Midlife is the perfect time to return to your creativity: A conversation with Ann Imig

Show Notes:

• Experience a quick, grounding practice (PQ reps) to tune into our bodies
• Guest Ann Imig and Steph have a discussion of the concept of saboteurs: patterns that keep us stuck
• We overview  common obstacles to our creativity: perfectionism, procrastination, people-pleasing, or being a hyper-achiever
• “We don’t outrun our saboteurs, but we learn to turn them down and take action from a different place in our brains—the intuitive, clear, focused place.”
• What happens when you feel like you can’t find your spark, your creativity, or even yourself—it’s not lost, we promise!
• Learn more about working with Ann here.

For those curious about learning more about this, frustrated with creative blocks, or feeling out of touch with your spark, you can learn more about the April workshop here.

Looking for a community of other creative midlife women? Join us in The Pause. 

Transcript

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Welcome to a special episode of the Paranormal Podcast. I'm your host, Steph Springer, and today I am in conversation with Anne Iig. But rather than interviewing Anne for the podcast, we did a Substack Live a few days ago, and I'm sharing the recording of that conversation with you. Well, most of it, it started out with a completely hectic moment when I lost internet. Well, we lost power altogether. Shortly before the Substack live. No worries. I have my phone. It'll work out. Well, you know when you keep getting that advisory that it says you're unstable or your connection is unstable, but it kind of feels personal, so I just buckled up to accept the fact that we were about to do a live with an unstable connection. And oh, it was also spring break and we had neighbor kids stop over at the exact moment I started recording because you know how garage doors don't work when you have a power outage? They were locked out, the dog was barking uncontrollably. There are three kids in the living room and my internet is unstable and I'm about to have a conversation with Ann about getting into our creative flow. So, um, it was a moment you guys. While I'm going to edit out most of that cacophony just to spare your ears and your nervous systems, I will include the conversation about how rather than having this beautifully scripted, we've got it all together, discussion. It was a little rough around the edges, and Anne was able to hands-on in the moment, demonstrate some of the work she does, and it helped bring me back to a place of calm and groundedness so we could talk about being a creative person, feeling blocked, losing touch with yourself and your spark. And we're also going to talk a little bit about the workshop that we're doing together beginning April 6th, called Surf Your Creativity, the Five Week Saboteurs. And superpowers workshop and I hope you'll join us. There will be details in the show notes where you can learn more, and Ann Immig is the national founder of Listen to Your Mother Boulder, but she's also an MSW and certified coach, so I'm really excited for you to get to know her a little bit more. And we were inspired to have this conversation because of. The many issues I talk about with midlife women in my writing community. The pause, which I'll also link to in the show notes. We are constantly talking about imposter syndrome, procrastination, people pleasing, lack of follow through all the things that pull us out of our writing overwhelm, self-doubt. And so Ann and I are gonna dive into that together and I hope you enjoy our conversation. I have Anne Iig with me today and I am so excited about this conversation. Um, I'm in Colorado and Anne is in Madison, Wisconsin. Yep. And I'm gonna tell you all a little bit about her. Um. A little gushing why I love her, the kind of work that we've done together. And I'm gonna let Ann share a little bit about her work and our topic of focus today is creativity and flow and what happens to us when we feel. Blocked or stuck. It's like you couldn't have, scripted this better. So instead of talking about how one holds it together when things go south, I'm just, I'm just modeling it. I'm just demonstrating my, well, let's just do some PQ reps right now before we do anything else. You know what, I was actually gonna ask you how you felt about doing a PQ rep session. Yeah, we'll do think a couple right now about this minute. Okay. And you don't know anybody who's watching. You don't have to know what the heck we're talking about. Mm-hmm. But I'm just gonna lead you through one minute of deeply tuning into our senses. You can call it mindfulness, you can call it cognitive behavioral therapy. In the positive intelligence world, we call this a PQ rep. The name isn't important. So Stephanie, I'm gonna close my eyes. I'm gonna invite you to do the same. Or you can just, listeners, you can just pick a point of focus. If you're driving, I hope you're not watching this anyway, um, and you can just pull over safely and then close your eyes or pick a soft point of focus. And let's just start by taking three deep breaths, noticing the temperature of the air as you inhale through your nose, and how it changes when you exhale through your nose. So just letting go of any thoughts you're having and specifically noticing