Creative Pep Talk

335 - Feeling Out-of-Step with Your Creative Journey? Do These 3 Things Now

Episode Summary

Nothing feels better than when you’re unlocking your best work, finding the perfect opportunities and experiencing the best of your creative practice, but sometimes those times from the past can make you feel completely lost in the present. If you feel like you have lost your path at some point in the creative journey, this episode will give you a process for checking in with yourself and your work in a way that can help you find your flow again. In this episode we dive into: 1 - A Process for Finding What Fuels You 2 - A Method for Integrating Your Efforts for Maximum Results 3 - Creative Homework to Help You Find The Pulse Again

Episode Notes

Take my new skillshare class! “Social Media for Creatives: 5 Exercises to Power Your Freelance Career” https://skl.sh/truefansclass

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Episode Transcription

AUTO GENERATED

Hey, you're listening to the creative pep talk podcast. And man, it is so easy to get lost on the creative journey. And that's why I make this show to help you get back on the path, back in your flow, on to reaching your creative potential. Don't you want some of that? I need some of that and we will get there doing it together.

I'm your host, Danny J P. Let's get into this episode quick, shout out to the sponsors. Shop design, sell custom fabric, wallpaper home decor on Spoonflower. If is your jam spoon. Is the destination for print on demand, fabric, wallpaper, and home decor products. Visit spoonflower.com and DIY all the live long day.

Go to T R Y. try.spoonflower.com/creative-pep-talk or a one-time 20%. Promo code today,

support for creative pep-talk comes from Adobe max Adobe. Max is the annual global creativity conference and is going online this year, October 26th through the 28th. This is sure to be a creative experience like no other plus it's all free. Yeah, that's right. A hundred percent free, free, free, free. 25 hours of keynotes luminaries, beakers breakout sessions, Colu artists, Lauren Hom is going to be doing a session workshops, musical performances, and even a few celebrity appearances.

It's going to be a one-stop shop for inspiration. In creative tune-ups did I mention that it's free explore over 300 sessions across 11 tracks. Hear from amazing speakers and learn new creative skills. All totally free. Online this October to register, go to max.adobe.com.

You know, I am doing all kinds of different things. I'm doing podcasting kids' book, client work classes. Public speaking, all kinds of other stuff in the works beyond that. And sometimes when I'm doing all of these disparate things, running in a different billion, different directions, I can feel like I am just totally unintegrated with myself.

And it just feels like, man, why am I doing this? And, you know, we started. Artist management entity called collusion. And so I work with a bunch of other creatives and I see the same thing happened to them. They have these seasons where everything is in its right place, like radio head, and it's all in sync with each other and everything.

Feels integrated. And then there's these seasons where everything just feels out of whack. You know, I was recently reading about the new documentary. It's a mockumentary, I guess, on the musician St. Vincent that Carrie brown seen from both Portlandia and the band Sleeter Kenny. And I read this quote from the film that I was like, Aw, man, it just hit me right in the gut.

And it's them musing about their career. And Carrie says, I think I'm in the failure era of my life, where people don't like the stuff that I'm doing, um, artists, can you feel that? And then she says, I do think that it's the artist's role, the writer's role to thrash around, to make mistakes and be out of step.

But when I'm out of step, I feel. Terrible. And you know, it's not my place to judge, but I feel like we all know when our favorite artists are kind of out of step and they're rolling around in the valley, in the wilderness and it's not quite working. And, you know, honestly, I feel like that. Totally part of the game.

Like, I think it's important to make difficult albums that don't make any sense and that aren't really your best work because they're kind of the manure that goes on to fuel the better stuff. Like I think. Good to ebb and flow. I'm not, I'm not saying we gotta be going up to the right all the time.

Always winning, always getting better. I think life is much more of like a pulse. I keep seeing this on Tik TOK and Instagram and all over the pies. People talking about how achieving anything requires like waste and death of some kind. And I, and I agree. But I don't think we have to do a way with the death part of the cycle.

