Search Results for: work

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Playing It Forward with The Accidentals   [INTRO] [00:00:04] PF: What’s up, everybody? This is Paula Felps, and you are listening to On a Positive Note, where I sit down with a songwriter, recording artist, or music insider to learn how music can lift our spirits and heal our hearts. Sav Buist and Katie Larson were shy high school students when a music education presentation changed the way they saw their future. A decade later, they front a trio called The Accidentals, and have earned glowing album reviews, while packing venues with their live shows. But because they've never forgotten how that high school presentation changed their lives, they also host and lead workshops around the country to inspire young musicians to find their voice and use music to improve their mental health. They're here today to talk about all those things and how they are changing young lives one song at a time. Let's take a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:53] PF: Sav and Katie, thank you so much for coming On a Positive Note. [00:00:57] SB: Thanks for having us. We're excited. [00:00:59] PF: You have such a fascinating backstory of the way that you got into music as your lifelong career. Can you talk about how you met and how that grew into your career? [00:01:12] KL: Yes. Sav and I met, what, 11 years ago now. [00:01:16] SB: Oh, goodness. [00:01:17] KL: It’s been a lifetime, and we were both really shy high school students interested in music. The thing that brought us together was our high school orchestra program in Traverse City, Michigan. Our public school had a great strings program, but most importantly a conductor who was really interested in alternative styles and opportunities for young musicians. So Sav and I were in a quartet together at one point, but we also were in the alternative styles for strings club, which was this really dorky group where we'd get together after school and play sheet music arrangements of Coldplay and Led Zeppelin on our cello and violin. So we do our little pop and rock music and and folk tunes and jazz tunes, and make our own arrangements sometimes too. There is a duo called The Moxie Strings, who came in to teach a workshop on improv. That also kind of opened our eyes to musical opportunities, and there's not just one way to carve your path in the music industry. Like you can be in a band. You can write music. You can produce and record and tour and teach. So that really inspired us. From the beginning, Sav and I just started playing tunes together around our hometown in Traverse City, Michigan, and writing music, and recording, and touring. 10 years, 11 years later, we're in Nashville, Tennessee and still playing music full time. We see each other like every day. Yeah, so still making music. [00:02:56] PF: That's terrific. So prior to having that experience with Moxie Strings, did you see yourself having a career in music? Or did you know how much that you could do with it? [00:03:05] SB: We did not I don't think. I mean, we definitely knew music was always going to be a part of our lives, but I don't think those dreams would have come to you as much fruition have we not had role models not just in The Moxie Strings, but in the Michigan music community as well. Both sets of our parents are musicians. So that kind of told us it was possible for sure, and they were super supportive once we decided that's what we wanted to do. I definitely had like all kinds of passions, and Kate does too. What's nice about the career that we have is that we've been able to get to a point where we can pursue all those passions and have music as a full-time job, which is pretty amazing. We're really, really lucky to be able to do that. [00:03:48] PF: One of the things that's so impressive is how big you are on music education and giving back to youth. Do you think that was inspired by the experience you had as high school students? [00:03:58] SB: Oh, definitely. Yeah. Because we wouldn't be a band had it not been for our high school orchestra program, like a public music program. That's the thing is that Kate and I were also introduced to sort of unorthodox instruments from the time we were 11 because there was like a local public music program that helped kids come up from like age 11 to the end of high school, just playing instruments, saxophone or violin or cello or any of those instruments. Not every public school has one of those programs. Or sometimes, they'll have an orchestra but not a band or a band but not an orchestra. I even heard one instance where the school no longer had a budget for musical instruments, and so they threw them away. So there are some really – I mean, we can acknowledge that we're really lucky to have grown up in that program because we literally wouldn't be a band without it, and we wouldn't have been shown these instruments and gotten the chance to do something really new on them. But also, it's important to us that every kid has the opportunity to try something new and to find a way to like vocalize or, I guess, verbalize their emotions through music. [00:05:08] PF: That’s a great point I wanted to bring up because when someone who's not musically inclined or doesn't put a value on it the way that we do, they hear music education, and they think, well, they're taking band classes, and they don't really think about all the things that you learn through music education. Can you talk about what students are getting emotionally when they start going through a music education program? [00:05:31] SB: Totally. We like to joke that music is cheaper than therapy. That's like how we opened – [00:05:37] PF: [inaudible 00:05:37]? [00:05:38] SB: Yeah. We're [inaudible 00:05:38] because it's true, though. Like we use music and writing lyrics or sometimes even just writing instrumental pieces as outlet because we're both really introverted. Especially back in high school and middle school, we were really, really shy and didn't make friends easily and playing music in an orchestra for kids who don't want to play a sport. It’s really nice to have that community, and you can start forming friendships, without even talking that much. Because music is sort of its own language, and it sometimes can do all the talking for you. So, yeah, that’s really important for us. Go ahead, Kate. [00:06:12] KL: Yeah. I was so bad at sports. I tried every single one. I think what it came down to, for me, I'm definitely a perfectionist. I'm competitive with myself, but I don't do well in other competitive settings. Whenever we play sports in gym class, I would just feel like, “Let me get out of here.” I think it took like extra math classes to get out of gym once. [00:06:37] PF: That's hardcore. [00:06:39] KL: What I liked about music was I was having a hard time like solidifying an identity in school. When I picked up the cello, like it just felt like something that I instantly bonded with, and it was a portal to songwriting. Like I can strum chords on the cello. I could write music on the cello. I could play my favorite songs. I could – It was almost like meditating, practicing sometimes. So that was really good for me personally. But like Sav said too, when you're playing in an ensemble, like you're learning all sorts of teamwork skills. You're learning listening skills. A lot of improv is really 90% listening and then, I don't know, 10% being fearless and jumping right in, which I took jazz band for two years at our public school, and that taught me like just keep going. Even if the tune is flying by, if you get lost, like just keep going. Just so many skills. We both were in the pit for our musical theater production. Later, we went to an art school called Interlochen, and we took like choir classes and poetry classes, and learned how to incorporate things like history and current events and art into our songwriting and music. So there's a lot of education where music is like a really good portal. [00:08:03] PF: Then how did you start becoming involved in music education? Because it's a lot of work just to be a recording artist to be writing songs, to be touring, doing all that. Then you've added this whole other dimension to it. How did that start? [00:08:17] SB: Well, it's actually kind of been around for a while for us, simply because like when we're