Ep 10: Play Date with Sarah Raad

Sarah Raad has spent her career working with creative women who are stuck in the loop: overthinking, second-guessing, circling the same ideas, and never quite feeling ready. Sound familiar?

In this episode, we dig into why rest isn't laziness, why confidence isn't coming no matter how many online courses you take, and why picking one idea and letting the rest wait might do more for your creativity than chasing every single one.

You'll also hear about the surprisingly powerful case for doing things you're bad at, why creative women need space to think more than they need more advice, and how a monthly journaling session became Sarah's favorite thing she does.

Sarah is a coach and mentor for creative women, and writes the Substack Gather & Grow. Find her at www.sarahraad.com.

www.annmarieboyle.com

Music from Uppbeat (https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/to-the-top), License code BC9SEN3G6PMABOA

Transcript

Annmarie 0:02

Welcome to I Used to be Fun, the podcast about remembering who you were before life got so serious. I'm Annmarie Boyle, author, creativity instigator, and recovering overachiever. And each week, we explore how reconnecting to creativity and play helps us feel more alive, inspired, and like ourselves again. So set down the to-do list, grab a cup of coffee, and let's go find some fun I have a quick heads-up before we dive into today's Playdate episode. In the conversation today, there's a few soft spots audio-wise. Nothing dramatic, just a spot or two where things get a little quiet. So my advice, turn up the volume and lean in when that happens, because Sarah is too good and her British accent too delicious to miss even a second of it. All right, here we go. Hey, welcome to the next play date episode. Today's episode is going to take us across time zones and an ocean. My guest today is someone I came to know the way a lot of us find people these days. One online recommendation led to another, and I ended up taking a course from her, and then hired her for a coaching session, because I really resonated not only with what she teaches and shares, but how she teaches and shares those things. It feels real and down to earth and truth telling in a way that hits you right where it needs to, but she does it with grace and humor as well, which is important to me. My guest today is Sarah Raad, or if I say it with the correct accent, I'm guessing it's Sarah Rod. She is a coach and a mentor who helps creative women get unstuck and move their ideas into reality without pushing them into strategies that don't fit. And I am always the first to follow someone who realizes that a one size fits all solution actually fits no one. She has a great Substack that I read faithfully called Gather and Grow, and a commitment to the idea that your business should work for your real everyday life, not the aspirational Instagram version of it. And if that sounds familiar to the things we do around here, I thought so too.. So I am very excited she agreed to be one of my Play Dates. And without further ado, welcome to I Used to be Fun, Sarah.

Sarah 2:42

Oh, thank you. You know, it's always really interesting, isn't it, to hear, like, reflected back at you how people perceive you and what they get from your work. So thanks so much for that because, yeah, that was lovely. That was so nice.

Annmarie 2:57

So now I've told everyone a little bit about you, but I'd love for you to fill in the picture for us. So tell us in your own words who you are, where you are, and what you're giving your energy to right now

Sarah 3:12

Ooh. Well, as I... We were just chatting beforehand, weren't we? I've got so little energy at the moment because I'm in the UK, and we're experiencing one of our very rare, but becoming more often heat waves. So I'm kind of feeling it at the moment because as Brits are not used to, um, I mean, anything under about 24 is, like, really extraordinary for us. And I'm in the northeast of England, which is, the coldest bit of England usually. We're quite close to Scotland. I'm much closer to Edinburgh than I am to London. And yeah, so we're not used to this at all. But yeah, I'm in England. I'm in a really small village of about 150 houses, in an area we call the Tyne Valley, which makes it sound really nice, doesn't it? And my village, which is really nice, and my village is called Clara Vale, which sounds even nicer. So yeah, that's me, and you've introduced me beautifully as a coach in terms of my work and my coaching style.

Annmarie 4:08

So I was reading through your website and Substack to get ready for this episode, and I wrote down all kinds of things that really intrigued me. But one of the things that really stuck, and likely because it felt familiar, I'm just going to read it directly from, I believe it was your About page. But it says, "I work with creative women who are tired of going around the same ideas, treading water, doubting themselves, and not really getting what they want. Often they feel stuck in overthinking, second guessing themselves, and the feeling of being not quite ready yet." And I'm guessing it stuck with me because it's not all that different than my mission for this podcast. So I'm curious, what brought you to where you decided that creative women were your people, and made you think that this was an area that you could be of service in?

