From Judgment To Joy: Choose The Voice That Builds You Up! Creativity Part 2

We dig into how judgment blocks creativity and how small shifts in mood and mindset unlock the voice of inspiration. Through stories, reframes, and simple tools, we move from “poke holes” to “try this” and show how to treat mistakes as data, not verdicts.

• replacing snap judgment with curiosity
• training attention to notice possibilities
• raising mood from “I don’t know” to “I can”
• letting go of gurus and comparison on social media
• building internal motivation through practice
• redefining mistakes as lessons that speed learning
• following small nudges in daily life and work
• using simple self-questions to unlock outcomes

Transcript

Frozen Morning, Foggy Minds

SPEAKER_00 0:10

We are on the line.

SPEAKER_03 0:13

And it's cold. Yesterday I made fun of the weather and now it's teaching me a lesson.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:20

Solar vortex comes crashing down. The river is tiny now. It's frozen like overnight. And a minus 30.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Nuts.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

But it's sunny. The sky is clear. The sun is in my eyes. Which is nice.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Yeah. It is.

SPEAKER_03 0:40

And we are struggling.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Yeah, we both woke up with brain fog. I woke up with a headache. I just took Advil to try to get through it. And yeah, we're both like, what are we doing?

SPEAKER_03 0:58

It's just ironic that the topic is uh following following the voice of inspiration.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Right. And I really think, you know, when we get in these moments, it really is about, okay, just let go and follow. And so bear with us today. Bear with us today as we muddle through.

SPEAKER_03 1:21

We appreciate you being here. And with any luck, it'll go well.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

With any inspiration, it'll go well.

Creativity Versus Judgment

SPEAKER_00 1:28

That's right. We'll get hit with light bulbs, little light bulbs going off over our heads.

SPEAKER_03 1:34

So creativity is our general topic.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:39

And mostly we talked yesterday about the enemy of creativity, judgment. And how that's trained into us. How it's a voice that we hear from being very, very young. Voice whose motivation was sometimes loving, sometimes selfish, sometimes very much guiding, wanting to see us succeed, but very much, you know, the voice of control, which is really not the way creativity happens. We talked about our education system not being very good at promoting creativity, in fact, being exceptionally good at numbing it, decreasing it, and making us mostly afraid of it. And although we're going to talk about the voice of inspiration, we're not talking about you know listening to the voices in your head. No, that's not what we're getting at is an openness and a willingness to be inspired. An openness and a willingness to allow ideas to flow. You know, everything we do, everything we talk about is about how to use your mind in a way that makes your life better. We come to understand how the mind is habitual and the mind has programs, and the mind will keep you doing the same thing over and over as long as you're safe. That doesn't mean you're going to thrive. And how do you take that next step with your mind and start to train it? Start releasing the things that held it back so that your mind becomes this incredible resource, this incredible tool that you use to make the most of your life.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:28

That you use to create a thriving life. And I think sometimes we are taught not to trust our own mind. Not to me is that what we're talking about is what point, in what way, at what time, do I allow ideas to come to me and I consider them? And I consider myself capable of coming up with good ideas.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

What what did I ask the chat too? How am I supposed to ask that? So when you have an idea and it comes to you, and maybe it's a creative idea, what is the first thing that you do with that idea? Like how do you feel about it? Or how do you do you do you think it through or do you poo-poo it? Because I think what we do in those moments is very important. And I don't know if there's a right answer to do in those moments, but I think uh many of us when we have a creative idea, we we think, oh, I'm not so sure about that, or will that work, or maybe there's too many steps involved.

Reframing The First Idea Response

SPEAKER_03 4:44

Well, all of those things, I think you you categorize that as judge. Right. If the first thing you do with a new idea is you try to find the problems with it, yeah, that's a program.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:00

Need to recognize that. If the first thing I do when I come up with a new idea is ask myself, you know, why did you think of that? Yeah, what has that got to do with anything? Or that could never work, or you know, you don't even know what that means. You know, these are these are the kinds of responses that shut down that voice of creativity.

unknown 5:26

Right?

