—and notice where the real standards are being set.

Thanks for listening. And as always, remember: the words don’t do the work. We do.

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Chapters

• 0:00 A Quote That Hits Home
• 0:59 Story Is King, Or Is It
• 1:48 When Mantras Become Crutches
• 2:28 The Suitcase And The Handle
• 4:58 Live The Values, Not The Slogan

Transcript

Lisa Hopkins: 0:23

Hey there. So I recently came across something in my morning reading that I really found powerful and I wanted to share with you. The book is called Creativity Inc., and it's about overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration. It's by Ed Katmall, who's co-founder of Pixar Animation. It's um it's a wonderful book, so shout out for that in the first place. But here's the thing that I came across, and it got me thinking. Um, I'm gonna read it in a minute, just this little chapter. But what what he's talking about here is how we sometimes come up with phrases to help us power through mantras, if you want. And well, I'm gonna go ahead and read it, and maybe we can talk about it a little bit after. So he says, Coming out of Toy Story, we thought that story is king and trust the process were core principles that would carry us forward and keep us focused, that the phrases themselves had the power to help us do better work. And it's not just Pixar people who believe this, he says, by the way. Try it yourself. Say to somebody in the creative world that story is king and they will nod their head vigorously. Of course, it just rings true. Everyone knows how important a well-wrought, emotionally affecting storyline is to any movie, or really any creative process, right? He goes on to say, Story is king differentiated us, we thought, not just because we said it, but also because we believed it and acted accordingly. So he goes on to talk about it, right? And how they used it and how they trusted the process, and and and story was king. But parroting the phrase story is king at Pixar, he says, didn't help the inexperienced directors on Toy Story 2 one little bit. He said this guiding principle, while simply stated and easily repeated, it didn't protect them from things going wrong. In fact, he says, it gave them false assurance that things would be okay. He goes on to say that likewise trusted the process was a phrase they used all the time, but the process didn't save Toy Story 2 either. It had morphed into assume that the process will fix things for us. It gave them solace, which they felt they needed, but it also coaxed them into letting down their guard, and in the end, he says, made us passive. Even worse, he goes on, it made us sloppy. So once this became clear to him, he began telling people that the phrase was meaningless. So here's the part that really stuck with me. He says, Imagine an old heavy suitcase whose well-worn handles are hanging by a few threads. The handle is trust the process, or story as king, some pithy statement that seems on the face of it to stand for so much more. But the suitcase represents all that has gone into the formation of the phrase. The experience, the deep wisdom, the truths that emerge from struggle. Too often we grab the handle and without realizing it walk off without the suitcase. What's more, we don't even think about what we've left behind. After all, the handle is so much easier to carry around than the suitcase. Wow. What do you think about that? The idea that we surface level lead from these phrases, hoping that they will lead us through the process, hoping that by saying them, reiterating them, or posting them on the wall for that matter, that it's going to do something. I love, love, love what he says in this about how words like quality and excellence can be misapplied so relentlessly that they border on meaningless. When someone comes up with a phrase that sticks, it becomes a meme. It's so funny he says this, and I've said it a million times to my clients, which is it's about excellence being earned. It's about living in our values and our experience and all those things in that suitcase, isn't it? I leave you with that thought. And I hope that you found this valuable. Shout out to Ed Catmell and his wonderful book, Creativity Inc., for really getting me thinking this morning. I'm Lisa Hopkins. Thanks so much for listening. Stay safe and healthy, everyone, and remember to live in the moment.