Living Your Creative Mission with Shereen Sun

Do you find yourself wanting to prioritize creativity but feeling like you don’t know where to start? How have societal structures and norms impacted your relationship with your wild creative self?

In this episode, Shereen Sun (they/them) joins me to discuss the many reasons we disconnect from our creative selves and how they’re helping others reconnect to their radiant Wildhearts.

Shereen is an artist, author, and acclaimed mentor who specializes in creativity and self-actualization. They have spent their life living on the margins, inviting the creative spirits of others to come out and play. They believe that everyone deserves access to the revolutionary healing power of the arts.

Tune in to hear us discuss...

• Creativity as a wellness practice
• The myth of the wide open space for creativity and making space for play where we can
• The importance of healing our childhood creative wounds
• Shereen’s suggestions for creating a consistent creative practice
• The importance of focusing on the process rather than the end product

Hang out with Shereen...

• Visit Shereen’s Website
• Listen to Wildheart Radio
• Order Radiant Wildheart: A Guide to Awaken Your Inner Artist and Live Your Creative Mission
• Follow Shereen on Instagram

Love Needy? Pretty please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave a rating & review.

Really love Needy? Join the Needy Podcast Inner Circle! Courses, discounts, quarterly Q&As and more for a one-time or monthly donation of any amount. Exclusively for folks who love the Needy podcast. THANK YOU.

You can't stay on your own side if you don't know what your needs are in the first place. Tend is a 12-week season where you'll learn to notice and name your needs, build unshakeable trust that they're legitimate, and stay by your own side, even when everything in you wants to self-abandon. 

Spring cohort starts March 27, doors close March 20—join me at maraglatz

Transcript

1:20

Music. Mara Glatzel, and you are listening to The Needy Podcast. Here at Needy, we are devoted to sharing, frank conversations and true stories about what it means to meet your needs consistently, messily, and sustainably. Needy is a listener-funded podcast. Your contributions enable us to continue bringing you the delicious conversations you adore without advertisement or interruption. To become a member of the Needy Inner Circle and to get information about today's episode, dance on over to theneedypodcast.com. Now, on to today's show. Music. Hey there, welcome back to the Needy Podcast. I am your host, Mara Glatzel, and I am super excited to be joined today by Shireen Sun. Shireen is an artist, author, and acclaimed mentor who specializes in creativity and self-actualization. They have spent their life living on the margins, inviting the creative spirits of others to come out and play. Shireen teaches people how to express themselves with confidence and authenticity, and they help people live their creative missions by guiding them to build thriving platforms that are as impactful as they are unique. As an art educator since they were 18 years old, Shireen's love for creativity and desire to help the most marginalized youth led them to earn a master's in urban education with advanced specializations in visual arts. Their passion for awakening the creative spirit of others, or what they like to call, remembering their creative mission, led them to become an art teacher in inner city schools and paint murals with communities all around the world. After quitting their job as a teacher to start a nonprofit, Shireen realized that they still weren't living their own creative mission. While they loved the impact they could have on their students, they knew that their creative mission was bigger than that. Called by a desire to engage in their own creative work, they started Radiant Wildheart in 2016. It was then that they discovered that community building actually was their creative work. By helping people to identify their passions and create a life around them, they soon found themselves immersed in community with thousands of people with more joining every day. Their global following of loyal creatives whom they call wild hearts are longing to make a positive and creative impact on the world. They believe that everyone deserves access to the revolutionary healing power of the arts. All right, welcome to the Needy Podcast, Shireen. I am so excited to have you here And... Talk about one of my favorite topics, which is meeting your need for creativity. So important as we all know, and also many of us struggle with. So we're gonna dive into all of that with you today. But before we get too far, can you tell us a little bit about what you do and why you do it? I'm so glad to be here, Mara. This is my favorite topic, too. I love talking about creativity. And speaking of what I do and why I do it, I am a creative guide. I've been an art educator for many, many years for my entire adult life. And I've worked with kids. I've worked with adults. I've worked with all sorts of different marginalized communities, bringing them access to creativity and helping people use creativity to heal themselves and to make the world a more colorful, inclusive, beautiful