The Freedom to Create

When we stop focusing on the outcome, creativity becomes a way back to ourselves.

In this episode, I explore creativity as more than making something—it can be a way of becoming fully present. Through my first experience at a pottery wheel, I reflect on perfectionism, inherited expectations, fear of trying something new, and the pressure to focus on results. When the outcome no longer mattered, something shifted: mu body relaxed, my mind quieted, and the experience itself became enough. Creativity offers us a chance to play, experiment, use our bodies differently, and discover who we are when we’re no longer trying to prove anything.

Walk with me.

Transcript

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Welcome to Invite Wisdom. Um today I definitely want to talk about creativity because I had a very, very interesting experience with myself. Now this has happened before, so I'm gonna talk about it on to me before. So I think it's interesting. So um the last time I was asked to do, let me say the first time I was asked ever to do a true, what I would consider to make a true creation that was gonna end up. I was asked to be an art show, digital art show. And but I didn't know exactly what it was. I don't know, I didn't know what the art show was exactly gonna be. Um and in other words, what you know, what the curator, what she was gonna want in the end. So I went to Michael's, I just put all this stuff together, was in the aisles, and I was so overwhelmed, like so overwhelmed, like with emotion, that I started crying in the aisle at Michael's. And my discovery at that point was that like venturing into something new brought out all these metaphors in the way I live. So it was sort of like you know, you're not gonna know how to do this, you're gonna do it wrong, um, this is stupid, you're stupid, you know, all this messaging. And at this point, um, I mean, I could talk about where that messaging comes from, but it's like we all know, right? It's all our memories, it's all our experiences, it's everything that we wished what was said wasn't said, it's all of our parents' crap, whatever it is. But I think what's so interesting about this is this is like a low, it's a high emotional risk, but it's a low physical risk. Because what I've discovered is being creative is so important for mental health. And the reason why is that is that it helps us get out things, you know. And let's say this wasn't used to be a natural part of when I say get out things, it's able to mirror us, show us, it's part of like the human experience. Let's say to do this or to experience this or to evolve through it. Um, and there's an idea about working with the hands. Okay, this is not so much what I've seen. This this is what I've learned more in my spiritual circles, not so much psychologically, except Freud talks about that. He was talking about a man who was a who was a creator writer, and how he was they were he was kind of envied in the circles he traveled in, because maybe botching the story a little bit, but because he got to be a kid. He got to be a kid, and everybody else was being an adult, and he in these stories got to be a kid, and he talked about how when kids get interrupted in their play by adults, they kind of get embarrassed, you're right, because the parents the the kids can't pretend when the adults are around because the adults come and they go, You're pretending we know, and the kids are like, Can you just let us have fun? Why do you have to put the kibosh on it? So it's sort of like you know, they get to the creators get to use their imaginations, you know. But in and then and in this case, I'm saying, and if you look at this as like, I'm gonna go try to make a sweater and have never made a sweater before, it's gonna bring up all your fears about why you don't do the things you want to do that you've never done before. Fear of the unknown. Everybody, you know, these are the things I hear every single day. Fear of uncertainty, fear of the unknown, fear I won't get it right, fear it won't be perfect, fear other people are gonna think it's better than me. You know, it brings up some more lively stuff. I mean, it's really interesting, but you can't knock it until you try it. So that you know, I don't know. I know in a lot of the circles that I walk in, you know, creativity is a really important thing. But I really don't it's it's it's because it's spoken about on a regular basis, but um not I don't know, I don't know how this is being received. I know people are always fighting for the arts, but are those the artists fighting for the arts or are those people? You know, because it's like we're gonna play music on our phone, we're not gonna actually play music. And um, oh my god, it's a lab, a puppy. Lab poppy, wish you all could see. I'm not gonna take a picture, obviously. My god, the cutest thing ever. Um so okay, so if we if we're looking to face our fears and we want to do it in a pretty safe way, we can we can think about looking at our doing a creative project, something you haven't done before. I mean, I was when I went to Michael's, I got like it was around this time of year. And um, and I love all the spooky stuff. Um, mentioned that before. But I I love all the spooky stuff because of the infinite possibility reminds us of transformation, the skulls, the change, you know, that's what really sees skulls. That's what's left, you know. That's what's left of us when everything else is gone is the bones. So what does that mean? You know, what does that mean if we're bare we're stripped down to our bones? And I mean that like psychologically, the vulnerability. You know, okay, so that's what I mean. It wasn't, you don't have to set out to do anything in particular. All right, so the reason why I'm bringing