SPEAKER_03 5:26

A little one can only be told so many times to be quiet before it just is. Right? A little one can only be criticized so much before they just stop trying to do anything, right? If everything I do is not good enough, if everything I do is a mistake, if everything I do is a problem, if every idea I have has got all kinds of issues with it, then eventually I'm not gonna have it. That part of your mind will respond accordingly, it will shut down.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

Yeah. But it doesn't mean it's gone. That's I think that is an important moment for people when we say you are naturally creative. And they go, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not creative. I can't do art. And it's not all about art. I think people get sucked into that idea. But you are naturally creative, and just by feeding that creativity, that that little voice of creative creativity that can help inspire it again and get you rolling towards. Lots of different ideas. Lots of different ideas. In the chat, it says, I think it through and then see how I can develop it. There you go. I'll hash it out in my mind, and then yes, I poke holes in it. Very normal. Yeah.

Criticism Out, “Try This” In

SPEAKER_03 6:46

Oh, yeah. And and let's echo that. You know, we are. We're judgment machines, right? Everything's good, bad, good, bad, right, wrong, good, bad. It's it's a way in our life. We gotta stop that because it's not helping. And yeah, most of what's going on for all of us is really normal. And it's what we were raised to be. And judging it, judging yourself and being critical is not going to be helpful. In fact, you know, that's that's one of those great lessons to learn, I think. It was taught to me years and years ago, and uh by a psychologist, and I've just embraced it, and I I can't say I live it very well, but I I really embrace the idea is criticism is never helpful. I learned that early on, and I tried to use that in in my teaching career, and you know, I learned as a corollary to that, is the best teacher, the best teacher simply says, try this, right? They observe, they watch your attempts, they watch your efforts, and they say, try this. They don't spend time pointing out what you're doing wrong, they spend time pointing out what would help you, what would make your efforts more successful, and in many respects, that's what that little creative voice is. Try this, you know. I I I in the last year I've really been working on that, and I can tell you absolutely the voice can come alive, the voice can feel listened to, that part of you can become itself, in itself will become inspired to be more present to you.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

What's the feeling that you get? Sorry to interrupt your mind.

Tuning Your Vibe And Mood

SPEAKER_03 8:42

Well, that that's in my notes of the book to talk about. Yeah, I think that there's a there's a vibe, yeah, there's a mood, there's a level of functioning, there is a that's the word I'm looking for. I guess I'll just stick with vibrational value within you at all times that you have the capacity to raise or lower using your mind. I really like and I have used with my clients for a long time the the channeled work of Esther Hicks and Abraham, and and I mostly focus on their vibrational scale. Just the idea that emotions vibrate higher than other emotions, right? At the bottom of the scale, sort of depressed, uh lost, that that kind of feeling like there's no hope at the top of the scale is joy. And there are 22 steps on that scale. Maybe we can post it on our school so you can see it. And I'll take that list of 22 vibrational emotions and I'll just hand it to my client when they come in the door. Uh just say, So, where have you been? Where have you been emotionally? How low have you gone? How high have you gone? If you had to pick an average, what do you think your average was? And it's fun. It's a fun thing because I really think part of the work we do, yeah, when a computer gets rid of a virus, it just works like normal. And you don't say, Oh, isn't that great? You just say, okay, the computer's working again. And I think the same with the mind. When the mind gets rid of negative ideas, it's not that it's oh my god, look at me. It's the mind is just working well again. And so sometimes we don't notice the improvements that we're experiencing. Sometimes we don't notice our own development. And I I really like to use we call it scaling. I like to use scaling hypnosis. So, you know, uh, if your mood was from zero to 10, where would you say you are now? And where would you say you would be in the next five minutes? Because it's amazing how just putting our attention on our mood, again, that observational ability to observe ourselves rather than just be that vibration to observe it and decide you want to make a change to me. Yeah, and I'll have clients just sit in the chair, and you know, as soon as they're in the chair, if they've been there before and the room is, you know, closed and calm and quiet, they've already dropped into a state of hypnosis, they've already dropped into at least an alpha state, and they're very, very internally aware. And I'll just say, you know, try to raise yourself up a couple of steps and see what's involved in that. And it's amazing how we can regulate our mood. So let's just go quickly on a simple contrast, right? Think of the contrast between saying to yourself, I don't know, and that has the tendency to get heavy and take you to I can't know. But pull yourself back up to I don't know. Now pull yourself up a little further to I could know. Pull yourself up a little further to I can figure this out. And notice how that can shift to instead of being focused on your inabilities, you're now more focused on the potential ideas. Well, what's possible? Notice how that lifts you up. Notice how it changes you, and I use this phrase a lot with my clients. Don't worry, we'll figure it out. Sometimes I'll get clients that come in and they're just really, really dark, and I'll just say, you know, I'm committing to work on this with you. I'm here. I'm not going away. We're gonna we're gonna do what it takes. And it's amazing how it changes them.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