I think that is part of life. I think what we need to master is the resurrection of it. The recycling, the ebb and flow. I have no problem with being out of step or with artists being out of step. What I have a problem with is when you get out of step, you lose your way and you get so lost that you never return to the pole.

Right. And I see this sometimes when artists start feeling totally unintegrated, they're doing a billion things at the same time and they just want to shut it all down. And now I think sometimes you got to cut some stuff out, but this impulse to shut it all down is saying, the problem is I'm doing too many random fangs.

I'm just doing too many things. And it makes me feel like, you know, no one else is doing. Billions of things, your body, your body, it's making insulin, it's digesting food. It's fighting off colds. It's, you know, deal your livers, do it. Your kidneys and liver are doing something. I don't know exactly what they're doing, but they're doing stuff, man.

And you might be like, Andy. Yeah, they're all doing a bunch of different functions, but they're all serving. A specific integrated purpose. And so maybe the problem with your practice and your creative life and journey isn't that you're doing a billion functions is that you can't see how they're integrated to serving the bigger purpose.

And so in this episode, I want to take you through a process. Kind of having a deeper understanding of what's fueling this whole thing, then laying out what are all the things I'm doing and how do they contribute to that bigger thing? And they don't all have to contribute in the same way. Some of the things you're doing, you might be doing more for financial reasons.

Some of the things you're doing might be. Right on the money. Some of the things you're doing might be totally irrelevant, but ultimately are fun and they feed and fuel back into you staying fresh and sharp and interested in the greater journey. And so in this episode, if you're feeling out of step with your practice, I want to help you to take the billions of things that you're doing and help you find what is their function and how does that play out into the bigger purpose?

Of what I'm doing on this planet as a creator, let's go.

Okay. So we have four different parts to this process and plan the first one being start with why start with, why is the Simon Sinek book? And it's just this idea that. You need to have that deeper purpose, fueling the what and how, of what you're doing. You need a sense of what is the meaning of all of this turning my wheels, showing up every day, clocking in, clocking out.

Why am I doing this? If I don't understand that, then I am not going to stay motivated. And I think. Extremely important to get super familiar in a Berry rich kind of way, and then keep that at the forefront. And later I want to talk about kind of tapping into specific memories and embodying those feelings of what it felt like, man, just revisiting that stuff sometimes.

Super charge you up and get you rolling. And so the first thing you had to do is start with why, why do you want to read your creative potential? That's what this whole podcast is about. I really freaking love to see RNs have breakthrough creative works. My favorite thing to see is artists late in life.

Having their biggest creative breakthroughs, you know, Johnny Cash doing the song hurt doing that nine inch nails cover. That's like, that is like, that's what fuels this show. Like, I want to see all of you doing your Johnny Cash her in your later years, your, your massive comebacks are breakthroughs. And I think you do that.

By thriving in all areas. I feel like you, you know, I kind of feel like art is the sport of your right brain, your brain, and in the same way, uh, an athlete needs to stay in shape. I really believe that a huge part of making your best creative work is staying mentally at your best, which means you gotta have money in the capitalist world.

To do that. That's part of it. So I that's part of the reason why we talk about how to thrive in your career as well as your creativity, because I believe your wellbeing contributes to your ability to have those Johnny Cash hurt kind of moments. And so that's, that's what fuels me. That's what fuels this podcast.

You know, recently on the podcast, we were talking about the flaming lips front man, Wayne Coyne, talking about how he feels that drug use and creatives is less, uh, causal and more, just a correlation with the fact that creative people are open to experience. And, uh, I was tagged in a tech talk recently from a young dude.

Um, Eat underscore more underscore spiders. Uh, jeez, for that name, that's what blamed this guy, but it seems like a smart bloke. And he was talking about, you know, is this causal, is this just a correlation? You know, w w chicken and egg kind of thing. And I also heard Andre 3000 wrestling with a similar thing on Rick Rubin's podcast, broken record.