place. So I do that because it's the medicine that I've always needed. This is how I've been healing myself my entire life and finding my people and my community and using my creativity to self-actualize, which is what I also help other people do. So I think creativity is the panacea for everything and there's so many benefits to it. So I like to make it accessible so everybody sees that they belong in the creative space. Yeah, something that I love about your approach is that you talk about creativity as an approach and something that is not just an act, but also something that you can weave into. Everything you do, it seems, right? Which so feels so important. And I think we don't talk enough about I'm wondering if before we dive into how you meet your needs, if you can talk a little bit about, what creativity looks like for you right now. Yes, so important. I definitely love to start here because I know many people, maybe even most people, when they see the word creative or they see the word artist, they immediately disqualify themselves and say, that's not me, I'm not creative. And I used to say that too many, many moons ago when I was feeling self-conscious about my ability to be an artist. Because I know for me, I always loved the arts, I admired the arts, but I had all sorts of inner critics that made me feel like I couldn't do what other people can do. And I wasn't naturally born talented or gifted like that. I think most people, when they think of the arts, they think of the visual arts. So drawing and painting for the most part, as well as there's other traditional art forms, is what I call them. Drawing, painting, dance, music, writing, singing. These are what people typically think of as creative activities. However, as you mentioned, for me, creativity is a verb and it's a lens that you can look through to view anything in your life. I believe that every single day, we're always making choices that can allow us to be a little more creatively expressed or bring us a little bit closer to who we truly are. So, when you look at it that way. The way you parent your kids, the way you dress yourself in the morning, the food that you eat, how you spend your time, the choices you make in your business if you have one or in your workplace. These are all opportunities that we can all be a little more creative. So, well, for me, I do do many of those different mediums. I always am exploring a different medium. Right now, what I am exploring is music. I've been exploring that for a little and exploring DJing, exploring singing. These are not things that come easy to me, but things that just feel fun are like things that I've always been curious about. So that's been a big way that I've met my creative needs is like putting myself in different classes or lessons of things that I want to explore. And over time I've started to see as I've explored all these different mediums and the non-traditional mediums too, that creativity is really a state of being. And it's your ability to get out of your head and into flow. And you can do that in all sorts of different ways. So you're talking to a room full of, a virtual room full of humans who struggle with perfection. Struggle with control, struggle with not being great at things the first time that they try them. I very much consider myself amongst this crowd. And for my own creative journey, such a process has been getting over, being. Not even bad at it, just however I am, trying something new and then being however I am at it. And you have this idea where I signed up for this pottery class and I was just positive. By the end of the seven-week class, I was going to be making these beautiful mugs. And by the end of the seven-week class, I was still trying to center my clay, really just making things that were then and destroyed is starting again. And just that humbling process of being with yourself as a beginner, as a curious person. And so is that something that you have dealt with? What do you do if you feel that way? Yeah, I've dealt with that so much. I think that that is the, really what it comes down to is facing yourself and facing our fears and facing our insecurities. For me, it has always come up when I see a blank canvas or a blank page and anything could happen, including quote unquote failure, feeling like a failure. And I am totally a recovering perfectionist as well. I think a lot of us who have some creative resistance probably are because that's what keeps us from showing up to the practice of our creativity. There's definitely been books I think about, making bad art, just letting yourself make, quote unquote, shitty art, I think was the word. I don't know if I can curse you. Yeah, yeah. Okay, perfect. Yeah, so I've experienced that a lot. I love that. I love the anecdote that you shared about being in the ceramics studio and making pieces that just eventually ended up getting tossed back into the clay bin, which I've definitely had that experience as well. And there's something really beautiful about being able to make something that's just for yourself. That's just for the moment and what you feel like when you're creating it and doesn't have have to be seen by anyone, doesn't have to be shared with anyone. You're simply doing