I like how most of us feel alone.

unknown 12:47

Yeah.

Moving From “I Don’t Know” To “I Can”

SPEAKER_03 12:47

So that that was just a little example on how just just using your mind, being aware of your vibrational state, you can just with your own thoughts uh lift the way that feels. And it happens fast if you want it to. And so I think for that voice of inspiration to come, there is required an openness, a willingness, and an intention. So I think, you know, if you're trying to hear the voice of inspiration, if you don't feel inspired, right? Step one is to just sort of check your vibe.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:26

Where am I? What am I feeling? What could I do to improve that? How can I lift myself up from frustrated and confused to hopeful? I mean, there's a vast energetic shift from pessimistic to optimist. Pessimistic might seem to hide behind realistic. And if you just measure your past experience and the only experience you're looking at is the negative ones, it's really easy to be pessimistic. And you can say, I can prove this. Here, let me show you all the things that have gone wrong in my life. Right? But it's that old exercise where I ask you to look around your room right now and notice everything that is blue. Count the things that are blue. Take an inventory of all the things that are blue in the room around you, in the space around you. And now I have a question for it. How many things are red? Notice that you only notice the blue things and you didn't notice the red things, and you haven't a clue how many red things there are. Because we see what we're looking for, right? We see what we're looking for. And when we're trying to prove to ourselves that things aren't going well, when we're convinced things aren't going well, when we're convinced I'm not capable of getting out of this mess, I'm not the one to fix this, I'm not creative, I'm not the one that will come up with a good idea, then you will find that. So I think that you know, embracing as step one as your primary reframe when it comes to listening to the voice of inspiration is am I open to inspiration right now? Am I open to that? How do I shift myself to being open to that?

Letting Go Of Gurus And Comparison

SPEAKER_00 15:16

And so, yeah, part of shifting, I I think I think it's about letting go of judgment. That's sort of a first shift. I think about the creative class that I'm that I'm holding tomorrow and in the school and what we're going to be doing. And there's going to be a lot of like letting go of judgment, self-judgment. But also judgment of others. I'll give you an example. Let's think about Instagram, social media in general, really. And let's say that you are a writer or an artist or I don't know, a ceramic artist, or or a creative of any kind. And naturally you might be following others that are like you, creative. Maybe you follow writers, maybe you follow artists, maybe you follow ceramic artists as an example. So there tends to be sometimes, many times, a feeling of they're better than me. And that can creep in and creep in and creep in until you don't do your art. You don't, you, you let go of your creativeness, creative senses. And then when you look at social media, you just feel bad about yourself because you know you're not like them. And so we do this. I don't know, I named it a couple of years ago. I named it letting go of gurus, right? These these people that we think are gurus in their trade. And so we go through little techniques to release as much as possible this idea that they're better than us or or anything that's around them. And again, it's all judgment, right? Judging them is better than us, judging ourselves is worse than them, or you know, all the different levels of that. And just starting to know or feel at least that everybody's just different and everybody's on their path, and everybody is doing their best. And also what you see on social media, we talked a little bit about this on the weekend with Brian on that podcast yesterday. What you see is really not what's going on. I mean, this this person might look like they've got it all together. They're pumping out books or stories or poetry or art or ceramic. I don't know why that one came to me, but and you know, they look like they've got it all together, but nobody has it together. And you won't have it together. Nobody has it together. Yeah, it's the only person that has it together. And uh so to just give yourself grace and and love and support and and that's just part of that phase of uh of letting yeah, letting go of judging yourself.

