Good Life Project - Lisa Congdon | Bringing Your Whole Self to Life

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

It seems, every time I sit down with my friend, illustrator, fine artist, and author Lisa Congdon, she’s in a moment of transformation. Truth is, it’s a bit of a perpetual state for her. Lisa is best known for her colorful, graphic drawings and hand lettering. Her work appears in private collections, merchandise, textiles, apparel, and a wide array of collaborations with clients around the world including Method, Target, Comme des Garçons, Crate and Barrel, Facebook, MoMA, REI, and Harvard University among many others. She is the author of nine books, including Art Inc: The Essential Guide to Building Your Career as an Artist; Find Your Artistic Voice: The Essential Guide to Working Your Creative Magic; and her latest book, You Will Leave a Trail of Stars: Inspiration for Blazing Your Own Path. Lisa teaches in the Applied Craft & Design MFA program at Pacific Northwest College of Art. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon, and is also a devout cyclist, having just finished an intense ride to Crater lake and, as we talked, was getting ready to complete the Gravel Grinder race, where she would climb more than 30,000 feet in elevation on her bike, on gravel. You might wonder what, if anything, has to do with the creative life and art, and as you’ll hear, the answer is everything.You can find Lisa at:Website : https://lisacongdon.com/Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/ellen_hendriksen/The Lisa Congdon Sessions : https://pod.link/1562400129If you LOVED this episode:You’ll also love the conversations we had with Mari Andrew. She is an author, illustrator, has a tremendous following across the socials and has an incredible ability to sort of get into all of our heads and through words and art express, what we're thinking and feeling in the most relatable way : https://tinyurl.com/GLP-Mari-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So it seems like every time I sit down with my friend, illustrator, fine artist and author, Lisa Congdon, she's in a moment of evolution and transformation. The truth is, it's a bit of a perpetual state for her, which is an amazing thing. So Lisa is best known for her colorful graphic drawings and hand lettering. Her work appears in private collections, merchandise, textiles, apparel, and a wide array of collaborations with really clients around the world from Method, Target, Comme des Garcons, Crate and Barrel, Facebook, MoMA, REI, Harvard University, and so many others. She's the author of nine books, including Art Inc., The Essential Guide

to Building Your Career as an Artist, Find Your Artistic Voice, and her most recent, You Will Leave a Trail of Stars, Inspiration for Blazing a Path of Your Own. And Lisa also teaches in the Applied Craft and Design MFA program at Pacific Northwest College of Art. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon. And this is kind of fascinating. We get into this more than we actually ever have in previous conversations. She's also a devout cyclist, having just finished this intense ride to Crater Lake. And as we talked, she was getting ready to compete in the gravel grinder race, where she would climb more than 30,000 feet of elevation on her bike on gravel. And you might

even wonder, well, what, if anything, does that have to do with the creative life with art? As you'll hear, the answer is pretty much everything. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. So as we sit here hanging out, we've known each other for a while now and had conversations in various settings in front of an audience, like in the podcast setting. So it's always fun to sort of like touch down with you at different moments in your life

and your career, because I feel like things move so quickly for you. It's like I blink and we're like, oh, so Lisa's living a bit of a different life. But one of my fascinations is actually, and we've talked about this a little bit, but I think it was earlier in your journey, you have become, is obsessed the right word with cycling? Yes. So as we're sitting here, hanging out, having this conversation, you're fresh off of this intense ride up to Crater Lake. It's like 15,000 feet of climbing, crazy inclement weather that knocked out most of the group of people that you were riding with.

And yet you, among one of two sole survivors on the final day. And I think shortly after this, you're doing the gravel grinder, which is like 30,000 feet of climbing. That's next week. One of my curiosities is why? What is the call? What is the pull for you behind this? Because it's not just, oh, I like cycling.

This is different. It is. I spent many years, as you know, building my business and my career and growing as an artist and sort of putting my head down. And all of that was really cerebral work. I mean, there is a certain spiritual aspect to creativity, for sure. And creativity requires a certain amount of downtime and what we scientists call diffuse thinking state, right? Where you're not actually doing any focused work. And I try really hard to have those moments in my life. But what cycling does for me is it gets me in my body. So much of my work and time is very cerebral. Or if I'm relaxing, I'm maybe doing that in a

