For the Love of Creatives: Unlocking the Power of Community
Imagine a space where your creative spark is truly seen, a community where people get you. That’s what Maddox and Dwight bring each week on For the Love of Creatives. As your hosts and “connections and community guys,” they dive into conversations that bridge the gap from solo journeys to powerful collaborations, transforming “me” into “we.”
In each episode, explore a variety of engaging formats, from insightful dialogues between Maddox and Dwight to conversations with everyday creatives who’ve overcome challenges to reach new heights. You’ll meet fellow artists, innovators, and heart-centered creators sharing their stories, and together, we’ll discover what it means to create, collaborate, and co-elevate.
Tune in, share, and join us each week as we celebrate the magic of community-driven creativity.
For the Love of Creatives: Unlocking the Power of Community
#019: How Not Caring What Others Think Unleashed April Chavez' Creativity
What happens when you stop giving your power away to other people's opinions and fully embrace your creative self? April Chavez, host of the Wellness Driven Life Show and CEO of Driven Living LLC, shares her remarkable journey from survival mode to creative thriving in this illuminating conversation.
April's path hasn't been easy – navigating systemic lupus since childhood, working in male-dominated fields like law enforcement, and raising three daughters as a single mother. Yet these challenges became the contrast she needed to discover her authentic direction. "I don't know many people who aren't doing extraordinary things in life without having gone through extraordinary difficulties," she reflects. "We have to have that contrast in order to know what we want to do and be and how we want to show up."
The turning point in April's creative journey came when she reclaimed her personal power from others' expectations. That liberation transformed everything: "When you don't care what people think about what you create, you will create fabulous and you will shine so brightly." This mindset shift allowed her to move from merely surviving to genuinely thriving through community and creative expression.
Perhaps most powerfully, April reveals how community became the catalyst for her creative expansion after years of isolation. "We didn't come here to be solo human beings," she shares. "When we're isolated, we're surviving, and when we're in community, we're thriving." This profound insight frames her current mission of building supportive spaces where others can discover their own creative power.
Whether you're struggling with others' opinions, feeling stuck in survival mode, or searching for your creative voice, April's wisdom offers a roadmap to authentic self-expression. What action will you take today to start being your creative, beautiful self and seek the community that will fuel your fire?
April's Profile
DrivenLivin Website
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For starter, dwight, I don't know many people who aren't doing extraordinary things in life without having gone through extraordinary difficulties extraordinary difficulties. We have to have that contrast in order to know what we want to do and be and how we want to show up. If we don't know, the opposite of it right, it's the yin-yang aspect.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to another edition of For the Love of Creatives podcast. I am one of the hosts, dwight, and I'm joined by Maddox. We're the Connections and Community Guys, and today our featured guest is the lovely April Chavez. Hi, april.
Speaker 3:Welcome.
Speaker 1:April. Thank you, such a pleasure to be here with the two of you.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, we're really thrilled to be with you on our show. I know that you have hosted a wonderful show the Wellness Driven Live show for quite some time now and you've done a whole lot of things to really give a lot of people a platform. And with the breadth of all of your experiences, I don't think that I could do justice in giving you an introduction. So why don't you share with our listeners a little bit about who you are, so they can have an idea of who you are and what you're about?
Speaker 1:Thank you, dwight. You know I stem from many hats background and I have three daughters, so I've done the mom thing. I've been in the corporate career aspect, I've been in law enforcement career aspect. I have an autoimmune disease and so I've lived with systemic lupus for my whole life. So I have an array of many different facets of myself, which we all do, don't we? When we start to get down to it and you've lived enough life, then you've done a lot of things. But right now, in my current life, I'm the host of the Wellness Driven Life Show. I'm the CEO of Driven Living LLC, and that is really our big business and it's the thing that we're so incredibly passionate about. And so it's community and it's educational courses, and there's a lot that we offer really in the self-improvement aspect, a lot that we offer really in the self-improvement aspect.
Speaker 2:That is awesome. I really. I think our listeners would love to know about some of the things that have brought you to where you are. You mentioned a whole lot of different things being a mom, lot of different things being a mom, a career in law enforcement, a career in corporate, and that that seems like a lot of different things to navigate and to make those pivots.
Speaker 1:I would think that it all kind of tap into creativity when we figure out different ways of doing things and navigating the course of our life right. So creativity can have so many different ways of expression. It doesn't always mean you grab a paintbrush and you start painting, you know, with with colors. Creativity is really utilizing our minds in order to create new paths for ourself, bring new ideas to life, you know, really manifest the life that we desire. And when we come up with all those bumps in the roads, like being a single parent of three children and needing to put food on the table so then you're creating different avenues to do that, like working a couple of jobs, and so bringing in creativity.