that up is a little backstory about the importance of us being creative so we could have joy and fun in our lives. And if you have kids, I realize like, you know, these this is the time where you might you might have just done that with your children and it opened you to things, but then you don't, you know, but you don't do that. Um you don't do that on you know a regular basis anymore because or you used to do something, let's say, and now you're at all your kids' stuff because your kid's not interested in what you're interested in. I mean, this happens a lot. This is I think especially true for women. Um I think men more easily, or I observe this, I'm not gonna say all men, but they more easily keep their in their lane around their fun activity is kind of born more um in that stead. Um, okay, so if um okay, so so now I'm gonna talk about my next experience. And I went and I threw clay for the first time ever on to a potter's wheel. Now I I'm like, I feel like I'm like um, you know, this 50-ish year old cliche, like, oh let's go take a pottery class. But maybe it is these days, I don't know. But it it was very, very interesting to go do that. But the thing I found most interesting is that I was in a bit of a let's say had a really stressful week last week, and I was in a really a pretty big funk. And when I went got in the car to go, I was feeling like I don't know, you know, not good. I'll just say I was in a bad mood. Um, I was trying to keep my head above the water, like doing all the exercises I suggest in these podcasts, but my heart was hurting. So I get in the car and I start having like I don't know, like some panoramic view of my of my of my childhood. I start to have some panoramic view of my childhood. And I'm like, you know, almost like there's an expectation this must happen, but it was about all the blocks, all the times I wanted to go and do things. And we just we just couldn't like my parents just couldn't do it. They couldn't do it, so we never went anywhere, we never did anything, there was always an excuse, and I'm hearing all of these excuses, and I'm getting the barrage of of you know, perfection is all these things, and I'm going, brook, uh you don't care, you you don't care about any of these things, and the real truth is I I don't. I didn't care about any of the things that was coming through. I never seemed to care about those things in the morning, and so I was like looking at the project on the way there, the project that I mean the going, the class I was taking. And the other thing for again, people in similar situations to me, when I went to go sign up for the class, there was a million reasons I had found not to sign up, and it was especially because one of my children was gonna be home from college. What are we gonna be doing? And you know, just to say, that kid who came home from college, he came home, was home for a few hours, and then immediately turned around to go see his sister at school, right? So here I am, I'm not gonna plan that. Now, did someone tell me not to plan it? No, no, but I'm just supposed to be available. Did anyone tell me I'm supposed to be available? Well, yeah, I learned that from I don't know how many generations of people. Okay, so of women. All right, so who are supposed to be at the beccan call of men, and although it's taboo probably to say that these days, I still think women are taught to do that. So, um, because it's in it's inherently built into the culture for so long that no one even realizes that's what they're teaching their daughters, and maybe it's also in the inherent nature of women. Okay, so I'm on the way to the studio. I don't know where it is. Now here it comes. I gotta find parking. I didn't leave enough time, I'm gonna be late, but it's like I'm on this two-tiered thing, and on the top tier, it's like the is all of this, or I should say, like, let me look at it from the at the bottom tier, okay, it's all of this stuff, but at the top, the water's great. It's like it's a kind of like the water's cold, really cold, but then the water's really warm. And I'm like, okay, which person am I? Am I the person who's so neurotic about getting to the pottery class that I'm that I paid for at HPC2 on time and getting it right? Or or am I, you know, the other person who's just like trying to do something new and enrich her life or you know, see what this can do for her mind body complex because it's very, very interesting to use your body in a new way. Okay, so I get there, I find the parking spot, um, and I get inside, I'm a little late, and she's like, all right, go pick a wheel. And I'm like looking around, like the rest of the class is sitting at the wheels. I mean, this is how bad this is. Like, and not that I let me say it this way, I've never seen a Potter's wheel before. I'll go as far to say that ever. Right? So it's not like I don't have an idea of what it looks like, but I don't know. And meanwhile, you know how heavy that is. You know, it's like there's the whole thing so crazy. And I'm looking around, I'm like, oh, this is a good place to get started. And I'm cracking myself up from the beginning. I'm like, oh, actually, I don't really think I I think this is really interesting. How I feel. Like, I feel interested. And I feel like palm. And I and I'm like, oh, this is like me. This is me who just wanted to try new things and doesn't really care about the outcome. I talk a lot about this. Now the outcome. I think that's sometimes. Look, we're we're built that we're as humans, we're built with this temptation to look for um the results. Because honestly, I think it's we believe our love depends on it, our worth depends on it. And I've seen this a lot with older people, a lot, a lot, a lot with older people who especially well, you know, it doesn't