Sarah 5:04

When I graduated from university, which is a long time ago I applied for many, many jobs. And the first job that I got was for my, region that I live in's, art gallery a museum service. So I was immediately immersed into that world, that sort of, like, cultural world. And because the woman that was running the department at the time, I was working in marketing and PR, she wasn't that interested in the art gallery side of it. She really liked the museum. She really liked the heritage. She really liked social history and things. So she chose the work that she wanted to do and gave me the bits that she didn't. And fortunately for me, the bits that she didn't were all the bits that I was super, super interested in. So I was immediately, in a world of art and artists, and one of the galleries I, did marketing and PR for was a contemporary craft gallery. So I was dealing with not only their collection, but also all the exhibitions, that were of work being created by, real, live craft people and arts people, many of whom were women. I then worked for a dance agency. So I got completely immersed in the world of contemporary dance and choreography, and again, that just being around creative people, a lot of whom were female. I was asked to be on the board of one of the dance companies that we worked with which was, still is actually, run by an amazing artistic director called Liv Laurent. So I got really into her work. And then after that, I went to work at a new writing theater. I would get scripts given to me, and I would have to absorb the scripts, and some of them got made into plays, and I would do the marketing. So I've always been really connected just by chance of, you know, the first job that I got in that sort of creative world. And then I started working with my husband, he's a branding and web and design guy, and so I started working with him on business development. And because of my background and my connections, I naturally started bringing more creative businesses into his business. And yeah, it's really funny, isn't it? How people get to where they are is, is often not what you would expect, and I never studied art. And in fact, until I was in my 30s, I never saw myself as a creative person, so I never really did anything crea- well, this was my perception. I never did anything creative. Obviously, my work was very creative because I was writing press releases and putting together marketing campaigns and organizing events, and, you know, so creativity is a multifaceted thing, isn't it? It doesn't just mean being an artist. It's lots of things. But yeah, I think because I hadn't enjoyed art at school, my perception was that I wasn't very good at it. I was probably told I wasn't very good at it, I would imagine. So I didn't even do art up to GCSE level, which in, this country is that kind of, exams you take when you're 16. I think I stopped studying art at school when I was about 13. So, as I started to build my coaching business, I guess it was a mixture of who seemed attracted to me, who my network threw at me because obviously I knew quite a lot of people from the work that I'd done, and who I felt that I got the best results with. I particularly love coaching writers because I like to write, I think. So maybe that's just something that I feel a synergy with. But yeah, there's something really lovely about coaching writers. So I coach writers and designers and textile artists and choreographers and theater makers and the whole thing.

Annmarie 8:37

That's one of the points of this podcast, is to get women thinking about creativity very broadly. But I'm going to shift focus a bit, and I also talk a lot about rest and the importance of rest, and I think you do, too. I'd love to hear your thoughts on why you think it's so hard, for women in particular, to just let ourselves rest without it feeling like a failure. Though I do have to add a caveat. Last night, I listened to one of your, I think you called it a voice note, but a podcast episode where you were trying to delineate the difference between rest and letting yourself off the hook. I loved it, but if you could wrap all that together, that would be awesome.

Sarah 9:25

Oh, I love that episode, because yeah, we try to fine line, don't we? Because I think to answer your first question, I think it's just complete conditioning. I mean, people, not just women, I think human beings through I would imagine ever since the Industrial Revolution, have been valued by our worth in terms of our output. So, you know, even in factory definitions, people would clock in, clock off. Like time was a real thing, how many things you could do within a certain amount of time. You know, yards of material woven or whatever. And people think it's just human nature, and I don't think it is, because I think prior the Industrial Revolution, without getting too historical on you, people didn't work like that because they just did the work that was there and in front of them. So there wasn't just this endless productivity thing. And obviously, there were times of the year where there was a lot of work, like harvest time and planting time and that kind of thing. And then I think there were lots of other times where there wasn't as much work, and people only had to do what they needed to do in order to just be, didn't they? Just to have roof over their head, clothes on their backs, food on the table. So all of this sort of productivity does seem to have spun out of the Industrial Revolution and now capitalism, et cetera. And I think for women it's even more difficult because we've been given two roles. So if you're a man, or traditionally if you're a man, your job was to go out- earn money, bring it back, bring home the bacon as it were. And for women it was to do all of the house stuff and all of the child stuff and all of the looking after elderly relative stuff And now we got that brilliant opportunity, didn't we? To have it all. And unfortunately having it all, like, just nearly kills you, doesn't it? Because if you want to have a successful or interesting challenging career, or you want to run a business or you want to have an artist practice or whatever, that's a lot of time and energy that needs to go into that and, you can't do that and also all the other things. But we do have to, so we keep going with it, this idea that we have this new role of income generating productivity, doing something good in the world, et cetera, but nobody has taken away the traditional role of mothering and caring and house management and emotional labor and all the things. That's why I don't want everyone to blame women because I just feel like we're under a lot of pressure, but rest is really, really important. And what I really do believe is that- for some of us anyway, particularly those of us that can you know, create our own world of work, so those of us that are self-employed and doing our own thing, we sort of owe it to ourselves to really try to do that in such a way that it doesn't absolutely kill us. And so I wrote an article recently actually about how I only work four days a week, and a lot of people are kind of like, "Gee, wow, how do you do that and how do you fit it all in?" And It's like, well, it's not actually as hard as you think. You just have to be more focused. You just have to decide what's important, what isn't important. You have to be prepared to work in a different way so that you can have that time, and I just could never go back now to five days a week. It just makes my life so much better. But to reference the voice note that you said as well, we do have to... Yeah, that's not so much rest, is it? But it's almost allowing ourselves to not do things or challenge ourselves, and tell ourselves that we're doing that in the spirit of being kind to ourselves and self-care and all of that. But sometimes we're just avoiding, we're, we're not kind of pushing ourselves to expand and to do more. Not more in a productivity way, but just like be more, you know? So we can sometimes let ourselves off the hook. But then sometimes I do think it's all interrelated because sometimes the reason we're letting ourselves off the hook is because frankly we're too tired, we're overwhelmed, we're a bit scattered, we're not really sure what to do next.