it just because the inherent process of being in your creativity is therapeutic and is healing and feels good if you can let it, if you can learn how to navigate what I call your inner over protectors. So the perfectionist is one of several inner over protectors that I outline in my book. So our inner over protectors are trying to keep us safe. They're trying to help us. they're cute, they mean no harm, but they don't need to necessarily be in the driver's seat. And when they are, your creativity is not gonna feel very fun. And when it doesn't feel fun, it's kind of doing the opposite of what it's supposed to do. Because if you're thinking about whether other people will like it, then you're basically thinking about other people the whole time instead of focusing on yourself, what's coming up for you. There's so much medicine available in your creative practice but if you're so focused on what everybody else is thinking about what you're doing, and you're editing yourself and judging yourself, then you're not gonna be able to access those benefits. But it's all a practice. The more you show up for the practice, the more like hopefully by the end of those seven weeks, you just got used to the fact that you're still learning how to work with clay, and that's a beautiful place to be. And all the artists that we love and admire, we're not seeing the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours it took to get to that finished piece that looks so easy to make. So we all get to show up for the practice and eventually as you continue to practice, just like with your yoga, with your meditation, it becomes second nature over time. Yeah i think for myself there's so much medicine and not being so precious about everything and. I don't know we live in such a world where we're surrounded by other people's creations their final products and so we don't necessarily have access to what all of their many many drafts looked like and you feel maybe hypersensitive about yourself. Or what does it mean, or get that preciousness. I found at the end of those seven weeks, so much freedom in just laughing, in fucking something up and laughing and also just not being, the pressure to not be good at everything. You know, I think that we so often are encouraged to pursue things that we're quote-unquote good at. I see this even in my kids. I have a four-year-old and a seven-year-old and, you know, people will ask, well, what are they good at? And want to push them already at such a young age in that direction. And so I imagine in your work, there's a lot of inner child healing that's happening because we start these messages so early. 1,000%. So many of our creative wounds come from childhood. I believe that we all have an inner child artist that just wants people to, wants to be seen and wants to be loved and appreciated for our creations. I actually came to this work as an elementary school art teacher. So for many years I was in schools working with kids K through, mostly K through five, although I did do all the way up to high school at various points. But K through five was really interesting place to be because kids come into school so wild and free and expressed. And then over time, you start to see developmentally that those inner critics start to come in. We care a little more what people think about us. We're judging ourselves. We're We're really sensitive about whether people will like our work or not. And I would see some pretty extreme meltdowns in the art classroom. Along with really beautiful moments in the art classroom or the feeling of creating a sanctuary for kids to come and try to explore new things and play with mediums. But what I found is that those creative wounds that happen when we're little, I certainly have them. I can remember exactly the moments when I was younger And I felt that fracture in my creativity and that little wound from a comment, from a teacher, something that happened or something another kid said. A lot of times we don't heal these things and we just move on and pretend like it wasn't that big a deal. But then for the rest of our lives, we're telling ourselves a story that we can't sing, or that we can't draw, which is not even necessarily true. We just haven't let ourselves do it because we feel like we're not good at it. But a lot of times those feelings came from internalizing something someone else said, maybe it was a parent, maybe it was a teacher, maybe it was a peer. Our creativity is very fragile and I think there's oftentimes many people as we're growing up don't really know how to hold that. I know that was the case for me. I was super creative, but I didn't have people around who knew what to do with that. So that for me led to having a lot of struggles when I was young and I was a D and F student because nobody really knew to put me in the art classroom or to help me expand on those gifts that I had. So I definitely think there's like a, I heard it from you, I hear all the time that people are just drawn to creativity. I think it's what makes us human. The only thing that AI can't replicate is this soul and spirit that comes from our creativity. And I know as I was studying arts education that the programs or the schools that have better arts programs have