The Liz Moody Podcast - The Real Cure for Burnout Isn’t Rest—It’s Creativity. Here's How Anyone Can Unlock Theirs

Starting point is 00:00:00 Why is creativity one of the most missing parts of the health and wellness conversation? Creativity is generally misunderstood for a variety of different reasons. One of my personal missions is to really help all people see that creativity is innate. It's something that is within every single one of us. Really, the reasons that we stop engaging in it is because of social reasons, the ways that we interpret it in the world. So if we go back tens of thousands of years, about 30, 30 to 70,000 years ago, creativity was basically born in the human brain because of this evolutionary

Starting point is 00:00:38 mistake. Cognitive scientists call this the cognitive revolution, this moment in time where humans got the capacity to imagine and then turn it into reality. I'm Katina Bajaj. I'm a creative health scientist and co-founder of daydreamers. I also got my master's in clinical psychology at Columbia's Mind-Body Institute where I studied how creativity works in the brain and why it's one of the most overlooked aspects of our health. The reason that I got into creative health in the first place, I, too, was experiencing not just burnout, but kind of this broader sense of disillusionment and lack of purpose and really finding myself in this place where no other well-being pools were helping me. It not only helps us relax, but it also helps us get agency over our

Starting point is 00:01:27 lives. The way that I personally like to define creativity is our capacity to ask what if things could be different and then do something about it, which I think it kind of shifts the way that we start to think about how it shows up in our lives. Yeah, it's really different than like knitting or doing paint by numbers. Yes. This is ultimately what I want us all to see. And what's fascinating is that, you know, fast forward to right now, creativity is working in our brain. in a variety of different ways, pretty much at every moment. So creativity isn't found in one specific spot, but it's the series of networks and combinations of aspects of our brain that happen in various different ways. So the three main ones are the default mode network, which is the

Starting point is 00:02:17 imagination network. This is where we brainstorm what happens when we daydream and mind wander, and you get that like spark of an idea. The control network, which is our like, editor. So this is where we decide which ideas are important. And then the salience network, which is kind of like the moderator between the two, but this is where we kind of decide what is most relevant and meaningful to us. And so with that framing and that kind of like nerdy scientific background, we can all see that creativity is something that we do all the time. And it's so much bigger than art, paint by numbers, going to a pottery class, right? It's really truly a way of existing in the world. Okay, so connect that back to how will that improve our health and our wellness?

Starting point is 00:03:06 When we're talking about our health and our wellness, we are talking about one specific type of creativity, which is something called mini C creativity. This is creativity that's just purely meaningful to you. It's not maybe the viral videos or even, you know, a beautiful painting that you might do in your free time. It's the process and the integration of understanding how we exist in the world. So when we're engaging in mini-see creativity, we're not really showing it to anyone. This is something that we're doing in our alone time and our private time. And so the research is actually really clear that this type of creativity impacts our well-being in so many ways that we really don't talk about in our world. First, it impacts our emotions and our mental health.

Starting point is 00:03:58 Second, it impacts our cognition and our brain health, our long-term brain health. And third, it impacts our capacity to flourish and thrive. So it not only is reducing our stress, but it's broadening our perspective. It's helping us access awe and one-term. And it's also really making our brain dense, helping us improve our neuroplasticity and the strength of our brain for the long term. What are examples of mini C creativity, like in a day-to-day life? I like to break it down into three different forms of creativity. The first one is creative expression, which I think we all know. That is like paint by nature.

Starting point is 00:04:40 Yes. Okay. Yeah. And I even like to go broader than that. It could be picking out your outfit and being really intentional about what you're wearing and putting on your body. It could be dancing in your room. Any way that you are connecting your mind and body that doesn't even need to use words that is expressing yourself in the physical world. Okay.

Starting point is 00:05:03 So that's one. The second is creative thinking. So this is where we connect the dots in new and different ways. And a lot of times this is what we're doing right now, like a deep conversation. conversation, experiencing novelty, learning something new. Even if you're listening, you're doing something that is mini-see creative. And the third is noticing and appreciating beauty. So I think this is something that gets overlooked so often in our world, but it's really being able to savor to observe the beauty in big ways and small around you. And then what that does is start to

Starting point is 00:05:40 proactively help us experience awe and wonder and a sense of interconnectedness. So many people feel stuck and I feel like unalive right now, how does creativity help with that? This is like the reason that I got into creative health in the first place. I too was experiencing not just burnout, but kind of this broader sense of disillusionment and lack of purpose and really finding myself in this place where no other well-being pools were helping me get to this kind of deeper root of, you know, my own struggles. And what I found was that when I started to turn to creativity and this mini-C form of creativity, writing in my journal on the subway, noticing a flower for a little longer than maybe just, you know, pounding to my office, I, this is not scientific,

Starting point is 00:06:36 but I like to say that it defrosted my brain. Like, it's starting. to wake me up to these parts of life that we just completely overlook, play, imagination, making meaning, being able to sit with and potentially even thrive in chaos and uncertainty. And so I think creativity is really unique and it's this extremely powerful tool that hits on many of the elements that go overlooked in the well-being tools that we're using today. Why have we moved away from creativity or have we? Like I'm kind of thinking about, you know, in the 1800s when people were working all these crazy hours and stuff, were they taking time to be creative? Have we moved away from it? Have we never had the opportunity or time for it in the first place? I personally think that this is an industrial revolution ship. And, you know, this isn't necessarily just my personal opinion. There are many scholars that also point to this. But if we look back to, you know, kind of pre-industrial revolution times. Creativity wasn't a thing that we did. It was just a way that we

Starting point is 00:07:43 existed. So there were craftsmen and women that were kind of making things at all times. People were sitting around, even around a fireplace, right, and telling stories and being able to sing and dance and have fun in a way that I think we've really lost in a world that is solely focused on productivity and efficiency and doesn't really prioritize things like play and and curiosity. It's interesting that you say, like, it was a way we lived because I'm thinking like, oh, yeah, because the craftsmen needed to make plates. Like machines have sort of taken a lot of these roles that artisans might have done historically. And I also, even as I'm saying that, I'm like, am I glamorizing that though, too?

Starting point is 00:08:28 There's a really important difference that you're highlighting that mini-see creativity is one form, right? maybe after their work as an artisan, they were coming home and reading, they were chatting around, you know, a fireplace, right? These smaller forms of creativity. Pro-Cate creativity. So creativity that we engage in for our work is something that actually requires boundaries. It's not something that always will bring us happiness and joy and all of the healthy things that we're talking about. Creativity is almost like a double-sided sword. And I think a lot of the researchers in this space are a little hesitant to say creativity writ large is quote unquote good for us because there are so many different ways that we can engage in it.

Starting point is 00:09:13 So that's why I'm really specific about the types of creativity I'm talking about because I mean, I'm sure you've experienced this too. When you create for your job, there is a lot of stuff that comes up with it. Right. Yeah. What would you say to somebody who's trying to decide whether to make. make their creative passion into their job? I think what's really important is coming back to this idea of both boundaries and then also retaining a mini-C creative practice.

Starting point is 00:09:42 So one of my favorite researchers in the space, Mahali Chicks-in Mahi, sadly he passed away a couple of years ago, but he was like the quote unquote father of flow. So if you know about the idea of the flow state that often gets hijacked for productivity, that is not what the point of it was. It was really to understand quality of life. How do we live a good life and what does a life well lived actually look like from a scientific perspective? And that's what he kind of set out to explore and ended up discovering by chance this concept of flow. And one of the things that he says is that if you look at creativity back in the day, it was something that was pleasurable. Like artists back in

Starting point is 00:10:28 ancient Greece and ancient Egypt, we're seen as enjoyable people to be around. And for some reason, over the past couple of centuries, we've associated the depressed artist, right? And a lot of that really comes from the social pressures and the identity that gets wrapped up in creativity. And even more than that, this idea that artists and people who use creativity for their job need to, to be kind of outside of society, outside of the norm. And so I think if we start to bring creativity back to the center of both our lives and then also collectively how we view our world and what a good life looks like, that might shift. That's a little optimistic.