Annmarie 13:25

If you were working with a coaching client, how would you tell them to discern the difference between, "Hey, you're overwhelmed. You need to rest. Maybe you need to go out and play for a while," and this letting yourself off the hook thing.

Sarah 13:39

I just think we know, don't we? I think we actually know the answers to everything if we just allow ourselves to be honest with ourselves and to listen to ourselves. I think one of the things that women need the most is space to think because I don't think we need the answers from other people, do we? And I think if I gave somebody the space to look at, you know, maybe they've got an ambition to do a thing, but they keep not doing it. I think it would be quite easy just by giving them the space to talk about why that is. Within about five minutes, most people have kind of busted themselves on their own bullshit, frankly, and they'll kind of go, "Yeah, but actually I think the real reason is because I'm scared, because I'm worried it won't work. I'm worried about what people will think. I don't know how to do this bit of it." The sort of self limiting belief stuff starts to come out. Or maybe sometimes some of the more practical things of like, "Well, I don't really know how to do that, so therefore I'm not going to it." I think most women are genuinely a bit overwhelmed as well, And when I do work with women who I can almost immediately tell from their energy that they're kind of like running on fumes, and they're not able to take a step back and do that thinking, and it's about their energy in the session. Yeah, I will point that out to them, and I will ask them questions like, "How much time do you have for yourself?" And "How are you sleeping at the moment?" And, "How often do you get outside?" And, "What do you do that lifts you up?" Like, "What's joyful in your life?" Because sometimes people just need it pointing out to them that they're maybe just on a little bit of the treadmill. Because it's really easy to get on a treadmill, isn't it? It's really easy to go through days and weeks and months, if not longer, of our lives just like rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, And if someone said to you, "Yeah, so when was the last time you really enjoyed something?" Or, "When did you last feel really uplifted?" Or, "When did you last feel motivated?" People really struggle. A lot of people really struggle to answer that question because they're not actually motivated or connected with joy or feeling inspired. They just got themselves into this, endless cycle of like do, do, do, do this, do that, get that done, you know, and, and try to spread themselves very thinly. What I do try, is to get people to sort of choose things as well because it's that spreading yourself thinly. A lot of the time, I think with creative women, it's like they've got five ideas. They don't want to put any of them down, so they'll try and run with all of them. You'd be better off just picking one or two and accepting that the other three stay on the list for a bit while you get them underway. I've been doing a lot of thinking about that at the moment actually. One of the best ways to move your creative business on is by doing less things and not trying to enact every brilliant idea. Because obviously creative women have brilliant ideas all the time. It's like what our brains do, isn't it? Is that so full of ideas, but you can't possibly do them all. But that can be overwhelming, particularly when you have fear about which one to choose, which ones to put down, wanting to do them all which one's going to work.

Annmarie 16:47

I have spent 2026 doing exactly that, laying out all the ideas, all the projects, and cutting back, and then I come back the next week, and I cut back again to the point where the phase that I am in right now has two things on the list. Now, obviously, one of those things is this podcast, and under that is reaching out to women like yourself. Recording, editing, like there's many things under that, but really the bullet point is do this podcast. And for somebody with a lot of ideas, it is hard to set those things down. And I love that you're working with women to choose, and I think that works even for what I'm talking about here is, yeah, you may have bought supplies for 16 different hobbies. Pick one, and actually do it, and give yourself the permission to do it, that you don't have to be working all the time. You don't have to be momming all the time. There is time for yourself. And that ties into another thing I wanted to ask you about. I can't remember what About page it's on, if it's on your Substack or if it's on your website but you had one little line that says, "I want to live a simple, happy life." And honestly, that's not something a lot of entrepreneurs are going to put on their website because we're always hearing the gurus talk about chasing six figures and seven figures, and we've already talked about productivity culture a little bit. So I'd love to know what that means to you other than working four days a week what does simple and happy mean to you, to Sarah?

