For the Love of Creatives

#044: The Science Behind Why Everyone Can Create and Thrive With Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle

• Maddox & Dwight • Episode 44

Share episode

What if everything you thought about creativity was wrong? Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, senior research scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and author of The Creativity Choice, challenges our assumptions about what it means to be creative.

Forget the notion that creativity belongs only to artists, designers, and “creative types.” The biggest misconception limiting our potential is believing creativity equals art. Engineers solving problems, parents inventing dinner solutions, and you navigating your day—all require creative thinking. Yet many dismiss their abilities because of a narrow definition of creativity.

Dr. Ivcevic Pringle reveals how creativity actually works. It’s not a linear process but more like an elevator that skips floors—you start with one destination but may end up somewhere else. This unpredictability isn’t a flaw but a feature of innovation.

Perhaps most liberating is the truth about confidence. We don’t need complete belief before beginning, just enough to take the first step. As Georgia O’Keeffe admitted, she was “terrified of everything she ever did,” yet still created groundbreaking art. Confidence builds through action.

This episode explores how claiming a creative identity changes our work, why doubt is inevitable, and how community prevents “one-hit wonders.” Dr. Ivcevic Pringle also shares research on why physical engagement sparks more innovation—and why AI, despite its power, still can’t truly depart from average patterns.

Whether you’ve always considered yourself creative or not, this conversation offers both validation and challenge. Start small, embrace discomfort, put in the reps, and remember... the magic happens outside your comfort zone.

Dr. Ivcevic Pringle's Profile
Website

This is Maddox & Dwight! More than anything, we want to connect and communicate with you. We don't want to think of you as listeners. We want to think of you as community. So, scroll to the bottom of the show notes and click the SUBSCRIBE link. Thank you!

Thank you for listening to the For the Love of Creatives Podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please scroll to the bottom of the show notes and Rate & Review us. We would SO appreciate it.

Support the show

Become a SUBSCRIBER to Get Notified of New Episodes

Want to be a Featured Guest?

For the Love of Creatives Community

For the Love of Creatives Podcast

Facebook

Instagram

YouTube

LinkedIn

Rate and Review the Podcast on Apple or Spotify

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

But what about developing creativity in new ways, in new areas where you didn't train? You know, I didn't train to be a chef or pastry chef, but I really wanted to bake. So I started very small, in things that were just tiny little things that are just meaningful, even noticeable to me only. And then it becomes, it grows, it becomes bigger.

Dwight Spencer:

Hello and welcome to another edition of the For the Love of Creatives podcast. I am your host and Connections and Community Guy Dwight, joined by our other host and Connections and Community Guy Maddox, and today our featured guest is Zorana Izvichik-Pringle. Hello, Zorana, Welcome to For the Love of Creatives.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

Thank you very much for having me.

Dwight Spencer:

We're so excited that you can join us. It's a little bit of a departure from the artists and makers and musicians that we normally have a chance to sit down with, but we're especially excited about having you here. Could you tell our listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

Yeah, so I am a senior research scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, so my background is in science and social science, particularly psychology, and I really study everything about people who create. So this is a perfect fit from my standpoint. Your audience are people who are creating, and I just love to learn about all of you and give back to the community by telling what I have learned and what are some unexpected things that we don't normally talk about when we talk about creativity.

Dwight Spencer:

Oh, I'm excited, and I am especially excited now for those of us who are not watching on youtube. Um, right over, uh your shoulder is a wonderful book that you've done, that you've uh written. That does a great job of unpacking a whole lot of things about creativity, and you buried the lead. I mean, what a wonderful book the Creativity Choice. It's fabulous. One of the things that really stood out for me was how you outlined something that we get to see played out. Every time we go to a creative mornings event, they have a manifesto that they recite that starts with the line everyone is creative, and I really felt that sense as I was turning the pages of your wonderful book.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

Oh, that is the best of compliments. Thank you of your wonderful book.

Maddox:

Oh, that is the best of compliments, thank you.

Dwight Spencer:

Well, and just so everybody knows, there will be a link to the book in the show notes. Yeah, so I know that. A few quirky things that are points of commonality On this particular episode. It's just a little talk among three Trekkies.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

Oh, that is a super special treat.

Maddox:

You are among friends. I'm old enough that I watched the original series when it aired live back in the 60s.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

Oh wow, you definitely do not look old enough for that.