When he was saying that creative people seem to have a lot of mental health struggles. And so often we think. The cause of creativity is mental health issues. You know, being depressed, tragedies, being sad, but he was like, no, I think it's just the fact that creativity comes from being a sensitive person.

And so it correlates with being a creative person, but I actually believe, and I think Andre 3000 does too. That when you're at your best, when you're at your healthiest, when you're integrated, That's when you have the potential to make your best work. And so that motivates me that deep. Why gets me to show up here every single week and what I've done to get to the bottom of that, why to really flesh it out is this practice of the five whys, uh, something that, uh, Japanese engineer Tai-Chi Ono came up with and he would do this practice of the five why's when something broke down like a machine of some sort on the assembly line, or what have you, he would ask the five why's what's wrong with it?

Well, the electrics one. Why won't the electrics turn on? Well, the spark plug is not working. Why is this bar pub not working? Dah, dah, dah, dah, all the way to get to the bottom answer. Now, when it comes to finding your why, or, or fleshing out that that abstract kind of motivation, I feel like the five why's is super helpful.

Yeah, partially to get to the bottom of it, but more so to kind of just make it super rich and at the front of your mind and just fuel you up again. And so for me, what does that look like? It looks like number one the first. Why, why do you want to reach your creative potential? Well, because it makes me feel happier when I'm making stuff.

More people have gas moments. Ha you know, that's for me, I love getting better at creative work. I love feeling like, oh, this piece was better than the last. And I get so much satisfaction in how I grade, whether it's better of does it just like make me come alive more. Does it make my audience. Lean into life, have a posture of being like, yes, life has some reason to stick around for a second.

Why, why does that make you happy? Because, well, when I create that thing, I feel like I'm getting better at getting my insides on the outside. I feel like I'm getting better at being understood. Third. Why, why does being understood matter? Well, it matters to me because. It seems like when I articulate myself really well, people like me feel sick.

Fourth. Why, why do you want to make people feel seen? Because it makes them feel less alone and happier. And that makes my life feel like it has meaning. And it, it makes me feel fulfilled. Number five. Why, why does it matter for you to be fulfilled? Well, when I'm fulfilled, that bonus can be shared with people in my life, my family, I put my oxygen mask on for meaning and fulfillment and I can.

Them find meaning and fulfillment, then put that oxygen mask on. And I feel like it makes me a better parent because when I'm living a happy, meaningful life, my kids will actually want to take my advice. They'll actually want directions on how to get there. And so it all integrates and you can just feel that richness just getting richer and you can hear in my voice.

I'm just getting more and more pumped out about going pumped up about going out and making creative work and it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be like, this is why I'm on the planet. I think the five why's help you just enrich that fuel. And after you do that, let's do the second.

All right, I'm going to get to number two, but I just want to say I'm kind of after a card in that bat, I'm feeling a bit like Leslie man in the movie knocked up. When, uh, she's like trying to get her sister Katherine Hagle up and she's like, come on, we're going to do it. We're going to go live our lives.

And Katherine haggles, like how many red bulls have you had? And she's like, I've had about three red bulls in the past 15 minutes. That's where I'm feeling like, and I haven't even had red. But I have had the daily amount of coffee, but I'm fueled more on my personal wise. Okay. Number two is you got to name the function, creative junction.

What's your function. That's what we're answering, picking up all the pieces of your creative career and making them run right. Little school house, rock reference. I am having a moment right now. All right. Here's what we want to do. We want to list out a brain dump of all the various pieces of your practice for me.

That's you know, this podcast, Tik TOK, Instagram. I do two Instagrams. I got my regular Instagram and invisible things. Instagram, Twitter, client work classes, podcasts, my talk. The lay-down tragedy performances as we call them all these different pieces. And when they're all these disparate pieces and there's no interconnectivity connecting these molecules, they can't emerge into a greater purpose.