Internal Motivation And The Guitar Story

Redefining Mistakes As Lessons

SPEAKER_03 18:38

You know, I just want to tack on to what you just said, you know, we we talk about us being creatures of contrast, right? Our perceptions, our contrasts, and that's that idea of comparison, right? We compare ourselves to other, that's Hillary's talking about. And that comparison leads immediately to judgment. But the way out of that is is really about shifting your intention. You know, I I've I've played the guitar for most of my life, and in the beginning, I was curious about it, and I was put into lessons, and I had to practice stuff I didn't care about, and so I quit. And then years later, like two, three years later, this guitar with two strings on it was in my closet, and I was curious about it again, and I took it out, and then I saved up my money and I went and bought myself a set of strings, and I started to play around with it, and then I found out that some friends at school were playing the guitar, and then I was part of a I don't know, a social milieu where people were playing guitars, and my interest in playing the guitar, my curiosity got activated watching others, and then I started to get this desire to be able to be as good as them, to be able to do what they did, and I started to learn from them. That's when I came up with the phrase because I I have since, you know, on many occasions taught guitar to people. But it's like what interests me, and the way I'm gonna get better is by playing with guitar players who are better than me, because I will learn from them, I will watch them and I will learn. My motivations were pretty much always internal. I have performed, I have played in bands, I have been the subway musician, I've done those kind of public things, but the my joy of music was always an internal thing. It was, you know, in my room, the door closed, you know, singing at the top of my lungs and learning new songs constantly. You know, our intentions and our motivation are gonna guide us towards our creativity when we are less focused on external reward, less focused on other people's opinions and interpretations. You know, I still joke with my my family about it because it you know pisses them off, and I like that. Is you know, you know, I remind them how they used to slam my bedroom door and tell me to be quiet. Because they were out there watching TV and I was in my room playing my guitar. And and it's it there's really not a lot of ill-feeling towards that. It's more teasing. But the point is, it was my own interest, my own desire, my own internal motivation to be better, to learn more, that drove drove the whole thing forward. It wasn't a comparison to other guitar players saying, Oh, oh, I'm but they're they're better than me. It was always, well, I can learn. And I think that this is this is a critical human mental state. I can learn. I can learn. It's amazing this stuff we learned. I mean, when you think about it, you know, you're born just a sort of a blob, and you gotta learn everything, right? And now you're the master of language, you're the you're in complete control of this body, you're able to do things other people can't do. Everybody's got things that have interested them and drawn them, and they've gotten, you know, capable at certain things. And all of that is just proof that you can learn, right? And what happens is, you know, I'm I get I'll get bored. I'll be in a situation where there's nothing I'm being compelled to do. And inside me, I hear, I go pick up the guitar. Okay. Or I'll hear, where's my guitar? And that's the voice of inspiration. And I'll go pick up the guitar and I'll noodle around for half an hour. And the thing of it is, is when I engage that kind of thing, you can call it creativity, you can call it expression, you can call it curiosity. These are these are, I think, are very important aspects of who we are. When you hear that voice that says, why don't you just go? Why, why don't I just do this? Why, you know, what about this? When you hear that stuff, the trick is to respond to it and say, okay. Now, I'm not if if you're hearing a voice that's telling you to do something wacky and crazy, you know, like you know, crazy, crazy stuff out there in the world. There's tons of that stuff. And and it's if it's gonna have a negative effect on anybody, including yourself, you'd like that's not the voice of inspiration, right? That's yeah, now you do need to talk to somebody. But the the point is, is most of the time the voice of inspiration is a little suggestion or a little shift of your attention or a little tiny idea. I wonder if I wonder if this might work. And the trick is to treat that little voice like the little three-year-old saying, what's that? And instead of telling that three-year-old to be quiet, you know, say to the three-year-old, I don't know, let's look. Let's say to look. You'll know the voice of inspiration because what it's uh directing you to, what it's encouraging you to, is uh, for the most part, going to be personal for you and generally speaking, harmless. There there won't be a negative result from this. And you just sort of follow it. You know, to finish the guitar story, I I was 21 years old and I had moved up to the UConn to work on drilling rigs, and I worked seven hours or 12 hours a day, seven days a week, which means I had 12 hours a day, seven days a week with nothing to do. I was out on the side of a mountain and I had my guitar, and I really played a lot, like four or five hours, and I got really good. Like if I could hear it, I could play it.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Did you serenade bark bears?