Starting point is 00:11:13 But I do think for someone who actually wants to take that jump into living a more passionate life writ large, it's really important to remember that creativity for your job is one aspect. And we need to incorporate many other forms of creativity into our life to really be able to show up with that spark and energy and vitality. But if they were pragmatically like, I love baking bread, should I go open a bakery and have that be my job? Are there things that you would have them considering knowing what you know as a scientist and also somebody who did this yourself? I think we can't look to that job to give us the well-being benefits. that creativity as our passion might have given us. So to continue to lift up other passions and hobbies that we have in order to continue to get those

Starting point is 00:12:09 benefits to give our job all the, you know, what we would like to. It also occurs to me because we're defining creativity in a much different way than we would have thought previous to this conversation perhaps that maybe there are ways to bring our creative selves into whatever job we have rather than leaving whatever job we have to do a quote-unquote creative job. Yes. And there's actually some research on this. There was a study that came out in 2016 where scientists wanted to understand what kind of leads to work-related burnout and how maybe we could begin to combat it. And one of the things that they found was that people who bring curiosity and engagement into any task at work. So that creative mindset, right,

Starting point is 00:12:55 end up becoming less exhausted and they perform better at work. And overall over time, they increase their psychological resilience. So if we can find those pockets of creativity and curiosity throughout our day, then I think that's a wonderful way to start to increase that autonomy and freedom and engagement no matter where we are instead of like completely abandoning our job as it might stand. Can you ground that in reality for me a little bit? Like what might that look like on a day-to-day basis? Yes, the study was quite kind of abstract, right? What they were saying was, can you think curiously when you're answering an email instead of just turning it out and kind of being robotic in that?

Starting point is 00:13:41 What I think is really important that's an added layer to this is bringing some of your mini-C practices, mini-C creativity practices into your workday. So something that I personally do is that something that we call it Daydreamers, your creator's cognitive offload. So after a meeting that feels extremely intense and overwhelming to me, you know, normally I would just jump on to the next thing, turn out my next emails, go into another meeting. But as I began studying this, what I found is really powerful, and we see this, you know, in the data that we have, is taking time to offload and externalize some of those emotions and stressors ends the stress cycle. So we are able to show up with a bigger, broader perspective to the next thing that we need to do. We're a lot

Starting point is 00:14:37 less stressed. And we also have started to warm up that way of thinking creatively. So I think that it doesn't need to be that you just approach your job in a creative way, which can feel weird to implement, but you can also bring some of those mini-C practices into your life at work to help you start to separate out work versus your creativity and then show up with a more creative perspective. Can you share a few more of those ways that we can concretely close those stress cycles? Because I saw a video that you did online about this and you were like, we're perpetually trapped in these stress cycles because we're never closing them out, which is why we all feel low-key stressed all the time.

Starting point is 00:15:17 And I was like, I relate to that. Yeah. So tell me why we feel low-key stressed all the time and tell me how we can stop feeling low-key-stressed all the time. When we think about what burnout really is and what these prolonged experiences of stress are, it's that we have not been able to close out the physical and biological stress cycle that builds up in our bodies and our brains when we are exposed to something stressful. So what we used to do in ancient times is we, we would experience something that was stressful, whether it was a lion running towards us, or it was something that interpersonally we felt was stressful.

Starting point is 00:15:59 And we would close that out by doing something physical. We would shake it off. We might run. We also might do a dance or can't or sing. We had a lot of creative rituals that we did. But today, we don't do any of that. we continue to let these experiences of stress build up in our body without truly closing them out. And then ultimately what that leads to is burnout.

Starting point is 00:16:25 So what we can start to do is use something like creativity as a way to close out that stress cycle and then also begin to expand our perspective and really be able to incorporate new ways of seeing the world. So I think that mini-C creativity is one of the best ways to deal with that because it connects our mind and body, oftentimes if we're expressing ourselves in a physical way. And also, we don't need to always use words to describe how we're feeling. I think that we have entered a world where we are really cognitively heavy, right? We talk about our feelings all the time. We talk about, you know, what's stressing us out. But that doesn't actually. close the stress cycle. And also, sometimes we don't have the right words to describe exactly how we're feeling. So when we use forms of physical creative expression, whether it's doodling on the side of your page, doing a cognitive offload exercise, or even dancing between your meetings, that is able to close that stress cycle and then also expand us into a more creative way of seeing the world without needing to describe any of the things that show up. Do we need to be connected? Do we need to be connecting the thing that we're stressed about to the creative expression, like, do we need to be

Starting point is 00:17:48 thinking, I hate my boss is we're like doing our dance or no? Honestly, love that. I think like that might serve a lot of different health things and I might take that away for myself. But no, we don't. I think that what's really cool about creativity is that regardless of skill, background, experience, how inspired you feel, et cetera, the true. act of doing it literally reduces cortisol in our body and shifts us into parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest and digest, our relaxation, right? Something that's interesting about your question, though, is that being able to integrate and process our experiences is still extremely helpful. That is like the icing on the cake. And I think that that's something

Starting point is 00:18:39 that we often forget about when we're going to a paint and sip studio and we're like, great, Yay, I feel so much less stressed in the moment. But if we really want it to be a long-term thing, being able to use creativity as a way to make meaning to process exactly what our boss said that is helping us or making us feel stressed out is really the way that we are going to make a lot deeper change. But it definitely is not a thing that we have to do in order for it to have an impact. So what would that look like? Would that look like going to like talk therapy sessions?

Starting point is 00:19:13 and then dancing it out? Yeah. Like what's the ideal prescription here? To connect the experience that you're having with the creative expression that you're doing. So that process focus and then integration. And so let's just stick with the cognitive offloading example. One of the things that we often recommend is I just had a meeting that was so incredibly stressful to me. Right.

Starting point is 00:19:37 I need to offload and externalize these feelings. You could totally just like doodle, mindlessly. and that's great. But what we recommend is turning those feelings into a pattern. So you might be able to not be able to explain exactly what happened, but you might feel really angry. And what you want to do is just draw in complete straight lines and get rid of that anger. You don't need to know what the anger means, why it really is showing up for you at this point. But being able to start to tie in the process of creating and the actual integration and meaning making is a really beautiful way to start to build up this muscle. So it's like what am I feeling as I'm going through whatever this

Starting point is 00:20:25 creative expression is? Yes, that's a great way to start. If somebody was feeling stuck, what would be the first thing that you would have them? Creative expression all the way through. I think that exactly what we're talking about here is that it not only starts to help us relax, but the two other parts of burnout that we didn't talk about, which often result in us feeling stuck and unmotivated, that definitely get less of the airtime is cynicism. So feeling really disillusioned, like, what's the point of all of this? And then feeling really inefficient. So, like, you're moving through your day, you're kind of wallowing through your day, and you're just not getting anything done. So oftentimes those are the two aspects of being stuck that we don't necessarily talk about. And I think that when we express ourselves creatively, it not only helps us relax, but it also helps us get agency over our lives.

