90. How to Radically Transform the World

"You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world, and you have to do it all the time." 
- Angela Davis

I have four ideas of things that would make the most sense for all of us to stop doing. And four things that would make sense for all of us to add. 

And here's what's really special about these is that we can heal and move in these directions. As a community, as women working together, these things become so much more powerful and so much more possible. It's essential we know that we are not alone in our struggles, that many women face the same kinds of struggles day after day. And there are women who can inspire us, to help us move towards more passion, certainly more focus on our purpose and allowing ourselves to be more present in each and every moment so we can gain the most from our lives. 

Cut: hating our bodies, drinking alcohol (to excess or at all!), overly focusing on others for our self opinion, and neglecting our creativity.

Add: present moment awareness, honoring out creativity, knowing our values and what to do when we have conflicting values, and learning to use gratitude.

Transcript

This quote from Angela Davis sums it up. "You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world, and you have to do it all the time." This episode is all about taking the actions that are effective and will move you forward, and letting go of those actions that hold you back and stop your creativity. 

Welcome to the Modern Creative Woman podcast, and this is for women like you who want to elevate their creativity and start applying creative thinking in their everyday life. I'm your hostess and creativity expert, @DrAmyBackos. There are conversations and creative insights. I'll provide simple, science backed tricks and proven creative practices that will help take the mystery out of the creative process so that you can start each day feeling empowered, creative, and ready to take on whatever comes your way. Let's get started. 