Sarah 18:31

I still like to keep that line in because at one point I did create a lot of content around that. I wasn't so much one-to-one coaching and focusing on creativity and business and things. It was really about that. The brand that I had and the website that I had at the time was called Simple Happy Life. And the logo that you now see on my website that just now has my name in it, said Simple Happy Life at one point. So I didn't rebrand, but I renamed when I refocused myself. But That's still a really, really important focus for me as a person, but also for what I want to inspire and give permission to other women to want as well because, as you've already mentioned, there's so much out there when you go online. Instagram is full of it. Substack is now full of it. This whole big success thing, like all the shiny things, you know, the six figures... Oh, now it's seven figures apparently. You know, six figure businesses are no longer enough. We now need a seven figure business, and I just think, do you know what? What a load of nonsense. You do not need that. You can have that if you want it. If you want to go for it, go for it, but that is not... That's not the be all and end all. And I think everybody has to know within their own life and their own lifestyle and the commitments that they've got, et cetera, et cetera, you know, when it comes down to the money piece, like how much is enough? Like how much do you actually want? How much do you need? It's all about figures, isn't it? Like how many followers you've got, how many subscribers have you got, how many people bought the program. It's just, I just find it a little bit exhausting to be honest and for me it is about you know, like yesterday it was too hot and I just thought, do you know what? I haven't had a day off for a while, an extra day off. So I just took yesterday off and I just sat in the garden and I read a book and I didn't really do much, and I ordered pizza and for tea. So for me it's, yeah, it's things like that. It's having time. I mean, I have to say that extra day a week really does give this to me because it's having time to, to walk, to be out in nature, to be creative. So we're talking about how I wasn't a creative person at one point and then I started to just go to the odd, "Oh, there's a workshop on how to do this or a workshop on how to do that," and I just became this serial attendee of creative workshops, which I still am to be honest, because I just love a new thing as well. I love newness, I'm like, "Ooh, learn how to do this," and, "Ooh, learn how to do that." I go to a junk journal art club once a month where we just do all kinds of things. The woman that runs that is amazing and she just always has really good creative prompts for us and really good ideas and teaches us a new technique, and then off we go and we do our thing. And so for me it's being able to do that. I am the mom of just one child, so I appreciate the privilege of only having one child to think about. Some people have two, three, four children to think about. And I don't, chase the the shiny things, as I call them. So I don't really care about things like wealth state assembly things, you know. I've got a nice enough car, it's fine. I live in a nice enough village. I don't feel like I'm always one of these people that's looking at the bigger houses or, oh, what kind of car, or caring too much about clothes or any of that kind of stuff. I'm just not very interested. So I like to be as calm as possible. So anything that creates stress or too much urgency or too much now or trying to pack too many things into a short space of time is just a big no from me. So for me, simplicity is about pairing back. I mean, honestly, I'm embarrassing in how little I know about popular culture. Like people will mention, I don't know, singers or film people or, you know, whatever, and I really don't know who most of them are. I used to watch a celebrity reality type show over here called Strictly Come Dancing. I think you've probably got... It's Dancing With the Stars this thing, isn't it, in And I just never really know who at least two thirds, if not three quarters of the people are. I used to watch it anyway because it's kind of fun. and I the dancing and the costumes and things. So it's just about that not paying attention, like putting my attention where I want it on the things that I'm interested in and largely ignoring everything else.

Annmarie 22:47

You think that's a gift that came with age, or have you always been that way?

Sarah 22:52

I don't think I've ever been that interested in trendy things, fashion things, being in the know about things or being seen in certain places and spaces and, you know, "Oh, have you been to such and such a restaurant in town?" I don't need to keep up with all of that. I just think I was brought up like that, actually. My mother's very sensible, pragmatic. I was chatting to someone about this the other day. I said I've largely come out of the whole, like, body conscious thing that a lot of women have kind of been through their whole lives relatively unscathed, I think because at a formative age I was brought up in a family where we did not talk about what people looked like. We didn't talk about what people looked like. It wasn't about who was pretty. We never mentioned anybody's weight. We talked about people in terms of who they were and, you know, what good they did in the world and what they thought, and we talked about ideas and politics and stuff like that. We didn't talk about what I still have in my brain, I guess as being quite trivial things, like clothes, money, cars. We never tried to keep up with the Joneses. And I think largely I've just sort of kept that, that kind of personality and also thankfully passed it on to my kid as well, who literally could not give the monkeys what anybody thinks about him, what he thinks, what he's wearing, what music he likes, whether he's cool or not. He just doesn't care, and I just think it's a gift.

Annmarie 24:14

That's exactly what I was going to say. What a gift that you received from your family and then we're able to pass it on. The other thing that tickled the back of my brain, when you were talking about that is, do you notice a difference between how your British clients relate to what you're talking about versus the American women in your community? Is there a cultural difference?