And they just feel like a bunch of loose cans rolling around in my back seat. Okay. We don't want that. It's very distracting and it makes you feel on integrated. Okay. Now, I've heard Kanye west talk about how little money he makes on his music, which I think as a musician, there's probably just, that's a hard pill to swallow.

Like you've been doing this whole career thinking I'm going to make it big. But if Kanye west makes it as big as you can make it and it's like, There's just no money to be made here. Then we have to have a different problem. We know if you followed his little career, his little career is an enormous career.

You can see that there was a period of time when he was a deep in debt, and then he launches his fashion line, which is a fancy way of saying merge. And now he. Super liquid has tons of money. It saved his career. And guess what? He's not the first Jay Z had Rockoware P Diddy had Sean. John Rihanna has her own fashion line and the fashion sells on the strength of the music.

They are interconnected. One is for the purpose of making money and the other one, the only way that one can make money is if the music is creatively thriving, they're interconnected like an ecosystem. They have different parts to the body of their creative. And when I figured that out, all of a sudden I realized that every single element of my career doesn't have to be making tons of money.

It doesn't have to be fulfilling the deeper purposes of my soul. They can actually work in an integrated function. And so what I want you to do is list out every single aspect of your business, and then try to define what is the function. You know, is it money? Is this just, this is where it's easier to make money.

And that money goes, and it allows me, it gives me time to do the creative work. That's more fulfilling that is serving that function. And then I do this piece. It doesn't make money and it doesn't fulfill me, but it's strategic because it. Doors and opportunities for this fulfilling stuff or this money stuff.

And then this piece, you know, I want you to just stop right there and say, there are some things that are on this list that are just fun, experiencing lines. Is kind of the highest purpose in my experience, we don't thrive to survive. We survive to thrive. You know what I mean? Like there are things on this list that you do just because you love doing.

And that fun actually keeps you fresh. There are side bands, there are side projects. There are, there are things that you do that when you do those, you know, once a month, once every week, you actually show up to the other stuff, more inspired. And so the functions can be abstract. What they can't be, what can't be on this list is stuff that does not serve.

Any real function. Now, as I said that I wanted to highlight, there are some things that you're planting seeds right now, and it doesn't serve any function right now because you're just putting stuff in the ground, but you're doing so because it's going to pay dividends down the road in the future. So there's all kinds of different types of functions and I caution you don't stretch it.

Don't make up functions. Don't be like this could one day. If I really use my, uh, you know, if everything goes to plan, this is really possibly gonna, no, that's not good enough. You've got too much to do you have too much at stake? By making sure that you stay integrated to give some crappy excuse, to keep something in your ecosystem.

That's weighing you down. We've got to make this thing a little bit more lean and as you go through them, I think it's important to have a sense of the hierarchy. Like I said, we don't. Thrive to survive. That doesn't make any sense. We survive. We, we, we do the things. We pay our bills. We, you know, do all of the little nuanced tasks that we have to do to keep the house functioning, to keep the body going, not for the sake of the body, but for the sake of the experience, you know, I think a lot about how Lego.

Had this giant breakthrough, when they started telling stories with their toys, when they started Ninjago, that series blew open the flood gates on their profits because they started this TV show where they were telling stories. They're giving this emotional charge to the total. And all of a sudden the toys started flying off the shelf, but I'd like to think, and it seems to be that what happened was as they started making movies with Lord and Miller, the Lego movie Batman movie.

I think that at some point that flipped when they realized like, no, we're not selling, we're not telling stories to sell toys. We're selling these toys to fund these amazing stories like that. You gotta be sensitive to the hierarchy when you get the hierarchy in place, when you realize like delivers doing whatever it's doing so that your brain has the energy to produce consciousness, then you're like, Okay, I get it.

This all makes sense. And the liver can find the motivation to keep going, man, I wouldn't go. Totally. Wheel-well some people would say like, if you're not using your consciousness, right, your liver actually will protest. I'm not going to go there even though the idea. Is motivating to me, you know, I, I do think like don't waste that the money from selling the toys Lego make these brilliant movies and you gotta be careful with that hierarchy, you know, Batman and Robin, that movie, you remember back in the day, very camp Batman film that the suits had.