the temperature of your breath as you inhale and how it changes when you exhale. Now I invite you to let your breath return to its natural rhythm, paying close attention to the effortless rise and fall of your chest and stomach. You could even put a hand on your chest or stomach and really tune into the movement your body makes as you breathe. And again, letting go of any thoughts that's totally normal. Now shift your attention to your fingertips and take two fingertips and rub them together with such attention that you can feel sensation on both fingers. Maybe you even feel fingertip ridges on both fingers. Maybe not. Just feel sensation on both fingertips. And then we'll do one more, which is relaxing your hands. Shifting to listening for the farthest away sound you can hear. Finally, listening for the closest sound you can hear, maybe a sound inside your body, maybe the sound of your breathing. And then before you open your eyes, just notice how you feel compared to before we did these grief exercises. And then just open your eyes when you're ready. Oh, and that was so amazing. I feel so much better. And so if, if any of you can imagine doing a substack live when you are having a power outage and spring break and children and barking dogs, imagine the contrast, the before and the after. Um, I love that we got to give a little demo. The kind of work that Ann does. And now I'm gonna introduce her a little bit more in depth and I'm gonna talk about some of the work we did together last fall. Ann is my coach, but she has been my, my longtime mentor because Anne founded. Listen to Your Mother, the National Storytelling Show. Was it 2010? Ann? Okay. And so I've been producing, listen to your mother Boulder since 2016, so 10 years. And so Ann has just like, kind of been an icon and one of those people that you, that you look up to that you wanna be when you grow up and, um. So to get to work with her as a coach was really special. And, and after I got to meet Anne and started producing, listen to your mother. Um, she's been a guest on my podcast and she's done workshops for our writing community of midlife women. She's just really important person in my life. And so after kind of knowing her and her work for over a decade, I decided to do some coaching with Anne last fall. And. A lot of it had to do with the scene that you just witnessed, that the tremendous amount of stress that was showing up in my life. I had a really rough divorce. I was at a pivotal career moment and I knew that I needed some different tools. To get through the stage of my life and working with Anne, is probably one of the most grounding things I've ever done for myself. I'm a perimenopausal woman with a DHD and a single mom, and I'm self-employed, so I have been working to regulate my nervous system, like it's my job and the work that Anne and I have done together has been just. Probably one of the most transformative things that I've done. And so, like I said, she's presented workshops for my writing community, which is now the Pause, um, a community for midlife women. And after our last one, I really wanted to go deeper with the conversation. Because so many of the midlife women in our community have been voicing similar struggles about. Feeling blocked. Writing used to feel easier. I don't know where I'm going. A lot of us wrestle with comparison and imposter syndrome, and just overwhelm. And so Anne and I talked about it. It it's not like, it's not like you've lost your creativity. It's not like you've lost your spark, but. We all have these patterns that are unconscious, primarily that, that get in our way. So we're gonna dive into that a little bit today. I'm gonna let Anne talk about her work, but as, as we shift to that, if you are a writer and you have been feeling stuck, I'd love for you to leave us a comment about what your biggest obstacle is right now, what's getting in your way, whether or not you're a writer, whatever the thing is that you are trying to do that, that you're feeling stuck on. Um, we'd love to hear from you. But Anne, why don't you tell us a little bit about your practice? Sure. So what I help people do is quite literally retrain our brains. Um, I've been doing this work as a coach for about five years, um, and it's profoundly changed my life. We all are under this. False impression that happiness is waiting for us someday. That I'll be happy when, um, it might be around achievement body relationship. But you know, as soon as this x, y, and Z happens, then I'll be happy. And what all the positive psychology research over decades shows is that we can actually. Change our ability to enjoy our life in a very real way, affecting our creativity, affecting our relationships, our wellbeing. And it starts in our brain. And the reason is, as many of you already know about the negativity bias, we're just so primed. Our mammal brain is always running the show, um, as if it's an emergency, even when we're not aware of it. Now, in a real emergency, we need this. We need to run fast. We need to lift up the car. We need to become right. The rest of the time that brain really interferes in real ways. Um, the tool I use with people is called Positive Intelligence. It's an app. Space learning program and um, it's something that I've used every day for four years for myself and for my