Sarah 24:37

I don't think there is actually. I think Western women in general are just really hard on themselves, push themselves too far, try to achieve too many things, care too much about what other people think. Yeah, worry about whether they're good enough. Competitive like in a bad way. I think competitiveness can be really healthy, but you know, competitive in a bad way where it leads to bad feelings about themselves or perhaps kind of jealousy of other people. And a sort of a constant hum of not enoughness, like everything's not enough or not quite good enough or not quite whatever enough. You know, most women just think they're not good enough, don't they? They're not clever enough. They're not smart enough. They're not pretty enough. They're not well off enough. They're just not enough. They're not talented enough. It's kind of upsetting really because most women are absolutely bloody amazing when you sit down and talk to them. Most women have got like an amazing story, so much about them, so many talents, so much experience, so much wisdom.

Annmarie 25:34

It is something that I've struggled with over time too. We all have, I think, to a certain extent. And then I always have to sit back, and ask myself do I really believe I'm not enough? Or if we bring this fully back around, is that letting myself off the hook? Oh, well, I'm not good enough to do that, so don't even bother, right? And so sometimes I think what's happening is it just makes it easier for me. If I believe, "Oh, I'm not good at that," then I don't even have to try.

Sarah 26:06

Yeah. I think there definitely is that. I think it is much more though that people genuinely... Yeah, like, so asking someone to be on your podcast is a really good example, isn't it? So some women would just get to the point where they go, I can ask this kind of person," but then there's, like, another level up of people. But you know, there's another level of people where you might kind of go, "Oh, I can ask them, but I definitely can't ask them." And I'm sure that's not really letting yourself off the hook. I think that's probably a genuine sense of the hierarchy that I think we all see and feel, particularly in online business world where we can see all the people that have got, you know, whether it's social media or it's their mailing list or their Substack or what their website looks like or how many other podcasts they've been on or what their own podcast is like. We make judgements about how important that person is. I mean, I had an amazing conversation with a business woman who I consider to just be, like, absolutely at the top of her tree, and she's a multimillionaire. She's done so many things, and she was just the most brilliant person to have a conversation with. She was so normal. She was so down-to-earth. There was no bullocks about her. She was quite happy to have a conversation with little old me, and it was all fine. And so that was all just in my head, wasn't it? So we have this idea, don't we, that there's a ceiling or there are kind of things that we can't achieve and it's this hierarchy. It's like looking at someone who's got... I don't know, like you might look at someone who's got a million Instagram followers and think, "Well, I can't ask them to be on my podcast." Well, you can. They might say no, but you absolutely are entitled to do that because you have a podcast, and you are interested in them, and you think that they would be a great person for your audience, et cetera. And I think a lot of times when we do step outside what we think is for us we find that there's not quite as many gatekeepers as we though they were going to be. I mean, they're are some for sure, but I think a lot of times people get quite surprised by how easy it is to just step into that next world if they want to. Yeah.

Annmarie 28:08

I have a Post-it note stuck to my computer that says, "Make the audacious ask." And you realize once you start asking that maybe it's not as audacious as you think, right? And I'm not afraid of no, as long as it's respectful, of course.

Sarah 28:25

I think the other thing is you think of the thing that you want to do, right? And you go, "Oh my God, that's just like, oh, I can't and I could never." And, and then somehow you get yourself off that hurdle and you do it. Like, you start a podcast, you write a book, you start a business, you whatever. And when you do it, you go, "Oh, oh, well, I'm doing it now." So like that audacious thing becomes no longer audacious, and you have to go, "Ooh, well, like, what's, what's next then?" So you might ask 10 people to be on your podcast, and you might have imagined that only two of them were going to say yes, but like when all 10 do, you go, "Oh. Oh, okay. That wasn't that big a deal, and now I need to think of something else that I can do to challenge myself a little bit." And that's how we build confidence. One of my favorite things to say to clients, which sounds a little bit mean, is, "Confidence isn't coming." And I don't mean never, I just mean it's not going to arrive if you sit there and go, "I'll do that when I feel more confident. I'll do this when I'm feeling better about myself." No, that's not how it works. You have to do the thing. You have to be uncomfortable and cringey and do things that make you go, "Oh, God." And then even when it doesn't work, that can build confidence. That doesn't have to floor you because sometimes we just go, "Well, there was a scary thing and I did it, and actually it didn't work out, but I still feel loads better now that I've done it or I think it didn't work because of this. Maybe I'll try this.'" And sometimes it does just work and you can go, "Oh, look at me doing the thing." And that's how you build the confidence. You don't build it by just thinking, "If I read enough books, if I listen to enough people's podcasts, if I do enough online courses, if I got enough certificates, I'll somehow be confident," because I can almost guarantee that you won't. And the only way you'll be confident is by, yeah, doing the thing.

Annmarie 30:07

I was asked to give a talk about publishing at the local library about a month ago, and I consider myself a pretty small potatoes author. But I went through and I did a survey of what has happened since I started publishing, and I realized I've distributed books to 41 countries. And there was a whole bunch of these things, and I'm like, stand back, and I'm like, "What are you not confident about?" Like, yeah, maybe you'd like more sales. Again, we get back to the number thing and using that. But on the flip side, look what you've done. And I would say that, too, in the play and creativity space. You don't have to be the world's best artist to sit down with a set of paints. You don't have to be Nadal to go out and play tennis, right? So we need to bring that back a little bit and say, "Listen, we can do this just for fun. It doesn't have to be perfect." But also to your point, until you do something, you're never gona know.