Speaker 1:With my past, I could go back as early as childhood and that, literally is crayon to paper, right, I absolutely loved it. I loved the colors. That was my outlet as a child. Singing was my outlet as a child, and so bringing that creative piece from our voice and an expression into the world, and so I've really been able to bring creative pieces into my life on so many different levels. So, that being said, that's kind of where we've gone, but do you have anything specific that you want me to go with that in the creative ways that I've brought into expression.
Speaker 3:You know, what I love about this is we've had many people on the podcast now, and the vast majority of them have been artists or dancers or singers or architects or you name it, and I think you're perhaps, unless memory fails me, you're one of the first ones that really has talked about.
Speaker 3:I mean, you're describing creative entrepreneurship, and I think this is very important and valuable, because we want everything we do to appeal to the full range of creatives, not just artists or people that make things, but people who dream up things, people who you do course, creation, and I know you're working on community right now, and some of this is very similar to what we do, and we haven't even really taken the time to talk about this, but you know, neither one of us necessarily make things Now. I have painted in my life, I've done photography, there's been a lot of things that I've done that were in that artistic realm, but the vast majority of what we do right now is creative entrepreneurship. All of our creative juices are going towards how to make this contribution to humanity, and so I'm excited to have this conversation with you and hear more about that and what that looks like and how you're doing that.
Speaker 1:Oh, maddox, you know, excuse me, going into entrepreneurism is one of the best ways to tap into your creative state. And let's take the conversation as far as going into the health arena. And so health has always been at the forefront of my life because of having an autoimmune disease, and so when I went into law enforcement, we learned a lot about breath work, calming the body down during stressful situations, and I think most of us, at some point in our life, have had a point in our life where we've been very anxiety ridden and it's showing up in the body down. When you start learning about techniques like meditation, that is when we actually start going into a creative state, because you cannot be creative unless the body is calm enough to do so. So when we tap into ourselves in that you know that meditational state and we are dreaming of different things and we're calm enough to be like, okay, you know, this is what I want, this is what I desire, then we really start moving into that and that creative piece is what creates our realities and our bodies start seeking out evidence of that the more and the more that we do that.
Speaker 1:And when you go into entrepreneurism, it's living out your passion and you can't have a passion or be passionate about something you know unless you're excited about it and you're creatively excited about it right. So stepping into entrepreneurism has been really exciting for me, because I get to do what I want, what I want to bring forth to the world what I am passionate about, what I believe in, and you're really putting yourself out there. But at the same time you get to make it yours and you don't have to listen to anybody else or be pigeonholed into something or be inside that box. You get to truly express what's within that's incredible.
Speaker 3:This is really good. I I would love for you to just back up for a minute and expand on because of all our listeners are creatives what specifically are things that you can call out that when we do these things, it diminishes our ability to create?
Speaker 1:It diminishes our ability to create when we do what things, the things that we stifle our creativity with.
Speaker 3:Perhaps it's doom scrolling on social media, or I know you probably have a. You kind of touched on it. I just want to expand on it because I think this is huge and who doesn't need to hear this? If you're a creative?
Speaker 1:I think one of the biggest things that stifles creativity is doing the same thing day in and day out. It is the automatic programming that we all know very well because our bodies are designed to do so, that we all know very well because our bodies are designed to do so, and if we fall into that trap, that stifles creativity completely right? If you're just being the automatic robot and you're getting up and you're brushing your teeth and you're going to the bathroom and you're taking a shower and you're eating your breakfast and you're drinking coffee and you're, you know, going to work and driving in traffic and you are not expanding upon the expression of you, you know you're not, you're not really utilizing life as you were put here to to do. We were put here to express who we are inside, because we're all uniquely different.
Speaker 1:And isn't that one of the coolest things in the whole wide world, right? Just like how different and unique we all are, and it's a beautiful thing. Just like the spectrums of the, of the colors of the rainbow, which we don't even I mean, I don't even know maybe you guys know more about. Like we can't see so much of those colors. There's just so much that we cannot see and that we do not know. But it's like that. We're so individual and so unique and it brings life to this world. It brings joy to this world and I want to live joyfully.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:And that's contagious. I think that the way that you go out and boldly live is an inspiration to any that have the good fortune of being in your presence.
Speaker 1:Now is it scary? Yeah, if you're not used to it, absolutely. I mean, we, we all know that I it's. It's very, very interesting when you start to observe humans and yourself.
Speaker 1:Of course, self reflection is is what we have to do continuously. If we want to evolve and be something greater, we have to observe ourselves and make the tweaks and changes that we want to evolve and be something greater, we have to observe ourselves and make the tweaks and changes that we want. But when we start to observe other people, we really pick up and notice that we're all so similar that we're all feeling very awkward in this human body that we're, like don't really know what to do, how to act socially. And if you take your Um, and if you, if you take your um concentration off of yourself which is difficult for most of us to do and you really observe you, you truly do see that we're all um really trying to are joyfully expressing themselves. You can like point them out right away because they don't look awkward. They don't look, you know, still, they're really just being themselves and they feel and look like they feel comfortable in their own skin.