matter these days, I see it with everybody, where they feel so demoralized. That's where their depression is coming from because they can't, they saw themselves as these worthy individuals contributing to life, and now they can't keep their schedules because they can't keep their minds on straight, you know, and they feel so lost and lonely, afraid, they so wish things were different for themselves. They didn't believe it was gonna end up this way. You know, they're just very upset, and they're upset because they don't feel worthy. And look, there's a part of all of us. We call it the witness. Some people in in Eastern thought, um in other realms they call it like the self, the big S. And it's this place that we can go in our minds that's beyond thought, right? It's a place of inviolability, meaning it's a place that nobody can cross, no one could hurt us, no, because it's all it's always there for us to return to. We could argue that's the divinity within, all different ways to look at it, but it does um there's peace when we go there. Now it could be you could find this feeling, you know, if when you walk into a church, someplace where someone has been praying and connecting to this part of them because that energy is like honed in there. This is the place I think people hope to when they meditate meditate a lot, they can find it in their mind. I mean, it's really another way to say it, it's present moment consciousness, because it's like the air, it's like this is where the sky in our mind, the sky is blue, the sky, the weather, the sky's always there and the weather comes through. The sun's always there, but the weather comes through. The sun's even there when the moon's out, you know, that type of thing. All these metaphors for us to be able to relinquish something inside when we're when we're hurting, right? So let's say that was a part of me that was like, yay, go into pottery class, you know, that's it. Trying something new, yay. And then there's this other thing: the memory, the metaphors, the expert old experiences. That's not pure consciousness, that's not inviolability, that's where the pain, the trauma, the interruptions are. Okay, so anyway, so you know, I've had I've I'm able to find that space in myself. Worked very hard to find that space in myself, lots of meditation, lots of mantra, lots of, you know, real effort put in in that way. And um systemic, you know, like having teachers, the learning how to breathe, all these different things I've learned. So I can't, I can, I can go there. I can go there. And I can also I just learned sit at a pottery wheel. Okay. The reason why, I mean, I came out of that. So I did it. I did the steps. Um, I didn't care how well I did them. I threw out all the clay when I was done. Because it I they were I wasn't going to do the next stuff. If I was gonna do the next step, I would have learned. But this was just a beginner's class with you know, they were gonna fire it for you. And I didn't need anyone to fire and paint my creation because what I was interested in, and I think this is very important, I was interested in the process, and the process in my body felt, I was like, this is another way to hit present moment consciousness because I have to use so many parts of my brain at the same time that it forces you to be in the present moment and you can't think, you can't think, at least you can think about what you're doing, but even that might ruin it. And what I also found is it was a brand new way of using my brain because I couldn't remember the steps as she was teaching them while I was doing it, and I was like, oh, so that means so other people, you know, you might be like, I can't do this, I can't do this, you know, and instead I was like, oh, so she's like, oh, I have a cheat sheet, people to remember. I mean, there were some perimenopausal jokes going back and forth, etc. etc. And you know, joking, I was joking with myself, I was laughing at myself. It was it was interesting to meet the side of myself who just was free, free to be you and me, because she was focused on the process and not the result, and the result didn't matter, and that made the whole process so different. So there's two different levels here, but the most important thing I learned was about our way, it's really about our neuropsychological processing. Because if you told me that I could sit down at a potter's wheel and find that space within, at this point in my life and my career, I would believe you. But I I can't believe I left, I was in a completely different mood. My body felt different. My body felt different. Now I had had that exercise with my mind before, so I knew my mind could still like that, and that was through meditation, but I did not realize that to engage my entire body in that process, how therapeutic that was going to be for me, how fulfilling it was gonna be. And you know, there was there was some nice people to talk to, you know, they talked about, you know, it's a nice community, you know, you know, you see people that you know that it's it's it's it was it's interesting. It's an interesting, it was interest, it's interesting for me to observe myself in that and to use my body in that way, and then see how that affected my mind. Now, could it also fulfill some dreams of a child, you know, uh having more fun doing what the type of things that I think is fun, having my mind stimulated, realizing how hungry I am for entertainment and knowledge of a certain kind, of a certain kind, like deep, really deep stuff. And you know what happens with the deep stuff. I don't know, I've talked about this before, but you know, deep kids sometimes, depending on who they're hanging out with, they can really get the shit under the stick, so you know, so to speak, because you know, they they maybe