Maddox:

Thank you.

Dwight Spencer:

Wow, I think Maddox has a new best friend.

Maddox:

I do indeed. Yes, I've been a Trekkie my whole life. I've seen everything Trek there is just about.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

I think what attracts me to it is imagination about the future. It is imagination of what could be, of what better life, better society would be like. It's not about space at all. It is really about the new frontiers in humanity.

Dwight Spencer:

Beautifully said.

Maddox:

Yeah, I think it's very symbolic. You know, I think that I've always, for many years now, said the final frontier is not space. In that show, it's the metaphor for going within. The final frontier is in here. Yeah, people will go to the moon and back before they'll go within.

Dwight Spencer:

It's crazy well, a wonderful thing about that whole notion of everyone being creative is and it's kind of funny. I remember being a little nervous about maybe you thinking twice about joining us because the name of our podcast is For the Love of Creatives and you make very clear that you hate the way that that kind of puts up a dividing line.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. I think everybody who we in everyday life call creatives certainly are creative, but that term implies something that I think is limiting. Implies something that I think is limiting. It implies that creativity is for those people who are in particular industries or in particular roles, who are designers, who are in advertising, who are writing, who are doing something in the artistic fields and most definitely it is. But creativity is more than that and I have worked with people in different roles, in different industries where you would not even suspect creativity was possible. But it is.

Maddox:

Creativity is in everything. People have heard me say. If you got out of bed, managed to get yourself dressed and across town to your job today, you're creative.

Dwight Spencer:

Yeah, yeah, very much so, and I love the way that you have shared some of the examples of things that you've done. That showed your own creative journey. Like one of the things you share early on in the book is about how you would, um you would actually bake, right so and I believe you started first very carefully following recipes and then you found um the freedom to improvise it.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

So when we are, when we think about creativity, we first go too big. We think of you know einstein's and steve jobs's of this world and you know coco ch, coco Chanel, and just name your favorite creator in whatever is meaningful to you. But creativity is much more and it comes in different levels. Psychologists distinguish these four levels of creativity and my professional creativity is in science, is in science, communication, in telling you and your audience of what we have learned in ways that are accessible and meaningful. So I have developed this kind of creativity through time, through education, through, you know, practice.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

But what about developing creativity in new ways, in new areas where you didn't train? You know, I didn't train to be a chef or pastry chef, but I really wanted to bake. So I started very small in things that were just tiny, little things that are just meaningful, even noticeable to me only. And then it becomes, it grows, it becomes bigger. I can now combine recipes, I know how to imagine things that previously I could not imagine, and that's how oftentimes creativity in everyday life works in lots of different things. I have a friend who has started just writing a personal blog and it became a popular one and then a book deal came through that. So this is how creativity can grow in real life from something that is very personal to something that is for friends and family, to something that becomes professional.

Dwight Spencer:

Beautifully put and, I think, something that a lot of people that are listening should really take to heart. You know, it's all about having the willingness to try, the willingness to keep going at something.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

And I love how you are starting with that willingness, because I have divided the book in three parts. How I think of the creativity journey and the creative life is. Start with that willingness part, because we have to talk about things that can be barriers. And I think I love how Maddox has brought up that we all can be creative. We have this potential, but not everybody is living up to this potential and it's not their fault. I really don't think it is because you just don't want to.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

It is usually because of the things that we have been conditioned to think, to believe in these misconceptions of where creativity is From. That you know, creativity is for creatives creatives only I happen to be in a different kind of role, so maybe not for me To things that are just coloring how we think. Talking about confidence, for instance, we know that we tend to do things that we are confident about, that we believe we can do. But there's this misconception that you need to have full confidence in something. You don't need to have full confidence. In terms of creativity, probably, it's not even possible to have full confidence because you're doing something new, something that hasn't been done before. How can you possibly be sure? And you really need just enough to say this could be possible and then get started. So that is my first kind of big topic in the book of what are some things that prevent people from even embarking on creative work, and once you know them, how you jump over them and then, okay, you have started, but now what are the strategies? Some strategies that you can use, some tools that would be helpful, and I, very purposefully, I, do not have a methodology in my book.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