Speaker 3:I kind of feel like you're describing an innate need in humans to have a sense of belonging. That's what it sounds like you're describing to me, and when we belong is when we start to move through easily and we don't look so awkward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's funny the chicken or the egg, right?
Speaker 1:And what I mean by that? In the sense of self-acknowledgement, self-work and also engulfing ourselves with other people and in community also engulfing ourselves with other people and in community. So when I say that, when we observe other people and we start to realize that, oh yeah, we're all just a human being, no matter what status they are, no matter what they're doing in life and you guys know, the more that you interview people, especially at high status, you really just feel very comfortable with them and there's no longer this gap of, oh my gosh, you know they're like this, you know they're this incredible human being, but you really start feeling like, wow, we're all so similar. Or is it where we start to improve ourselves and then we're ready to step out and be along with other humans. Like we kind of need a little bit of both. Right, you have to have the understanding that we're all the same and yet we're all unique and we have to go within in order to know how to feel comfortable in our skin.
Speaker 2:It sounds like you're hitting on a profound life lesson here. It's really interesting how we can all get a little bit too wrapped up in the stories that we're running in our own heads, you know, so focused on the things that might make us look out of place or awkward or just be a cause for some negative attention when, if we were to zoom out, one way of seeing this is you're just not that important in the grand scale of things, because so many people are telling their own horrible stories about the things that they're scared of and the ways that they're going to be the target for, for ridicule or for judgment. What's happening in the world around you, or, better yet, to take an interest in the person that you're talking to, then you don't have room to worry about the things that can go wrong and that's-.
Speaker 1:I feel like it. Yeah, it goes into servitude. Yes, you know, when we again take the pressure off ourselves and we move into an act of servitude, how can I serve you or how can I be there for you? And what is one of the best ways to do that? It's being present with somebody, fully present, and listening to them and hearing what they say and letting them know that you've heard them through what they said, by acknowledging what they've said and not necessarily going into advice or anything, but truly just being with them and hearing them you've just connected some dots for me, so thank you very much.
Speaker 3:You know I most of my life I have been very uneasy in rooms of strangers, very uncomfortable in room, very awkward. If there's ever going to be a place where I don't feel comfortable in my own skin, it's in a big room full of strangers. And yet we lead big rooms of strangers. You know, we just had an event recently where there were two thirds of the people in the room. We did not know and I don't feel awkward or uncomfortable in my own skin, or none of that happens when we are, when it's our event, when we're leading, and I don't think that I ever connect the dots until just this moment is what enables me to do that is that in those moments I am serving, because that's the way we view it.
Speaker 3:We bring people together in service. You know, it's our passion to bring people together and we very much when we think about community and leadership. It is a form of servitude. You know, I don't ever look like, oh, look at me, I'm the big grand poobah. What is they'll saying. It's more like you know, I'm here, yes, yes, if you're a member of my community, I'm here to help you, to serve you, and I think that's what I now really fully get, that that's what enables me to be comfortable in my own skin and operate from that place of calm and sense of belonging. And so, wow, thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, very much shifts it. And what I would invite to people like your past self, maddox, is, when you step into those rooms and you feel so uncomfortable, shift that perspective into what do I get to learn from somebody here tonight? How do I get to make an impact on them, potentially through the people or the resources, the connections that I may have. How may I support them? Like, maybe they just need one more follower on their YouTube channel or they want somebody to engage on Instagram? Now, we all know that we're living in a day and age that social media is. It's pretty vital for businesses, for entrepreneurs, business in general I mean, every business has some sort of lead on social media, and so some of those things are really important for creatives, for entrepreneurs, for people in business, you know, and so how can I help other people? And making switching that perception is will change everything for you when you walk into that room.
Speaker 3:I can see that. I can see that just walking in with you know how can I serve anybody that I come across in this meeting?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great muscle to build to deal with those, those halting negative self conversations that we have and putting that frame of servitude over them.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Totally shifted.
Speaker 3:Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful April, I want to direct the conversation back and make it about you for a minute, okay.
Speaker 2:Since you're our featured guest.
Speaker 3:I would love to know, when you're in the zone when you're absolutely your most creative, what are you doing?
Speaker 1:I'm not hearing anything that my husband is saying to me. That's for darn sure. I just I am tuned out to whatever is around me and I am zoned in. And my excuse is well, you know that we can't actually multitask, right? So don't talk to April and try to communicate with her when she's in the zone. But it feels like like like that you know, it's just you're totally present with whatever it is that you're doing and you're concentrating on, and it's really. It flows like things systematically go, time is stopped, time is gone. You look at the clock later on when you snap out of it and it's like how did three hours just go by?