sedentary way. And I discovered, I mean, I've been a cyclist since 1999, 98, somewhere in there, on and off. But I got really into it in the last year and a half, like in a way that I haven't before, because I found that it got me out of my head and into my body in a way that made me feel alive without all of the sort of swirling thoughts of, you know, how much money am I making this month? Or, oh gosh, I got to finish that deadline for the client. I really hope they liked what I turned in. Or, oh my gosh, I have, you know, five different projects to work on. It's not that those thoughts don't occur to me while I'm riding, but when you're on a bike, you have to focus on the road, especially gravel riding. If you do not focus on what is in front of you and how your body feels, you will crash. And so cycling is this way for me to get out of that place that I'm in a lot around work and really focus on my body and just being present in the moment. And it does that for me in a way

that nothing else does. So I think that's what it is for me. It makes me feel really alive in a way that, you know, of course making art makes me feel alive too, but it's just very different way of activating my brain and my body. And it's such a great juxtaposition to how I spend most of my time. At the same time, I feel like it also requires a lot of the same things of me. It requires an enormous amount of discipline and getting up and going and doing stuff that often feels overwhelming or hard. But then once I'm in it, it brings me a lot of joy. Yeah. That resonates with me on so many different levels. It's funny because as you're speaking, I'm missing, for a huge part of my life, since

I was a kid, I was a cyclist. First as a road cyclist, like distance. And then for a lot of years, focusing intensely on mountain biking. And I would always say that my meditation was moving and I would ride really fast and I love riding in trees. And like you said, if you lose focus for even a second, there's a really good chance you're either in the dirt or in a tree. And I love that about it because the fundamental nature of the activity required you to let the entire world outside of what you were doing in that very

moment go, or else you were no longer in it. And then you add sort of like the moving meditation of the rhythm of cycling and the varying intensity of like, sometimes you're just flying and cruising downhill, and then it gets really hard again. There are some really interesting parallels with the creative process. It's true. I wrote this book many years ago called The Joy of Swimming. And in my opening essay, I talked a little bit about the parallels between the discipline of athletic endeavors and the discipline of creativity or finding your voice or growing as an artist. And I think it's so funny because we think so often of creative people as being these sort of nerdy folks who are not athletic. And I

think while that's true for a lot of people, the cross section of artists who also are athletes is actually much larger than I realize. I've met all of these other people who feel the same about not necessarily cycling, but some other athletic endeavor that they use as a way of, I don't know, leaning into this other part of their existence than creativity, but uses also the same muscles in some way. And I thought that I was, you know, I actually never used to talk about my athletic endeavors on my social media. And it's become such a big part of my life that it's almost like every fourth or fifth Instagram post is about cycling because it's become so important to me. And for a while, I was like, well, I'm going to lose followers because people aren't necessarily interested

in that. And then I'm like, who cares? This is a big part of who I am. And it's so important to me and the rest of my artistic practice. Like I feel like they feed each other in this really amazing way. And so I'm really kind of like coming out of the closet as a like obsessive athlete. I love that because I think there is this association. I think back to my high school days, I'm like, okay, so you have the jocks, you have the artists, you have like the geeks. And there wasn't a real association of, well, could you sort of like dip into both buckets or all three buckets, you know? And the idea of them all being sort of necessary components of being able to really excel at

any level in any one element of them. Like in the ancient Greeks, scholar athlete was just, that's what you were. It was understood that the body, there's a seamless feedback mechanism that they all compliment each other and they make all the different parts express each other in a really powerful way. Everything works better.

And yet we've certainly dissociated them with just creating these really standardized stereotypes that say like, you either do this or this. But I agree. It's funny. There's a now retired professional baseball player named Micah Johnson, who started drawing almost as a way to deal with sort of like anxiety and stress and started drawing these stunning, stunning illustrations and ended up leaving baseball, becoming a full-time artist now and now developed a character that's super inspiring. I think it was his nephew and developing animations

and I think a feature-length movie based on this stuff now at this point. And I love seeing the merging of all these different worlds and seeing people say, okay, so even if I've defined myself in this one particular way, realizing that you can be all these different elements and facets. And not only is it okay, but it actually tends to work a lot better that way for a lot of people. Yeah. Another thing I was thinking about was, even though I've been cycling for a long time, it's just really in the last year and a half that