touring, oftentimes, we'll be in a town for like maybe six or seven hours, mostly at the venue. But there's like a little bit of time before that, where we can probably go into like a elementary school or a high school and do a workshop. Oftentimes, we'll just ask teachers like, “Hey, what's your curriculum currently like right now? Like what are you guys struggling with?” They’ll be like, “Oh, we need kids to like find an emotional outlet, or we need them to like learn how to take chances and be fearless.” We'll go in and kind of structure workshop around that. But that's something that's always been really consistent with who we are, and we've kind of had that almost since the beginning of the band. [00:08:59] KL: Yeah. I think almost there's certain benefits of going into schools, while you're still 17, 18, 19 years old. I think when we were first doing that, a lot of the first opportunities were us just coming in and playing songs and doing a Q&A or just talking to other students about what we did because we were basically their age or a few years older. [00:09:23] PF: Right. And they're going to listen to you. [00:09:26] KL: Yeah. I noticed. So we've definitely like shifted our approach. Now, I'm 26, and Sav is 27, and we've evolved and adjusted but definitely feel a distance growing every year from us when we go into the schools. So the very early stuff, I mean, it was us just talking and performing. It was a lot less formal. It doesn't always need to be really structured, I think. [00:09:53] PF: That's great. Then is that the Play It Forward, Again and Again initiative? [00:09:57] KL: So Play it Forward, it kind of combines two different things that we were passionate about, and we finally got nonprofit status in 2020. That was one of the benefits of – [00:10:06] PF: Congratulations. [00:10:07] KL: Being off the road is that we were able to get the paperwork done for that. But really what we've been working on prior to that was one part is getting instruments in the hands of young students and also mentorship. Because we've seen so many students who've had to give up playing like viola or another instrument because it's too expensive. So before the nonprofit, we would do fundraising campaigns. Like one time, we did a kick starter for a young girl. I mean, it was instantly funded by – [00:10:39] PF: Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. [00:10:41] KL: And she got an instrument right away. So part of Play It Forward, Again and Again is based on that. Another part is to get more musicians and more bands into schools to do performances and workshops, sort of like what The Moxie Strings did for us and what we've been trying to do for students who were on the road on tour. [00:11:03] PF: How hard has it been to get other musicians involved? [00:11:07] KL: There's definitely a different approach. You kind of have to get your feet wet in it because I think a lot of time, touring musicians, we get into like our flow. We do like a show every night for a similar audience. Then when you get in front of a school, like a group of students at any age range, it's like a totally different experience. Like a group of five year olds, they're going to be honest with you. If you're not entertaining, you'll know. But in a way, that's like the most pure form, I think, because they're not there to judge your technique or to think about your – Overthink the lyrics or anything. They're there to have a very pure musical inspirational experience. So anyone that we've talked to who has gone into a school, like they've gotten out of it with like just such an appreciation for music. [00:11:59] PF: What do you consider a success when you're walking out of a classroom situation? [00:12:04] SB: Honestly, I think it's just successful if somebody takes away even a little piece from it, which oftentimes one of the songwriting workshops that we do is we like pass out a bunch of books, and then we'll ask students to pick a sentence out of every book. Then we'll go over to the wall to like a whiteboard, and they'll read off the sentences. We'll write them down, and then we'll show how you can change a couple of words and start to put together an actual verse, even from widely different material. I think we used like an RV Cookbook once. [00:12:33] PF: Oh, my gosh. [00:12:35] SB: We've used like all kinds of crazy books, and we always get something out of it. Then we'll ask students to finish the songs. Oftentimes, we'll get like these songs through our email that are like completely finished, like either lyrics. Or they'll like pick up some chords and start putting it to that. That, to me, is like peak success from a songwriting workshop or from a workshop in general is just seeing them be excited about it and take it home and like apply their own creativity towards finishing it. Because just knowing that somebody believes you can do it, I think, is a huge aspect of actually finishing something. Not everybody believes that they have the ability to do something. There are lots of times where we go to a town, especially like a smaller town, and we'll teach a workshop, and the kids will be like, “Yeah, that was great. But I don't think I could ever do that.” So we've really had to restructure to make it like, “No, this is something everyone can do,” and made it really inclusive because that's what art is supposed to be, and that's what art is to us. [00:13:32] PF: In doing that, you're completely changing the way they're thinking about it, right? [00:13:36] SB: I hope so. [00:13:36] PF: Now, they're going to – Their mind is going to start seeking that out like, “What could I do with that? What can I do with that phrase?” You're like really opening up the way that they think about how they discover their creativity. [00:13:47] SB: Yeah. Like there's a song we have. A friend of mine, a childhood friend, passed away really suddenly, and I didn't have any closure. So I was trying to figure out how to write it down because that's sometimes the first step towards acknowledging and healing. I was having a hard time describing what grief actually felt like, and so I started looking around at household objects. The line ended up being “Grief’s a sheet of tin foil that I crush inside of me.” So I tell kids about that line because it's like you might think it's stupid on paper when you first look at it, but somebody is knowing exactly what you're talking about in that moment. Most importantly, you know exactly what you're talking about. That's helping sort of unravel some of these things that are super hard to find the words for. Sometimes, it's easier to sing it. I'm really interested in neurobiology too, not to go on a big rant. But like there's some really interesting stuff about music that pulls people who are having sort of debilitating memory issues. It's almost like an entirely different aspect of memory that music is attached to, and I think it also is attached to an entirely different aspect of emotions, where sometimes it's easier to express how you feel through music rather than having like a full hard conversation. [00:14:57] PF: Absolutely. Right now, with kids having gone through such a difficult last three years, and they're not able to process – Adults aren't able to process what all has happened and how it's affected us. So do you see that coming out through music? Do you see them being able to manage their emotions better and deal with what they've been through? [00:15:17] SB: I hope so. I think it's important that we try. It's important that we keep workshops like this going and initiatives like this happening and not to bring it back to public music programs. But I really think that's a huge aspect too is accessibility and belief and having the right tools is important. [00:15:35] KL: Yeah. We just did a collaboration with a youth studio orchestra in Cleveland called the Kaboom Collective. [00:15:42] PF: That was my next question, so good. I'm so glad you brought this up. [00:15:46] KL: I think that was a really good example because we had to stop touring in 2020, like everyone else did, and we were doing upwards of 200 or 250 shows. That tour with the Kaboom Collective was really one of the first big tours we did back and, exactly what you're saying, was the experience of a lot of students, who they were between the age of 15 and 25, and a lot of them had missed out on their high school