Speaker 3:I don't even know. But physically, what are you doing? When you're in that zone and you're creating and you're having that feeling that we get when we love it the most, what are you physically doing? Are you creating course material? What are you doing? Are you creating course material? Are you creating? What are you doing? Oh the thing that just blows your skirt out the most.
Speaker 1:That's a difficult one to answer because I am constantly creating. We create thumbnails for the show, we create titles, descriptions so there's writing that comes into it yeah, creating the courses and all of the content and the videos. And. But you know, I really get excited with creating my thumbnails on our YouTube channel for our interviews with our guests, and I've done it completely different than a lot of people do, and I've done it completely different than a lot of people do.
Speaker 1:Most people, I would venture to say, are taking the headshots of the guests that they have, and I've had a lot of top guests. I don't use their headshot on the thumbnail. I create something entirely different. Where it's a picture, it's a photorealistic image of something that really brings me joy and something that I'm attracted to, and so I figure my audience is going to be attracted to it too because I'm attracted to it, and so I've gone in a really different way with that. But it brings me a lot of joy when I create those things like this expression of what our discussion is about and how I can entertain our audience by grabbing them first with that thumbnail. That image that's really vibrant and really telling. It speaks emotion, and I think that that is really what I want to bring to our audience.
Speaker 1:That's why our YouTube channel is the biggest platform. Yes, we have the podcast arena, apple, spotify, all of those but we concentrate on YouTube because you get to see everyone visually. You know we're on camera, so you get to see the expression of the guests when they're talking about their story and how they came to be and why and how they're doing what they're passionate about doing today. So, yeah, I think that that, amongst many other things, I get really excited when I am finally in alignment with the thing I really want to do the most and present to the world and present to the community. I get excited about creating the things that matter most to me, like a wellness-driven, life driven living. We have our dog, who is our mascot. She's a Doberman and so we utilize Dobermans a lot in our marketing and it's our brand. So the expression of our brand and living that out, because we all know our brand, it's a reflection of us and so that's a long-winded way. I hope that answered your question.
Speaker 3:No, beautifully, beautifully. I love the detail and as you speak, it's very obvious. You know, as an empath, I can feel your passion and your enthusiasm. I can hear it in your voice and see it on your face, but I also can like viscerally feel it in my beingness.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you.
Speaker 2:I'd like to come back to a couple of things that you talked about before, or actually just kind of open the door to talk about some of the challenges that you faced. You mentioned that you had an autoimmune disease, and you also talked about being a single mother of three.
Speaker 1:Those are yeah go ahead on their own.
Speaker 2:Those would be tough for anybody to deal with. But yeah, you know, we, we don don't, we're not able to deal with the deck that we're dealt, other than just going through it, and you've done so beautifully. What's that been like for you?
Speaker 1:Well, for starter, dwight, I don't know many people who aren't doing extraordinary things in life without having gone through extraordinary difficulties. We have to have that contrast in order to know what we want to do and be and how we want to show up. If we don't know the opposite of it, right, it's the yin yang aspect. And so with with the autoimmune disease and I still have it I still have markers, but I do really well with it. So I'm very blessed, but I've also done a lot of work. I continue to do my best to do the work that I feel helps manage it. So I'm very blessed, but I've also done a lot of work. I continue to do my best to do the work that I feel helps manage it. And but I've had symptoms since birth and I was diagnosed at 15. So being a child diagnosed with a disease or having a disease, it was a really. It was better luck for me to have that. I think that when we're diagnosed with things as adults, it's more difficult. We've already had a lot of life, we've already had a lot of issues and sometimes life us down so much that we create it into an end. It is this disastrous thing and that is it and we are done, but as a child. A child doesn't think that way. They want to live and they want to express themselves naturally. And so I just wanted to be a normal kid. I didn't want the disease to define me, and so I went through life like that, where I was bound and determined to not be that. And so it really shows in my life, moving forward, going into male dominant fields, always wanting to express myself as strong, healthy, capable, not weak, not diseased. And so I think I was really an advantage as a child. And then being a parent of three daughters, you know I did not want children. I was diagnosed at 15, sexually active at 18. My doctor said, well, you can't have children. And I was like, well, what am I on this birth control for? So I got off of birth control and I became pregnant and I was like, well, I guess I'll miscarry because I can't have kids. So that started the stage of motherhood for me.