their peers are interested in something different than them, depending on where where where and whom you hung out. Or let's say you hung out with the cool kids, but you're really wanting to be uh a part of the other group that did things more like this. So, anyway. The biggest observation I made at this, okay, so then there's the result piece, focusing on the result. I don't think people realize, maybe, maybe, maybe some people do, but I don't think I've realized how much my life I have suffered in my life because I was focused on the result and not the process. And this is a don't pay, you know, it's the journey, not the destination. But when we your whole life have been taught, focus on the prize, focus on the prize, focus on the prize, focus on the prize, focus on the prize. You know what I mean? You lose, you miss out on this experience. And it's the experience in life, not the prize, that leads to the fulfillment. And I think when people look back at their lives, um, what they end up, what they end up regretting isn't what you think they, you know, it's like it's like one of my one most wonderful mentors is like, Brooke, in the end of the day, uh you're just gonna end up in a room with all your files. And I'm like, and I thought this guy was awesome. You know, I don't even know how many lives he saves. And I was like, what do you mean? But look at how many lives you impact. He goes, he's still gonna end up with the files alone. And I'm like, wow. And you know, this is what I've observed, as much as I may have wanted to deny it. I have observed that. I've observed that with so many people that when they get old, what is it they regret? They said, you know, they wanted to spend more time in their faith, they wanted to spend more time with their families, they want, but when they talk about that, especially the older generation, they're not just talking about time spent. They're they're talking about where their minds were, where their minds were at the time of the process, which I think is phenomenally interesting. It's not did they travel, it's were they present, you know, and how do we get present? We're always looking at ways to get how do we do this. And I'm just gonna say, try some new creative endeavor that you've always wanted to try. And I feel like everybody has that. I don't know, everybody has this so interesting because it's not been, it's not like sort of part of our lives so much anymore. As a natural uh sort of way to be. The kids, yes, but the adults, not necessarily unless you are an artist by by training, or that's what you do. And I think that's very different for those, you know, maybe those artists are like, I should go pick up something new and do it. The other thing that also comes up I for me and for, and it's like I like that teacher, I don't like that teacher. I mean, people talk about how they, you know, it's like endless metaphors as an adult person to see how you operate in this larger world order, and it's a little snapshot, just a little snapshot. So I think sort of what the the, you know, I went all, I feel like it went all the way down underneath the water because I can't encourage this enough. People are always looking for ways to learn how to meditate. I mean, the this is, you know, that's a meditative process. And I don't know, you know, Einstein talks, like would talk about that's how he came to his greatest ideas, is he would take these breaks and would you know, be with nature or play. I think he played um, not sure what instrument he played, you know, or he would play his instrument, and and this allowed for this like other part of his brain, or maybe his consciousness, to be able to access other, I'm gonna say information, whatever that means, or maybe clarity, whatever that means. So I don't know, I think like try something new because you could and and let the fear wash over you and push through it and see all the things you confront. Because if you have lar other goals that you want to set, you know, other goals, then it becomes um clearer and clearer. It becomes clearer and clearer that the the nature of trying to break through that it could it could be a lot, and it brings up a lot of emotion and it brings up a lot of blocks, and that's because of um all the things I talked about today. So it's it's worth pushing through because the risks are very low. It's very low. Um maybe just one class, you know. So, or one experience, and even if you go, you know, uh, you know, I don't like this. This isn't what I want to be doing. That's as good of an experience as anything else because sometimes people think they want to go do something, or they're motivated to do something by like let's say money or or and but that it they don't really want to do it, and they find that out because they go and they do it, or let's say someone told you to do something, but in the back of your mind you want to do something else, and you know, and sometimes your suggestions that people make, especially if they're they're trying to help you, they're just suggestions, you know, no one knows how it's gonna turn out, but again, over and over again, what's important is experience, experience, experience, experience, not thinking, thinking, thinking. So go and try something new and understand the nature of how important it is to engage your creativity, engage your hands in doing something because it's so important for your mental well-being that you engage in something where you don't have to be thinking walking back on the street. So try it. Let's see. And um and I'll wonder how I'll wonder how it went. So uh thanks so much for walking with me. I didn't report in on the weather, not that I care about the weather, but it's a beautiful fall morning here, and I hope a good week. Um thanks and uh walk with me again soon.