clients. And what it does is it literally brings our right brain, generally speaking to the gym and builds it up in a brand new way. That is life changing. It regulates, yes. Our nervous system and that feeling of I've lost my spark or I am, I have writer's block, or I don't even know who I am anymore. You haven't lost anything. It's all waiting in the happier, more positive, curious, intuitive part of our brain. It just keeps getting blocked by this stress channel, by these hardwired patterns from our childhood that whether you had the best childhood on earth or the hardest childhood, we developed these superpowers. Is why we're sitting here today to get love, to get fed, to get nurtured, to survive, but then into adulthood. It creates what we call the saboteurs, these old, hardwired operating systems from our five-year-old selves that really get in the way of our current ability to shine, using our strengths to be in ease and flow. Um.'cause there're these patterns that are overused and abused. So that's what our writing workshops are gonna be focusing on. That's the work in a nutshell that I do with people and um, and how we tap into more ease and flow in our creativity, in our work and our relationships, especially in our relationship with ourself. I, I love this. And the, so the workshop we're gonna do starting the first week of April, um, is called Surf Your Creativity. And it's, it's a five week saboteurs and superpowers series. And I love the saboteur and superpower concept. Um, first of all, I'm a person who lived for a magazine quiz in the nineties, right? And so. The saboteur assessment where it's like you identify which ones are showing up, the mo, I'm like, oh my God. I need to understand I'm one of those people, like I wanna do the Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram, and all the things like, tell me about me. I wanna understand what I'm working with. And so. But this framework of figuring out these patterns that you have that you maybe aren't, maybe you're a little aware, like I think some of us know if we're perfectionists or, or control freaks, or if we procrastinate, but I think what we usually do is we just like slap ourselves with that negative label like I'm a procrast. I am tightly wound and, and I think this work is really special because it does two things, like it gets you to understand why, like what? What that pattern has, has done for you. But I love the connection to the superpower, right? Like, maybe you are a really sensitive or empathic person, right? Like that's a good thing. And then kind of here's what happens when it gets taken too far. I mean, I just think that the compassion angle versus judging ourselves is, um, it's a big one. Yeah. So it's um. I'll use myself as an example.'cause I think it's helpful to put this in tangible terms. So I grew up, um, in a really chaotic family. Lots of love, but lots of drama. And I was the youngest and I learned really quickly, like, I don't want any part of the drama. I'm gonna get along with everyone and um, I'm gonna take care of myself and I'm gonna do really well, so no one has to worry about me. And so that was like, I. So that turned into me being really likable, making friends easily. Everyone liked, you know, I kind of was the kid in the family who could get along with everyone despite all the friction and fighting and all that. And I achieved and achieved, and. That literally like when I was a performer and when I would have shows, my family would come together and that was the only time. So that's powerful. And then as I became an adult, I developed that kindness and that ability to get along turned into this really high pleaser saboteur who promised me that I would. Everything would be okay if I could just get people to like me and make everyone else happy when of course the reality is if you have a pleaser running the show, you don't know. You lose your boundaries. You don't even know what fleas you anymore. Um, and you kind of get a breadcrumb and you're always chasing the bread because you never ar. That's never enough. You, you, there's, there's always more people to please. There's no end to it. And then also this hyper, hyper achiever, I had my whole sense of self. Just waiting on the next bigger and better achiever achievement. And then even when I would get those things, I couldn't even enjoy them because it was just this unfillable, well, this insatiable needs and distracting me from a very beautiful life available to me. Um, and it was this work that helped me disrupt those patterns and. Love every day, an average day, no matter what is going on. And, and, and so in terms of creativity, what brought me to this work is I had a novel that didn't sell and I got farther than I had ever got. Like my agent was behind it, she started sending it out and it didn't sell. And. I just went into despair despite like it was a pandemic. We had everything we need. My family was healthy, right? Like I had every reason to be enjoying my life. And yes, you can say of course a big creative disappointment is real, but not for weeks and weeks and weeks, you know, tearful like just, and feeling like a failure. Yeah. Meanwhile. Well, I had written a whole novel and gotten it to a place where my agent was sending it like that is something to celebrate. I couldn't even see that. Yeah. And