Speaker 1:It was unexpected, it wasn't planned, it wasn't something that I had ventured out to do. Between all my high school friends I was the one who was like I'm never having kids. I had a whole plan to go to college and universities I wanted to be a forensic entomologist and study the life cycle of bugs and all that forensic piece of how it affects and timestamps the time of death on cadavers. I was so fascinated in that world. And then having the kids, that was going to take a lot of schooling. So I went into law enforcement because I figured well I could maybe go into investigative fields that way and eventually, if I chose to, I could go to school and further that education.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, it's brought a lot of challenges and especially the dynamics of being a woman in a male dominant field. I mean that brought a whole new sort of harsh realities that I wasn't expecting. And so all of these things they really like they can either really harden you and where you just become this hard person that doesn't want to, you know you get stagnated there, you don't want to expand or grow, or you can turn it into something where, wow, I've had all these experiences and all of these lessons that I now call wisdom. And so when you turn the things in your life that have been traumatic for you in some capacity into, wow, I'm so glad I had that experience and now I consider it wisdom and now I get to present myself in the world and respond in the world in a different way. Because of that, you know it's a beautiful thing, and when you think of it that way, nothing in life is by mistake. It all led you to right here.
Speaker 2:I love that. That is. That's incredible. It reminds me of some of the challenges I've had to overcome.
Speaker 2:I was a gay man in the military during Don't Ask, don't Tell, and the final year of my enlistment was horrifying because I had to look forward to a day filled of interrogation every day. I knew exactly what was going to happen. I'd be sitting in a room with a defense intelligence agent and we would go through the same thing over and over. Experience was something that was a really. It made a really big impression on who I was. I didn't feel safe and I was always looking over my shoulder, but I found the support I needed in community. I was able to work with a legal defense fund that helped soldiers in my situation and they connected me to resources, and I'm curious as to how you were able to find community when you were in such a male-dominated field where you were kind of exceptional community didn't come until much, much later in my life, and I would say so, within the past, oh, I don't know five years or under, I didn't trust people enough to allow community into my life and COVID happened and I didn't need community.
Speaker 1:Then, you know, or what have you?
Speaker 1:We feel that way, go that way. And when I said that you can become stagnant in those feelings and in those traumas, you know you were very fortunate, dwight, to have a community where you found resources, where you felt like you could trust somebody again. And it took me a long time, it took me time to start building my own community and, you know, creating my business and start to learn that there are so many incredible, beautiful angels on this planet, you know, that are there to support you and be there alongside you. And so, yeah, it didn't come until much later, sadly to say, but here we are and I am so grateful for now having that, having community in my life, having people that are alongside me on this journey, and it's really beautiful, and you know we've created community. Maddox, I want to go back a little bit, because you said when you were younger you were terrified to step into a room and be social, and I too have created communities, and so we bring that to our lives because our souls are desperate to have it.
Speaker 3:For probably the first half of my life, I felt very unseen. You know, once again, I came out as a gay man 45 years ago. It was at a time when and I lived in a small town in central Texas. It was a time when it wasn't socially acceptable, and so I did everything I could to be invisible until things started to change in the world. Where I could be myself, I could be myself. And so, after half of a lifetime of being invisible and not being seen, now much of what I do is specifically to create space so people can be seen, because I know how valuable and how important that is. Yeah, I kind of want to. I know that we can't change the past, but I want to ask a question. You came up the ranks a single mother with three children, and that had to be incredibly challenging. You didn't have you've stated that you really didn't have community at that time, because there was just a lack of trust.
Speaker 3:Not only that, but I oh go ahead, no no, well, go ahead, say what you were going to say.
Speaker 1:I was living in survival mode. I was working two jobs. I didn't have time, quite literally, to or I didn't create time, I should say, to have community. I was just in survival mode. Go, go, go.
Speaker 3:And I know we can't change the past, but I'm asking this question because I know there are people out there that are going to hear this who are in the place that you were. Maybe it's different, maybe it's not about being a single mother and having three children, but they're in a place where they are in survival, for whatever reason. They're in survival mode and they don't have community. And so my question is what do you think might have been different in your experience at that time in your life if you had had community?
Speaker 1:if you had had community? Oh, I think it would have been really important to me as a mother to be able to share experiences with having kids, and I felt like an outsider a lot of the times because it didn't seem like there was too many single moms, you know, they always had a partner by their side or what have you, or maybe they were more financially secure, and so I allowed all of those things to really barricade myself away from other people. But the way that I describe bringing in and I'll go ahead and utilize community for it, but I usually say it we should always have five people surrounding us that we admire the most, that we strive to be like, we want to embody their beautiful aspects, that they bring into the world right, and I tell my listeners that that is something you can. It doesn't have to be somebody physical in person. It could be somebody that you admire from the past, a historical figure. It could be through books, it could be through, nowadays, podcasts, right, and people that you just really admire. And I feel that that's at the time. That is where I had my community.
Speaker 1:I listened to a lot of audiobooks, I continued to work on self-improvement. I just did it alone, I did it by myself. I did it without other people, so I listened to other people's stories via headphones instead of in person.