Starting point is 00:21:27 We are able to be able to express ourselves in a way that we want, not what we should be doing. And then, as I've mentioned a couple of times, it starts to broaden our perspective. It creates more room in our working memory. And it really helps us see the bigger picture, which helps us enhance our focus. Practically, what that means is any form of creative expression that is purely just for you. And really zeroing in on something that connects the mind and body. So again, you know, doodling, cognitive offloading, dancing. maybe even humming, singing, right? Things that are getting you back into your body and closing

Starting point is 00:22:08 that stress cycle to give you more agency and a bigger, more creative perspective. Can you give us more options? Because I do feel like sometimes we get stuck in just being like, I don't know what type of creative person I would be or I don't even know where to begin with those. Like, should I hum? Should I sing a song? Like, what counts? I have to say this is like the question that I get, the main question that I get online when I talk about creativity. And I think it actually gives a little insight into the ways that we approach our lives, right? This very almost like rigid, I have to be doing it right? Like we want to make creativity productive. Yes, exactly. I'm not not giving an answer to this, but I'm going to give some caveats. Creativity

Starting point is 00:23:02 is fascinating because it's the definition of it is that it's infinite, right? Like there are a million and one ways to be creative. And I think what the problem is is that we don't know where to start, what to do, and then what exactly to focus on if we're not focusing on the output. The thing that I do want to say is that it's extremely personal. So giving a prescription to every person out there and saying, you, Liz, dancing after a meeting is perfect for you. Maybe you hate dancing, right? Maybe it actually brings up a lot more self-consciousness for you than it does for you. But maybe someone listening was

Starting point is 00:23:44 a dancer when they were a kid and it sparks this feeling of nostalgia and excitement for them. So I think what's complex and almost like a math problem in a way to creativity is that there's a couple of different factors that we have to kind of solve for when we're thinking about the perfect creative practice for you in this moment based on your skills, your comfort level, and also the like thing that you need right now. Maybe you do really need to reduce stress or maybe you need to play and get energy and explore. Like those are all really different creative practices. The framework that I do want to get people, though, is something that my favorite researcher, Mahali Chicks and Mihai, distilled down when he was talking about getting into

Starting point is 00:24:35 the flow state, which is very connected to mini-C creativity and the style of creating that we want to do. We want to be able to blend our skill level and the challenge at hand to a perfect place when we are creating, because if we don't, and the challenge is way too high, we feel anxious, right? You've, I'm sure, done creative things where you are like, this sucks. I'm so bad at this, and I actually want to give up. There's no reason for me to continue on. That, the challenge is too high, skill is too low. On the other hand, when the challenge is too low and our skill is incredible, we become really bored, right?

Starting point is 00:25:20 we are like, this actually is not engaging me at all. And so what we want to be able to do is pick from the infinite levels and types of creativity. And in that moment, exercise our agency and autonomy, our voice, our expression to find that blend of what in this moment is going to be the mix of challenge and skill that is going to help me feel my best. And I, you know, there's so much to say here. I think that like this is the ultimate problem in creativity, right? Many see creativity is that there's so many different ways to go about it. And it's really confusing to find the one thing to do. I wanted to ask you this earlier.

Starting point is 00:26:05 So Chigsma Hai was studying how we can live essentially our most richful satisfying life. Was Flo the secret to that? Yes. Okay. He is a fascinating character. I feel like my side quest is like. psychological history. I just love knowing why people decided to study these things and how they went down this very niche path. And he was born to parents who survived the Holocaust and really

Starting point is 00:26:33 wanted to understand like why do some people thrive and why do some people not? And what he started to discover through a series of kind of random discoveries was that there are some people who find that their life is flow state, right? They are completely in this perfect blend of skill and challenge in all that they do. And they approach their life with curiosity and wonder and are completely immersed in every task that they take on, whether it's washing dishes or becoming, like, a prima ballerina. And so he dedicated his life to really understanding where this shows up, how we can continue to experience this high quality of life in all that we do. And a lot of it centers around creativity, right? It is like the ultimate creative expression of how we can be our

Starting point is 00:27:28 most curious and fulfilled selves. But I think what's really sad is that so many people have like co-opted this, right? The idea of flow is often associated with like turning out emails and being in this productive flow state. Well, I think it's because we, when I think of flow, I think of when time compresses and I sort of don't remember what happened in that time period. And I think that can happen when you're having a really great conversation, but it can also happen when you're scrolling on TikTok. And so then I'm like, am I in flow when I'm on TikTok because that time just sort of disappeared? Great question. So one of the secret elements of flow, and we've talked about this already, is challenge. It's friction. And so social media is the complete opposite.

Starting point is 00:28:15 of that, right? It is completely frictionless. We are just dozing out in dopamine hit after dopamine hit. But what is really essential to being in flow is that we are fully engaged in the moment, so much so that time disappears, that our prefrontal cortex, the part that is self-conscious and questioning things, completely quiet. And we are so immersed in the task that we're doing that nothing else matters, time flies. And we just kind of almost come to in this completely different way. And what's beautiful about it is that this is a marker of being in flow or not, is that your sense of self expands. So after being in a flow experience, you feel that you have accomplished something that previous you didn't or couldn't have, right? You have done something that

Starting point is 00:29:11 had an element of challenge and friction. And oftentimes when we stop scrolling on social media, we feel really bad, right? We're stuck in the hole. We are constant comparison. And it's almost the complete opposite of how flow makes us feel. But you're right. Both of them do make time go away. Can anybody become one of these people who experiences flow when they're like washing dishes. Yes. One of the things that I am really passionate about is that creativity is a tool, right? We've been talking about it as a tool this entire time. But it's also a distinct area of our health and well-being. Just like mental health and physical health, creative health, is a way of being and way of life that we can approach any part of life with curiosity,

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Starting point is 00:36:47 slash Liz Moody. That's 15% off at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody, Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. So we can almost rewire our brains by practicing those skills. So then that bleeds over into other activities when we're not consciously trying to engage our creative selves. Exactly. The ultimate goal of creativity and mini-see, creativity is this tool, is to improve our mental, physical, you know, the areas of health that we've talked about. But ultimately, what it does is starts to help us live a more creative life. Which to the point of like when we are in flow, we're going to live a more satisfying.

Starting point is 00:37:24 We're going to thrive. Yes. A more creative life is more thriving life is a life that we're going to be happier, more fulfilled, and more satisfied. Exactly. This is a distinct concept that we came up with at Daydreamers and has been validated through our research and our work with our members and then with various institutions, which I think is just really cool to be able to put out into the world. And I think that this starts to expand creativity from just this tool that we use to a way of living. So the eight core elements that we've come up with and validated are openness, so our ability to be open to new ideas, new experiences, new ways of doing things, essentially our inner curiosity. Our ability to be mentally flexible. So to be able to not just be stuck on one rigid way of doing something and explore lots of different opportunities and pathways, our ability to experience. autonomy. So I've mentioned this word a couple of times. I think it's kind of the secret

Starting point is 00:38:27 sauce of creativity. But it's our ability to not follow the status quo, to be like, okay, you guys can all do this, but this is my way of doing things. And I don't really care what anyone else thinks. And I think creativity really helps us unlock that confidence. That's so interesting, because that'd be another way that social media is harming creativity, because I do think it filters us into all wearing the same outfits, doing the same trend, thinking the same thoughts. Yes. And I mean, we can get into this, but AI as well, right? Like, it is one of the ultimate pools of N of 1, like constantly making us these people that are all ultimately thinking the same thoughts and having the same experiences. I thought of that when you were talking about friction and challenge too, because

Starting point is 00:39:16 I do think that, I think, first of all, I think AI is here whether we like it or not, you know, and we need to figure out how to integrate it into our lives. And I think that there's dangers with it that we need to be aware of depriving us of friction that we really need to have our brains thrive. A thousand percent. I think that this is one of the biggest downsides of AI and increasing use of technology, right? And I think that's a great segue to one of the other aspects of creative health, which is grit and resilience. So can we move forward?

Starting point is 00:39:51 through challenges and really reframe challenges as an exciting aspect of life and also like a natural aspect of life rather than something that we just put our hands up and say, no. Now we're on more of the kind of like aesthetic feeling side. The next one is mindful awareness and the way that we just define this at daydreamers is not necessarily tuning out the world. So being mindful by being fully absorbed. So I think what's something that kind of alongside this loss of friction is that we're living in almost like a world of sensory monotony. Everything looks the same.