I do not say here are the steps, six steps, 12 steps, whatever steps of creative work, because that leaves an impression that if you follow these steps, you are going to be successful. It is going to happen. There is no such certainty we can have in creative work and I want to, instead of steps, offer tools and talk about this process as being nonlinear. Steps are also creating this vision of, well, step one, step two, step three, you are climbing something.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

And when I was younger, I used to have these dreams of elevators. I don't know why, it's really funny, but elevators that would get you from second floor to 30th and skip places, skip numbers. Well, that wasn't particularly pleasant of a dream for me, but it's very much how creativity happens. You might start one place, you might have an idea where you're going, but you might end up at a different place, and that's not necessarily a problem. There is something to learn from the process. And then the third part of the book is saying OK, you have done something creative, but you were not alone and there is a social aspect to creativity. Let's acknowledge it, and I love that in your work you are very much purposeful about talking about communities, and the community is how we do not end up being a one-hit wonder.

Dwight Spencer:

That's right.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

And nobody wants to be a one-hit wonder, but we have to be explicit about it.

Dwight Spencer:

Absolutely.

Maddox:

You know I've been familiar with the term one-hit wonder in the music industry all my life, but I never thought about it the way you just introduced it and I really like that. I mean it's a way to express why community is important. If you don't want to be a one-hit wonder, you need community. I have a question yeah, yeah, do you think that it's possible that creativity in and of itself is kind of a misconception? I wonder sometimes if it seems like I talk to so many people oh, I'm not creative, and the reason I said is because they're not making something with their hands. It's like people don't realize that there's a whole aspect of creativity that has nothing to do with art. Yes, if you can solve a problem, you're creative.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

Yes, thank you for bringing that up it is. There is this misconception that creativity means art and when people ask for examples of creativity, first thing that comes to mind as symbols, as examples of creative people, as relating it to your personal experience, is art. Or you know, I study creativity and when you meet new people, the first thing that comes up is what do you do? And I share that. I study creativity and most common reaction to that is oh, that's very interesting. I am not the creative one, but my insert relation. You know, my sister, who is a kindergarten teacher, is really good at drawing and I'm like well, I didn't say that I studied drawing, I said I studied creativity, and some people particularly do not use this word or cannot identify with the word.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

I have found that engineers, who solve problems day in and day out, just never think of the word creativity. But that's what they are doing. They are solving problems. Those problems are open-ended. They can have multiple kinds of solutions. They are doing something that is oftentimes original or hasn't been done before. It has to be effective for the problem they have. It has to solve something, build something. So by all definitional components it is creative. But because this idea of being artistic is so closely associated with creativity.

Dwight Spencer:

They never use the word, they never use the word yeah, and I want to pose something that is maybe something for our listener to consider, and I think that many of the people who do make art are going to be familiar with the works of Rick Rubin on the creative act, of Julia Cameron's the Artist's Way, which does lay out a program that has steps, but sneakily.

Dwight Spencer:

I think that it's really about the process, and another one that comes to mind is the book by Chase Jarvis, the Never Play it Safe, and it does a great job of categorization, and the reason I bring up these works and there are others is because this is not just a way of being able to present research in a popular science way. This actually lays out methods. This belongs alongside those books, and the thing that I would like to offer to the listener is the application of those principles. Even though in the aforementioned authors they're talking about art, they're applicable to life, they are universal truths, and if you apply the same methods to anything, you'd be amazed at what you can achieve and you're in great company.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

I was just going to say well, thank you for that compliment.

Dwight Spencer:

Well-deserved.

Maddox:

Zorana, I have. I'd like your take on something. I have a theory that I work off of, but I'm just an everyday person that's creative. I'm not a researcher. I don't have studies that back up what I'm saying particularly, but I talked. We're very social and we do a lot of things where we meet creatives of all kinds and you know, I meet writers that won't say I'm a writer, or poets that won't say I'm a poet, or just creatives that won't say I'm creative. So many people are hesitant to say that and I always have this conversation.

Maddox:

I was talking to a young woman at a networking event. She said I write poetry. In a few minutes, poetry. And I said a few minutes later I said oh, blah, blah, blah, being a poet. She goes oh no, I'm not a poet, I just write poetry. And I went why aren't you a poet? Well, because if I say that I'm a poet, then I have to write poetry, and if I don't say it, then I can write poetry when I want to, but I don't have to write poetry. As soon as I say I'm a poet, then I have to and I'm like, really, but for me, what I tell people and this is the part I want your take on.