my own coach and therapist at the time was like, the more successful you get, the less happy you become. You need to do something about this. And that's how I found positive psychology and then positive intelligence. So that's one example. What comes to mind for you? Yeah, it's such a great example. And pleaser. It was a huge one for me. Anne and I spent a lot of time in the fall working on my pleaser and different origins, right? Like I was an eldest daughter. So, you know, that's, its, it's its own lovely little concoction in the other eldest daughters out there today, but also, you know, gen X. Um, Scandinavian, Lutheran, Midwest, right? Like it is baked into you that you are going to consider everybody else's comfort before your own. And, and so pleaser, I didn't even realize how much it was showing up in the things that I said yes to. And you know, when I, when I reached out to Anne in the fall, I was like. My career stuff is getting overwhelming. I, like, I, I thought that I was kind of signing up for something different. I had no idea that it was gonna crack open this stuff that, that didn't just have to do with how I was running my business or what I was choosing to do. But that connected to my relationships. Right. Um, they connected. And how did the saboteur affect your writing? Oh, oh, that's a different interesting one. Yeah, it is. And I think that, so, um, a lot of the women I work with are memoirists and personal essayists, and so I think pleaser can show up as, like the concept of permission that, that essayists face a lot. Like, what will people think about me if I write this? Um, people might judge me. I choose to do this, I might not be approved of. Right. And so that, that fear of the judgment of others, or maybe you're going to make someone uncomfortable by being vocal about something or about sharing a story, I think, um. I think that was a big one for me and, and even like considering just what opportunities, offerings saying yes, because you don't want to upset someone or overcommitting because you want to try to meet everyone's needs and then at the end of the day you're depleted, right? Think about like, when you think about people who can't even get themselves to sit down and write. Because they're so distracted. The trouble, you know, the lacking in focus, the shiny objects like, well I wanna write this essay, but, oh wait, maybe I wanna start that novel. Oh, wait a minute. You know, there's so many ways that our stress brain gets in the way of our creativity. Um, and you could, there's, you can. There's things you can do Well, and that's the thing is when, so when you talked about, because that, that's a big one. Like I'm just not like, but in chair is not happening. Right. I can't even get to the point where I'm judging what I'm writing or worrying about what people will think of it.'cause I. I'm just finding, you know, a million I'm, the dishwasher exists and oh, I, I need to do this and I need to do that. And for whatever reason, we have a lot of women with a DHD in the community. I don't, I think maybe I just transmit some sort of frequency and it's like a homing signal and we all find each other. So there are a lot of us who, there's a lot of self-flagellation about procrastination. Like, why can't I. Get but in chair, why can't I meet these writing goals? And, and I think that the, this work is different because rather than just labeling yourself and criticizing yourself, you start to understand, well, why am I not, why am I not coming to my writing? We're all human and we all share these saboteurs, um, and there's nothing wrong with you. I used to really be incredibly harshly self-critical and judge myself so harshly, and now I just, when I feel those feelings coming, when I hear that saboteur, I can identify it. I can do some PQ reps and I can act from a different place in my brain. Because we don't, it's not like a before and after. We don't outrun these saboteurs. What we do is we learn to turn them down and take action from a different place in our brain, from the more creative, intuitive, calm, focused, clear place that a lot of people listening probably are like, I don't even know where that place is in my brain. Right, right. But it's there. Right? I think that sometimes midlife is when I think a lot of this stuff comes up, right? Like you, you have enough decades of experience and maybe there are some things in your life that are easing up in a way that you're able to like slow down and go, oh, how did I get here? And then there's the curiosity, right? And I think the curiosity instead of the judgment is such a big tool, huge. In the Artist Way workshop we talk, Julia. Cameron writes about like the river of creativity, right? Like kind of dropping into the flow. And one of my brilliant group members was talking about like the river is always there, right? Even if, even if you don't hear it flowing or even if it's frozen over for like the river is always there, like it hasn't run wrongly. Absolutely. Absolutely. So it's like finding your way back to it and, and like you said, accessing this part of yourself noticing it, oh, that, that was a saboteur right now. I. Well, and this is gonna be like a light introduction, so we're not gonna be like doing, this isn't therapy, we're not gonna be doing like gut wrenching, like