better performance in every single discipline. They have kids actually showing up to school more often. It really just helps everything because I feel like it connects us to what is human about us and that there's something so special about that. So if you're drawn to it and you've been drawn to it and that longing hasn't gone away, I would encourage you to just put yourself in an environment where you can find the fun in it. So you mentioned not being so precious. I think if you can focus on having fun and how you're feeling when you're creating, the result of that is gonna be creating something that you actually like, I think. Yeah, I have my youngest daughter loves to create things and then rip them up into little pieces. That's like a part of her creative process. And I have really been enjoying that as a practice myself myself because it's so it's so counteracts that outcome oriented. Behavior and you know, I mean creativity is a part of my work as as of course creativity is a part of your work We both just released books Just that when your creativity is also part of your daily gig. Some of that can seep in for I don't know and burnout. I mean, I I definitely feel burnout every once in a while when my creativity gets too focused on how I'm using it in my business or what it looks like and so I love that you know creating something and just ripping it up even if I really like it can be kind of a fun process that the enjoyment that was in there is not doesn't have anything to do with the outcome or the you know how it looked at the end. Do you How do you get burnt out? Oh my God, yes. Yes. I have the same issue and I've been working on this a lot more lately. I'm like, with the launch of this book, I've entered a new era of approaching my work from a more like lunar oriented place where it's not grind culture, it's not hustle. I've definitely been on my journey. Even in my business, I've been on a journey of falling away from even teaching creativity and then coming back to it and my own process of like, no one's going to value this, this isn't worthy, people want to learn how to make money and how to like achieve their goals. And yeah, so I've definitely gone on my own journey around creativity, even though it's been my thing since forever. I have fallen into the patterns and the wounds of capitalism also, which is something that I've navigated a lot. I grew up with messages that pursuing my creativity as a career was unsafe, that I would be a quote-unquote starving artist, that it wasn't a real thing, wasn't a respectable thing, was pipe dream. And capitalism tells us that our success or our value is based on how much money we're creating. So I think for me, there have been times where I've gotten lost in the sauce, so to speak, in a way from why I show up to my creativity in the first place, which you've mentioned so many beautiful ways that creativity is so healing. And that's always why i continue to show up for it because it is how i get to know myself and it's how i digest the world and it's just so healing and magical for me. But when i do for example you talk about we're both entrepreneurs so. My business is highly creative and I've made a whole career around sharing how creative it is to be an entrepreneur, but at the same time, there's something to be said for just, for example, making something that no one's ever going to see, making something that you're just going to rip up because the purpose of making it wasn't to put a price tag on it or to sell it at a gallery, but it was to Do some therapeutic work some healing work on yourself to just. Get in the present moment i think our creativity can be a wellness practice i've studied the expressive arts which is all about the process instead of the product and. When you're working in an expressive arts kinda way. You're not thinking about the finished product at all and it's all about intuitively creating something in the moment. It doesn't matter what it looks like, doesn't matter, none of that matters. And really, it's just about letting what's in your subconscious out. And then you can kind of assess it later. But I love approaches like that, especially when you're first getting started and you're first working this muscle of like getting out of your head and out of your analytical mind with your creativity. I think for a lot of people listening, especially those recovering perfectionists, just give yourself the opportunity to sit with some materials and explore and have fun and get curious and let yourself off the hook of trying to be good or perfect or make something that's marketable and just give yourself some time to just be and the result of that will be that you're more connected to yourself that you're more clear about who you are and that's gonna do good things for everything that you're doing but it doesn't have to be the goal so that's That's why I say, if you can just focus on how you're feeling in the moment, focus on having fun, you're going to make something a lot better than if you were focusing on creating something that everybody's going to like. I'm curious about how you work with people who might be burnt out in this moment and. Just in that place of like telling themselves those stories. There's no time, there's