I've started to take it seriously. I took up gravel cycling in the last year, I'm starting to race and I'm 53 years old. So, you know, I mean, I think to, you know, a lot of people that's still young and I definitely feel young and, you know, kind of vibrant and healthy, but, you know, a lot of women in particular think like, oh, by the time I'm 50, like if I haven't tried something, what would be the point, especially in athletic endeavor. And so for me to like say, I'm going to try these really hard things and I'm going to, you know, I'm going to train, I'm going to do all this stuff in my 53 year old body, which by the way, is not even the same as my 47 year old body, just like in the last six years, I feel like is a way for me to hopefully inspire other people to not necessarily take up cycling,

but to understand that it's never too late to try that thing that you'd always dreamed about. I find myself writing and thinking, I used to watch people do what I'm doing now and wish it was me. And I didn't know or have the confidence or whatever that magic formula was to actually do the thing that I always wanted to do. I was that person who was like, oh man, look at that woman doing that, or I want to do that. But then I didn't sort of know how. And just in the last few years, I've really started to say, well, why not me? Why not me? And now I'm actually doing all of those things that I wished I could do or wanted to do, but didn't quite know how to get started. And that feels really good. I'm living my life. I'm not wishing that I did something. I'm doing it. And I know that takes a certain amount of privilege and

financial stability and all of that. I want to acknowledge that. But at the same time, that kind of like, I'm actually doing the thing that I always dreamed of doing, but didn't know how to do until now. And sometimes I think it takes until you're in your fifties to sort of get to that place where you have the confidence to just go for it. Because what do you have to lose? Yeah. I was just recalling somebody, a friend sharing how people talk about middle age as this thing to be like feared and loathed. And she was in it like now, and she's like, this is the best time. It brings up another curiosity of mine. You've reached this point that a lot of artists aspire to and that you aspire to,

as you just shared. Your work is in private collections, textiles, apparel, merch. You collaborate with everyone from Target, Madewell, Comme des Garcons, MoMA, REI, all these amazing places, written a series of incredible books. You teach. I guess my curiosity is, it's always a different experience from the inside out than it is from the outside in. And I'm curious at this moment in time, how your lived experience of the moment that you're in is both different from and the same as what you thought it would be and feel like. I never actually, I'm not sure I ever imagined that my lived experience would be what it is. And so I wake up every day super grateful for all of the opportunity that I've had and all the love that I get from the world and all of the great stuff I get to do. But I think that now that I'm in this place,

on the one hand, you have that gratitude, the joy, the waking up and pinching yourself. I'm also grateful that I have continued to work on myself so that I can actually enjoy what I've earned. I think so many people, and I know this because I'm in contact with a lot of people who are on similar paths and who have reached success. It's very hard for them to, once they get to that place, it's very hard to enjoy it. We feel like we don't deserve it or that somehow it's all going to go poof tomorrow, right? Like this can't be real. And I really feel like I've gotten to this place where I'm in it and I'm enjoying it and I'm kind of like, I'm leaning into it and that's all great.

But on the other hand, there is a lot of pressure. And I think, um, this sort of idea of kind of being under a microscope because I have in, you know, in no way to the extent that some celebrities on the internet are under a microscope, but, you know, I've almost, you know, at some point soon I'll have half a million Instagram followers. And even that is sort of huge to wrap your head around, right? That's like 10 soccer stadiums full of people, right? And not all of those people are tuning into everything I'm saying every day or liking it, but I have a lot of people paying attention to how I respond to social justice issues and how I respond to anything really in the world. And I have, with that platform comes surely a lot of customers and a lot of financial success. My Instagram is the greatest driver of traffic to my shop. And so, and also, you know, the, the ways in which our directors find me and pay me lots of money to draw pictures

for them. But it's also the place where everything I say is analyzed in some way. And so there's this constant pressure to say the right thing, do the right thing, not make a mistake, even though that's impossible my followers. And as my career has grown, I have had increasing opportunities and also increasing requests for this thing or that thing, or can you help me with this? And can you be on this? And can you do this? And I'm one person, I can't do it all. And so I have to say no a lot. And I'm actually working with a life coach right now for the last six months. And she's been really amazing. And part of the reason I found her and hired her was because I still feel like I need to detach, need to continue working on detaching from situation, like that I need to continue to be the person that I am, but also get comfortable saying no, disappointing

people, not doing it all. Because if I were to say yes, or even a halfway yes to every single person who came my way and wanted something from me, there's no way I could do it all. Right. And so I have, you know, in order to like have time to ride my bike or spend time with my wife or, you know, take a vacation or just, or downtime, I, you know, I have to, I have to say no. So, and that's like a psychological feat for somebody like me who wants to be loved and appreciated, right? And so, you know, you might call them boundaries or, you know, I have to have like barriers around myself and self-protection. So I'm working on that and also working on not knowing that

I'm not always going to say the right thing on social media, that I'm going to screw up, and that people might be disappointed in me for their own particular reasons. And doing a lot of work on just letting that be what it is and not trying to please everyone because it's impossible. So it sounds very elementary, but like, you know, you take all the issues you had in seventh grade and then you sort of, you know, you grow to be a 53 year old woman who's clearly more wise than she was when she was 13. But, you know, 40 years later, I'm still, and we all are still dealing with these core issues around, you know, being loved and appreciated and doing the right thing and wanting to do the right thing. And that's really my work right now is letting go of that.