graduation, prom, like – [00:16:17] PF: Turning 21. [00:16:18] KL: Yeah. Senior trips, college, like freshman year. These are all things that they kind of had to experience in isolation. I know for sure like a few of them were having maybe a difficult relationship with music at the time and nothing quite like being on a stage. We had one show on tour that was in Grand Rapids, Michigan at the Frederick Meijer Gardens Amphitheater and performing in front of 4,000 people live and feeling that energy. I thought that was really cool to talk to the students after that show and see a lot of them say like, “Wow, I didn't know this was part of music. I didn't know this connection was part of music.” That was a really good feeling. [00:17:06] PF: Tell us a little bit more about that collaboration because you had the album with them. What was that like, both for you and for the students, to have this entire experience together? Honestly, you could have done it yourselves. For you to bring along a student orchestra was just incredible, and what a ride that you gave them. [00:17:26] SB: Well, what's funny is I think we really couldn't have done it because they did all the arrangements. The students did. Again, they're like 15 to 25-year-olds, who took the initiative to like completely figure out our songs and then the emotion behind the songs and what it should be and how they could amplify that beat arrangements, which is a super amazing skill set to have at 15 years old. To have your name on a record at 15, to have like your name in an old music guide, it's just ridiculous to like be able to actually do that. I mean it in the best way. It's completely amazing. So I wish like I had done this when I was their age. [00:18:05] PF: I know. It's like you wish you had been there for you when you were that age, right?   [00:18:08] SB: Yeah. But like, tangentially, we're so honored to just be able to work with them because it really was like kind of a treat for us, as much as it was for them. Touring together, yeah, the logistics of taking like 40 students on the road with like all their instruments, including like upright basses and tubas and everything we had, that was quite a process. It took like a whole amazing team of people to put it together, including our manager, Aryn Madigan. But, yeah, it was just a wild time. So we're really excited that it happened and panned out. We learned a lot, just by being around them. They're all like so nerdy. They knew like every classical piece that you could name. Then also, we're like listening to these cool punk indie bands, and it gave us a lot of not to say like hope for the next generation because there's always something good in every generation to find. But it's really amazing to hang with the future of music and to kind of see where that's headed. Both of us were just really excited about it. [00:19:12] PF: That’s terrific because your music is – It's not just about the music. You are about spreading joy, and you are really working to make this world a better place. Why is that so important? [00:19:24] KL: It helped us. I think that's a big piece of why we keep doing it. I mean – [00:19:31] SB: Yeah. It’s a selfish aspect of our – [00:19:36] KL: I mean, music is not always – It's like a long-term relationship. I mean, it's a way to express creativity. It's something that, I don't know, we live and breathe, and it sounds kind of cliché. But we see it impact people day-to-day. We also have that experience with people who are not musicians. We have like a page on patreon.com, where people support us, and we do just random things. Like we do a tour blog every week, but we also interact with our patrons on Zoom, doing like book club, and we review favorite albums that everyone submits. Having that relationship, we see and we hear stories from our patrons about like how music totally changed their lives, even if they're not a musician, and just like listening to music or seeing a show how maybe changed the relationship with their parents or their children or relationship with themselves. So I think that those little things inspire us because some days, you go online, and you're like, “Why am I making music? TikTok is – I just spent like three hours on TikTok and like five people viewed this thing.” You know what I mean? But then when you hear a story like that where you see the impact, then it's like, “Hey, we should keep doing this.” [00:21:04] PF: Yeah, because you're making such a difference. Now, you're in Nashville, which is where I'm located too, and it's such a great songwriting community, such a nurturing community. Has that changed your relationship with the music? Has it changed your songwriting? What has it done to be here? [00:21:21] SB: Yeah. So what's funny is that we have kind of shifted to another side project. So we have The Accidentals generic rock band, and then we have Kaboom Collective and like collaborations and workshops and use music initiatives like that. Then on top of that, we have a co-writing project, where it's a series of EPs that we write and record. We write them with people who inspired us to become writers. So these people include Tom Paxton, Gary Byrd, Georgia Middleman, Maia Sharp, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Gretchen Peters, Mary Gautheir, Jaimee Harris. Like the list kind of goes on and on. But we basically write songs of these people, and then we compile those songs into EPs that we self-record and engineer right here in my very messy studio, Crooked Moon Studios. Yeah, so that's been going on for the past couple of years. It kind of started right before the pandemic hit, and one of our first co-writes that really kicked off the idea of putting them into a record was with Kim Richey, and it was over Zoom. We just love the song so much, and we love the idea of writing over Zoom so much during a time of isolation, we'd say, to keep it going. So a lot of the songs were written in isolation. Now that we live in Nashville, luckily, we can actually be in the same room with the people who inspired us to become songwriters in the first place, as we write the songs together. So it's just a really amazing experience. I like to joke that co-writing in Nashville is like the equivalent of getting a cup of coffee everywhere else. Or it's like the first thing that comes up half the time is like, “Oh, yeah. I've heard about you. We should write a song together.” It's happened so much while we – Since we moved here. That's been a really great aspect, and we've also done a ton of session work this year. Kate and I, we played violin, cello, viola, and upright bass. We essentially serve as our own quartet or orchestra if we're doubling parts. So we've done a ton of session work this year. We've gone to a lot of studios. We've recorded a lot remotely here at Crooked Moon Studios, which is our studio here in Nashville. Yeah, it's just been a really awesome time living in Nashville and getting to actually hang with the people who inspire us. [00:23:23] PF: That is terrific. So looking down the road because even though you've been doing this for 10 years, you're young, and you've got a lot of highway ahead of you. What is that future going to look like? What is your legacy that you want to leave behind, as you do so much good with the next generation? [00:23:42] SB: Man, I think we just want to leave something behind that continues to sort of unite people's emotional platform. Not everybody knows how to find what works for them emotionally. I think like leaving songs behind shows that – It sounds like cliché, but like you're not going through something alone. People have experienced the same kinds of grief or the same kinds of pain. Just having a song that speaks to you sometimes helps unravel that not. So I think that's why we write songs. That's why we put music. But it just does a lot of the really difficult work of sort of untangling what's hard to verbalize, and it’s like an initial step to healing. That’s like sort of the intangible part of what we want to leave behind. I think our idea of like physical success is just to be able to do this for a living and to continue to record or continue to write, continue to do workshops, and continue to put out albums of music that speaks to us, whether we've written that collaboratively, or we've written that therapeutically for ourselves. [00:24:43] PF: That is terrific. Katie, do you have anything to add to that? [00:24:46] KL: Like Sav said, that hopefully some of these students that we're teaching when we're retired, and Sav is like studying wolves in Alaska or something, and I'm like on a goat farm. Hopefully, like the animal life that there'll be more music and people stepping in our shoes and continuing to try to make the world a better place. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:25:14] PF: That was Sav Buist and Katie Larson of The Accidentals, telling us how they're inspiring the next generation of musicians while living their dream. If you'd like to learn more about The Accidentals, check out their music, or follow them on social media, just visit livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of On a Positive Note and look forward to joining you again next time. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Cultivate a Compassionate Relationship With Michelle Becker [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 404 of Live Happy Now. It's Valentine's Day. And as the rest of the world focuses on romantic notions, we're going to get real. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week I'm sitting down with marriage and family therapist, Michelle Becker, to talk about how we can become more compassionate in our relationships. Michelle developed the Compassion for Couples program, is co-founder of the teacher-training program at the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion, and a senior teacher of compassion cultivation training. She also hosts the Well Connected Podcast, and is author of Compassion for Couples: Building the Skills of Loving Connection. Today, she shares with us some of the key ways that practicing compassion can transform our relationships, and then she gives us some tips for getting started. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:56] PF: Michelle, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:58] MB: Thank you. Happy to be here, Paula. Thanks for inviting me. [00:01:01] PF: Well, it's Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day. [00:01:04] MB: Thank you. You too. [0:01:06] PF: Yeah. This is a time when we are absolutely inundated with all these images of romantic love and grand gestures, and that's why I wanted to talk to you because it's not always that way. I wanted to talk to you about the side that gets overlooked, and that's this more mature part of the relationship, this later phase of love. So to kick it off, can you talk about how this stage, this later stage of romance and love, is so much different than the love we have who are falling in love? [00:01:34] MB: Yeah. I think it might help actually to talk about what happens when we fall in love and then how we progress to that mature love. So in this falling in love phase, we are actually dosed with chemicals like oxytocin. What happens is that prevents us. We have this sort of, not all of us, but often this sense of being on cloud nine like, “Oh, he's so wonderful. She's so wonderful. They're so wonderful,” right? Like, “This is the thing that has made my life happy and complete. My happiness rests with them,” right? The thing is that this hormone cocktail prevents us from seeing any qualities in our future partners that we don't like. We're just blinded to it for a while. But the cocktail wears off. When the cocktail wears off, the curtain lifts. Suddenly, we can see that this person actually has qualities we don't care for and habits we don't care for. It could be small, little irritating things like they don't put the cap back on the toothpaste or they don't pick their socks up or whatever it might be, right? It's kind of an uncomfortable thing to realize, “Oh, no,” because we've tied all our happiness to this idea that there's this other person out here that completes us, that is the source, the root of our happiness. Now, to find out that they're just a human being and they have qualities we don't like can be really painful. Psychologist Rick Hanson talks about the negativity bias. He says we're like Velcro for negative emotions and Teflon for positive emotions. So once we start to notice negatives, we can really fixate on those negatives. The positives that we were so happy about just a little while ago, we're not so much noticing anymore, right? We're used to those. These new negatives we see, really we fixate on. Barbara Fredrickson, a positive emotions expert, she talks about how when we're in a state of positive emotions, it broadens our field of vision. We see lots. But when we're in a state of negative emotion, our whole field of vision narrows down to that one thing. So in this kind of second phase, we can get really fixated on all the problems in our relationship and especially all the problems with our partner. [00:03:53] PF: So as a couples counselor, as a therapist, do you see relationships that could be very good and solid that they come to you, and it's simply that they are focusing on the wrong thing? [00:04:04] MB: Yeah, all the time. Most people come into couple’s therapy because they think there's something wrong with their partner, and they would like me to fix their partner, right? That's really why they come in. What they learn actually is that focusing on their partner in that way isn't actually helpful. It kind of feeds this negative relational downward spiral. But when we pause and start to learn to take care of ourselves, so this is where self-compassion comes in, and it can be very helpful. When we learn that we can meet our own needs and we're not so dependent on our partner meeting our needs. In other words, we can be a full human being fully ourselves, accept ourselves, our good qualities and our growing edges. That kind of takes a lot of the pressure off the relationship. Then when we start to view our partner in that same way, when we start to look at our partner as a whole human being that has both qualities that we admire, that we're fond of, that we love, and also qualities that they struggle with where they're like a complete human being. Nobody's perfect, right? We start to understand that when they do things that bother us, it's not because they don't love us, which is usually the sense we make of it. It's because they're in pain in some sort of way, right? That actually kind of softens our hearts. Then we can show up for our part – Instead of getting into feeling offended and defensive and whatever the other reactivity habits might be, we can start to see, oh, I don't have to take that personally. That isn't actually about me. Gosh, they must be having a hard time right now. It really changes everything. So in this mature love, which was the question you asked me, in the mature love phase, it's really characterized by a deep love but also acceptance, acceptance of ourselves and our partners as we are. It doesn't mean we don't have qualities we still need to work on and we still need to change. It just means that we don't have to get rid of the things we don't like about each other to love each other, to care about each other, to show up. [00:06:16] PF: That's terrific. So oftentimes, and I know this has happened in my own relationship, we all feel very aggravated with the other person, and it's really me. It's like I'm having a bad day. That same thing would not have bothered me on a normal day or if I wasn't hormonal or whatever that case may be. So how often is that the case that it's really not what the other person is doing? It's just how you're feeling and how you're responding to it. [00:06:43] MB: I love that you said that, Paula, because that's exactly what I'm talking about that when our partner is not skillful, they snap at us, for example, as you're saying. Even if they snap at us and say it's our fault or you're such a or you never or you whatever, it isn't really about us. It really is an indicator that our partner right now has some pain going on underneath that that's causing them to snap. Just like you're saying that they're having a bad day, that they're stressed out, that they learned that they have a health problem or someone they love has a health problem, that something's going on at work, that they didn't get enough sleep last night. As human beings, we're subject to all these different causes and conditions for how we are right now. Really, I'm just excited that you're