no space. I have to like work my way to a place where there's time and space, you know, caught in that cycle of not being able to access what they need. But needing it, needing it. How do you work with that? Because I think it can be so calcified in there. Totally. So the first thing I'll say is that it can take five minutes. I actually have a creativity calendar that you can download. I've got to find the link for it somewhere. But in it, there's prompts for every single day, a five minute creative thing that you could do, whether it's like turning on your favorite song from childhood and belting it out, or just simple things that you could do, weave in throughout your day to move the energy around. I totally understand feeling like you got to get all these other things done before you can even begin to think about making the time for this. But I would invite you to consider what is it costing you to be burned out and depleted and disconnected from yourself and probably not very present in the things that you're doing because you've got a million things to do when you've got a lot of pressure on yourself. How might that be impacting you in all other areas of your life? And it doesn't have to be that way because we only have one life and taking some time for yourself and studies back this up all over the place, but if you take some time for yourself, for your wellness, for your mental health, for your creative expression, for the things that just make you feel you have a full cup again. It's gonna make everything else flow so much better if you're gonna be better at every single thing that you do whether you're an entrepreneur or a parent or a colleague or a friend or a partner if you are giving from. A cup that's full and not depleted everything's gonna become so much easier so much better so much more in flow. It's not gonna feel like uphill battle So I would say that this comes first because it's your energy that you're giving from in all these different areas But if you're burned out burning the candle at both ends, that's not actually really helping anybody, especially not yourself, so I would say, start with five minutes or, Put yourself in a class or something that has some accountability. Maybe get an accountability buddy maybe carve out some time in the morning for a morning practice. Find little ways to make it accessible. One thing that I do that has helped is create a little space in my house where my art supplies are always out, and where it's just easy and accessible for me to do that. And I totally understand because I have always had the biggest pain point for me is that I just wanna have a consistent creative practice and I always fall off the wagon or I get so busy or work takes over and I tell myself that this is not as important as other things, as capitalism or making money or whatever. And I think that that's like 90% of the creative battle. That we're in for our creative warrior selves, which is figuring out how you can create a system for yourself that works for you, so you can access this energy and share it also with the people in your lives because everybody needs this. Yeah, I always I tell myself the story that it's going to feel so much better if I'm creating in a space with like a blank calendar or wide open hours of time. And this is not just meeting my creative needs. This story shows up for me meeting all of my needs, like, oh, I'll just grind, grind, grind, grind, and then get to a wide open space, which it will just feel infinitely better. And of course we know that wide open space is never coming. If you're listening to this and you don't already know, I hate to break it to you, the wide open space is not coming. And- I felt that. I know. It's hard because it's so seductive. You know, you're like, oh, it's gonna feel so good. Nothing but time to create. But I love the idea of meeting yourself in five minutes and doing something creative, finding different ways for it to be creative. I find that in working with people and their needs, meeting the need for play is very challenging. And it's challenging for me. You know, I like to joke that my inner child is like wearing a mock trial outfit. Like she's very, she needs to connect with her inner child. because that's the kind of kid I was. And it is true that even as a kid, I needed spaces to be more creative and more open. And so I like that you talk about it being a practice because I think that alleviates those feelings of this is a little challenging. This is a little, feels uncomfortable, feels weird, feels like I should be doing something else that's more productive, but that there are so many benefits to it. So I was just gonna say, can you tell us a little bit about your journey, coming to this place where you were able to prioritize your need for creativity to help other people do that? Like, what was that? What did you have to reclaim and navigate through that? Yeah, so this has been a lifelong journey. I'm very much still on it. So I like to debunk the myth that just because I wrote a book about creativity does not mean that I have it all figured out by any means. In fact, this book and probably your book and all the books on your bookshelf are actually about how the person writing it went through a whole