Starting point is 00:40:34 We live in this world of like millennial gray, right? And where our creative brain thrives is through diversity. I mean, nature was like our first exposure to creativity. And I think that being able to really absorb diversity and beauty and being mindfully aware of it is extremely important to our creative help. The next one is emotional expression and regulation. I think this is obvious in a way, but it's a lot of what we've talked about with these forms of mini-see creativity that are focused on creative expression. It's being in tune, seeing our emotions really as data points, and also being able to offload and express them. in a healthy way. And the last one is my favorite. I think it's a lot of, I think you've talked about

Starting point is 00:41:24 this on a past podcast, but our sense of awe and wonder, our capacity to not only be connected to ourselves, but our communities and the world writ large. So this is a really fascinating and new growing area of scientific research, but our ability to kind of feel part of this whole and really be able to kind of connect more deeply in much bigger ways than just being connected to ourselves. So interconnectedness is kind of the last icing on top, but I think it's a really beautiful thing to evolve towards. How should we be thinking about these eight pillars of creativity. Is it like if I do my creative practices, if I'm dancing, if I'm doodling, I'm going to get all of these things? Or am I thinking, I need to be hitting all these things and trying to integrate

Starting point is 00:42:19 one or two practices for each of the eight? I think what's really interesting about these and what we've seen, you know, through our analyses is that some of us are really strong at some aspects of these. And some of them, we kind of need to strengthen in various ways. And I almost see them as like our different superpowers of creativity. We could lean on them in some ways. And then we can also zero in on certain practices that can help us strengthen others. So overall, your first take is correct, right? Like all forms of creativity are going to hit on all of these different elements in various doses. But, if we want to zero in on one aspect, we can pick a certain type of practice that will help us enhance that. So, for example, going towards interconnectedness, one of my favorite ways to practice this is going on awl walks, which I think you've talked about many times. It's my, I do it every single day. It's really being able to be out in nature to fully absorb the beauty that's around us and to experience slowly this sense of being connected on many different levels

Starting point is 00:43:39 to the world. And that is a creative practice not only because it starts to kickstart our creativity and inspiration, but it also helps us see the world in a more expansive way. I had Dr. Dacher-Kaltener on and he told me about those. And one of the favorite, my favorite things that he said was that you can experience awe by looking at anything, but just look at it a little bit longer than you normally would. And I just, I use that all the time where I'll just be like, there's a plant. And I'll be like, just look at the plant longer, Liz. And it does, you feel, you're like, oh my gosh, this plant grew from this soil. And it was once, like, it is crazy that if you just look at anything a little bit longer, you probably will feel a sense of awe. Yes, exactly. And think about all the reactions that you just had, which is inherent creative health. Right. And I think in one of his studies, um, They zeroed in on mini-see creativity and how practicing awe actually expands our sense of creativity, I think, by 50%. So it is this bidirectional feedback loop. That's what, you know, it's called in the literature. But I think what's really cool is that you don't need to show up to any of these practices feeling creative or inspired. They just actually do that work just by showing up to them.

Starting point is 00:44:56 Could you give us one thing, one little experiment we could run or one thing we could try for each of the eight pillars? I think for interconnectedness, let's start there. I think that oblocks is something we already talked about and it's a really powerful way to start to experiment how this expands and broadened your perspective. So the other aspect of going on an obwalk is that movement in nature is a really powerful way to start to kickstart our. creativity. So I think being able to do that and also proactively experiencing the process and the integration afterwards. So just like you did, wow, looking at this plant, is it making me feel like I'm more deeply connected and more inspired when I'm done with this experience? If we want to experience and expand our openness, this is exactly where your novelty rule comes in. So

Starting point is 00:45:55 So novelty is one of the most powerful ways, novelty and surprise, to start to be more open and curious about the world. So if you can experience something new or different in your life, whether it's going on a walk in a different route in your neighborhood or even trying to experiment with a new creative practice, that is going to help kickstart our openness and curiosity. I think what's really cool is that at Daydreamers, we've seen as almost this like anecdotal predictive factor of increasing our other parts of our creative health is that when people start to be more open and try new and different things, it usually means that they're about to experience a lot more creative health. So this is one of the kind of first foundational things that we can do to

Starting point is 00:46:49 kickstart the other areas of our well-being. Okay, so that's great. So that's like, Start here. If you don't know where to start, start with doing something novel to increase your sense of openness, and that will probably have cascading effects. Exactly. Okay. Mental flexibility is something that actually is often associated with perfectionism. So when we are feeling like we have to get something done in the most perfect, ideal way with zero mistakes, we have very low mental flexibility. And we see this actually as like the first creative block that most of us experience in our world. And so something that I like to recommend when people are feeling that way is doing something called creative warming.

Starting point is 00:47:33 So when we are about to do something big and creative, maybe like a podcast like this or you have a big meeting, you might want to do something that is small, a very micro creative practice that starts to wake up your divergent thinking brain, your ability to think flexibly and differently. So this might be trying to come up with as many different names for ice cream, an ice cream that you love. But really what we want to do is come up with as many different ideas for something as possible to start to really warm up that cognitive filter in our brain and begin to start to think more flexibly. Interesting. What if perfectionism gets in the way of even that and you're like, I can't even come up with good ice cream names? You know what I mean? I do. Thousand percent. I feel like that's a silly example, but perfectionism often gets in the way of us embracing our creative selves or even. starting creative pursuit. So what can we do about that? My first hypothesis was like, there is just not enough tools for non-artists, right? Like, it's all for people that already consider themselves creative. We just need to give people tools that are easy for them to use and tell them how to use it.

Starting point is 00:48:48 And what we found is that that work for some people, but really what the problem was is that there were these bigger creative blocks that were holding us back psychologically from even getting started. So I think what you're saying is completely valid. I like to call it the good enough creative process and really begin to put a much lower level of expectations on anything that we do creatively. And I think what this requires is to really begin to lower our inner critic, right? To get in touch with that compassionate side of ourselves and completely lower the stance. to almost zero. So maybe your idea is instead of coming up with a hundred different options, right, self-edit and bring it down to five. And begin to really see, can I apply a good enough

Starting point is 00:49:47 standard to what I'm doing here? And then we can increase that over time. But yeah, there's so many different ways to think and talk about perfectionism as it relates to creativity. But I really do think that completely shifting our standard and expectation is kind of the first starting point. I'll bring us back to practices for all the eight pillars. But I just want to dive into that a little bit further because I do think that is a thing I hear from people all the time. Like, I want to write a book, but I don't feel like I'm capable of writing the book that I want to write. I want to paint something. I want to do a dance, but I don't think I'm a very good dancer. How can we combat that other than you're saying lower the bar. So maybe instead of writing a book, would that look like I'm going to write a page?

Starting point is 00:50:30 Yeah. Okay. Yes. The three problems we've seen with perfectionism is procrastination. So yeah, I have this huge goal. And I'm not even getting started on one tiny piece of it. This rigidity. So if I don't write a bestselling book in one year, then I'm a failure. And then this massive inner critic, right? Like I'm the absolute worst. anytime I write any word on a page, then I'm failing. So like I'm like, check, check, check. Like, I got all of those. I was like, this is really easy for me to work on because I relate to it on every level. But yeah, so if you relate to any of those, then you might fall in this perfectionism bucket. And honestly, perfectionism is massively on the rise. Like some of the studies say it's up to 90% of young people are experiencing effects of perfectionism.