As a psychologist and an art therapist, I noticed there are real struggles that women are facing when they try to make change. And so much of the change we go for is about stopping doing something or adding something new. Stop sleeping in and start going to the gym. And it involves this real push and pull. And I want to give you some of the ways that you can engage in this push and pull in a meaningful way. I have four ideas of things that would make the most sense for all of us to stop doing. And for things that would make sense for all of us to add. And here's what's really special about these is that we can heal and move in these directions. As a community, as women working together, these things become so much more powerful and so much more possible. It's essential we know that we are not alone in our struggles, that many women face the same kinds of struggles day after day. And there are women who can inspire us, to help us move towards more passion, certainly more focus on our purpose and allowing ourselves to be more present in each and every moment so we can gain the most from our lives. Here are four things that it's time to stop. Time to let go of. And I'm not going to say that these are like easy things per se. They are, however, possible. And if you want to make a significant change in the world and like Angela Davis, move in a direction where you can see social change and you can keep going in that direction. Acting in the ways that give you evidence that you can make a change in the world. Here are four things that I think are just worth your while to let go of. The first one is hating your body. And the amount of psychic energy. And by that I mean psychological brain process and physical energy that it takes to hate your body is tremendous. It's exhausting, and it keeps us away from our true vision and our true purpose in life. And there are zero women on the planet who on their deathbed said, boy, I wish I would have hated my body more. No one says that. They say, I wish I would have put on my bathing suit and played with my kids. It's not about our bodies, right? Because there are people with all different shaped bodies who love their bodies, and there are people with all different shaped bodies who hate their bodies. And hating our bodies comes from this external societal pressure. What we see, how we're influenced and how we interpret what we're seeing. It is worth your while. If you struggle in this area to work with a psychologist, an art therapist, a coach doing art, moving your body and learning to love what it's fully capable of. These thoughts of hating our body are are not ours. They are not moving us forward. They are rather these ways that keep us distracted from living a vibrant life. And you can do what it takes to stop that one action and shift away from engaging in behaviors that keep you out of your life and out of changing the world. We can't take radical action and improve our circumstances and the circumstances of our communities. If we're being distracted by hating our bodies. There are resources available to you and many, many examples of women who overcame these negative thoughts and the patterns of thinking. I want to encourage you to do the work that you need to do, to let those thoughts not dictate how you take action. The second thing I want you to consider letting go of is a particularly powerful, socially supported avoidance strategy. And can you guess it's actually found in most places you're able to engage with it. In many situations. Do you know yet? It's alcohol. The sociologists that I studied with in my undergrad really gave us a lot of pressure and influence in a good way to not drink. And I always remember that they said that. But I didn't stop completely drinking until about 4 or 5 years ago. Five years ago. And I always knew it was an opiate, not like an opiate drug, but something that lulls us and dulls us. And so many women that I work with wish that they drank less. They make an observation that they're drinking a little too much or a little too often, and they want to stop, and it's difficult for them. Alcohol has significant health risks that are associated with it, including cancer, heart problems, and of course, accidents. Psychologically, it has a depressant effect. It is a central nervous system depressant, which is why so many people feel so bad after drinking. And if you have a tendency towards low mood or you already experienced depression, alcohol is one of your worst enemies. It's an avoidance strategy that many people turn to because of traumas that they're trying to avoid. The wish to escape feeling truly awful from trauma memories is often done through substances, and the the reason why people want to get rid of these memories is is natural. It's biological to want to avoid terrible memories and terrible, um, intrusive thoughts. The challenge is, the more we avoid our pain, the worse it gets, because now we not only have our pain, whatever it is, we've spent time avoiding it and drinking makes us feel worse. It causes us to lose track of our time, lose, um, kind of authority over our time, and lose the ability to stay in the present moment. And we'll talk more about why we need to stay in the present moment in a little bit. If you need help with substances, there are incredible resources that are available to you. There are many that are free. There's much more than the traditional AA model that everyone seems to have heard of. There are other ways that people can take a step back from their drinking. If you want to just cut back. There's a rational recovery, and rational recovery is a harm reduction model. 12 step programs are really powerful, largely because they involve community and community. Healing together is extremely important. Quitting drinking is something that will change your life in really meaningful way. Even if you don't drink that much. Even if you don't feel like you need to cut back or have any kind of problem, not drinking anything is really different than even just drinking a little. So again, I want to encourage you to do what you need to do to manage this incredibly destructive substance. The third aspect that I want to invite you to step away from is an overt focus on other people. And here's what I mean by that. Allowing our mood to be dictated by what other people are doing. A feeling that we're only doing a good job if others are pleased by the work that we've done, or if they notice the work we're doing. The habit of judging ourself based on the reaction of others. It's useful in some circumstances, right? Like we have to learn. All kinds of things when we're kids. And, you know, the the way to go to school, how to go get a new sheet of paper when you're in kindergarten. Just kind of these rules of social engagement do depend on what others, you know, shape us and mold us to become. However, the mistake happens when we begin