Speaker 3:You know, you've just said something that really has made me think and reflect for a moment, and had an aha moment in that you talked about the five people that we need to surround ourselves with, the people that you want to be like, and what I realized. I was thinking about the people that are in my closest of circles, and I think that we think sometimes we have this perception that those five people need to have all their shit together. They need to have their shit together, otherwise why would we want to be like them? But in that moment, I realized that every person that is in my closest of circles, in all of us including me, at times are a hot fucking mess, and so I was thinking about a couple of my dearest friends. I was thinking about one friend in particular. We've been friends for a quarter of a century, and the thing about her that I absolutely love the most, the way that I want to be like her, as you were saying is that she loves unconditionally.
Speaker 3:I always feel loved unconditionally by her and I always know that in my moments of of need she would absolutely be there for me, and that's what I love about her the most.
Speaker 3:Now are there other areas of her life, as as there are my life and probably Dwight's life and perhaps your life that aren't all together and are messy. So I think that it's important for us to realize it doesn't have to be the full picture for us to love them and to bring them into our lives and to aspire to be like them. We're aspiring to be like an aspect of them, and that opens up the door for a wider experience. I think and this is a brand new awareness I mean this is fresh, hot off the press right here as we speak because I've always thought about that the five people you, the closest people you to, are, you become and I'm looking at the five people that I'm close to and that's scaring me a little bit, you know, because I'm looking at some of the messy aspects of their life and I just realized that that's not the way it works, because there's nobody that's got all of their shit together. If they do, they're not human.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, yeah, that absolutely goes back to, you know, saying that not everybody is perfect. And you start to realize that when, when you see people, or or you know you're next to people of high status or whatever, whatever place they've gotten to be in life, they, if they're human, they certainly have flaws, but the the best thing about the people that we, those five people, is, yes, along with the flaws, they're always driven to be a better version of themselves. You know, they're always continuing that evolution evolution.
Speaker 3:I do I do that, have that in common with each of my close friends, as I do with Dwight. I tend to attract now, not always, but I attract now people who are working on themselves and wanting to be more and bring more to humanity. Yeah, good, good, call out April, good call to humanity.
Speaker 2:Good, good, call out, april, good call, yeah I. I'd like to call out another aspect that you you mentioned in that and how, because of where you were in life, you didn't, you weren't able to hold physical space with some of these people that were driving you forward, and I think that's okay. I think that it's a good thing that we can learn lessons from people who may not even be with us anymore and, you know, still be able to in some way have a relationship with those who've given us the gift of the hard lessons that they've learned through what they've recorded in books or in other media.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:April. Would you say that now you have more of a sense of community than ever in the past? I'm kind of hearing that, but I wanted to confirm that.
Speaker 1:Oh, a thousand percent.
Speaker 3:Okay, and so having a large chunk of your life without really much community and now having some community around you, what has that? How has that benefited you? What has that enabled you to do as a creative human being that you weren't able to do when you didn't have that community?
Speaker 1:Oh well, it's huge. First off, it feels good to me to give myself some credit that I am growing. To me to give myself some credit that I am growing, that I have moved beyond a time in my life that you know I didn't have a grasp on that, I didn't utilize the power of that. We didn't come here to be solo human beings and we hear the science, we hear the research of when we are isolated it is not good for our overall well-being.
Speaker 3:Well, you said it earlier, you were just surviving, and I fully believe when we're isolated, we're surviving, and when we're in community, we're thriving. It's just that simple.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. It's a signal to me that I'm thriving and what a wonderful thing. And now that I'm at this point, how much greater can it get? And so there's that aspect which is huge, huge. And because it feels good, because I know it's wonderful you know we just keep evolving that and growing that in so many different ways it gives me confidence to show up and feel good about being myself, to feel good about being myself, to feel good about being me and not having any sort of setbacks with that.
Speaker 1:So we talked about it before. We're all just being human, and to be our expression of what's inside us is the greatest thing we can do and it's really living life to the fullest. And so the confidence thing is key and it gives me this piece of where I want to serve more. And I think that that is another huge, huge key of being human is that we are here to serve others, to serve our fellow humans. And if you don't have community and you're isolated, it's impossible to serve, right? I mean, I guess you're serving yourself, but to be able to to serve others, and then that reciprocity is a beautiful exchange because we're energetic beings and that is where there's a lot of magic that's created.
Speaker 2:Beautifully said. You mentioned there being a definite before and after, and I think that you put a pin in five years ago as being kind of your new origin point. So what was it like for you to lay that first brick that would become the powerhouse that would lead you to the Wellness Driven Live show and to build Driven Living?
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh well, it was stepping out of working for other people, it was stepping out of the mundane every day and I had to start becoming creative to figure things out in order to survive, because I wasn't relying on a consistent paycheck and the consistent habits of daily life that were routine and the consistent habits of daily life that were routine, and so that's. I mean, that's really it. It was venturing out into the unknown and finding a way to do that creatively, passionately, and yeah, I hope that answers the question.
Speaker 2:It answers it in spades.