Starting point is 00:51:24 What does that do to? I don't think we fully know the answer, but I do think a lot of it is this extreme high standard and this constant comparison with others, right? Like there's no backstage self. We don't have a place where we can just be weird and silly and mess up and kind of take the nonlinear path, right? Like even our free time is often, you know, seen as productive and efficient and perfect. So I think that we're really losing. a lot of these aspects of creativity that are messy and non-linear, and we don't even do it in our private time. So in order to address each of those buckets, I think that we want to start with the first one, right? Like procrastination on any level means that we have to take action in some way. So I think this is where our like mini-see as a habit comes in. And again, this can, there can be many layers of why this is hard, but oftentimes just like exercising, if we think about creativity in that way, we really want to be able to apply many of the strong aspects of habit building that we already know, right? Like break it down into the absolute smallest piece, set really realistic goals,

Starting point is 00:52:45 and do it consistently. And it will be something that we start to shift our perspective around. What's also important to marry this with is that inner critic and compassion. And I think what's really beautiful about creativity is that we can use many different forms of it to be able to get in touch with different parts of ourselves. So if we want to be able to explore our inner critic, we might try something like expressive writing, which is this really powerful tool that was actually discovered in the late 80s or the early. 90s by this researcher, Dr. Pennebaker, who discovered that people who write their secrets out loud actually are not only heal faster, they go to less doctor visits, they actually improve their immunity. But they also are able to like bring that shame outside of themselves and see it clearly. So I think alongside the goal that we have, right, maybe of writing a book and starting

Starting point is 00:53:53 to break that down into smaller pieces, have a good enough creative process around it, we can also marry that with some of this more kind of expressive writing that increases our compassion for ourselves and really lets us kind of close the loop on shame. What would that look like in practice. Like, let's say I was singing. I wanted to, like, write a song or something. And every song I wrote was trash. And my singing voice sounded not at all what I heard on Spotify. And I really wanted it to sound like that. When my expressive writing be like, that was trash. And then I see what happens next. Or do I need to be consciously trying to be like, you're good enough. I love you no matter what. No. The whole point is that you are like being as honest as possible. Okay. Right. So it is not for

Starting point is 00:54:42 anyone else. It is completely letting those secrets that often like manifest in our bodies and minds in the background come to the surface and being able to see them clearly and allow that clarity to shift our perspective. And ultimately that is what what the research found. And I mean, I can speak from my personal experience. I use expressive writing literally every day. It works. Like, it's something that when we are really honest with ourselves in a place that no one else needs to see, we really often become a lot more compassionate than we imagine when it's just kind of the inner critic racing around in our head. That's interesting because I would imagine, I guess I would fear that it would just be another place that my critic would yell at me. Like it's yelling at me in my brain and now it's yelling at me on the page.

Starting point is 00:55:36 Yeah. I mean, I think. And you're like, that doesn't happen. It definitely, I'm not going to say that it doesn't have. happen in the moment. But remember, the thing that we're aiming for is consistency over time. We're not just showing up to our creative practice one time and being like, you're a horrible singer. Like, you know, it's really being able to view it as something that we grow with and shift with over time. And I think a lot of times our creativity gets put to the back burner, right? It's

Starting point is 00:56:05 something that we don't use and then we think it's bad and it continues to fester. But when we're able to get up close with it and to use it consistently, we actually shift our perspective and ultimately become more curious and compassionate over time. The thing that helps me the most with my perfectionist tendencies is trying to embrace process versus outcome. And I think that your work is really helpful for that because you're talking about all the benefits of the process. So even if the book never gets written, even if the song is never to your standards, even if you can never paint something that you would be excited to give to somebody, you're still reaping all of these mental health, physical health, social, all of these different benefits. And so for me,

Starting point is 00:56:50 that's helpful in embracing that as a use of time, even if the outcome isn't ever what I want it to be. And I also think that you have to be okay with like trash outcomes for a long time or what create good outcomes too. Yes. I love the way you worded that. I think it's really interesting because even the most prolific creators, first of all, had a mini-C creativity practice that no one saw, like, they were not showing anyone that they were kind of doing weird stuff in their lab, right? Like, this was a core part of who they are. I see it as the foundation. And ultimately, when we look at that big C creativity, even the most innovative things in the world, a lot of research shows that it's the one or two things that kind of made it big, but these people were experimenting and creating all the time. So we often think that it was like the one big pit of Einstein's theory of relativity, right? But first of all, he was daydreaming, playing the violin, doing all this stuff, and at the same time creating a ton of

Starting point is 00:57:59 work that he really saw as like failures and messes and continued to iterate and experiment. And that's the core of mental flexibility, right? It's this idea that like first, second, third, a hundredth idea might not be good, but my goal here is to put stuff out. And maybe one of them will be great. But that's another job for another time is to analyze which ones are good. And if you don't put anything out, nothing will ever be great. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Okay, bring us back to experiments for the different pillars for creativity. autonomy is that sense of being able to almost, we call it like your rebellion score. So it's being able to do things that you don't care what other people think about them. And I feel like this comes down to a lot of fashion, right? Like a really cool way to be able to practice autonomy is dressing yourself in a way that is like purely for you. And being able to be like, I look great. I think that this is a sick. outfit and I am going to go out in the world. And maybe you don't. Maybe the first couple of times

Starting point is 00:59:08 you just stay at home. But really being able to practice that choice and that freedom in the choices that you have. I love that you say that too, though. Like you don't have to go out in the world. You can just put on a really fun, crazy outfit and wear it for yourself completely at home. I also love the idea. I had this stylist on my podcast who I love Charlie Goss, who is sadly passed, but she used to say fuck flattering. And I do think that realizing that flattering, that flattering, is just another way that we're sort of conforming to how other people want us to be is very freeing. Oh my gosh, a thousand percent. And I mean, you know, something that I shared about a couple of weeks ago is this new study that came out on coolness and how these researchers looked at all around the world.

Starting point is 00:59:52 What do we consider cool? And they found these kind of eight core traits that very much align with our creative health metrics. And one of them, it's huge, is autonomy, right? It's this idea of being like, I am doing this for myself and I think this is cool. And other people end up catching on. And by the way, all of the conversations we're having around taste and developing taste and in a world of AI, like, do you have an opinion that really matters? That is autonomy. And I think that the only way that we really cultivate that is in our own inner world first.

Starting point is 01:00:27 How do we even know what we like when we're, I mean, it can almost feel hard to even keep track of that for yourself because you're being subjected to like, this is what you should like, this is what these people are wearing, this is what you should be thinking. And how do we begin to tease out what our real thoughts and tastes and preferences are? I, so the third creative block that we identified is conformity. And this is, you know, after you work through the idea of even getting started perfectionism. Our second block is autopilot, so I just don't feel inspired. I'm bored, repetitive, et cetera. We could get into that. But the third is conformity. So, okay, cool.

Starting point is 01:01:06 I'm creating stuff that I think is interesting. But, like, I still am scared. I still feel cringe, sharing this stuff, doing this stuff even. I think that we live in a world of, like, surveillance in a way where we're constantly putting our creativity out. I think what it really requires and what we recommend first purely doing this stuff for yourself without letting it ladder up to anything. Then it's like rebelling against the rules.

Starting point is 01:01:39 So being aware of the rules that exist in the world and then being like actually the one, I think that one's weird. So like if for example the normal thing to do is, I don't know, to match your close and you think that just looks weird purposely taking that to the max and being like, I'm going to massively rebel. And what that does is start to like get us in touch with our risk tolerance, our ability to like actually take risk, see where we fall on that spectrum. And then the last part is like owning through autonomy who you are and what you think outside of rebelling, outside of almost copying the rules, like what.

Starting point is 01:02:25 feels right to you. And I think what that requires is like collecting a lot of data, right? Like we have to, and one of the major aspects of creativity is collecting inputs. And so we need to go out and experiment and explore, collect things that feel interesting to us, collect things that don't feel interesting to us at all. And then bring that all together and be like, okay, where do I sit in the midst of this? And do I have any opinions that are different than what currently exists? It's one of of my top rules for life is that creative outputs require creative inputs and the most creative people that I know are not just having inputs in their fields of creativity. Like the writers are not just reading books. They're going to museums. They're listening to different types of music.

Starting point is 01:03:09 They're engaging with paintings and visual and physical art and all these different things. And I think that I don't know why we don't do that. I don't know if it's an exhaustion thing. I don't know. I mean, do you have any speculation as to why we've kind of stopped doing that as much? So a research paper just came out about this. And it's funny because we, you know, when I first started working on daydreamers, this was something I was really big on, is this idea of being a leisureist. So like being an 80%er on everything that I did and like kind of allowing myself to collect a lot of different dots. And the research backs this up. Not only do Nobel laureates have a ton of hobbies and a ton of different things that they're doing and collecting information from different domains. But also like everyday people like me, when we collect a lot of different ways of being creative, creative inspiration, we are just as and more creative than people who maybe have a certain skill. So what we can actually do to even surpass people who might have certain creative skills is increasing the variety of creativity that we're exposing ourselves to.