to kind of distort that experience into judging ourselves based on what others react to us. If someone is not excited about food I make, it doesn't mean I'm a bad person. It doesn't mean I'm a terrible cook. It just means I don't like what I made. And the same is true for every other example that you can think of. We are not able to effectively gauge our behavior based on the reaction of others. There are people who are, you know, maybe grumpy all the time. And if we're allowing our sense of self-worth to be dependent on their approval, we're in a lot of trouble. And over focus on others is about how we value ourselves or don't value ourselves. It's not about community. It's not about being in a position where we're not looking to others. There's a lot of social psychology research from the 60s. That you can tap into around this. And it's about learning to have thoughts about yourself, evaluations of yourself based on the actions that you take. And this is a huge influence on acceptance and commitment therapy as well. And the idea that taking an action and then evaluating yourself on it can give you a high quality sense of yourself, because we can't control what anyone else thinks or says or does. This is much more about values. And finally, the fourth thing that we all need to quit doing is we need to quit stifling our creativity. That means we have to make it appear on our schedule. Oh, on Saturdays we paint. Okay, that's what we're doing. When we stifle our creativity, we stop doing the things we love dancing, painting, singing, sculpting, knitting. We end up in a spot where we're not being self expressive, and that directly impacts if we can express ourself verbally in other places, it directly impacts if we feel good about ourselves too. So the four things to stop. Stop hating your body. Stop consuming alcohol or too much alcohol. Stop over focusing on others and their opinion to evaluate yourself and stop stifling your creativity. Next, I want to talk about four things that you can move towards that will give you a stronger sense of self, community, and purpose. The research is extremely clear that present moment awareness matters for our mental health, for our relationships and our ability to live our purpose and take action on our goals and on our values. It's one simple strategy that can change everything about your life for the better. There are thousands of articles on this in peer reviewed journals, and I have never come across an article that said there's something terrible about making contact with the present moment. It has only positive benefits to make contact with. The present moment is a practice, because we go in and out of this contact with the now. If you've ever been in a conversation with someone and they're starting to repeat themselves and they're not responding to what you say, they're just responding to whatever's in their head, you know that they've lost contact with the present moment. The thing is, we all do it. There's none of us that are immune to it. It takes a conscious effort that ultimately becomes pleasurable to make contact with the present moment. If we're responding to our partner. We can choose our values of compassion, engagement, empathy, kindness. If we're responding to what's in our head, we can say all kinds of things that are not in alignment with our values. A present moment practice is not simply sitting quietly meditating. I think a lot of people struggle with that idea that a meditative practice involves extra time. It involves the discomfort of sitting lotus position on the floor. And those are certainly powerful ways to get into a meditative state. They are, by all means, not the only way. Going for a walk with the conscious intention is an incredible way to cultivate mindfulness. It means walking without focusing on your thoughts or trying to work something out in your head. It means paying attention to what's around you. Noticing the trees or the ground or the sound of the wind. It allows you to be in the present moment. And if you've ever done a walk fully in the present moment, you come back completely refreshed. You can choose a certain spot that you would like to be mindful. For example, your front door before you walk in to your door of your home. You can pause and just make contact with the present moment. You can choose incredibly easy ways to make contact with the present moment. Every time you open your car door. Make contact. You just want to choose places and times that will be a trigger. A reminder to be mindful every time you put your key in the car or you scan your bus pass. Those are opportunities to make contact with the present moment. You can choose other ways to make contact by a word, a reminder word say. Every time you hear the word read, you sit up straighter. There's so many simple ways to pull you back to the present moment, and you'll notice that when you start to pepper in these little reminders for yourself, it'll become easier and easier. Now, of course, we have to talk about the power of art in pulling us into the present moment. This leads us to my second thing that we all need to add, and that is more creativity. The power of creativity to transform our lives cannot be underestimated. Making art and self-expression is what we were designed for. It's part of our biology. It's this essential way of self-expression that really runs into all the other areas of our life. If we're comfortable expressing ourselves at home in our journal doing mandala drawings, we'll start to be more and more comfortable expressing ourselves in other places as well. And if we get out of practice of tapping into our creativity, if we're out of practice of creative expression, we really start to feel it. I hear women say, I feel like I've gotten away from myself. Have you ever said that to yourself? I lost track of myself. I lost track of who I was. That's losing contact with our creativity. Creativity is an essential part of being a human being. We are creating all the time. You created the room you're in. You. If you made your lunch, you created that meal. If you sat down and doomscrolling on your phone while you ate, you created that situation of not being mindful about what you were doing, which was supposed to be eating and becoming focused on things that are distractions and whatever mood you finished your meal in. You created that mood too. And the thing is, we can create intentionally our rooms, our mood, our environment, the people we hang out with and to get better at creating the life we want. It really is essential to get back to basics and create drawing, painting, sculpture, dance, music. All of these aspects of creation are essential to knowing ourselves better, to understanding ourselves and community. It's a powerful way to connect with ourselves, with others and the art never has to see the light of day. You don't have to show it to anybody. It's