disclosure. That's not what you're signing up for. I love your river analogy from Julia Cameron, and that each of these sessions, you're gonna get to touch in that river. I think every time we have a session, and it, and this is just an in, it's an introduction to the work of positive intelligence. You won't be doing the program and like doing a deep work, but you'll be introduced to it and you will have discoveries. You will have, um, it will be energizing and you will walk away with a little more ease and flow, I think. And, and the way real change happens is micro steps. And allowing yourself to be a learner, so I hope people will join us. Yeah. I, I do too. And I love the way you just described that. One of my favorite things that Anne taught me is, um, when we're talking about change in our lives, it's, it's 20% insight and 80% practice. And that really pissed me off because I really like to insight my way to things. It's like, no, I've read that. I listened to the whole podcast. So now I know this is like an invitation to start practicing. Some, just some different skills and yes, it, you are not like you were, it's not a full immersion coaching experience. The other thing that I think is cool that I love about, um, the workshops that we do for midlife women, the community becomes like this ingredient, right? Yes. There's this alchemy, And like I've, I have learned so much from all the women who've done workshops before. Like I think that we absolutely long for each other, right? Like we, we are craving that connection again, that return to sort of gather around. Yes. The well, and it's built in support and accountability if you're looking for that. Um, you know that 80 20 rule comes from Shiza, Shain and positive intelligence, as does the fact that when you do learning in groups, you're much more likely to sustain real change because of that built in support and accountability. So you said such wonderful things in the introduction about my work. I haven't even acknowledged yet, Stephanie, and I just wanna. Hone in on how much community you create for others. Like real affordable opportunities for creative women of any, you know, whether you've never written beyond a journal to, you know, you're a multi, um, said multi-platinum, multi published author, you know, hobbyist to professional, um, right. And people, you know, moms non moms. Um, it's, it's a, it's a warm and welcoming space and, um, and you bring your own, you know, amazing writing and creativity and community building. You know, it's so amazing. So many of the listen to your mother producers have taken the show way farther than I I ever did. So, like, kudos and huge gratitude for what you are doing and, and allowing people to experience. Thanks, Anne. I like, I, I really think at this stage of life, so many women are really feeling that pull back to themselves and, and like you said, whether it's your journal or like a book deal, you're trying to land, right? Yeah. Like I think our creativity is so often like a path. What we are really looking for is like that, that spark in ourselves that maybe we feel like we misplaced for a bit. And, and I do think that we, we. Amplify, amplify our, our wisdom and our learning when we are together. And I, I really, and so if you joined us late, um, I'll post the replay of this and you'll get to see the beginning of this, which was perfect. It was so perfect. It was like, no, I choreographed this shit show just so you guys could all see, because you know, the thing that, um, with my. Wiring, like, um, I use the word flappable, like I'm not, I'm not unflappable. I'm very flappable. And this work is like a way to be like, ooh, that nervous system. It's, it's learning how to calm down when there are barking dogs and power outages and children, you know? Do you listen to Amy PO's podcast and did you see the one with Rachel Dra when like they, that her Rachel was just a mess, like she, her. Her headphones were malfunctioning. She had ordered like DoorDash, the doorbell was ringing, the dog was barking, and it was one of the, if you haven't seen it and you wanna laugh today, no. Okay. No, I'm going up, up. It's so amazing. Um, and if you, I haven't filled out a substack profile, so I, if you wanna find out more about who the heck I am and the work that we're talking about. Yeah. At listen listen life coaching com, um, and I'll put that. I'll put that in the notes too. Okay. Um, and, and you can, there she goes. We're just talking. This experience. Perfect timing. Yeah. Thank you for being here. Thank you. And as all of you, bye. Surf your creativity is a five week saboteurs and superpowers workshop. And it's not just for quote real writers. If you have a creative practice, a hobby, a pastime, if you're a journaler, if you've been feeling blocked or just not quite like yourself, you are going to get something out of this workshop. The community that we've developed over at the pause is beautiful and supportive, and I learn from the members every day. So check the link in the show notes for how to join me and Anne this April for the five week workshop to help you better understand your saboteurs and your superpowers. You can learn more about this workshop. The Pause Writers Membership Community and all of our other upcoming events at Welcome to the pause.com. See you next time.