Yeah, that resonates so much. I feel like we're often, we're all just sort of like a heartbeat away from middle school at the end of the day, no matter how old we are. Like we love to think we're so much more evolved and then like something happens you're like oh right exactly exactly

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Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. But you said something that was really interesting, I thought also, which is that I wonder sometimes we hit a moment where so many of us are thinking about whether it's for professional reasons, because we know we have to appeal appeal to, or sell to, or want approval from. But literally saying, I'm actively choosing to disappoint this person, or this group of people, or this community, because in order for me to move through life, aligning my actions with my values, my beliefs, what I hold dear, I must do that. And rather than just kind of dancing around it and trying to figure out how to

do the thing you've got to do without being too disappointing to that group, just kind of like making decisions saying, no, like these are the people that I am going to annoy, bother, disappoint, let down. And that's sort of like, I'm going to draw a line in the sand and say, be clear about it. It feels like to me, knowing you for a number of years now, that that's become more of a bright line for you. Yes, definitely. And in fact, every time I post a picture of my wife and I, or I talk about some particular

political issue, I lose followers. And I've gotten to the point where I'm like, yes, I'm doing something right here. And quite frankly, I've gotten to the point where I have, you know, plenty of people who support my work and continue to grow my following that I've sort of relaxed into that. I would rather wake up every day and feel good about what I choose to talk about and make art about and disappoint people than be so benign or so without an opinion that everybody's hanging on, but nobody really knows what I stand for. I run a values-driven business and I want to make sure that those values are reflected in

what I am sharing. And there are a lot of people who will write to me and say, I don't actually agree with you about this thing, but I'm hanging on because I like you or whatever. So there are always those people who are open-minded enough, but I also get flack for not being political enough or not being progressive enough. So I get feedback from all sides of the spectrum. Sometimes when I work for big clients, I'll get flack for working with big clients from my more, you know, you know, bleeding heart, progressive followers who are sort of anti, you know, corporations. So it's like it sort of runs the gamut for me. At the same time, I also want to learn. And sometimes followers will give me feedback that actually, if I think about it, is good feedback and something for me to think about. And I want to stay open to feedback.

And I want to stay open to learning and growing and changing my mind, too. Yeah. I mean, I like to think there's data in most things. And sometimes the data is garbage and you need to throw it away. But then sometimes there's real value, even though the initial, sometimes the emotion that comes bundled with the data makes us not want to see or deal with it. But it's like, if you can set that aside for just a moment and say, okay, so like, is there actual useful information here? It's not easy to do, but it can be really powerful. And you have got almost, you know, you've got this living dynamic laboratory, you know,

of hundreds of thousands of people who are participating in that, whether you want it or not. Like they're a giant data set who's passing information to you all day, every day. And I know at various points also, you went through a window of pretty intense burnout a couple of years back. And also, I guess you emerged from that, I remember, being clear on what you wanted to say yes and no to. And you took a bunch of time off and said, I'm not doing these things simultaneously. And you've also moved through in the last couple of years, we've all moved through a lot of challenge.

In the middle of it all, you've also moved through a cancer diagnosis. And so as we sort of emerge here, it's like you're in a moment of emergence on multiple levels. And I'm wondering if the last three, four or five years for you have made any really meaningful shifts in what you hold dear. Yeah. I mean, I thought that if I wasn't hustling, that I couldn't, that somehow... Okay. So I really did, when I started my business back in 2007, I got into this mode of like time is money. Not that I'm like wanted to be rich. I just wanted to survive. At the time I was really poor.

I had left my job. I didn't have health insurance, you know? And so my wife who I started dating sort of shortly there, you know, after I started my business and had left my job, you know, she would get really mad at me because I would literally take the computer to bed and then put it on the floor, go to sleep and wake up and pick it up and put it in the bed. And we actually had a no computer in the bed rule after that forever. And so it was actually good to have somebody who's sort of playing back to me even then, these habits that I was getting in around working all of the time in a way that I never, I had never been that person when I worked for somebody else. I would go to work at eight and leave at five. And, you know, I never took my work home with me.