the practice of self-expression that allows us to overcome our struggles and move through challenging times. The third thing I want to talk about is our values. Do you know what's most important to you? You should have a list of things that are truly important to you, not the list that society would tell you is important. I'm talking about the list that you create yourself. And there is no right or wrong here. You might say, well, I should value my work the most, or I should value my family the most. And that's not true. There's no right or wrong. My number one values has been health. It's always health. And I can't picture that anything would change that. Because if I have my health, then I can focus on everything else. I can be the parent. I want to be the partner. I want to be the worker. I want to be the woman I want to be. Without my health, those things become severely compromised. And that's how I ended up choosing health as my number one. There are times in our life when the values shift. If you're parenting a young child, a lot of things have to go to make space and time to taking care of a baby. If you are worried about a loved one, there's a lot of things that seem easy to set aside. To focus on supporting them. When we know our values and what's truly important to us. Not the shoulds, but the things that are truly important to us. It makes life so much easier because we can prioritize. Does this move me closer to my family? My health and my work? If not, I might not do it. Part of knowing your values also means you have to know how to resolve when you have a conflict in your values. You may have a wish to do a volunteer project at your child's school, and you also may have a wish to protect your free time. And resolving this and deciding. Well, this time I will volunteer and this time I won't. It allows you so much more freedom and having the. I think of it as like a mental responsibility to have this list and then to have the ability to move closer towards one value or back off from a value when there is conflict. And the fourth thing that we all need right now is gratitude. There are so many peer reviewed journal articles about gratitude, and it seems to be one of those magical emotions that we can cultivate. It's a natural mood lifter. It is a powerful way to engage with ourselves, to see the big picture. To have a balanced perspective on life and other people enjoy being around us when we're grateful. I always tell parents when they're kind of sorting through, should they give their children chores? Should they give them an allowance based on chores? Um, and sometimes people ask me, should they say thank you to their kids when their kids do what's expected of them, which is, you know, homework, empty the dishwasher, whatever the chores are. And I say, tell them thank you. Tell them thank you early. Tell them thank you. Often, early and often on gratitude. It makes you much more enjoyable to be around. It makes them feel good about what they're doing. You see your kid pick up something in their room to go do the laundry, put their laundry away, whatever it is. See if you can catch them initiating it and say, thank you so much for picking up your socks. Thank you so much for hanging your towel nicely in the shower. Thank you so much for taking responsibility on the trash each week. Remember, we all love a thank you. We might go to work outside the home for pay and that might be considered, you know, the exchange. Our time for the money. However, it's really nice when someone says thank you at work, isn't it? It's our job. Of course, you may have grown up in a household where it was not expressed in this really obvious way of just saying thank you. And it might feel foreign, or you might be like you're placating someone. Why are you saying thank you if it's their job? Trust me on this one. The research shows that expressing gratitude is not just for the other person. It's for us as well. And giving our attention to what we like helps us even find more of it. It allows us to see what's working well. If you find yourself heavily worried and concerned about what's happening in the world, or you're worried about future things that have not yet happened. Gratitude is an essential component. It's an antidote to worry. Gratitude forces our mind to see a bigger picture because for everything that we are catastrophizing in our mind, it's only a small piece of the picture. There are many things that are working well for you, and gratitude allows you to just feel more balanced internally, especially when things feel difficult either on the outside or in terms of feeling a lot of worries. There are four things that it's time to let go of and four things. It's time to add into your life. It's time to let go of hating your body. It's time to let go of drinking or drinking too much. It's time to let go of overly focusing on the opinion of others. And it's time to let go of neglecting your creativity. And here's the four things that you want to add. Present moment. Awareness. Making contact with the present. Knowing your values and knowing what to do when you have conflicting values. A focus on creativity such that you're able to use your creative process to enhance your entire life. And the fourth thing is to cultivate the habit of looking for things that you're grateful for. Wherever you are, whatever the circumstance. Gratitude will allow you to feel more balanced and have a complete picture of what's happening. Take extra good care of yourself this week. It will allow you to be present for yourself, for others and the people around you. Go ahead and take action where you can. And know that when you move with kindness, it has an impact on the people around you. When you engage with your creativity, it improves your life in so many ways. Have a wonderful rest of your week. Now that you know about how to use your creativity, what will you create? Want more? Subscribe to the Modern Creative Woman digital magazine. It's absolutely free and it comes out once a month. And I know you can get a lot out of the podcast and the digital magazine. Yet when you're ready to take it to the next level, I want you to know you have options inside the membership. And if you're interested in a private consultation, please feel free to book a call with me. Even if you just have some questions, go ahead and book a call. My contact is in the show notes and you can always message me on Instagram. Do come find me in the Modern Creative Woman on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest at Doctor Amy Backus. If you like what you're hearing on the Modern Creative Woman podcast, I want to give you the scoop on how you can support the podcast. You can be an ambassador and share the podcast link with three of your friends. You can be a community supporter by leaving a five star review. 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