Sarah 31:15

Yeah. Absolutely. And, I think it's just taking that pressure off. You don't have to be great at everything. And I think particularly when you are, from a creativity point of view, thinking, I just, I want a creative hobby. And I think even people that do a creative thing for their business and, in their work like you do with writing, it's having another creative thing that you're allowed to just play with. I was working with a writer once, and she found it really difficult to play within writing because writing had become this thing that she did for a living. And so it just, there was a bit of a block there. But it was like, well, what else can you do? Like, what else is play? She was brilliant actually. We got to a point quite quickly where she was blocking off bits of her diary in work time as well. Imagine that. To just play and go to her studio where she would normally write, but she played and she had this theater almost like one of those cut out and put together like theater kits, and she would just buy things or she would draw, or she would do whatever. And all of this, of course, as you can probably imagine as a writer, really improved her writing because it really got her imagination going. It got her thinking creatively in different ways. But mainly it was just so she could have fun and lose this idea that everything had to be really serious. There's a theater director that I have been coaching and she started doing a ceramics class in the evenings because she doesn't have to be good at that. It's not important, is it, to be good at everything? And because we're shown all of these successful versions of like everything, so we've got to immediately be really, really good at things and sometimes it can be a real disappointment when we're not good at something or, you know, we try to do something and we're a bit terrible at it, and then we start to make that mean things about ourselves. And I think it's sad, isn't it? Because everybody's creative, everybody's got creativity, and what is good is subjective, isn't it? Not everybody's gona think that book is great or that's a wonderful painting or that was an amazing play. It is subjective so we should just go for it.

Annmarie 33:24

I'm curious, one of the things that came up for me while you were talking was do you use creativity as a tool to help the women you coach know themselves better in any way?

Sarah 33:37

I do encourage people to do things that are creative that aren't their work and to see themselves as creative in different ways other than the way that they want to be known to be. I think it's more like getting back to that rest thing because a lot of women... There's lots of different kinds of rest, aren't there? I mean, there was... I can't remember the name of the woman, but she wrote that book or she pinpointed seven kinds of rest that now can't remember what they are. But when people think of rest, they just think of someone lying on a sofa, and I don't think rest is that at all. And I think for a lot of women, going to an art class or going to a workshop or faffing around in their sewing room or whatever, is rest because it's rest from all of the other things. Like, when I go to my art club once a month, I'm not thinking about anything else. I'm not thinking about work. I'm not thinking about what's going on at home. I'm not thinking about what I'm going to eat that weekend. I'm just playing, and I'm really in the moment, and I'm very aware afterwards. I kind of go into a bit of a trance, and then I sort of come out the other end and I look at the thing that I've done and I'm like, I really like that." I really do see that as rest for me because it's, trying to remember what all the types of rest are, but there's, like, there's emotional rest for sure. The emotional rest of not having to think about and carry everybody else's emotions. And I think women do that in families a lot. Particularly women that are in heterosexual relationships, I think they spend a lot more time worrying about whether their husband's happy than any husband really spends worrying about whether his wife's happy. We're the ones that worry about the children. It doesn't matter if they're little children or big children or children that have got their own children. There's that emotional holding space for everyone is a big part of a lot of women's lives. So- creativity, if that just gives you, you know, whether that's an hour a week or, whatever it is, 20 minutes a day, to just zone into and tune out of all of that, then creativity creates that kind of rest, doesn't it? yeah, for sure, that kind of mental rest, emotional rest, I think it's really important way to do that because we get into flow. As long as we can allow ourselves just to be bad at something at first. There's a friend of mine in the States who's just got really, in the last year, really into pottery. She sold and closed down her business and gave herself a certain amount of time to just play. She would be a great person for you to speak to, actually. And she just very quickly actually did become quite good at all this stuff she was doing, but to the beginning, she was probably terrible, I would imagine. But it was just that process to go through. You're always going to get better. You're never going to stay at the same level. If your drawing is terrible or your writing bad, with practice, it's going to get better, isn't it? It doesn't mean you'll never publish a book or start exhibiting your drawing somewhere, but that's not the point, is it? You're not trying to make a career out of it. You're trying to explore it as a way of connecting with joy, connecting with yourself, getting into flow states, just getting back to that simple happy life thing. I think a big part of that is just how much of the day are you in flow, where you're not worrying about things or juggling things you're just genuinely absorbed in something.

Annmarie 36:50

I think I could clip out that section as the perfect promotional tool for this podcast and all the things I'm talking about, that rest isn't laying on the couch, -that play is so important and that creativity is important part of that and I love all of that And so while we're talking about setting aside time for ourselves, you run something, I think you're still running it, called The Selfish Book Club. You still doing that?