Maddox:

I always say you know, there's something energetically really powerful that happens. You can say something. It's something that I do like I do creativity, I do painting, I do poetry, whatever poetry, whatever. We were with somebody recently and he said, wow, something like y'all really are like coaches. And I said it's not something we do, it's who we are. And he wrote us a long email a couple of days later, just like really saying how that had impacted him, me, saying that it impacted in me, saying that. And so I try to get people to own whatever it is. If you write, say that you're a writer. If you write poetry, say that you're a poet. If you're painting, say I'm an artist. Because when we own it, there's something energetically powerful that transforms something inside of us, it takes it to the next level and our confidence grows. Now, that's my theory, but you're the researcher. I would love to know your take.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

I agree with you. Something happens to us when we accept that doing aspect as a part of our identity. So what you are saying is saying I am a poet is a statement of identity versus I write. Poetry is just an action that happens to be on a Tuesday afternoon at 7.30 pm I'm revealing here that I'm a night person and not a morning person, but if your time is 5.30 am by all means. So when you say something is part of your identity, then you are creating commitment, and the person you were talking to was right in that that creates. That creates the motivational component of oh, I am a writer, I am a poet. Therefore, this writing is not just a side thing. This is something that I should be doing consistently and you don't have to wait to feel like it.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

I think that people, especially when talking about feelings and emotions in relation to creativity of all sorts, there's this misconception that you have to feel a particular kind of thing in order to create. You do not. The better question is well, you have feelings. How do you take them? How do you use them? How do you transform them in the service of your creativity?

Maddox:

Beautiful. I love it. Well, thank you for affirming what I've been telling people, because I've sure been spreading that word about that. Ownership plays a big role.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

And it's empowering too, once you start thinking of yourself as a poet, as a writer, that doubt, doubt is omnipresent in creative work. I was giving a keynote to a room of designers, and these were experienced designers and museum exhibit designers. They do creativity, they breathe it, they do it day in and day out. They think of themselves as creatives. And the first question I got after the talk was how do we remove doubt from the creative process? And I am not going to sugarcoat it, I am not going to tell you something that is not real. You cannot remove it. There is no removing it. It is going to be there, but what you can do is get better at coping with it.

Maddox:

And would we really want to remove all doubt, would we really want certainty? Because wouldn't that just kill the magic? If you were certain, before you started, that you were going to complete everything that you did Boring.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

I agree with you very much. But we all differ right that uncertainty is so unpleasant emotionally and creating such tension that it becomes something that can weigh on them. And thinking that you can get more comfortable with susceptible to doubt seems to be getting out there in the culture as a message, and I hear it often expressed as you have to get better with, you know being uncomfortable. I don't think so. I don't think you have to get better at it, you don't have to get more comfortable with it, you just have to accept it.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

I recently came across this beautiful quote it became my favorite quote from Georgia O'Keeffe and she said that she was terrified she used the word terrified of everything she ever did in her life. But that did not prevent her from doing it. And I love this quote well from one reason that I personally identify with it. I am, you know, on the neurotic side, so I tend to experience things deeply and get very intense, so I can relate to it on a personal level. But it's also saying hey, the fact that you are not comfortable is not diagnostic of your ability to do something. You can still go and do it, you can still take steps towards it. And how liberating is that.

Dwight Spencer:

That's awesome. I agree completely.

Maddox:

All the magic is outside of our comfort zone, completely All the magic is outside of our comfort zone.

Dwight Spencer:

That's so true, and this echoes the conversation we had with an artist, mark Russell Jones, where the major point that he was making was that the magic is in doing the work. It may be uncomfortable, you may not know exactly what you're going to do next, but you gain confidence from the act, from a bias toward action, from actually doing something.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

Oh, that is such a great point to make. I think that there is this sort of confusion between cause and effect sometimes in how people talk about creativity and confidence, in that there's almost an assumption that confidence comes first create. But we don't really start with confidence, or we start with a hint of confidence. We start with thinking, oh, maybe we could do this or it's worth trying within those terms, and then as we take steps, as we try something, start experimenting, then we start saying, oh well, I probably can because, look, I have done this, therefore I probably can do the next thing, this progress, we are learning from experience.