I had really good boundaries around work. And the minute I started working for myself, I was like, oh, this is on me. I need to prove to everyone, including my parents, who were sort of dubious about my decisions, that I can do this and that I'm going to be successful. And sure enough, I became this workaholic and guess what? I became successful and I started making money and I started getting asked to speak at conferences and all these things happened. So what my brain said, that's the reason you're successful is because you work all the time. And yet I was becoming increasingly unhappy.

Like in 2016, I had my first kind of like breakdown and then it was actually both physical and mental. I wasn't exercising at the time. I was doing nothing to take care of myself. I was traveling a lot and working all the time. And then over the course of the last five years, I have been unraveling that in various ways. But in the unraveling, I noticed that I was so attached to hustling as the thing that if I let go of it, everything would fall apart. And so it took little baby steps of letting go of this or letting go of that or saying no to this or not doing that thing anymore in my career or focusing on what's bringing me joy and what's giving me the best return on investment. And where is the, like if it was a Venn diagram, it's like one circle is joy, the other circle is return on investment. And where do those things overlap?

So I started studying that and I took a sabbatical and then I got a cancer diagnosis and then the pandemic hit and one of my best friends and former partners died suddenly. And like all this stuff happened that kind of sped up the process of me understanding that if I'm spending all of my time working and not living, then what is any of it worth? Even if I am making a good income and able to buy a second house, which I just did last year. And so I just like have been focused more on how can I continue to work and do the stuff that I love in my career. And then also do things like ride my bike, you know, thousands of miles and spend, you know spend 15 to 18 hours a week on my bike and

also come to my beach house and walk on the beach without guilt that I should be back in the house answering email. And that sounds easy and lovely and romantic, but it's been the hardest work of my life to get to this place where I have this sort of sense of balance between, yes, I work, I have a thriving career, but I also allow myself to relax and enjoy. And what's interesting is that in the last two years, since I've been working less, nothing's changed in my income. And in fact, it's gotten better. In fact, I've had a few like cycling related jobs because art directors at cycling venues and magazines and brands are interested in working with me because they know that I love cycling. So really amazing things have happened. And yeah, so I think

I've just learned to like that life is precious. It sounds trite, but it's just true. And I feel like I'm living my life in a full way more than I ever have before without fear that it's all going to, you know, all the security that I've built around my career is going to somehow disappear if I don't work super hard all of the time. And it's a constant struggle, which I think a lot of people, even people who are beginning or mid-career can probably relate to, this sense of attachment to working as the reason that we're experiencing success. And I do think a certain amount of hustling and working in the beginning is important. Like you have to, but at the same time, there is a point at which we need to go inward and like, I don't know. I feel like my

art practice is better because of the changes I've made in my life in the last few years. And my life is better because of the changes I've made in my art practice in the last few years. That makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, I feel like sometimes we treat, especially like you said, I think earlier in the middle part of careers very often, we kind of treat it as, okay as we've got to be all in. We treat it as a practice. I'm going to study it. I'm going to analyze it.

I'm going to devote myself to it and mind, body, and spirit until I really get to this point where I feel like I've got it dialed in. Yet simultaneously, we don't treat our relationships, our well-being, our life outside of that with the same reverence that a practice would call for. We just kind of think, well, that'll just happen. It just takes care of itself. And I think it's interesting to sort of say, okay, what if I treated all of these different things as a practice? What if I approached them with a sense of intentionality and progress and held them all in a way where I was committed to exploring them as a daily practice?

And I feel like we have seasons in life where we tend to focus intensely on career in the earlier times and then just assume that life will happen in the margins. And at the same time, you know, when I think about especially people who earn their living in some really profoundly creative way, which you do and so many others do, when you devote yourself entirely to the process of craft and output, you know, that's always constrained in my mind by the input. And if you're not living, you know, the, the, what you can put into the creative process becomes dramatically limited. So what you can take out of it or create from it, like, I always feel like you're actually limiting the depth and the quality and the breadth of your creative output by only focusing on that and not actually setting aside time to live your life. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think that is probably the most profound lesson that I've learned recently. And, you know, yesterday I had a meeting with my, I do like a four hour session with my coach, who's, she's sort of like my therapist, but the way I run my business, changing the way I live my life, you know, based on what I value, based on what makes me happy and feel the most whole and full. And while that sounds great, it's hard work and I'm bumping up against things all of the