Speaker 3:Can we go a little deeper? Can I ask a deeper question?
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 3:This is an internal question, not a doing. It's a being question that transition from no community to community, from feeling unsafe and not pulling people in around you because of that lack of safety, that survival mode. Sometimes we have limiting beliefs that we have to release or other things that we need to let go of or we need to see ourselves in a new light. We have to embrace something new. What is it? Maybe it's more than one thing. Feel free to expand. What is it that had to shift inside of you? What did you have to release or let go? What did you have to embrace that enabled you this inside thing, this inside job, to go from no community to community?
Speaker 1:Oh, primarily, I would say that comes top of mind is allowing others opinions to, to dictate how I show up, which I stopped showing up when I allowed others to dictate that you know. So, basically, opinions, the opinions of others and you know we hear it all the time right, the four agreements, huge on that, and to not take what other people say personally, and I think it was very, very difficult for me to. It was very, very difficult for me to understand that and start shifting away from that when it came to family, because they were so close, they were so close and what they said and did mattered so much that there was nothing else that mattered outside of that. And it took me a long time to shift outside of that and change that perspective. And I think it's vitally important that the audience knows that change does not happen overnight. Success does not happen overnight. Success does not happen overnight. This is continuous habits, continuously thinking differently, reminding yourself to think differently, and it could take a very long time.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to paraphrase and tell me if this is accurate or not. This is what I'm kind of hearing. You basically went from a period of time of giving your power away to all those people whose opinions mattered so much to letting their opinions matter less and taking your personal power back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean, oh, my God, it feels so good it does.
Speaker 3:It feels so good to say I don't care it doesn't matter, and what impact did that have on your creativity?
Speaker 1:Huge, I kept going. I mean, that's the impact it had. It was like I didn't stop, I kept going. I do keep going. It doesn't matter, and that is so, so important as an entrepreneur. If you allow other people to make you feel bad and you sit in that and you stay with that again, that's what stagnates everything right. But you have to be able to move past that to just say you know what, I don't care, put it out of mind and start doing things.
Speaker 1:I it's so funny because I have this writing practice that I do every day and I got, um, I started doing it. I think, well gosh, it's been a month now, I think at least, if not a little longer, and we have this community that we created route 66 for driven living and it's a 66 day new habits checklist. So we do these, this list of habits, for 66 days, three times a year and so. But I started this writing journal habit a while back and it's those oh, I can't remember first person, second person, third person perspectives in really creating things. So I, april blah, blah blah, you April blah, blah blah, she April blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So where I'm going with this is this morning I had this writing down that I, oh man, I lost where I was going with this Maddox and Dwight. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:That's okay, I do that frequently.
Speaker 3:It'll come back in a minute, and if it doesn't, that's okay too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, take a big deep breath, it's good, it's all good. It'll come to me, but we were talking about family. Can you go back to the original question? Do you recall what you asked me?
Speaker 3:that might help, jog what you had to give up, what you had to release in order to go from you know no community to community, how you had to see yourself differently, how you said to see others differently, the world differently, in order to make that jump from. I don't need community and I'm just going to survive to. Ah, yes, I want community because I want to thrive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I well it doesn't jog my memory enough, but I I just really like that writing habit because it it helps me, it gives you different perspectives to show up a little bit differently, and you did say it was about this morning's writing, though something this you were writing about this morning.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I can't remember. Oh, my goodness, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go downstairs and grab it maybe, but I won't, I won't do that. But I think I think just the overall point truly again is going back to not letting people stagnate you and just keep moving forward with what you're creating, because you're going to create so much incredible stuff and you're doing the world such a disservice by not being you and not being your creative self and not showing up and shining your light, not showing up and shining your light.
Speaker 3:You joined the no fucks to give club.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:You know we saw a clip yesterday of the Super Bowl and it was a clip up on the big screen of oh gosh, I'm drawing a blank, Dwight Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift, yes, and people were booing her Really. Yes, yes, and people were booing her. And, yes, yes. And you know, she kind of looked around and saw this and she looked at her girlfriend sitting next to her and she smiled and she just shrugged it off.
Speaker 1:What's that? Shake it off.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:Taylor Swift is an incredible story just about this, because she really talks about her past and not doing well in school, not being the popular kid. And look at her now. I mean she's world renowned as an artist.
Speaker 3:And also an incredible philanthropist. She gives. I mean, few people probably give the way she gives. I've just read things that have blown me away about how every place that she has a concert where she performs, she gives to the local communities generously, everywhere she performs.
Speaker 1:That's just like wow, wow, wow, wow she gets it, she gets it and and I think that that is where I I was saying it feels so good when you that finally clicks for you. Um, if that is something that you that is a challenge for you, which I do believe, it's a challenge for most people.