owning that and naming that. What I want you to know is this is just how we're wired as human beings. It's not just you. It's all of us. [00:07:38] PF: When we're on the receiving end of that, though, it's difficult to sit back and say, “Oh. Well, they're just having a bad day.” It's easy to fire right back. So how do we change the way that we receive that? [00:07:52] MB: Well, let me first say that we don't have to accept bad behavior. It is okay and even important to set limits if somebody is doing something harmful. But when we don't take it personally, when we realize, oh, this isn't actually about me, even when my partner’s aiming it at me. When we realize that we can settle a little bit and then we can become curious about what's going on in them. Let me give you an example. Your partner comes home late from work, and this is a habit, and you're having a particularly bad day. You really were counting on them being home on time, and they come in the door, and you snap at them, right? So your partner, they can snap back at you, in which case, you're off to the races. Things are going to get worse, right? But what if your partner instead said, “Hey, Paula. You know what? I gather you're probably pretty stressed right now. But please don't snap at me. What happened in your day today? I really want to be there for you. Can you tell me what's going on?” [00:08:51] PF: That just completely disarms you. It’s – [00:08:54] MB: Yeah. Changes everything, right? But we have to first catch it ourselves. We have to practice catching. When our reactivity arises, it’s our threat defense system that gets activated when somebody attacks us. When our reactivity arises, we have to notice, “Ah, I'm getting angry. Why am I angry? I wasn't angry a minute ago,” right? “Oh, it's not actually my anger. It's my partner's. Oh, why are they angry? Ah, because something painful just happened to them, or they're in the midst of some pain,” right? The more we practice it, the quicker it happens in the moment for us. The quicker we can be with not catching the anger, but instead noticing that's not mine. That's theirs, and probably there's something painful underneath. [00:09:39] PF: I love that because that's an incredible skill, and it's not just relegated to your romantic relationship. That's great with your children and your parents, your entire siblings. I mean, everything. [00:09:48] MB: Your coworkers, everywhere. Yeah, everywhere. [00:09:52] PF: Yeah. That alone is just a workshop you need to offer us too – [00:09:59] MB: Yeah. It turns is out that people's behavior is actually theirs. It's not about us, right? [00:10:05] PF: That’s so hard to learn. So you have a new book coming out, which I'm really excited about, Compassion for Couples, and you go into using compassion for yourself and for your relationship. I really want to get into this, but very curious to find out how you became so interested in studying compassion, as it relates to relationships. [00:10:27] MB: Well, I started actually with a curiosity about relationships. So they've kind of always been my thing. So when I went to grad school, I chose to be a marriage and family therapist because that was the one that worked with relationships or was specialized in relationships. Then as part of that, I took some continuing education, and I learned about mindfulness. I was like, “Oh, there's a name for that. That was the state I was in when I had been practicing yoga, right? Oh, there's a name for that. It's called mindfulness.” Then  as part of that, I learned about compassion, and I learned that compassion is actually a skill that can be trained. So it's true that we're born with varying degrees of compassion. But all of us, no matter how much or little we're born with, can learn more compassion. So I was on a mindfulness retreat when self-compassion just kind of spontaneously arose for me. So I was opening to the pain in my life, and this sense of someone, which was myself, caring about me arose, right? That there was a sense that I could comfort myself, I could soothe myself, I could protect and stand up for myself. It was really very much a big change for me, and I began to – Well, shortly after that, I found the Mindful Self-Compassion Program. Chris Germer and Kristin Neff’s program, and they invited me to start teaching self-compassion. I thought this is really the thing that changes everything. Then when we co-developed a teacher training along with Steve Hickman for how to teach this program, and on one of those trainings, people were asking me, “Well, how would you use this with couples?” I went, “Oh. Well, in session one, I would do this. And then session two.” So I developed a program, Compassion for Couples, and that's what I do. I teach couples how to relate to themselves and to each other with more compassion. Because when we have compassion in our primary relationships, when we have that safety net underneath us, that soft place to land, not only does it change our relationships, but it really changes us. We now can go out into the world with more courage because when we fail, which is part of life, there's a way to be held, to recover, to be okay. It ripples out, and it gives us the courage to be more fully ourselves and live our lives more fully. [00:12:47] PF: That's really powerful. We know what compassion is. We know what it means. But how do we practice it? Especially, how do we start practicing self-compassion? Because I believe you say that's where it starts. We practice compassion for ourselves first and then for others. [00:13:02] MB: In relationships, so the research is that most people are much more compassionate toward others than they are toward themselves, that we're kind of trained in that way. Be kind to other people, right? But a lot of us are not trained to be kind to ourselves. So we have this capacity, and it's a matter of just learning to include ourselves in our circle of compassion. So we learn to show up by – One of the ways that we can harness our power for compassion is to – When we realize that we're suffering in some way, struggling, we're having a hard time, to actually pause and notice, “Oh, I'm having a hard time right now.” Often, we don't notice. We just find ourselves three episodes in binge-watching Netflix or whatever our go-to balm is, salve is, right? We have to notice that we're suffering. Then we recognize that suffering is part of being human. This is a shared human condition. Then we might ask ourselves what we need. What do I need right now? For many of us in the beginning, we don't have the answer to that. So we can kind of trick ourselves into finding the answer by asking ourselves, “Okay. If my good friend that I really care about had the same problem as me, what would I say to them?” Ah, now we know what we need, right? Then we can turn it around and say that to ourselves. I'm here for you. It's okay. It isn't your fault. We'll get through this. Whatever it is we might need to hear. [00:14:34] PF: So do you advise to have a daily self-compassion practice? Or how do they start implementing this and making it a daily part of who they are? [00:14:43] MB: Well, so in terms of learning self-compassion, I think the Mindful Self-Compassion Program is excellent, and I recommend that because it teaches a lot of practices. We teach some of them also in the Compassion for Couples program, and I've got some of them, many of them actually, in my book as well. But there are two kinds of practices. There's formal practice, which is where we set aside time just to do that. We're not doing something else at the same time. There are practices of following our breath. There are practices of saying kind phrases to ourselves, things like that. That's a good baseline to have and to practice every day. But not everybody can or will set aside the time to practice like that. So luckily, there's also informal practice. In informal practices, how we integrate that as we go about our day, how we integrate. So the self-compassion break, it might be an example of that. We can practice that actually both ways. We can pause, do nothing else. We can say this is a moment of suffering. Acknowledge that we're having a hard time right now. That suffering is part of any life. This is how it feels, for example, when couples are disagreeing. It's painful, right? Or this is how it feels when we feel