More articulation on the chest, then that was necessary. It was something, it was pretty wild, but that's not really relevant, but it's just coming back to me now. Very funny, but Batman and Robin was notorious for being a long toy commercial. You know, if you can tell an amazing story and then after you get the thing.

See like, oh, we can pull this piece and that piece and that piece and make some killer Merck, make some fashion lines that really help us bond this passion. Go for it. Do that. We want you to keep making movies Lego because they're my favorite movies. Get the hierarchy, get the functions in place, get them all working on all cylinders.

And as you do that, you're gonna start seeing the integration of all this stuff. And you're going to find this level of excitement and peace. And you're going to get back in step with your creative practice.

Little quick break, little shout out to the sponsors. Are you the kind of person. Learns better from watching something rather than reading it. Well, Spoonflower has your back again. Spoonflower's putting all these resources out there for creative people. I love that Spoonflower's blog features, video tutorials on everything from making a DIY craft organizer that doubles as wall art to making a DIY art smock for your little one to make an, a bow tie for your pet, all kinds of cool stuff that you can do with Spoonflower.

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Hey, we have a new skill share class, all about social media secretly. It's about having a totally different approach to a creative career that doesn't require getting picked by publishers editors, record labels, you know, casting directors and actually just going and doing stuff for your audience. Right now, you can do that.

You can build a thriving. Just by making connections to your audience on social media, you can go take that class for free with a trial a month long trial of Skillshare at skillshare.com/creative pap. But we're also doing. Pap Tobar what is pep Tobar now next year we might do pep timber. That sounds like it makes more sense, but this year we're planning pep Tobar and it's a lazy way to do a social media challenge.

Basically, I gave you 31 prompts and episode 3 33 on a thing you could put. Every single day of October, that didn't require you to make new work, except for one post we're talking about, you know, a work in progress, things we're talking about, BTS things we're talking about. Revisiting old work, we're talking about, uh, introducing.

To your audience. There's a billion different ways to show up on social media that doesn't require you to be a content making machine because you are not a robot and that's not what people want to connect to anyway. Okay. So we're doing that. Find the list of prompts at, uh, Andy J pizza on Instagram. I'm going to post the pep Tober.

List of prompts for social media there, you can also find it by going to creative pep-talk dot com slash episodes slash 3 33. And going into the show notes, the whole list is there for a deeper dive on what all of those prompts mean. You're going to have to go listen to that episode. I'm going to be posting every day for pep Tobar.

I'll be watching you. I'll be following the hashtag. Tober. So don't forget to hashtag all that stuff and let's do this together. Let's have fun on social media instead of being content generating machines.

okay. The third thing that I want to talk about is much smaller and it's just give this thing some time and then cut stuff out. Okay. So the third thing is we talked about this recently that I wanted to spend the second half of this year, just trying to get back in step, just trying to figure out what am I doing, trying to find what is the next mountain creatively that I'd like to climb?

And I feel like sometimes what makes us feel so. Unintegrated which I don't even know if it's a word, I'm sure. Some of you little, you know, perfection as little pencil pushing nerd out there, grammar freaks police. They're going to be like that. Andy actually

got unintegrated. And I'm so it sounds so boring to open, to pause recording, go open Google type in. Unintegrated see that it's on urban slang and it actually means putting a fork in your pork. I don't what, okay. I'm too excited on this episode. This is, you know, I'm excited. And I like to leave this stuff in.

I hope you don't mind this little tangential thing. I'm so excited about it. Cause this is what I needed. This is, I did this process just recently and it's so helped and, and I'm just, I'm still fired up on the fumes of that and I'm fired up on the possibility that it might help you get back and step a little bit.

Anyway, I'd integrate it. That's that's the word we're using. There's no mean I, uh, excuse me, actually, there, those people don't listen to this show. Some of them do, but they're lovely. Anyway, they're the sweetest versions of that. Okay. So what I want you to do is give yourself time, put the functions, right?