Speaker 1:Most, I agree, yes, majority I would say absolutely the majority of people. I mean, taylor Swift wouldn't have a number one song Shake it Off if it wasn't the majority of people, right? So because of that, when it finally clicks and and you know we come back a little bit to onto right, but but now you know that feeling of what it feels like to truly be empowered and and move forward and not even care and not give a thought to, you know those, those negative pieces that hold you back.
Speaker 3:And when you have creativity, creativity, don't you think, no matter what your creative choice is, it's it, yes, you. When you don't care what people think about what you create, you will create fabulous and you will shine so brightly.
Speaker 1:And you know, look at taylor swift now. I mean, can you imagine how her high school enemies I don't know if I should say enemies but you know the people who really were, yeah, the haters, the people who were abusive to her, what they think now and how they feel now and it's, you know, maybe maybe thinking twice about being a bully or or what have you? You know, don't you never know what people are capable of? And and, and I think that's really the overall essence of this show, is that when you start shining your, your light and being your creative self, you're going to shine so bright, You're going to blow the world away as long you know, and blow yourself away, and it's really that truly is the next step of evolution for us.
Speaker 3:And you're going to attract, you know, just the right people to you. You know, when we let go of caring what others think and just be ourselves, all of a sudden the most amazing people are showing up all around us. I have lived this. When I dropped the social mask and started to just be Maddox, it changed my life in ways that I could have never even dreamed, and the people that are drawn to me now are like, oh my God, just amazing human beings that I thoroughly enjoy being in their life and having them in my life.
Speaker 2:I'd like to reflect back to where the thought derailed the track. One of the things that you'd said before was about how success doesn't happen overnight, and, uh, I think the opposite side of that coin was something else that you you spoke to, and that is there is an inertia, a comfort with doing the same thing every day, all the time, following the patterns, the same thing every day, all the time, following the patterns.
Speaker 1:Either way, it's a choice, yeah, so that brings me back to now. I remember where I was getting to with the writing habits is that we're always working on it, because success doesn't come overnight where it's a continuous routine, continuous habits. So it's interesting, right. It's because success doesn't come overnight where it's a continuous routine, continuous habits. So it's interesting, right? It's like this contradictory piece of you can't be doing the same thing day in and day out. But then again, it's a choice of what you do, because we do like routine as human beings. So what routine are you going to create?
Speaker 1:That's in benefit, that is expanding yourself, where you do continuously grow and you do continuously seek out the unknown and be curious about life and be excited about it too. So that's where I was going and I don't exactly know what I was writing down again. But my point of that is is it's a continuous daily practice where I am trying to reprogram my brain so I show up differently and I respond differently to the world. So those things don't, when the triggers come, they don't, they don't affect me and I don't respond back to my old self. I'm responding to my new self and my excited self and joyful for the experience self, because I now have knowledge and I now have wisdom from that.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, yes, love it.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that we've had a pretty far-ranging conversation and, uh, I think we should bring things to a close, and the way we usually do that is with some rapid fire questions her rapid fire answers yeah I do my best okay, so we'll we'll have three rapid fire questions. Uh, first is, what's a creative risk You're glad you took?
Speaker 1:stepping onto a stage.
Speaker 2:Love that. Um, oh. What's a memory that always makes you smile?
Speaker 1:Oh, kissing my husband.
Speaker 2:Oh, how does community inspire your work?
Speaker 1:It makes me want to do more. It's the fuel, that is the fuel.
Speaker 3:Oh, please say that again. That's awesome. Everybody needs to hear that a second time, please.
Speaker 1:Community is the fuel that sparks that fire, and I want to keep doing, I want to keep serving.
Speaker 3:I love that.
Speaker 2:That is wonderful.
Speaker 3:That's driven. Living that drove it home that's driven living Yep, that drove it home.
Speaker 1:That's driven. Living Yep, that's our brand. You know, I've got. I can pump out all sorts of driving and safety and words.
Speaker 2:Well, before we put it into park, let's uh. I just want to make sure that we um have allowed you to share everything that you would like with our listeners have allowed you to share everything that you would like with our listeners.
Speaker 1:I feel like this has been a very well-rounded conversation and yeah, I have. I feel I truly invite the listeners if you're not already inspired and pumped up to you know, go seek community and be your creative, beautiful self. To um, start doing that, or better yet. I, I asked the question what action are you going to take to start and to begin now?
Speaker 3:Beautiful.
Speaker 2:It's a beautiful place to end it. Where can our listeners best find all things April Chavez and Driven Living.
Speaker 3:DrivenLivingcom. It will be in the show notes April. This has been absolutely amazing. Of course, I knew it would be. Actually, it's exceeded my expectations, which is just lovely. Not that I had any specific expectations, but yeah, this is beautiful and thank you so much for your contribution to the podcast and to all of the people who will listen to your episode.
Speaker 1:It's an absolute pleasure.