time, but those are opportunities, right? To go deep and to learn and to ree really intentional decisions based on not what I think I should do or what somebody else wants me to do, but really what I want. And I think as women in particular, we are raised to not choose what we want. We are raised to choose what other people want from us. And I'm not a mom. I don't have kids. And I have a very wonderful partner who affords me a lot of grace and freedom. But I do have a lot of people who want a lot of things from me. And while I'm grateful for those things, or for those people who want things from me, I don't have to do what other people want. Ultimately, I really owe it to myself and I'm going to show up as a better human in the world

if I'm listening to what I want. And it sounds weird to think that, you know, at 53, I'm finally, you know, like figuring out what I want and getting comfortable, you know, reacting to different situations in service of what's going to bring me joy. And it's even uncomfortable for me to say that sometimes because it feels selfish, because we're taught that it's selfish. And I'm trying to lean into really embracing that and knowing that if I do take care of myself and my own mental health and my own physical health, I will show up as a better person in my work and in my art. But that's kind of like the path that I'm on right now. And it's both exciting and, you know, from time to time a little nerve wracking. Totally get that.

Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Totally get that. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. You know, it's been interesting also to see your, I knew you originally as a creator and it seems like you've also expanded into the space of teaching, you know, and that's shown up as teaching individually, that's shown up as workshops, that's shown up as online courses, it's shown up as you being a part of the MFA program at Pacific Northwest College of Art now. But it's also showing up, I feel like, in your books. You're, what, nine books in now at this point? Ten. Ten.

Ten as of in a few weeks I have another children's book that comes out. Got it. So when I look at your books, I'm like, ah, this is beautiful. I love the craft. I love the message. And at the same time, I feel you, I feel Lisa the teacher as an essential part of what's driving you as an author now also. Is that valid? Yes.

I think I really, I wrote this book about finding your artistic voice and that book was really focused on literally your visual language, right? And so much of visual language can also be literal language. And I think for me, I have in the last few years, I had sort of already found my visual language, but then I started to find my other voice, which is talking about making art about the stuff that I had learned and feeling enough both humility around my life experiences and my humanity and enough confidence to tell those stories. And I started sharing lessons that I had learned grounded in my own experience, which I think for me has been super helpful.

I started doing this on Instagram, actually. And then I and a lot of the stuff that I write there ends up getting published into books, because it's sort of like my brain dump every day or every other day about what's going on for me. And, you know, my messages were resonating so much with people, even the messages that were hard. And there is, you know, I have written a lot of kind of hard hitting posts around, you know, nobody owes you anything. You know, the most viral one I've ever had is this list of kind of five facts about taking care of yourself first, which is the stuff that I'm working on. And it's called notes to self. Other people might use it, but really

most of what I write is I'm writing because it's a reminder to myself and it's the stuff that I'm working on in real time. So I'm always trying to strike a balance between a certain amount of vulnerability and humility and also authority. Like I have, this is my lived experience. It may not be yours, but here's my truth. And I've started making art about those topics, sort of's my truth. And I've started making art about those topics, sort of accompany the writing. And that has been, it's interesting. I don't know if this was a fluke, but you know how there's these online platforms that are like therapy platforms where people can... So I got an email yesterday. I don't know if they think I'm a licensed therapist,

but I got an email from one of these companies asking me to like join them as a therapist. And I was like, this is hilarious. Like that I'm actually started off, as you mentioned, just like as this creative person. And 13 years later, I'm now seen as somebody who is a mentor and a coach and, you know, somebody with wisdom. And I try to never come across as having it all figured out because I don't think we ever do. But yeah, it's just weird. I wake up some days and I'm like, what has my life become? And yeah, so I published a book recently called You Will Leave a Trail of Stars. And that book is actually like, it's artwork, but it's really just like all these lessons that I've learned in my life. And it was really like one of the most enjoyable projects I've ever worked on because I realized like I love writing about my life experience, my creative experience, the good stuff, the hard stuff. And I love sharing that. And so brings me so much joy to do that.