SPEAKER_03 25:08

I sang to bears, I sang to my colleagues, they took me down to town and they put me in a show. That it was it just naturally flowed that people enjoyed it, you know, and and it yeah, the irony of it was we lived in this big long bunkhouse with room after room, and they would come and they'd be in their rooms, and they would open their doors and come down the hall and open my door, and then they could enjoy the music while they were doing their thing too. And it was inspired because I loved it. I loved doing it. I was curious about it. I wanted to figure out how to make the sounds that I heard on the radio that I heard in my favorite recordings. I wanted to learn how to be musical, I suppose. I don't think it was really that intentional. It was always just sort of inspired. Uh, let's try that. And then, you know, it's just a human thing. You know, if you're gonna spend hours and hours on something, you're gonna get really good at it. It's just a human thing. There's nothing special about me. As I tell people when I teach them guitar, I tell them it's about time, right? You're not gonna get any better without the guitar in your hands. So it's about putting in the time. It's about saying, I like it. It's about doing it the way you want it. It's about listening to that little voice that says, Where's the guitar?

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Yeah. And to be open to making mistakes. And I've got written down here, you know, but are they mistakes? Like that's just a word, mistakes mistakes. And I think there's some baggage attached to that. So maybe reframing it as growth opportunities. But during your guitar, you know, playing like that, you had to move through all those, all those in order to to grow.

SPEAKER_03 27:00

Well, there was times I was very frustrated, but that was okay because all frustration means is try something different.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:07

Right? Yeah, like mistake is a whole world of programs.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:14

Right. And one that for many clients is a focus. It's a focus because the program has been installed inside them that making mistakes is bad. And the reframe we we use is really simple.

unknown 27:31

Right.

SPEAKER_03 27:32

If I do something and I do it right, it means I already knew. If I do something and I don't do it right, it means I didn't know. It's not a mistake. It's a lesson. There's really no such thing as mistakes. Okay. And I love this phrase from Dan Noman. I've carried it around a long time. There's no such thing as failure. People just stop trying.

SPEAKER_02 27:55

Yeah.

Following Small Nudges In Daily Life

SPEAKER_03 27:56

There's no such thing as failure. You just keep trying. You just keep doing it. You just keep trying it till you get it. You just keep pushing. You just keep trying new things. You just keep coming at it from a different angle. You just say, you know, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna figure this out. And every attempt that doesn't work out is not a mistake. It's a lesson.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:20

Right. And so really, if if every if everything we do that doesn't work out is a lesson, right? Then the best thing I can do is make tons of mistakes. The best thing I can do is try a million things and have them not work out, because that's how I will learn. And like I said, right, you go back to the beginning and say, I can learn anything. And yeah, you know, there's uh again, uh silly, I've given you all kinds of cliches here, but you know, what one person can do, any person can do.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Right?