unloved, whatever it is, that this is just part of being a human being in a relationship. Then we can offer some kindness to ourselves. I see you. I care about you, right? So we can do that in a formal way, setting aside time. But we can also do that, in the middle of a conversation with our partner, right? On the go. So our partner’s doing something that we don't like. We're feeling abandoned, whatever it might be. We can just notice to ourselves, “Oh, wow. This is really hard. This is really painful. Okay, this is part of being in a relationship.” Then we can say something kind to ourselves. I'll get through this. We'll get through this. We can always work it out in the end, whatever it might be, right? You don't have to say it out loud. You don't have to close your eyes. You don't have to do anything else. It doesn't have to take a long time. It can be three short statements. [00:16:49] PF: What I liked when you said that, you put your hand on your heart as you said that, and that's something I've learned. Like Shauna Shapiro was a guest a couple years ago. She really taught me that. Then we had Jeanine Thompson recently, who talked about that same thing of putting your hand on your heart as you make a statement like that. Tell me why that is important. [00:17:09] MB: So I love that you're saying this. Dacher Keltner and his team, Greater Good, did some research into what is compassionate, what cultures around the world find compassionate, what's the common theme. They found three things, and one of them was a kind touch. As human beings, we are wired. Our physiology is wired to be comforted and soothed by kind touch. So if you think about it, a baby is crying, and you pick them up and cuddle them in a certain kind of way. That's part of what helps them settle. The cool thing is we don't need somebody else to activate our physiology. We can activate our own physiology. So often, there's a spot on the body. You're right. For me, it's my heart. For many of us, it's our heart. But it's not the heart for everybody. Some people, it's putting your hands on your cheeks, or it's stroking the forearm, holding your own hand, all sorts of different places. But people can experiment with that, putting their hands in different places and seeing what effect it has on their bodies, right? What feels comforting and soothing? Isn’t that a cool thing? We can activate our own physiology. [00:18:18] PF: I like that. [00:18:19] MB: Yeah, me too. [00:18:21] PF: Once we've practiced some self-compassion, and we've gotten more used to implementing it into our lives, how is that going to change our compassion for our partner? Because as you said, a lot of people come in that's like change that person because he's the problem. So how will we then start using compassion toward our partner? [00:18:40] MB: So I love that you've said it that way, Paula. Change that person because he's the problem. When we are in our threat defense system, if something has come up, and we're distressed, we think the other person needs to change so that we can feel better. Change that person. He is the problem. Then I'll feel better. That's the hope, right? But, wow, does it change everything when we realize I have the capacity to feel better, whether or not this person changes, whether or not this person does something different. I have the capacity to feel better. That's self-compassion. We can tend to ourselves in that kind of way. We can give ourselves what we need. We don't always have to get it from our partner. That's hugely empowering when we figure that out. Then we can use that to settle our own physiology. So now, we can still go back to our partner and say, “I need something different. It was really painful when you did this,” whatever it might be. But now, we're saying it with calmer physiology and with some love in our hearts. Our partners can usually hear us better when we're coming from that place than they can when we're coming from the threat defense system, and we're attacking. [00:19:56] PF: Yeah. That makes perfect sense. I wanted to talk to you because in the foreword of your book, Chris Germer writes about the traps that couples fall into and how difficult it can be to get out of them. I wondered if you could give us an example of one or two of the most common traps that you see and then how we use compassion to get out of those, instead of use our old ways. [00:20:19] MB: Yeah. So I'm not sure which traps he's referring to. But what I think of when I think of these traps is I think of our physiology, just how we're wired for survival. Paul Gilbert has done a lot of work on this. I really love his work. But he talks about that we have these different emotion regulation systems. The primary one, the one that is dominant when we're stressed, is the threat defense system. People are familiar with that because it's fight, flight, freeze. That's where that lives, right? I looked at, okay, so what happens in relationships when we're in fight, flight, freeze? Well, fight turns into either blaming our partners or defensiveness. Flight turns into avoidance, right? We kind of disappear, back off. I don't want to get into it. Which is actually we're trying to protect the relationship often by doing that, right? Protect ourselves, protect our partners, protect the relationship. Freeze often turns into a kind of surrender, a kind of placating? Yes, dear. Sure, honey. Whatever you want. We don't agree necessarily, but we think that we're going to tell them what we think they want to hear so that they settled, so that they calm down, right? Those are the things that really get us stuck in our relationship. It's really good for our physical survival. It's really bad for our relationships and our emotional lives, right? Because fighting doesn't help anything. Abandoning your partner doesn't help anything. Really, we do hate to be placated, right? [00:21:47] PF: Right. [00:21:48] MB: What we can do instead, and this is where self-compassion is so helpful, is we can notice our own distress. We can show up for ourselves, give ourselves what we need, whether that's taking a break. But in a kind way, checking out, telling our partners, “Hey, you know what? This isn't going well. I'm a little bit activated here. I'm going to take a break and tend to myself, but I'll be back.” We always have to reassure. I care about you. I’m coming back, right? Because then our physiology has settled once we've taken care of ourselves. Now, we can actually see the other person. Before that, we don't really accurately see the other person. We have our story, and we think that's it. Toxic certainty and let me just tell you, right? When we've settled our bodies, when we've opened our hearts a little bit, our minds are open. Now, we can approach with a little more humility, a little more curiosity. I know my experience. I hope you want to hear about that. I'd like to hear about your experience too. Turns out often we weren't right. Something else was going on for our partner that we didn't understand. [00:22:56] PF: Can you talk about some of the things, some of the changes that you've seen in couples who start using this? Because I know like I've got friends, and you and I talked before we started recording. The pandemic was tough on relationships, and there are a lot of people I know who are really just kind of hanging in there and wondering if they really want to. It’s a difficult time for a lot of people. So would you share with that kind of how it can change relationships? [00:23:24] MB: It changes relationships. So many things jumped to my mind. So it's hard for me to kind of accurately describe all, but I'll tell you a couple things that come to mind. One is we treat our partners generally the way we want to be treated. So use my relationship, for example. When I am distressed, when I've had some relationship thing happen, I really don't want to be touched. I want to be heard. Once I'm heard, I relaxed a little bit. Okay, now you can touch me. My partner does not want words, does not want to talk about it. He wants to be touched. He wants to be held, to be comforted, to be reassured in that kind of way. Then maybe we'll be able to talk about it. So when there's some disagreement, and I show up and say, “Let's talk about it,” that's not really going to be skillful for him, right, if he's upset. So that's one of the things