bunch of hard stuff trying to get to this other side. So... There's that. I'm very much still in this process. So, starting my journey, I became a school teacher because I was feeling some pressure to figure out some kind of sustainable, traditional thing to make my parents happy. A lot of my journey has been trying to get my parents' approval, which side note did not work because at the end of the day, I'm still very queer. And they're not into that. Did you receive that? No, I did not. And that's okay. But yeah, so I started out being a teacher. That was one of the few things that I felt like I wanted to do because of my own experiences in the education system. That was great. Being an arts educator is definitely the foundation for everything that I do. At the same time, it still wasn't quite feeling right. And I kept getting these intuitive nudges that I wanted more creative freedom. I at that time wanted to do community-based artworks. So I had a whole praxis of community-based artworks where, I started a non-profit and I would go into communities and we would paint murals together. And beautify their space. And I had a whole conceptual background behind why I was doing that. That was awesome. However, it was very much not paying the bills. Neither was being an art teacher to be honest, because I was piecing together lots of part-time jobs. So at that time was when I started my business. And I started my business teaching about creativity, and it was successful pretty quickly. I'd like to think because of my background as an artist, because of my ability to express myself clearly, that translated really well to having a business. Next thing you know i'm twenty five years old in the business is kinda taking off without me i'm for the first time making money and didn't really know what to do with it and. From there as i continue to grow my business i had also worked with lots of quote unquote business mentors who are guiding me to like teach. More about how i was growing my business teach more about how i was scaling things teach more about how i was activating projects which is something i've always been good at doing like i can be in my left brain if i need to. I'm very much able to like think my way through things but that's not actually the medicine that i need the last three short. Business had grown lots of beautiful things came from that help lots of people but. Recently maybe a year or a year and a half ago i started realizing i had basically. Fallen away from creativity i was teaching other entrepreneurs how to be in business and i was bringing a creative lens to it and i had. Scaled my business i had employees things were complicated there was also this managing things it was just like. Really not who I have always been. Who I've always been has been in the classroom, on the ground, in communities, in different organizations where, or places where people are in need. And I found myself like becoming a manager of all of these people and of this business and all these programs and all the social media that I needed to do and all the marketing and just like all sorts of things that was not what I wanted, which was to be in my creative practice. So recently I had a little like burning it all down moment in my business where I closed all the programs, let go of all the team, stop. My program that I've been running for seven years released my book, which is all about creativity. Shout out to my publisher who, I gave them a proposal about business and they accepted the proposal, and then they said, now go write it again about creativity because we don't want a business book from you. And I was like, oh, okay, great. So I've been in what I call reclaiming my sparkle. I do feel like capitalism got the best of me there for a second, and again, my quest to scale to prove to myself and to my parents that I could make money as an artist took me away from what I really wanted to be doing. I think, for me, I recognize that a lot of my journey has been resistance because, like we talked about in the beginning, to sit at that blank canvas, to face my creativity, to face my emotions is all scary. And it's kind of easier to live from your head and to be in the strategic all the time. So yeah, I've been reclaiming my sparkle, reclaiming my roots as an arts activist. And I guess what I wanna say to everybody is if you're feeling that misalignment, that a lot of times it's a reclaiming. It's a reclaiming of who you've always been, that thing that's always been pouring out of you. Like so many people I talk to who used to be singers and musicians and have all these passions that they haven't touched in all these years because we tell ourselves that it's not important. But then at the same time, we're constantly feeling this longing that's taking up so much of our capacity. So that's been a little bit of my journey of trusting myself and recognizing that my creative gifts are valuable and are needed. And I hope that everybody else can see that too, because when we're all in our creative magic, I think the world is just gonna be so much more sparkly and better for all of us. Thank you so much for sharing that. I am certain that it resonates with a lot of people who are listening. And I'm curious about reclaiming