SPEAKER_03 28:51

If the human body, human mind is capable of something, then anyone can figure that out.

SPEAKER_00 28:57

It's just about time.

SPEAKER_03 28:59

It's about putting in the time. Some things come naturally, and more importantly, there's some things that you have natural curiosity about, right? If somebody said to me, Les, you're gonna learn how to paint, I'd sort of shrug my shoulders and say, eh, it's not my thing. I probably could. Why couldn't I? Right? Like anybody can learn it, but it's not my thing, so I don't know how to do it, and uh I'm not terribly worried about that, right? Knitting is just not something that draws me, right? But I know people who love it, I know people who love to come up with a problem. How can I make a sweater for a three-armed man? I think they just want to come up with a solution, they want to find the problem that they can try to knit their way around. Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

And I think being open to trying many things is an invite to find your passion, right? Because if you don't try, not that you have to try everything in life, but if that little creative voice says, why don't you try that or do that, or you know, I think it is an invitation to know maybe a passion, a new passion of yours, or a new hobby.

SPEAKER_03 30:16

Yeah, ideas will come. And you'll get more and more of them the more you positively respond to them.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:23

Just like a little kid. Just like a little kid. A little kid will either get told to be quiet or a little kid will be told to uh speak up.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:31

And just those little, little ideas. You know, um you're driving along and some challenge or problem that you've been working on comes to mind. Well, don't push it over. Let it sit there. See what comes.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:50

You get an idea, write it down, or act on it right then and there. You know, you know, uh going to my friend's house, um, it's a potluck, I gotta make something. I don't know what to make. And you're busy doing something else, and all of a sudden you think of something that you hadn't thought of before. You're not even sure where that idea came from or why it came up, but it came up so act on.

Creativity As Problem Solving

SPEAKER_00 31:15

That reminds me that when we went to, just to finish off here, when we went to a friend's house years ago, it was a potluck. And then I had on the stove, I had made a chowder, like a clam chowder kind of seafood chowder. And then I had also a bit of like thai soup. And then maybe I'll mix these together. And it was amazing. People like 10 years later are asking me for the recipe for them. I don't know. I try to give them sort of what I did. In the chat. This happened to me yesterday with a work problem. I've had a great idea to solve a problem. I've I'm calling my colleague today to share. And also, I just wanted to clarify. So in the in the chat as well, just found out some new areas that didn't work. What do you mean by that if you can share a little more? Yeah, I think I think just being open to new things coming your way, new hobbies, new creative senses, new problem solving. And and you know, we talk about guitar and art and create creative writing, and uh, but but part of creativity is problem solving, right? It's uh it's a huge part of it.

SPEAKER_03 32:49

Well, it starts with that question. That question just keeps coming back. And I think it's the question of the age, the question of our time. What do you want? Yeah, what do you want? What is the outcome you want? What do you want to have or do or be?

SPEAKER_00 33:08

And chat in the chat, it was just bringing up that example of not labeling things as mistakes or errors. Yeah. So important.

SPEAKER_03 33:17

Progress. Progress. So many, so many great ideas are just the final one of a series of hundred. Right?

unknown 33:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:28

Wow. Yeah, there's no such thing as failure. People just quit trying.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

Yeah.

Choose The Voice That Builds

SPEAKER_03 33:32

But that little voice that says, I can't, I don't know how. That's not your voice. Recognize that for what it is. It's not your voice. That's not your voice. The voice inside you that says, Oh, look at that. Or what about this? Or have you thought of this? Or notice that. That's the voice.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:54

That's the voice you should be listening to.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

The creative part. All right, everyone. Thank you for hanging out today. And yeah, the little engine that could, he kept saying to himself, I think I can. I think I can. Yeah, exactly. Well, have a wonderful day. And uh thank you for being here. We really appreciate it. And thanks for uh, I think we came around, our brains, the fog lifted, and we were inspired. So thank you, thank you. Have a great day.