Starting point is 01:04:23 And this comes back to that creative spectrum we talk about, right? Where, like, creative expression is one part. But noticing is another part. Thinking differently and being critical and curious is another part of our creativity and our creative health. So I think that this is, you know, falls on the side of the more thinking and noticing, but really being able to expose ourselves. And coming back to your question of why, I think we live in a world of where we, we really just like generalists, right? Like the idea of not being absolute best at your field, the most niche thinker, and kind of closing out all exposure to new and different ideas,

Starting point is 01:05:07 is what we prize in many of our institutions these days, whether it's at work trying to go for a promotion or even like in our hobbies, the idea of being like flaky is seen as something that we don't necessarily appreciate. A flaky hobby is just like a hobby you try briefly and then let it go. Yeah. Like we're like I, if I actually, I'm guilty of that thought process of like, ugh, I don't want to try crocheting because then I have to crochet for the rest of my life or it was a waste of time. And I do think that there is probably maybe part of what we're talking about here is this cultural idea of like time is such a scarcity unit right now. And so we do not want to waste our time. So they do have playing around with something feels like it could be a waste.

Starting point is 01:05:51 of that time. Totally. And also what's really interesting is that many of the ways that we think about or experience time is much more of a psychological issue than a scheduling issue. And so coming back to this idea of novelty that you talk about so often, when we do new and different things, this variety of being creative, it actually expands our sense of time because we have to be fully engaged in the experience. And also, um, our brain is like fully recording that experience. So take an example of like when you're commuting to work and you've done it a million times and you just do it in autopilot, right? But when you're taking a new route, um, you're paying attention to the whole thing. So when we are doing a variety of different tasks, we're actually expanding our sense of

Starting point is 01:06:48 what's possible and how much time we actually have. So if you're listening to this and you're like, ugh, I'm so burnt out. I'm so tired. And you're adding creativity to my list of to-dos. You're saying creativity will actually expand how much time we feel like we have. Yeah. And there's research to back this up. When we add effortful leisure activities into our schedule, people not only feel better, but they feel like they have more time to do things. Wait, what's an effortful leisure activity? Effortful leisure activity is something that requires us. to show up for it. And I think what's interesting is the lens that we often put on our creative spectrum is effortful to effortless. So creative expression takes effort, right? Like, you're whipping out supplies. You're doing something that when you feel exhausted, you're like, there's no world that I want to be doing something that requires something more of me. Effortless is like looking out your window and noticing a flower, right? That doesn't really require much of us, but it's really powerful. The biggest bang for our buck when it comes to the impact of our creativity on our

Starting point is 01:08:01 health and well-being is doing effortful leisure activities or creative activities. So things that require us to show up that feel like they are taking something from us in order to get there, but in reality are having the biggest impact on our well-being, our sense of time, our ability to grow and change, even if we feel tired, even if we feel tired. How do we get over that initial hump? I ended my workday. I want to just sit and scroll and do the most effortless leisure activity that exists, but I know I'll get a greater payoff if I do ever full leisure. How do we get over the initial hump? This is like the core of my personal questions every single day. And all, Also something I hear about all the time.

Starting point is 01:08:45 I first want to come back to the idea of autonomy, right? Like, we, I want to be cautious because I think we live in a world that is constantly telling us to do more stuff. And that's not what I'm saying here is to, like, completely push through your exhaustion and add another thing to your calendar your to do, right, every single day. when we look at kind of some of the research and even what we see at daydreamers, you really only need to do effortful, creative or leisure activities like three times a week to have an impact. So what's happening is when we're doing an effortful leisure activity or creative activity, it's not only making us feel good in the moment and like buffering against these negative effects that are showing up in our lives, right?

Starting point is 01:09:34 like stress and, you know, feeling badly about ourselves. But it has an effect through the next day. So the impact of it is not momentary, but it's really broadening our well-being for a longer period in time. So I think what's really helpful to know is that we don't need to do these effortful things all the time. And when we do make that active choice, it's something that has an impact for a longer term. And so when you're feeling exhausted and you're like, I don't want to do this, are you actually genuinely feeling exhausted or are you just feeling mentally drained? And when you're feeling mentally drained, that might be a good sign for you to engage in something effortful to really start to increase

Starting point is 01:10:21 that feeling of joy and freedom and excitement. And that can last for a period in time. And, you know, there's something, some really interesting research that came out of University of Virginia by Dr. Kelly Lampert. And she calls this behavior suitable leisure activities. And she hypothesizes that she calls it like a natural antidepressant. So it's something that has profound impact on our well-being. And I think it's something that like when used correctly, it can really. impact us for the long term. The last thing I'll say on this is like it doesn't need to be long. So if you can do it for about 15 minutes, it should have the same effect as if you're doing a two hour painting. So the bar is like 15 minutes. Am I feeling drained or am I feeling really exhausted and I need to sleep? And then from there you can decide how much effort you really want to give to your creative practice. Okay. There are other that we didn't get to for experiments yet. So coming back to our eight core metrics, our next one is grit and resilience. And so this is really about embracing friction and not necessarily shying away from it, which happens so often in our world. I think what I would say for this one is really

Starting point is 01:11:51 tying this to flow and giving ourselves the time and space to match that challenge and that skill level where you're doing something that you proactively know is not necessarily the easiest thing in the world. If you're like me and you don't really like cooking, you might decide to cook not using a recipe. And I think to me that provides almost like a layer, a constraint that forces me to think differently. And also to really show up in a way that embraces the hard parts, which is thinking about what, um, ingredients might go together. And I think something here that's interesting to talk about is the idea that constraints can be really powerful. A lot of times we think that this is a bad thing, just like challenge, but it actually is scientifically demonstrated that when we put constraints

Starting point is 01:12:48 on ourselves, it helps us think of more creative solutions. So I think being able to pair that together is something that can be really powerful. So that'd be an action step that people could take if they're like struggling to come up with a creative solution to something, it'd be like, well, what's a constraint that I can introduce here? Because that will actually expand my creative thinking. Exactly. So like in this example, practically, taking away a recipe is more challenging for me than following a recipe, recipe step by step. How could we apply that to like a work problem or trying to make a hard decision in our life? I often think. of constraints as something that I associate with time. So a lot of the creative practices that we have at

Starting point is 01:13:32 daydreamers are kind of limiting or playing around with time. So being able to almost do like a CrossFit exercise with our creative brain. So how many things can you do in 30 seconds? And I see that as a really almost gentle way to start to practice constraints. So for example, if you're like overthinking an email, maybe give yourself five minutes and see what you're good enough email can look like, step away from it, and come back and reread it with fresh eyes. And then are there any other pillars we didn't get to? Yes, we have sensory awareness. So being able to kind of be fully immersed in an experience. What I would say for that, I would almost pair it with our awlok. And particularly on an awlok, I would say, um, yeah, I would.

Starting point is 01:14:24 I'm a big fan of podcasts, but don't have any headphones in your ears. So be able to be fully immersed in the practice itself. And last but not least, we have purpose and meaning making. I think what's really beautiful about creativity and, you know, I believe that we, a lot of us are experiencing a lack of meaning in our lives is that it is a meaning making machine. Like, all we're doing when we're creative is trying to understand the world around us, how we fit into it. So I think kind of going back to a practice we already talked about, expressive writing, is a really helpful way that we can start to make sense of the world and our place in it. The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easier and the things that

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Starting point is 01:21:17 That is branch basics.com and use code Liz Moody. You've mentioned some of the factors that limit people's creativity. I think you mentioned autopilot. You mentioned perfectionism. Can you kind of go through the different obstacles people might face and trying to get in touch with their own creativity? Yes. So I think this is a perfect way to explain the three blocks, right? So perfectionism, thus feeling that we're not good.