your sparkle. What else is in, like, are other needs involved in that? What does it look like for you to take care of yourself on a daily basis these days? I love this question. Yeah, reclaiming my sparkle has been a lot about, meeting my needs and getting myself back to the place where I have felt the most inspired, the most vibrant, what I found in all of this hustle and grind culture was that for the first time, I stopped feeling inspired. And that was a very jarring experience for me because I was not used to that. And so I had to get myself back to the place where I felt the most me, the most on purpose. I did a lot of inner child healing. So in fact, more specifically, I did inner teenager healing. So I took myself back to my teenage years and Teenage Me, which involved also like reconnecting to my punk rock self, and just... Reconnecting to that person was who wasn't so jaded who was an idealist who. Who believed in what she believed in with so much. So much passion so that was part of it and big part for me of meeting my needs has been connecting with my community so i've been putting a lot more attention into my friendships. Actually along with that a big one for me has been asking for help and asking for help specifically for my friends because I noticed that. I need quite a bit of support and I in the past have been used to getting that from a romantic relationship which has kept me in romantic relationships that haven't necessarily been good for me so lately a big part of that has been. Diversifying where i get support from and asking friends for example pretty soon here i'm going on a little. Prime tour to a few different cities and i started asking people who are acquaintances and colleagues who are really awesome that i wanted to connect with more. I could stay at their house which is something i would never do in the past because i wouldn't want to put people out or you know just had a bunch of. Weird stuff around asking people for help like that, but it's been awesome because I've gotten to connect with people who I otherwise maybe wouldn't have and just like feel a new type of way to be supported in the world that's not so, transactional, which has been beautiful. So I think that's been another healing thing for me is especially being in the business world. For so long and being so immersed and kind of making that my whole identity for so many years to pull back from relationships that just feel transactional. And feel supported by lots of different people and by having an actual community. That's been very important for reclaiming my sparkle, especially because of the dynamics with my family of origin and just coming to terms with some of those needs that have never been met by them and cultivating chosen family instead. To think what else that's been a big one for me and along with that all of this has been making space for me to... Be my authentic self and be in my creative self and make the art that i'm here to make so. That has been walking away from certain relationships that maybe worked on some level but at the end of the day, where and allowing me to have the space that i needed to do this healing work on myself, creating a lot of space for myself, like just recognizing that I'm someone that needs a lot of space to be in my creative process, to think about things. I need time before I make decisions. So just honoring how I best operate. I also got a puppy, so that has been helpful. I have an emotional support animal also. So these are all some of the things that have helped me reclaim my sparkle. I'm still exploring what else is there. Inner child work has definitely been huge, having more fun. Yeah, stepping off of the capitalism hamster wheel. I got to recommend it to everybody also. Yeah, before we got on over the last couple of days, I've been reading your book, which I do want to talk about in just a second. We've alluded to it, but in the book, there is a quiz. And I think like the first question is like, if you, everyone else has 24 hours, you have 26 hours in a day, how will you spend it? And there was one question, which is sort of just like doing whatever the fuck I want, because I'm already kind of organized enough. Like who knows? Which called me immediately. And the idea, something that's helping me reclaim my sparkle post book launch, is just having blank space. And just having, and filling it with whatever I want to fill it with in that moment, you know, not anticipating my own needs or presuming that I'll know what I need or presuming that, you know, I don't know, I just, I often schedule, I have kids and whenever it's busy, so I often schedule myself pretty tight, but that kind of space, I hear that in what you're saying too, to just see what it is. Having blank space is so medicinal for me and that was one that I started implementing early on, is literally putting it in my calendar just like flexible time where I can do whatever I need to do do whatever I want to do and not feel like I'm so over-scheduled. So that's a big one for me. I love it. So let's talk about your book before we, we only have but a few more moments with you. You wrote a book and it will help everybody who's listening to this thinking like, I want to do this, but I don't know