Dwight Spencer:

We are learning from observing what's happening as we are taking these steps and brought back to your dream of the elevator, from observing what's happening as we are taking these steps, and brought back to your dream of the elevator and I'm reminded of. I've heard it said many different ways. A lot of people don't like to know that the shortcut is. There is no shortcut.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

There is no shortcut.

Dwight Spencer:

The shortcut is the hard work.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

No, there is no shortcut and that's why, in talking to people, I really want to stress that there are all these popular articles out there. In order to be more creative, here are three easy things. Yeah, you can do easy things and maybe they're going to help you with something, but most fundamentally, you have to do the hard work and it's also going to take time.

Maddox:

Yes, you have to put in the reps. As Dwight says, Most things in life are a practiced thing. It's a muscle you build.

Dwight Spencer:

Practice and building and time are all intertwined.

Dwight Spencer:

Yeah, I know that it's been my experience that I've seen the whole the phenomenon of practice, and you know the power that comes from getting a good night's sleep. It's amazing, and I guess this was something that I felt most strongly when I was learning to play musical instruments. There were things that required greater technical difficulty, and so I would execute and I would intellectually know what needed to be done. I would attempt them, but for whatever reason, they were just out of reach. But for some reason, the next day I would attempt them and it was just a little bit easier after having had the benefit of the rest, and you know the way of bringing it all together.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

And I think that's a great example also, at times, of creative block.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

Yeah, and different people call the creative block different things and you know writers call it writer's block, called it writer's block, and it's essentially any kind of lack of progress getting stuck when it's not really about your ability.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

It is just you have hit a wall in a particular task or or thing that you have to do along your journey and there is a period in order to get over it, to kind of squeeze through that tight space, you need to bash your head against the wall. My husband is also a scientist and he is working on a new project and just recently was saying how he has this vague idea where he's going, but he's not there yet and it seems that he's not making any progress. But he knows you first have to bash your head against the wall before you can have an insight and there are things we can do to kind of help our insight and it cannot happen without prolonged time on trying to stare at the problem and play with it and accepting the fact that you're not making progress. But this is still necessary to go through.

Maddox:

I push, the more farther away. It is that when I can stop trying to make the breakthrough happen and just breathe and know that everything happens in its own time, then it comes when it's supposed to not always on my timeline.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

Yeah, that is completely true, and both are true in the same time, that it wouldn't come even on its own timeline if you did not spend some time before. But even when you spend some time before, it might not come exactly when you wish it to come. When you wish it to come, you can try some strategies. You can, you know, take a break, reach out to other people to try to get different perspectives. You can try to nudge it, and that sometimes works. But one thing that is constant is that you need to spend substantial time on it.

Maddox:

Yeah.

Dwight Spencer:

There's no getting away from the reps.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

No, getting away from the reps, and that is we mentioned. You know the emotional side of creative work and I think that even when we know that's the case because our society and we live in that society is obsessed with productivity and we live in that society is obsessed with productivity when we are not making progress, we think, because it's been imposed on us, that there's something wrong and that we are doing something wrong. We should have, we could have, and usually that is not the case. Creative work is difficult, by definition. We are trying to do something original that hasn't been done before. Therefore, there is no blueprint, no step-by-step, you know, turn-by-turn instruction, and sometimes we get in that labyrinth, we get into the, into dead end and we have to retrace our steps and restart and play with the pieces.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

I, uh, you know, when I was I was writing a book and I knew what I wanted to say.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

I have these big visions, big pieces of a vision, big visions, big pieces of a vision. But sometimes it would happen that I would get stuck on just how to put it together to be clear and fit and flow, and at one particular time I just had all the pieces, but it was just a jumble and I ended up taking physical scissors and cutting up pieces of paper with printed text and then sitting on the floor and rearranging them until they you know those online puzzles when you move pieces and then they snap into place. It was like that, it was like, oh, and then they snap into place. It was like that, it was like, oh, now it's snapping into place. Um, because it could happen that we have the right pieces, but we have to arrange them in a particular way, or arranging them can show us that there is a hole that we were not previously aware of, and that act of playing and rearranging and exploring will help us get there.