Sarah 37:17

No, that's kind of paused, but there is still a lot of resources on that in my membership. But the point of Selfish Book Club was we... A lot of us read a lot of kind of self-development, self-improvement type books, but you read the book, don't you, and you go, "Oh, that was good. That was inspiring," and then you put it down. So Selfish Book Club did run for a while. I think I started it in the pandemic when nobody could do anything. I think the first book we read was Untamed by Glennon Doyle, which I think is a really good book for the people that listen to your podcast if they haven't already. Because it is all, really about claiming yourself. And we did Big Magic, which is a real great book about creativity. Very easy to read, but, quite deep when you want it to be deep. We did "Playing Big.". We did "The Source," which people loved so much that we actually then started to work through the stuff in it, so that was really good. There's a woman on Substack actually who runs a really similar thing now called Shelf Help Club, I think. Yeah. Toni. I just love the whole idea of it. I think in terms of my own creativity, I run out of steam for things. So I'll do something for a while, and then I'll just go, I don't want to do that anymore." Apart from the one thing that I do do, I personally have been journaling for years. I've used journaling as a tool for myself since about 2003, I think. Like a really long time. In my membership, I run a monthly journaling session, and that's always been there, and I love that because a lot of women have that, in their diary, and they come along, and it's a real, again, a space for, thinking. Women need space to think, and actually a really good way to think and to think creatively is in the pages of your journal, because there's just a real gap between what starts going on in your head and how quickly or not quickly actually through handwriting that comes out. It really slows the thinking down, so you actually really think much better. You could go on a dog walk and say, "Oh, I want to think about this problem I've got," all... "I, I need to make a decision about this or this." And I think when you do it in your head, it's never as effective as if you actually write it on paper because it's that slowing down and the quality of thinking is really quite different. So that's my number one tool for creative women is a daily, and if not daily, a very regular journaling practice.

Annmarie 39:43

It's almost a form of rest itself to be able to think differently, write it down. And there is, there's been study after study about what happens when we take something from our head and type it out or write it out with our hand. It helps us see things in a different way. So whether it's the Selfish Book Club, or it's the journaling you do inside your paid membership, if you're the kind of person who feels guilty setting aside time for yourself, then sign up for something like that, like your art classes you're talking about, or this journaling thing, or a book club. Put it in your calendar, and honor it. Do it. Because those are the things that we really need to do for ourselves. I had a girlfriend the other day said, "Can you send me a calendar invite for something? Because if it's not my calendar, I won't do it." So if you're that person, put play in your calendar, put creativity in your calendar, honor that hour journaling time you do every morning, make it your meditation.

Sarah 40:46

Yeah. I think that's a really good point. I think particularly for women, there's something about, it's like giving yourself a permission because it feels like a thing that you're going to do. And I do think that's why women do so many workshops and classes and things, because it feels like they can legitimately do that. So they'll kind of book themselves onto something, and they'll pay the money, and they'll put it in their calendar, and then they can tell the other people around them, "Oh, I'm not available," you know, "that Sunday, that Saturday afternoon," whatever, "because I'm doing that." And other people go, "Oh yeah, fine." But if they just try to get some time for themselves just within life, it never happens because there's always someone who wants something, and then it's that boundary thing, if you struggle with boundaries, which a lot of people do. You might have set aside that bit of the morning for journaling or doing some art or writing or whatever it is that you're going to do, but then somebody suddenly needs you, and I think nine out of 10 women just drop that and go to the person that needs them. Even sometimes if they go, "Well, like, I, can't help you now because I'm doing this," it's not seen as being okay to do that. Either they think that, or maybe quite often the other person thinks that as well. "Well, can't you just do that later? Can't you just help me now?" So I think there's definitely something about your friend saying, "Send me a calendar invite so it's blocked in my diary," and I can almost, go, "Look, I can't do it."

Annmarie 42:10

Well I have kept you in this heat in your attic office for quite a bit today in the middle of the afternoon. So let's wrap up with this. If someone is listening right now, and they've been so busy being capable and responsible and impressive, as so many women are, as we discussed, and she's lost track of herself, what's the first small thing you'd tell her to do this week?

Sarah 42:34

I would tell her to journal. Yeah.

Annmarie 42:37

I guessed that was the answer.