is actually learning. For me, learning, oh, when he's upset, don't ask him to talk about it. That's not how he's wired. Offer him a pat on the back, a hug, something like that. He'll feel comforted, reassured. Okay, now maybe we can talk about it, right? So that's one of the things is actually starting to see each other. When we see each other, when we really begin to understand each other, we have a lot more options about how to be skillful with each other in relationships. So that's one of the ways that it changes. Also, learning things like these emotion regulation systems. One is the threat defense system. One is the care system where compassion lives. But there's another one, the drive system, which is about getting things done, achieving, wanting, pursuing, achieving, consuming. Very often, especially men, but not limited to men, have been socialized to solve the problem. Fix the problem, right? So their partner shows up and says, “I'm really having a hard time. Maybe it's at work. Something else is going on with the kids, whatever. I'm really having a hard time.” I would say husband in this case, but please know it's not gendered. The husband says, “Well, you need to talk to your boss about,” blah, blah, blah, blah, or whatever it is, right? The wife just sort of collapses because that's not what she wanted. What she wanted was just a kind, caring presence. What she wanted was for him just to say, “That really sucks. I'm so sorry that's happening for you. How are you,” right? So one of the things in this Compassion for Couples program, in the last program that I taught, especially the men were like blown away. [00:26:05] PF: They know they're not supposed to fix it. [00:26:07] MB: No. They didn't know there was another option. I really did not know there was another option. So when they were like, as we practice communication, and we practice just that compassionate listening, how to actually just stay present while your partner's talking, I mean, really, they went on and on. Their minds were blown. They're like, “That's all I have to do. That’s it? That’s what she wants?” There just are a whole bunch of different ways that it shows up, and even people who have come into the program with really good solid relationships tell me afterwards that they came closer. They were able to develop more intimacy with their partner and in a way that felt safe. Because that's the thing is we sometimes keep a little distance because we don't feel completely safe. So when we have the confidence that our partners will meet us with compassion, we feel safer. We're a little safer to come close. [00:26:07] PF: That's great. As we started the show, we talked about that romantic love and how we just see these great things. Once we start seeing our partner through the lens of compassion, and we start developing these skills, how does it take us back to that? How does it remind us of some of those reasons that we fell in love and why we're here to begin with? [00:27:24] MB: It does because we actually can see them more clearly again. So we see the undesirable qualities, but we're not focused just on those. We see the parts we love about them as well. Because we are showing up in the relationship with more kindness, with more compassion, with more acceptance, they can show us more of who they are. Honestly, sometimes, it's really we're just in awe of like this actual human being with these qualities, right? Because we can see them more clearly, they feel safer coming toward us, if that makes sense. [00:28:02] PF: Yeah, it does. Michelle, thank you for this time today. This is so insightful. We're going to tell the listeners how they can find your book, how they can find you, learn more about it. But I truly appreciate your time today. [00:28:14] MB: Thank you, Paula. Appreciate that. Lovely to be with you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:28:22] PF: That was Michelle Becker, talking about how to improve your relationships using compassion. If you'd like to learn more about Michelle, download a free chapter of her book, sign up for her upcoming Compassion for Couples workshop, or follow her on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. With March just a couple of weeks away, we here at Live Happy are starting to think about our annual Happy Acts campaign, and we'd love for you to do the same. Throughout March, we're offering a full calendar of daily suggestions to help you make your world a happier place. I'd like to encourage you to visit the Happy Acts section of our website to learn how you can be involved and how you can host a happiness wall in your home, office, church, or school to celebrate the International Day of Happiness. Just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the Happy Acts tab. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:15:59] PF: That was Live Happy Marketing Manager Casey Johnson, talking about the Live Happy gratitude challenge and all the great things we have going on here at Live Happy. To learn more about the challenge, just visit our website at livehappy.com. If you'd like to check out our new merch or by one of our old favorites, you can get 10% off storewide just by entering the code grateful 10 when you shop at store.livehappy.com. That's grateful 10 when you shop at store.livehappy.com. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Discover Joy with the Unicorn Challenge from Andrea Goeglein, PhD [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 403 of Live Happy Now. Would your life be better if you are a unicorn? This week's guest invites you to find out. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I'm sitting down with Andrea Goeglein to talk about her 60-day Unicorn Challenge. Andrea, who is also known as Dr. Success, holds a PhD in organizational psychology and hosts the Hey, Boss Lady! Podcast. She created the 60-day Unicorn Challenge to offer small daily tasks that will help you take steps toward reaching your goals while making yourself a priority. In this episode, she tells us how the challenge came about, why she picked the unicorn, and how you can get started on this free challenge. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:48] PF: Andrea, thank you for coming back on to Live Happy Now. [00:00:52] AG: It is me being allowed to live happy. The amount of information that your podcast enriches my life with, even though this is my field, you're one of the podcasts I personally come to to learn from. So anytime I'm asked to share what new inventions I've come up with, it's an absolute joy for me. Thank you. [00:01:14] PF: Well, thank you so much for saying that. Because, obviously, we at Live Happy, all of us respect who you are and your opinion, and it means so much. I so appreciate your support. You have something so fun, so unique that you're doing. I was on LinkedIn and saw it, and I immediately reached out and said please come on the show and talk about. So tell us about your unicorn challenge. [00:01:40] AG: Yes. My 60-day Unicorn Challenge is as much an expression of how I work with my clients and in turn work in my own life, how this came to be. But I will just start with one of the opening quotes, and I have to read it. If you want to change your life, do it flamboyantly and start immediately, William James. Now, William James was a psychologist whose work grounded a lot of the work that I was first introduced to in psychology and how the unicorn challenge came to be. I want our audience to really think about this in their own lives. They're going about their daily life, doing their jobs, doing the same things that they always do. Then one thing happens that inspires another. So I'll just start with that one thing to pay attention to the average things you're doing. Here was mine. Every year on Halloween, I have some sort of a costume. I actually generally go and give out candy downtown. I would dress up and all these different things. It was just a way that I loved being in my community because I live in a condo. People don't come to my door, yada, yada. Well, on this particular Halloween and for the last few years, I've been a unicorn. I have this fabulous unicorn head that I bought at some party city or something like that a few years back. I had a business lunch. A very high-powered Hollywood executive and I were going to be having a conversation, a check-in