Dwight Spencer:

I can't help but be reminded of that study that you shared about the designers, and I think it was in chicago, where their task was to draw still life, and they were some of them were allowed to manipulate what it was that they were looking at, and look at it from every angle and touch, touch and and feel and work the parts and, you know, do all kinds of things that to an outside observer, someone would look and say, well, if they just need to draw, why are they? Why are they engaging all their senses like that? What's going on?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

That is one of my favorite studies of all times because it goes against their preconceptions, because it goes against our preconceptions. So our preconception is that, okay, you are drawing. Therefore, you just have your materials and you have your canvas and you start doing it. And yes, some people do it like that, but those who end up being the most creative don't do it like that. So in this particular study, everybody was asked to create a still life and they were given more than 30 different objects they could choose from, told, make still life with exact this. But, given that choice and that freedom that oftentimes exists when we are doing something creative, there isn't just one thing that you have to do.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

And then the researchers observed what people were doing, and some of these objects were different sizes and they were different weights. Some had mechanical parts, and so in a two-dimensional drawing, in the end you're not going to see anything moving. So you can say, well, there's no point in wasting time on making these mechanical parts work and playing with them. But it turns out, if you do something different happens to your process and the final product ends up being more creative. If you are weighing, comparing, arranging, stepping back, rearranging and spending a lot of time on the process itself.

Maddox:

That's fascinating. I have never heard of such a thing.

Dwight Spencer:

It's profound and I think it kind of holds up a lens to a lot of the ways that people are trying to lean on AI, the large language models, and use them as kind of a, as a shortcut, when I think there's so much value in what it is that we bring as living souls to what we do.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

Like we can look at something that's produced by ai if it's a heavy ai lift it has a signature we can tell it's just kind of generic or too polished or just weird in a way and, in studies that have looked at what AI produces, found that, on average, it might be considered by some independent group of judges to be more creative than something that is produced by a random group of people on average.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

But creativity is not average. Creativity is doing something that departs from the average and that's what the AI is, at this time, not able to do this time, not able to do Now. You know, I am a Trekkie and I leave it as a possibility of AI being able to do things in the future that it's not able to do now. But it is so heavily reliant on what has been produced before and its algorithm is such that, without being instructed and played with, so we are having that that you have to play with it, explore with it. That's where your creativity is coming in. If you're using it as a tool, but on its own, it's going to give you the next logical thing from where it's starting.

Maddox:

That makes sense. I'm very selective about what I use AI for.

Dwight Spencer:

Rightfully so, because we've all seen those things where it just has that AI look to it, that AI feel Kind of plastic.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

I love that phrase.

Dwight Spencer:

Well, it's been an amazing conversation that we've shared here and I've really enjoyed getting to spend this time with you.

Dwight Spencer:

I'm really kind of curious about one of the things that we call kind of the big question, and that is the nature of these conversations they can land on any ears that might open doors, and I know that you've done a whole lot of wonderful things. You've had a hand in shaping some wonderful apps that help us with creativity I'm thinking of the Messier app and also the how we Feel app and you've done a lot of work that has required um funding from from grants, uh, and you've you've done what a lot of people would consider kind of the the pinnacle of of several careers. Uh, you, you've done a lot to be proud of, but I know that there are other things that you might have ambitions for and knowing that no one does anything alone we're all a part of an interconnected web. We're all a part of one big community. What is something that someone could do that could be an unlock for you? That would really open up the possibility for what would be your next chapter.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

I love this question. It's such a beautiful question and the point of connection and building that community. I have changed a lot in my priorities in my career and in one of those out-of-body experiences. Looking back, it is so surprising because 10 years ago, 20 years ago most definitely, I could never have imagined writing a book. Even 10 years ago I probably could not. So in this chapter, in the chapter that I hope for is communicating. It's talking to people like you and your audience and saying, hey, I would love to talk to your group. I would love to dispel these myths about creativity that we talked about in terms of confidence and what is the nature of risks and how do we handle that identity part and that emotional part of creativity, because those are not obvious and sometimes the story out there ends up being misleading. So I would just love to talk to all your audiences. You have an organization. I would love to chat with you.

Maddox:

Wonderful and, if you like, we can put contact information in the show notes Zorana.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

Thank you.

Maddox:

Or we can lead them to your website. Is there a way that they can reach you once they come to your website?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

Yes, the best way to reach me is through the website, and I would love to connect.

Maddox:

Wonderful. Thank you so much for spending some time with us today.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

Thank you for having me. It's been such a lovely chat.

Maddox:

Well, and the wisdom that you bring. We are very grateful for you sharing that with us.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle:

Thank you, Maddox, Thank you Dwight.

Maddox:

Thank you.