Yeah. I mean, it was when I picked up that book, flipping through it, I was like, it immediately landed as different from everything else that I've seen you write before. And I think a lot of it was because it was like, this is my personal philosophy of living based on my experience and my time on the planet. This is what I think I figured out. And coming just from you, I thought it was interesting also that you opened that book, the opening passage, it was called Know Thyself. And I was like, this is an interesting starting point. And I was wondering how much of this

is you continuing to remind yourself, almost like putting a Post-it note on your mirror saying like, okay, so like, just keep going back to that, you know, like that's the work, you know, and everything flows from that. Yeah. I think self-knowledge is like the path to freedom, in my opinion. By freedom, I mean like emotional freedom and happiness and healing. When we deny even negative feelings or when we feel so much shame about something we've done or who we are, or that we are not this or that, that constricts our ability to feel joy and happiness and to show up in the world. that I've had unproductive negative thoughts that I'm ashamed of, or that I care about particular

things that make me feel ashamed, or when I finally admit those things out loud and then go through the practice of letting them go and sort of loving myself anyhow, I have more capacity and ability to show up for other people and to have compassion and love for others without judgment. Because if you're judging yourself, you're judging others. So this work is getting me to this place of being more present with myself and with others. And so much of the writing in the book is really about that, owning your story, owning your experience, even the hard stuff. And that is like really been my path for the last, oh gosh, 20 years. And it's unending work because once you peel away one layer of the onion, there's another and then another and then another and

then another. And it was really intentional that I opened up with that particular phrase in the book, because I feel like kind of summarizes what everything is about, like knowing and understanding yourself so that you can give yourself the opportunity to then heal those parts of yourself or change if change is necessary. If you realize you've been a jerk, instead of being in denial about it, like, you know, accept, you know, say, okay, I was a jerk and I'm going to go apologize. And I'm going to try not to do that anymore. But unless you recognize all the ways in which you are, you know, flawed, and then, you know, still love those parts of yourself, you're stuck. You're stuck. And so I think

self-knowledge is like, or trying to understand and love yourself is really just the, it's like the gateway to everything. Yeah. It's so great. It's like the magic in peeling the onion isn't what's left after you peel it because there's nothing inside. It's the process of peeling it if you're present to it. Which, speaking of magic, that was another thing that you wrote about. It was really interesting because on the one hand, I remember you writing magic. Effectively, you're saying magic requires discipline. And at the same time, there's another passage where you share that it's also really important to loosen your grip, to hold things lightly. So it's this idea that if we aspire to create magic in some way, shape, or form, whether

it's in our life, in our work, almost counterintuitively, you don't just wait for it to spontaneously combust into a magical moment or creative expression. It requires constraint and effort and discipline. But at the same time, the entire time that you're devoting yourself in a disciplined way, you've got to hold everything lightly and accept the fact that there may be no there there. Or that even if there is the there there, which none of us know until we get there or don't get there, that there are going to be failures and just vast, uncomfortable feelings. And there's also a lot in the book about getting comfortable

being uncomfortable. Because I think people imagine, take the creative process, for example, or even the process of becoming a fast cyclist. I think people imagine that in their fantasy mind that they could just close their eyes and imagine being really good at either of these things just sort of happens or that some people are born with natural abilities. But for most people, even people who are born with natural abilities, there's a lot of showing up that has to occur. But it's also extremely uncomfortable because getting good at anything requires, you know, screwing up and messes and failing.

And that's how we learn. And a lot of people don't want to feel the messiness. They don't want to feel uncomfortable. So they don't, they don't do it. That's why I, for years and years, I wanted to be the cyclist that I am today, but I didn't want to feel the discomfort of training or not being as fast as other people or whatever. And eventually I was like, screw it. I'm going to do it anyway. And it actually wasn't as bad as I thought, but I'm super intrigued by this idea was like, screw it, I'm going to do it anyway. And it actually wasn't as bad as I thought. But I'm super intrigued by this idea of holding on to a vision, having a vision, working toward

that vision, but also holding that vision with a certain amount of detachment. And that is freaking hard. It's kind of brutal. I've been working on that for a lot of decades. I feel like I'm like maybe, you know, a millimeter closer to it. Right. It's like, you know, in Buddhism, they talk about the fact that attachment is the root of suffering, right? If we get too attached to the idea of something or something being a certain way, that that's actually what causes the pain that we experience in life. And so the antidote to that is like, is holding things, you know,

trying things, experimenting, going for things, but also like understanding that, you know, your happiness doesn't depend on achieving that thing. It depends on being present in the process of life, regardless of what the outcome is. And yeah, that is hard work. Yeah, easier said than done. I've been meditating a whole lot of years trying to get there. And it makes complete logical sense to me. But the actual manifestation of that in your life is a whole different thing. It's funny. I was reflecting recently on a conversation that I had years back with Milton Glaser where he said something that really stayed with me that actually is really resonating when I think about your work right now, which is that the impulse to make is one thing.