The functions of what are the, why am I doing all these things? And then give it some time because the danger is. There are two dangers. The first danger is that you're going to go, you're going to feel amazing today. And then in two weeks, you're going to realize that. It wasn't perfect. Like this thing that you cut or this thing that you, you thought was really important is actually going to hit a huge wall.

And if you don't give it time, if you don't actually run the experiments and collect data and let this stuff kind of work out in real time in the work trial and error your way through it, then you're going to be like, ah, no, I've lost my integration, but if you see it common, if you're like, look, this is my best guess for now.

Let's kind of see how. Feels, and this works as I go along, you won't be as prone to freak out and lose that sense of peace. And so work it out over time. And then, and also before you just cut any one of these things off the list, be suspicious, be like, I think I should shut down this Instagram account or this thing, or what.

Do not jump to conclusions instead, take that suspicion that, that hypothesis into those places keep showing up in those creative habits and just see, use it. Use your internal intuition to see if. Is my heart in it was I right? That this thing isn't really serving a function or as I'm, you know, this happens to me all the time.

Sometimes, you know, when I'm right in the thick of yesterday, man, I was in the thick of making pictures and I was having a blast. And then I go today, I have to record the podcast. I'm like, man, I don't want it. Pumped and get in front of people and in cyberspace, so to speak and do a big talk and all that, man.

Ooh, am I doing that? I just want to go sit and make stuff. That's I like doing that, but then when I go do this, I'm like, I don't want to go back to drawing pictures that doesn't, you know, so that's one of the reasons why I want you to be cautious about jumping to conclusions. Don't make conclusions. A hypothesis hypotheses on what these functions are.

And then as you go about into your regular schedule, give yourself some time to feel out the truth of those things, but save your list, go back to it. Make sure you can review what are those functions? Okay. That's number three.

Homework. I want you to make a peace about your peace. That sounded, that sounded. And it went when I wrote it down, it sounded normal. As I said, it, it sounded really weird. Make a P I E C E a piece of work about your P E a C E like your inner peace. Where are you getting your peace? What is your why? Right.

Like what, what is fueling your practice? Make one piece that it encapsulates. The thing, the feeling behind all of it, I've told you before that the invisible things post that I did was a key to my work. It was kind of like the work behind the work. Me just like revealing it. It's a little bit like that, but I want to dive deeper into what makes this prompt different.

And so for me, I want to make a piece I'm going to make a piece of work that is. About telling the inner piece of my work, which is I show up every day to tell stories, to remind people why to say yes to life. You've heard me say that before. No, that's what art, my favorite art does that for me. Some of it does it for me in like a literal way.

Like it, it gives me a passes on a thought and idea of philosophy that makes me come alive. That makes me remember like, oh yeah, that's what life is all. Some of the stuff is just stuff. That's so cool that I'm like, I'm glad, I'm glad I live in a time. I live in a world where I get to exist at the same time.

This thing is existing because it's just cool. You know, I have to soak in that. So whatever your piece is, whatever this thing that's animating your practice is, I want you to first with this homework, I want. I, we need to prime this piece of work by revisiting things that made that you got what you're trying to give from.

Artwork that gave you what you're trying to give through your artwork. You know, when I stopped, I made a list of them right here when I stop and think about the things that the moments in my life, where I encountered these things and they made me glad to be alive. They sometimes changed my posture from a no.

I'm resisting life, a refusal of the call of being alive. When these things showed up in my life, they showed up at the exact right moment that I needed them. And they gave me that. I'm thinking about the time I was sick at home from college, surfing the channels on my TV, and I stumbled upon on HBO. I think it was spirited away by high a Miyazaki.

And I remember being like, oh my gosh, this is who I am. This makes me feel so pumped to be alive in a world where this exists. I remember being new zest for life from seeing that movie. I couldn't shut up about it. I'm still talking about it 15 years later, man. I'm pumped. I am about it. I remember. When I saw the movie about time and I just bawled my eyes out of like, God, this is why life matters or what I saw recently Pixar's soul.