Starting point is 01:21:44 enough. Nothing we do is good enough. And also, we can't make any mistakes. So we approach the world in a very rigid way and our creative practice as well. Autopilot mode, we jokingly call it, but this is our like repetitive, cynical way of living our lives and really being stuck in routines without looking and approaching life in a new and different way. Last is conformity. I think what's interesting here is that a big barrier that we see in the research, to being creative is this feeling of being surveilled. So when you feel like other people are watching you and, you know, judging you, this is shown to decrease our ability to be creative. And I think what's really important is coming back to the idea that we can create in private.

Starting point is 01:22:37 We can get dressed for ourselves and not step outside. We can make something and not share it with anyone and really be able to, I almost call it creative exposure therapy. So just like we might, you know, broaden our comfort zone, we can also do that with our creative practice. And maybe you don't share anything with anyone for a year. But then once you start to expand that risk-taking tolerance, you can introduce more factors of, yeah, exposing it to other people. Do you think it's important to ultimately share our creative practices at some point? I think that I see both sides of why it's important. And I think it depends on what level of creativity we're engaging with. I think to me, creativity is like the ultimate status quo pusher. It is the way that we make change both

Starting point is 01:23:31 in our individual lives and collectively. Like if we didn't have artists and critical thinkers and people who are really questioning the way things are done, then we would live in a world that I genuinely am scared to live in. And I think it's so incredibly brave and beautiful for people to be putting their voices out there and pushing back against things that are not for the good of humanity. That being said, like, that's not everyone's job. And I think it's really important to remember that. And also, it's not everyone's job to weigh in on every form of creativity.

Starting point is 01:24:07 we can keep things for ourselves. And also in this conversation, we've seen why we should, right? Like, mini-C creativity is purely meaningful to you. And I think we need to balance the fact that, like, we always should have a mini-C creative practice. But we can start to expand those layers of how and when we share based on our own personal needs and then also, like, maybe what we think the world needs, too. So that's conformity. We talked about perfectionism a little bit earlier. Talk to me about autopilot. The ideas that we were talking about in the beginning, right? Like the world that we're living in that feels stuck and exhausting and cynical. And I think what's really difficult about this is a lot of times we end up getting stuck in very repetitive routines, which means that we are not being creative.

Starting point is 01:24:53 Like at its core, creativity is asking what if and can things be different. So when we kind of do the same thing every single day, wake up, pick the same route, you know, have the same job. come home, eat the same meals, we are not really creating space for our creativity. This is a little different than perfectionism and conformity because it's a lot more both like cultural and then also individual. But I think what's powerful here is that we can introduce novelty. We can try to experiment and play. This is really where our like creative energy and inspiration comes in. And this can be introduced like in literally any way in any part of your life. What would be an example of a way we wouldn't think to introduce it, but we could benefit

Starting point is 01:25:43 from? Yeah. I think that this comes back to some of the ideas we talked about with openness. I mean, would you consider like taking a different route, walking around your block a form of creativity before this conversation? No. So I think that there's a lot of things that we can do based on this framework of express think and notice that really expands our definition of what it looks like to be creative and creatively healthy. And here in particular, we want to zero in on reconnecting with that curiosity. So is there a different way that I could do this? Is there a constraint that I could add? Is there a novelty aspect that I can add to this experience that ultimately helps shift me out of this like repetitive stuck routine and into a new way of seeing the world?

Starting point is 01:26:33 What would you say to somebody who says, I'm just not a creative person? It breaks my heart, but also, like, I was that person. I don't think we've talked about this yet, but I grew up in an immigrant family in New York and was always told, like, you could be creative later. Once you're successful, once you're rich and retired, like, you'll have time to be creative. And I think so many of us resonate with that, right? Like, we know, based on some of the research, that 70% of people today say that they're creatively unfulfilled. And so most of us and most people we see at daydreamers are not creative people. And even if they're being creative for their career, like they're a designer or even an engineer or even a creator, right? They still zero in on creativity as being artistic and ultimately being extremely good at being creative. So I think there are a lot of myths that we experience when it comes to our creativity, which is like, I have to be super talented. I have to have a ton of time. I have to have all the right resources and money. And this other one that I hear about often, which is like, I was creative once, but I'm not

Starting point is 01:27:49 anymore. Like that was a thing of the past. I was creative as a kid and I'm not going to be. And to me, that's the saddest one because we know creativity as we've talked about is this innate aspect of being human. And it's also a skill. It's a skill that we can engage. and strengthen and practice over time no matter where you're starting. So I think just like we, you know, some of us might be training for marathons and some of us might be walking around the block. Like all of us need to use our body. And I see the same exact thing with our creative brain. So we all need to be doing these little practices even if we're not going to run off to France and become a painter. Exactly. Yes. And it's within us already. So it's not something we need to

Starting point is 01:28:36 necessarily acquire. It's like a way that we already exist in the world. Is there like a tiniest baby step? Like one thing every single person could do to internalize that belief if they don't have it? When I think about myself and having embodied this narrative that like I'm not a creative person, even though by the way I like grew up as an opera singer and like competitive dancer, I just still always associated it with achievement and talent in a very, you know, specific way. So I think that first is the idea that, like, you know listening to this conversation that you are creative, right? Like you have that knowledge and awareness. But you, meaning any single person who is listening to this, you are creative. I just want to make that so, so clear,

Starting point is 01:29:22 because I still think that there is somebody out there who's listening who's like, this is other people are, but still not me, still not me. Totally. And please see yourself in me. Like, I always believed that creativity was for other people. And I think when we, really distill it down from an evolutionary, biological, and even social perspective, there's no fundamental way that we can argue that every single one of us is not creative. And ultimately, it's like our human superpower. No other being is creative, has the capacity to both imagine and then turn that into reality. So it really is this like this aspect of our humanity that we all have access to.

Starting point is 01:30:04 The second piece of it, though, that I want people to walk away with, like, something to do is it requires action, right? It's not just imagining and knowing, but it's also doing something about it. And I think what's really helpful is, like, giving yourself space to be really bad at doing something creative and just doing it anyway. So take this knowledge and awareness and then express yourself, think differently, challenge someone in a conversation, and use it. your critical thinking skills, which is really your ability to have autonomy, right? And I think that there are so many different ways that we can start to embody it, but marrying the knowledge and the action piece, and you know that there's a variety of ways to be creatively healthy and take action on it, that is where we start to begin this positive upward spiral, as we call it, where we are creative,

Starting point is 01:30:59 we increase our comfort level with it. We increase our motivation to do it again. So it all built on each other. What if we run into very real judgment, like somebody who says, this isn't good or you're not good at this? And that could have happened when we were a kid and we just hung on to that forever and we heard that voice in our head forever. It could happen as an adult. What do we do with that? I think that all of us probably have had that experience at some point, right? I mean, I definitely had an art teacher that had an impact on me when I was a kid. But I think that what this really comes back to is again, this is purely meaningful to you. There is absolutely no reason that you need to be telling anyone or showing anyone. Like the first most basic piece of this is making or doing something

Starting point is 01:31:49 that only matters to you. That is like the true scientific definition of mini C creativity. And that means that like no one needs to know. So there should be no judgment from anyone. And even so, even if that comes through from a past. experience, that's where we can even begin to talk to that part of ourselves through expressive writing or another form of expressing ourselves. And that in and of itself is creativity. I always also think about how subjective it all is. Like I firmly believe there's no such thing as a bad dancer. I think there are great dancers. And then I think everybody else is a good dancer. Like if you are moving to music, if you're feeling it in your body, if you're enjoying

Starting point is 01:32:31 yourself, there's not a bad or good dancer. There's, you know, prima ballerinas. But I just think that creativity is, is an experience and it's so subjective in the judgment of it. A thousand percent. Like, that is the basis of what creativity is, right? Is that it's a combination of what's meaningful to us, what our senses are telling us is important, and also what we've been exposed to. So all it is is someone's point of view. And you can choose to take it or you can choose to leave it. Exactly. What are some creative practices that you do on a daily, weekly, monthly, annual basis? Every single day, I start my day with two things. I start my day with a form of cognitive offloading, so really emptying out the space in my head, my working memory, just starting from a