how. You wrote a book for that. Tell us about it. Yeah, so I wrote a book. It's called Radiant Wild Heart, How to Awaken Your Inner Artist and Live Your Creative Mission. And it is a step-by-step guide for those of you who want to feel more self-expressed, live your truth, find your creative expression, be yourself, heal yourself, all the things that we've been talking about today. And I'm gonna walk you through how to find ways to make your creativity more accessible. I've got, there's a quiz in there, so there is a personality archetyping system to help you figure out what is your best approach to opening up to your creativity. I also talk about your creative mission, which is where I like to say where your creativity and your impact intersect. So I believe that we all came onto this planet with a creative mission, and for many of us, our life's work is to figure out what that is. So towards the end of the book, the beginning of the book is all about helping you discover yourself, figure out what your creative practices are, become more consistent in it. And then towards the end, it's about taking it out into the world, building your community, stepping into more leadership in a way that feels very true to who you are, and ultimately to build a whole life around your truth and make sure that every area of your life is in support and in alignment with being who you are authentically and expressing yourself how you want to. Yeah, somewhere in the book, you talk about how the answers that you're looking for can be found in your imagination, which felt so true. And also, I could hear many people coming forward to say. I don't have imagination. I don't know what lies in my imagination. That is a very also a very scary concept. And so what I love about your book is that it provides a flexible structure for something that can be really overwhelming, an exploration that can feel it's really a lovely guide. And I highly recommend everyone checking it out. It's also beautiful, which is just nice for your creative spirit to gobble up while you're doing the work. Yes, it has lots of colors and illustrations. And it's definitely a special book. And it's very neurodivergent friendly, everything down to like the way the paper feels and how big the font is and everything. And you don't have to read it in a linear order. So it does, I love how you called it a flexible structure. I think that describes it perfectly. It is a step-by-step guide, but it can also be used in so many different ways. So I do think that if you're someone who wants to reconnect with your imagination and your play, this is a great place to start. Awesome. So Shireen, before we let you go, two things. The first is where can we find you? Where do you like to hang out? So I am everywhere with the handle at Radiant Wildheart. So you can find me on Instagram at Radiant Wildheart, TikTok at Radiant Wildheart, Facebook Shereen Sun, but there is a Radiant Wildheart Facebook as well. My podcast, which is just getting started, is called Wildheart Radio. And then there's the book, which you can find everywhere pretty much. Awesome. And the last thing is, if you could leave us with one creative prompt that listeners could do in the next five minutes to reconnect with their creative self. I would say, I want you to go get some utensils like markers or crayons or color pencils or pens or whatever. I want you to set a timer for five minutes. I want you to draw your relationship to your creativity, knowing that it does not matter what it looks like, does not have to be good, no one is ever going to see this, set a timer. You only have five minutes, which doesn't give you a lot of time to critique yourself in the moment, and draw your relationship to your creativity. Just go, let it be intuitive. And once the five minutes are up, you can take a step back and look at what you created and analyze it how you need to. But for that five minutes, I want you to, without overthinking it, draw your relationship to your creativity and see what comes up. That's so fun. I'm going to do that right now. Thank you. Okay. And then send it to me. Okay. I will. You don't have to, but nobody has to see this. However, I do enjoy seeing people's art. So, if you feel like sharing it, you're welcome to send it to me. Awesome. Thank you so much, Shireen. This has been great. Thanks for hanging out with us. Music. Thanks for listening to the NeNe Podcast with Mara Glatzel. If you want my support in learning how to nourish your needs, dance on over to thenenepodcast.com to take my quiz to figure, out what you need right now and how to meet those needs with a greater sense of ease and confidence. If you loved today's show, please leave us a review on iTunes and consider joining the Needy Inner Circle, where your monthly contribution enables us to continue bringing you the delicious conversations you adore without advertisement or interruption. To become a member of the Needy Inner Circle and gain access to the inspiring behind-the-scenes treats we've whipped up for you, skip to theneedypodcast.com. And, as always, permission loves company, so if there's a human in your life that you think would benefit from this conversation. I would be so grateful if you would share it with them. Music.