The impulse to create beauty is a related thing, but it's not the same. And when I look at the work that you've been creating, like over the last 10, 15 years now, I feel like there was an early impulse to create beauty that has now fused with this emerging impulse and emerging over a season of years now to create value in addition to beauty that feels intentional to me. Mm-hmm. Thank you for saying that. Actually, that's such a nice... Yeah, I actually have a new product, I guess is the right word, coming out in September, which is a values deck, like a sorting exercise. A lot of people have done them, but my friend Andrea and I, it's called the Live Your Values deck. And it's a way for people to sort their values and then become more aligned with their values. And I have been doing a lot of that kind of work in my life and in my business over the last five years. And so it made natural sense for me to do that. And I think one of the offshoots of doing that work is that I have become more focused on what value am I giving versus not that making beautiful things

isn't valuable. People need beautiful things. And I do still, I think, make some beautiful things, but my primary focus is making sure that what I'm putting out into the world has value. And I think that's also where a lot of my storytelling came from. And I don't know. Yeah. I, I, it's been, it's been a, an interesting journey to get to the place where the main filter for what I put out into the world is, you know, does this thing have value? And, you know, sometimes when I'm working on client jobs, especially for big companies and I'm just drawing pictures for them to put on their website or whatever, I'm like, um, this feels really weird, but they're paying me a lot of money. So I guess there's value in that, but yeah, it, it definitely. And I think that's why my like audience has grown because I found this group of people who also finds value in what I'm sharing and whether it's about life or about the creative process or about running a creative business.

And then I also have come to the place personally where I actually value my own voice, right? It's hard to put yourself out there if you don't believe that what you're saying has any value. You know, I remember when I was writing Art Inc. for which you wrote the foreword many years ago, and I was, you know, three chapters in and I turned it in and my editor said, Lisa, you've got some good information here, but you have to sound more authoritative. A lot of the tone of the book was this worked for me, but it might not work for you, right? They're like, you know what you're doing, believe it or not. You have experienced success. So own that and tell your story in a way and share your resources and information in a way that

where other people are going to believe you. And it was like the first time anyone said that to me. And I sort of began work that very day, however many years ago that was almost 10 years ago now, just really thinking about like what I know. And, you know, of course trying to exercise humility, but also like exercise this muscle where I'm like, yeah, I do know that. And I, I have value that I can give to the world and, um, not everybody's going to find value in it, but some people will. And it's one of my greatest values is service. And so, you know, that's what I found out by doing this values exercise where you kind of like get your top three values and one of them is service. And when I did that values exercise, I was like, oh, my art business isn't just about making art. It's not just about putting pretty things into

the world. I mean, some of it is, and I get paid to do that and that's fine. But because one of my values is service and giving back, that also has to be part of my business. So I'm starting a foundation with Emily McDowell and we're going to give grants and mentoring to BIPOC artists who apply to our program. And even in the stuff I write about on my Instagram feed, I really think about it through the lens of like value added to the conversation. And that is not something I ever thought about back in the day. I used to work for a nonprofit before I became an artist. And I remember leaving the nonprofit world and being like, oh my God, I'm leaving behind everything that's meaningful to me. And, you know, I'm going to go do this selfish thing, which is like make pretty pictures. And, you know, 10 years later, my world have collided. Like I am giving back to the world

and making pretty pictures, you know, like I get to do both. And it's just like, I feel so lucky that I get to do that. So. I love that. And that feels like a really good place for us to come full circle as well. So it's kind of fun because I think I've asked you this question a number of times now, as I always end every conversation here, but years apart. So I'll ask it again, you know, in this context, in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up. Now I'm wondering what I've said the three times you've interviewed me before. That would be an interesting thing to go back and look at. To live a good life is to love yourself and to love all the parts of yourself, even the parts that are damaged or flawed, and to know and acknowledge those parts and to use them to connect with others. Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, safe bet, you will also love the conversation

that we had with Mari Andrew. She is an author, illustrator, has a tremendous following across the socials and has just an incredible ability to sort of get into all of our heads and through words and art express what we're thinking and feeling in the most relatable way. You'll find a link to Mari's episode in the show notes. And even if you don't listen now, be sure to click and download so it's easy to play when you're on the go. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app so you'll never miss an episode. And then share the Good Life Project love with friends. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to

action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Tell me how to fly this thing. You know what the difference between me and you is?

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