Starting point is 01:33:20 fresh sleep. And that can look like expressive writing, our form of like visual, doodling, active imagination. I do that right when I wake up. And then I go in an oblock. So no headphones. I just really observe, you know, in the park near my house that's extremely beautiful. I do the both of those things every day to, again, start fresh and start inspired. And then at the end of the day, I do something that helps me decompress. So something that I've gotten really into now is printmaking. And the reason that I really like it is because it requires a level of just like focus and repetition that I think allows you to get into the flow state without judgment. A lot of it is just like carving, right? So you're just sitting and carving something that you already sketched or

Starting point is 01:34:20 copied basically onto a rubber block. And so being able to just sit and have that repetitive action and also see something that I made afterwards is a really helpful way for me to just like wind down from my day. So those are two things that I do in some form. And then I think when I zoom out and just think about living a creatively healthy life, I try to inject one of those three elements in a big picture every month or so. So whether that's exploring a museum, there's so many free days that you can go in. at least the Bay Area. And there's so much research that shows that just like beholding art is really powerful for our health, longevity, sense of connection. Like, you know, there was a

Starting point is 01:35:08 study that actually showed that people who went to museums consistently had a 31% lower risk of dying than people who didn't, which is wild to me. I'm immediately like, have we normalized, have we standardized for like wealth and income and things like that? Because, leisure time and all the things that allow people to go to museums. I think that's an amazing point and I would totally go there too. I always see creativity as a luxury and that's like literally why I'm doing this is to make it not one. But it was this huge countrywide study in the UK done in 2017 and the UK is one of the leading places that is really pushing for creativity as a social prescription. They strongly believe and have conducted a lot of their own research

Starting point is 01:35:56 on how impactful it is for our health, longevity, well-being, and a variety of ways. So they really wanted to get like a full sample of thousands of people. Okay. So you're like when you're zooming out, you're going to museums. Going to museums. And like by the way, I'm not a museum person. I see it almost as like my grit and friction. You're like, I hate this. So I'm doing it. I'm like, this requires like a really new way of seeing the world. I did not grow up as a museum person at all. But I do see it as something that's like new and novel for me. And I think also big picture, I try to change up the form of expression that I do every three months or so.

Starting point is 01:36:40 So I think of it as like right now I'm printmaking, but there's there's a lot of things I do outside of that. And then also I try to bring like a new focus area to my expression, my mini C creative practice every couple of months. What do you mean by that? Printmaking is my like my decompression hobby will say. But in a couple of months, it might be something completely different. And where do you get the ideas for that? Like I feel like I want a hobby, but I kind of don't know where to start. I get it through daydreamers because that's like what we do.

Starting point is 01:37:15 So I have to test out a lot of things that we're doing. But I think that what's really cool is like it feels that we're living through almost a renaissance of analog hobbies, right? Like grandma hobbies are kind of the new friend, which of course I'm all for a trend or not. But I think that there's a lot of ways that we can get inspiration from our communities, from our friends and see what they're doing. And then also, of course, like, that is what we do at Daydreamers, is helping move from practice to practice to be able to address the different aspects of your well-being. So if you're like, I don't want to think about that at all. Are there ones that you've stumbled upon that you feel like most people,

Starting point is 01:37:56 enjoy benefit from in an outsized way? Yeah. Some form of painting, honestly, is a really powerful place to start. And what that could mean is like, finger painting, watercolor painting, just moving colors around on a page. And I think, you know, there's a lot of research why working with color and being able to express ourselves in this completely like physical and embodied way is really powerful, but I do see that as kind of the number one place that people like to start. Are there any other myths about creativity that you want to bust? I feel like the big myths, we call it the four big myths, but it's that we need to have a certain level of talent, which we myth busted with mini-see creativity, but we need to have a lot of time, which we know

Starting point is 01:38:46 it only really requires about 15 minutes to start seeing the well-being impact of it. We only did it when we were younger so that we know actually, as we've talked about, like, creativity is based on the inputs that we have. So the more inputs we collect, the older we get, the more creative we become. And then the last is that we need a lot of money. I think that this is probably like coming from my background, the biggest area of passion that I have, that like creativity is for these people that, you know, are rich and have all of these resources. And I think that what we've uncovered in this conversation is that it's not about having the exact right pools. Like, you can literally look outside of a window and begin to experience and expand your creative brain. Can you just distill

Starting point is 01:39:39 down? So we have the hobby side. We have like the specific creative activities. But we have also really talked a lot about how to bring that sense of creativity to anything you do in your life. So in like one or two lines, if somebody's like, I want to have sex more creatively, I want to cook dinner more creatively. How specifically are we doing that? That's a great question. I think that we can come back to any of those eight core elements that we feel most skilled at. Right.

Starting point is 01:40:04 So if you're thinking about cooking or having sex, are you really connected to your curiosity? Are you bringing your curiosity to that experience? Or maybe you're just a deeply interconnected person, right? And you see beauty and awe and wonder in everything that you do and you lead with that experience. Or maybe you're just like a super hard worker and you love grit, you love challenge and you're setting constraints on everything. So I think picking one of those eight and really leading with it and then, you know, we could worry about improving the other skills later. But being able to kind of get back in touch with that way of seeing the world in a more creative way. I love that because then you can kind of start applying it. You can take your creative activities and we can be including those and fusing those in our lives in our 15 minutes three times a week. But I love the idea of being able to apply all these things to everything we're doing. So we're constantly strengthening the creative parts of our brain. Yes. And I mean like that is the ultimate point, right? We want to live good lives that feel like they're worth it. And I think that being able to be creatively healthy and bringing these elements to all that we do is actually allowing.

Starting point is 01:41:15 us to live a more engaged and full and fulfilling life. And to me, that's like, that's the entire point. Can you leave us with one homework assignment, something we can all do the second we turn off this podcast. And let's have it be something to get in touch with our creativity to take us from a place of burnout, a place of exhaustion, to a place of thriving and enjoying our lives more. Yes. Okay. I love homework. I do. We're trying to rebrand it on this podcast. We're like fun homework. Oh my gosh. No, a thousand percent. I assign people. homework all the time. I am going to really advocate for creative expression. I think like if you turn off this podcast and you're like, I feel exhausted, I'm going to challenge you to lean into the friction

Starting point is 01:41:56 in your life and choose one creative pool that really speaks to you, whether it's doodling, dancing, picking out a new outfit, cooking something to connect your mind and body, close that stress cycle, and then also broaden your perspective. Love it. Can you tell us, little bit in your own words about where people can find you on the internet, about daydreamers, about anything you want to spotlight. Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me. This was such a creatively healthy conversation. But yes, I am on both TikTok and Instagram at katina. dot bajage. And I would love for you to come find me there. We talk all about the creative brain and creative health. And definitely come check out daydreamers. We specifically focus on people who don't

Starting point is 01:42:44 consider themselves artists or creative to really turn creativity into a habit. And we also just launched a substack because storytelling is such an important part of creativity. I'm really shifting the narrative about who and what gets to be creative. So definitely come check out either of those. I would love to have you. Amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Liz Moody podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, go ahead and follow on Apple or Spotify or subscribe on YouTube and hit that notification bell so you never miss a new episode. And if there's somebody in your life you think would benefit from this episode, send them a quick link. It is the best way to support the podcast and it is so, so appreciated. And if you're

Starting point is 01:43:28 watching this, drop me a comment. I would love to hear your thoughts and what resonated most with you. Thanks again for being here. I feel so lucky that I get to grow and learn and share with you. And I will see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more. thing, it's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.

The Liz Moody Podcast - The Real Cure for Burnout Isn’t Rest—It’s Creativity. Here's How Anyone Can Unlock Theirs

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