Sarah 42:38

Really easy, anyone can do it. All you need is a little bit of quiet time which as we've just discussed, you need to you need to create somehow, and you need a notebook and a pen. If you want prompts, there's prompts all over the internet. But just even asking yourselves questions like, "What is it that I really want for myself this week?" Or, "What am I waiting for permission for?" Actually anyone that goes onto my Substack I mean, some of it is behind the pay wall, but there will be, there will be kind of just articles in there. Like read other people's articles and just think, "Oh, there's a question being asked. I could use that as a journaling prompt." If you've got a decision to make, like almost just writing that down, like what that is or what the problem is, or what the argument is that you've just had, or what's the dilemma, if you're not doing something, for example, if you keep putting something off and you know you're doing that, well, maybe it's time to get honest with yourself and just get your journal out and go, "Why am I avoiding this? Why might I be avoiding this? What are the 10 reasons that I'm avoiding this?" Force yourself to come up with reasons why. And it's that thinking time which is so important to women. And you can do that in your journal, you can do that with a coach, you can do that with a friend. It's just having somebody who's not going to solve things for you, not going to, give you the answers, but just going to give you the space to talk or write and get your feelings down, get your feelings out, and notice what happens when you actually start to pull all of that stuff out of your brain. So definitely journaling because it's easy, accessible, anyone can do it. As I said, I've been in for a really, really long time now. I wouldn't be sat here talking to you today if I hadn't started journaling in 2003.

Annmarie 44:21

To your point,

Sarah 44:23

it's not an expensive thing to do. You can do it in 15 minutes. You can take an hour for yourself. You need a piece of scratch paper and something to write with. And for me personally, I would recommend, and I'm going to guess you would recommend too, is actually physically writing it, not typing. I think that makes a huge difference, and it feels more ritualistic. One of the things that I have done that's helped me, because if I use some of those prompts, I get into doing to do lists or, Why am I failing at this?" And it takes me down a negative path I don't think is always productive. But you were speaking of "Big Magic" earlier, so author Elizabeth Gilbert has a practice she's recommended to people about writing a letter from love, and her prompt is, "Dear love, what would you have me know today?" And I've started coming at it from that standpoint because it allows me to step outside of my really overactive mind for a little bit. It's just a little trick. So I would say that's something you could add to your practice if you're one of those people that does need to distance from the monkey mind a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes it's just about the brain dumping as well. So I I don't always do them in the morning, but I quite often do what Julia Cameron refers to as morning pages. Yes. Which is the ultimate kind of creative brain dump because... And that's actually when I was saying to you I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for journaling. And for anyone that isn't familiar with the practice, it literally is just sitting down with your journal and you start by just writing what is in your head. So that might be like, "I'm sat here with my journal. I don't really know what to say. I'm feeling a bit weird. The temperature's not nice. This jumper is really scratchy." It's literally a stream of consciousness because your mind will get bored with that after a while. So it will let you kind of be whiny or confused, or, "I don't know why I'm here," or a bit imposter syndrome or whatever. And you keep going, and you keep going, and eventually stuff that you need to say to yourself or think about, or ideas that need to be born will tip out of your pen onto that page. And there's always something behind it. There's always something really good. There's always a kind of aha moment. There's always a good idea. There's always a solution to a problem. And all of my ideas for my business come out of that kind of journaling, without fail, without exception. And if I'm ever feeling stuck or uncreative or unmotivated, I journal, and I feel better at the other side of it.

Annmarie 46:54

So if there's anybody listening that would be interested in your membership to do the Sunday journaling, where do they find that?

Sarah 47:03

They find that at Substack. Well, actually, anyone that goes to my website, everything is referenced at some point there. So you'll find my Substack there which is my name.com. so SarahRaad.com. And the journaling is called Gathered Pages, and it's the last Sunday, unless I say otherwise, but it's usually the last Sunday of the month, 7:00 pm UK time. And there's a different theme every month. Sometimes I'll teach a different journaling technique as well when I think, oh, this is a really good, like question laddering was one that we did recently. and yeah, that's in the membership. So people can join that membership and come along. It's cheap as chips, as we say in England. It's eight pounds a month or £75 pounds for an annual membership. And I think for that session alone, it's more than pays for itself just by doing that. And it's lovely. There's usually about 10 women there. It's not big. Nobody has to share anything. I don't ask people to read anything out. It's more just that collective experience of seeing a sea of other creative midlife, messy middle women just all getting together and answering the same questions and going through the same process and yeah, I love it. It's my favorite. It's my best thing that I do every month, I think.

Annmarie 48:16

You can find Sarah if you search her name on Substack, but it's also called Gather and Grow. I'll link all of these and the books that we've talked about in the show notes, and I feel like if today's conversation resonated with you, her writing will too. And I think the theme of today for me that I'm taking away from this is choose yourself.

Sarah 48:36

Yeah, absolutely. Choose yourself first before anything else because you're the most important person in your life.

Annmarie 48:43

I hope you loved this conversation with Sarah as much as I did. She gave me a lot to think about, and I hope she gave you a lot to think about too, especially her deep belief in the power of journaling. And that made me think about my Wonder Spark journal. So if you're looking for some fresh pages to try out any of the practices she mentioned, you can find that journal at annmarieboyle.com/thewonderproject. Just scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and you'll find it there. All right, I'll see you in a week. Now go play for absolutely no reason at all