And I thought, man, yeah, just experiencing. The ability to see a leaf fall from a tree. Like it helped me say yes to just the, the in-between moments of life. Remember watching parenthood, that show I'm a huge fan of that show. It reminded me like family matters, man. Urkel said it did. I remember when I found full cart for the first time, I remember the day that I watched the creative mornings talk from my now friend, Aaron Draplin and friend Lisa Congdon.

But at the time, I didn't know these people, I watched their talk. And I remember just leaving that and being like. Okay. Life I'm feeling it, man. Like I felt it and I want to show up right at the time when somebody needs it right at the time when someone is. Resisting life and give them something cool and fresh.

And maybe even some truth that makes them be like, okay, I'm feeling this thing called life. Let's do this. I remember the time when I've found the weekends, first mix tape, house of balloons. I was just like, this exists, what we live in a life where this is a thing. And I sent it to my brothers who both grew up with similar, like music tastes.

We were both. Are you hearing this thing? Th the beach house, Cocteau twins, sampling R and B rap hip hop thing. Like what is happening? This is, this is freaking amazing. Life is freaking amazing. That's the power of what art can do. I want you to soak up, make a list. Of every single thing that gay view, what you're trying to pass on the torture, trying to pass and tell someone about those things, make that list, record yourself, saying it like I just did.

I was, I remember what it felt like. It really makes a difference in your life. Art does creative work does it matters. And when you, when you've really got primed, you got your, why you understand it. You're primed. You're feeling it. Create while in that mood. And I had a guest on the show, it's going to be on the show future.

We talked about this. I don't want to give it away, but we were talking about how, you know, writing the mood that you want to write in that mood, like getting into that zone somehow through just weird creative osmosis, it shows up in the piece. And that's what I want you to do when you're primed. You're ready.

Then I want you to make up. About the inner peace about this inner, why that explains it or tells it or embodies it? It's this breakthrough moment. You know, Ryan Appleton my agent slash manager slash co of Cole loop, that artist management agency that we started was telling me the other day about how the creators of mission impossible for started with the trailer.

They went to the marketing department, was like, what is an amazing. And they, they created like, this is what we want the trailer to be. And that sounds like kind of backwards, but actually I have exact same experience with this kids book. I'm working on working on this kid's book behind the scenes, totally topsy grit.

And I ha and I was like really stuck and it wasn't until I thought, let me see if I can put the, the why of this thing, the reason why I'm getting out of bed in the morning to work. In a tech talk and a minute long video, let's see if I can capture that in that video. And I did, and it broke the story open for me in the same way that, that fourth mission impossible made the series, what it was the, all the biggest selling movies came after that movie.

And sure that might not work every time, but it got me thinking about like, maybe that's why Shakespeare would start his plays by just giving away the whole. Like, because it was just this powerful thing to have to boil it down to its most refined purpose and create out of that. Because if you can do that, if you have the trailer, if you have the tech doc, if you have that, that tiny, super potent little.

Piece of fuel. All of a sudden the function of everything else starts to make sense. It gives you the power to make decisions as you're going through. And you're writing the various chapters. You can be like, well, why am I doing this? Well, because we need this for the, that purpose from the trailer, from the Tik TOK, or why am I.

Well, I don't know. It has nothing to do with the, what we're trying to do here. Cut it, that clarity, that clarity and that sense of purpose will help you integrate all the various pieces. And so. Prime that feeling, uh, take this episode, identify what that purpose is, what that thing is, prime into feeling that feeling, and then make a piece of work that is on the nose at explaining or telling or celebrating what that thing is for me, it might be something that just says, say yes.

Right. You know, it's funny back in the day, one of my first. Proper pieces outside of school just said yes, and huge letters. And I remember thinking some point my career thinking like, that's the most hollow thing? Like, what does that even mean? But now I realize like, no, that was right on the pulse man.

That was right in the spirit of what I do. It's this posture of saying yes to life. And so find that thing, make a piece. Maybe I'll redo that piece for this. Cause the old piece, I actually redid it once. Already liked it. Seven, eight years ago. Maybe it's time to do it again. Do a three-part thing. Try it, check it out, make it happen.

Make the piece about your inner peace.

Okay. Just want to add one quick. They get to the end. You know, this is your creative theory of everything. And I think there is so much to gain from going through this process, but what it won't give you is an actual theory of everything. It's important to highlight that even the most top. Quantum physicists are struggling to figure out a theory of everything we don't have, that we have a theory of almost everything.

We have some good ideas that help us make some really cool things and find some really cool discoveries. But, but ultimately, maybe that's just part of it. It's just part of it to enjoy the ride, to find some purposes that suit you. Uh, finding a, not just a philosophy, but a working philosophy, some ideas that help you get out of bed in the morning, some worldview, some perspectives that just help you put all these things into a kind of framework that helps you.

I feel like it makes some kind of sense so that I can get up and experience this thing and give myself to making some amazing creative work. And the reason why I wanted to highlight that there is no theory of everything, even that's what we're attempting to do. It's still a real. We're the pursuit, because the closer you get to feeling that integration, the more fuel you're going to have, the easier it is to going to get to be, to show up.

But I, I highlight the fact that you'll never get it so that when you get out of step, like Carrie Brownstein talked about, um, Mentioning at the beginning of this episode, you won't panic. My theory of everything is totally crop. No, it's the theory of almost everything. It was a working philosophy. It was a working document.

We're still working out. We're going to, yeah. Oh, it broke a little bit. Okay. First of all, maybe that's a season to be out of step. Maybe it just like, let's break it down. Let's let it die, but let's not let it stay there. Let's not, uh, You know, never die. We're not the Goonies man. Let's learn how to resurrect a thing.

Let's learn how to go through the spring and summer and the blossoming and the harvest. And then also the winter. There's a time for that. And I just want to highlight, there is no. Theory of everything, but the ride, trying to get it, trying to get there as a worthy one. And I hope that you will say yes to it.

Don't forget to check out my Instagram at Andy J pizza and go find those social media prompts for pep Tobar. Come on, we're all going to do this together. We're going to have a bunch of fun. Hashtag pep Tober, all that. Listen to episode 3 33 for a deep dive into those prompts, it's going to be tons of fun.

The reaction to that episode has been phenomenal. A lot of people are doing it, um, and you don't even have to do every day. You can just take what prompts you want and leave the others. If you don't want to do the full thing, but I'm up for a challenge. If you are, let's do pep Tobar together. Create a pep talk is part of the Colu podcast network.

CallLoop is a network of creative podcasts designed to fuel your creativity. Make sure you never miss an episode of this podcast by signing up to the newsletter@creativepeptalk.com slash newsletter. You'll receive an email each and every week. And the whole purpose of this show is to help you stay in the creative habit.

And if you're subscribed to the show, if you don't miss an episode, it can trigger that habit every single week. So when you're listening to the show, you can do part of your creative practice that you can do while listening to a podcast for illustrators might be coloring your illustration. For, for musicians, maybe it's setting up or preparing or just, you know, practicing your instrument or whatever for writers, maybe it's the pre-writing session walk, whatever it is each and every week we show up to make this podcast to help you string together chain together.

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Thanks to the band. Why for our theme music. Thanks to. Yeah, Alex Sug for our creative pep talk soundtrack. Thanks to Sophie Miller, my wife, AKA Sophie pizza and Ryan Appleton for content assistance. Massive. Thanks to Connor Jones of pending beautiful. Editing this show so beautifully. And until we speak again, stay puffed up, man, and stay packed up.

Humanz all kinds. We love you. You're welcome here. We're working for you, man. The show's over. Turn it off. Just stay pap time.