conversation, and they were planning out some fairly big moves. I showed up perfectly dressed for the restaurant, however, with my huge unicorn head in tow. [00:03:36] PF: Of course, you did. [00:03:38] AG: Of course, I did. It sat down right next to me. What I realized in that moment was that I was feeling joy, the person I was with was feeling joy, and we had some pretty heavy business things and life things to discuss. So I went home. I did my post. That was the beginning. I didn't have in that moment the idea to create the 60-day challenge nor the e-book that people can get for free. That was the next thing I want people to pay attention to. You don't have to know everything at once. Be inspired by something, flow with it, take a step, and then see what else happens. [00:04:24] PF: Oh, that's so well put. So tell us what a unicorn challenge is. Yeah. Let's just start with that. What is it? [00:04:34] AG: So what it is, one of the many positive emotions. Well, the top positive emotion that I work in in order to help people achieve their next level of success is the overarching emotion of love with the 10 most research attributes of that. One of which is joy. Now, I am a really – My image meant a lot to me, especially businesses. I've owned businesses. I work with people that own really big businesses. My image has always meant a lot to me. So joy and being joyous and being silly may not have been in the criteria. But like the rest of the world, the last 36 months has allowed a shift in my thinking, bigger than any other shift before. So it was me taking the one emotion, positive emotion, joy. I went from remembering the feeling of this one little lunch to the next day setting a personal challenge. There’s things within my work and many people that are listening may need to use social media as – I'm not a social media expert. I am an expert in the application of positive psychology. But social media is very critical. So there are things I am challenging myself with to learn. Of course, I don't like learning them. Not what I do for a living. I'm cranky as anybody else. So joy, how do you add joy to the work and the tasks specifically that you have to do so that, in fact, even those mundane things, even those things that you don't want to do, you can move forward? So I focused on that, and I'm going to be straight. I was doing it for me. I was setting me a challenge. I went to lunch with someone. I did a post for my work, I. There's nothing wrong with that. Every second of our days, we are informing ourselves of what new opportunities may lie ahead for the things we do, and I made a choice to focus on the emotion of joy. Unicorns happen to be – The legend around unicorns happens to be about joy. William James told me to start immediately and be flamboyant. I succeeded. So then I became thoughtful about it. I started doing one of the sets of tests. That's one of the many things I want to share. This did not all come together like in one big thought and all of a sudden – Honestly, it was this. First, I did one thing and did a few steps towards it. Then I did another thing. Then by the time enough pieces came into being, I said to myself, “Well, wait a minute. If I'm investing all of this energy doing this, in what I was doing –” One of my challenges was to put a one minute short on YouTube, on my YouTube channel, every day because I think that's a silly way to spend my life. Not silly in a good way. I think it is a time suck. The only way something can't be a time suck is if I'm helping someone else. That gets me personally over the hurdle. All of us have that thing, where not my choice. I always categorize certain things like cleaning toilets are not my choice, but I do like a clean house. So maybe I'll clean the toilet. [00:08:18] PF: Cause and Effect. Yeah. [00:08:20] AG: Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's what the unicorn challenge is about, taking time in the smallest bites to shift a habit in a joyful way that adds to your success. [00:08:36] PF: How did – At what point did you realize this was not just a set of tasks you were doing for yourself, that you saw this is something that will generate real good for other people? [00:08:48] AG: Yeah. Feedback. I had my little list of why I was doing it. But then all of a sudden, I started getting feedback because people who have worked with me or who are working with me knew that this was the same exact work. All of it grounded. All of the tips in this free e-book are the exact tips you find in every reputable resource on how you do habits and how you take care of yourself, all those things. However, it was done in a different way, especially for me. So it caught their attention. Once I realized – What they were saying was, “That was so fun. I love seeing you do that.” They were telling me that that little one minute showed up at the right time for them. So as I said, for me, in my work, the impact on another is my return on investment. Always has been, always will be. So it was the feedback that others were feeling joy. Others were being moved in a way. That's what hooked me, and all of us have those things. I would say know your thing and start looking for it. [00:10:07] PF: So it's for anything that we want to improve, want to change in our life. It's not a I'm going to lose weight. It's not a I'm going to exercise. It's a whatever you need it to be for you. Is that correct? [00:10:20] AG: Yes. First and foremost, it's a commitment. So in one of the many things that I put out online for years, I have said, “If you don't do the free stuff, my fee is not the problem.” [00:10:36] PF: There you go. [00:10:37] AG: Okay. So what I will challenge everyone, hey, it's free, if you don't start there. What is free? It is a systematic thing that is helping you nudge you each day in one minute to see. Is this an action I want to take, will take? Is it one that eats at your brain after you hear it? Because what we know in human development is you don't have to do all 60 days. You may do one day and spend the next six months working on that one task. Just the one step get you closer to what it is you're trying to achieve in whatever area of the life you're focusing on. [00:11:23] PF: Yeah. You say something very interesting about why you chose 60 days. I wanted you to really explain that to us because we see all the time all this 21-day challenge a 30 day challenge. We don't see 60 day challenges, and I think that's because we're like, okay, we're lazy people, and who's going to last for 60 days. Like imagine if you had to do dry January and February. [00:11:47] AG: Thank you. Thank you – [00:11:48] PF: Why 60 days? [00:11:50] AG: Therein lies the reason. I want to get you out of the conversation that there's really a time limit on it. I actually somewhere in the last week or so put up another video out in the playlist on my YouTube channel, but it’s not linked in this, where I basically say, “So you think 60 days is too long, eh?” This is about 60,000 days of your life. This is about you, taking the moment to make you most important. I start with a 60-day challenge. But when you really look at it, I'm saying take 60 seconds. The same way that my fee is not the problem if you're not doing the free stuff, if you're not taking 60 seconds to pause back and say, “Is there something I can do to make my situation better at this moment,” if you aren’t willing to give yourself 60 seconds, I could have put 60,000 days up there, it would not matter. [00:12:54] PF: Absolutely. So really, you're just resetting the way that we think and the way that we're looking at things. [00:13:01] AG: It's all an illusion. At the spiritual level, I work in the concept that we make everything up. Now, 21 days has been researched. So we have good solid research about 28 day things and 30 day things and 21 day things. What we don't accept is that's the beginning of these processes, not the end. This unicorn – Like joy should be in your life forever. It is not a 60-day challenge. [00:13:30] PF: Right. Don't check that one out the door when you're done. [00:13:33] AG: Exactly. And it is that kind of a thing that the more we can appreciate, the more breaking down of the illusions, these artificial barriers that we've put around, that success looks like this, and I've got to wear a suit jacket if I show up at this lunch with an important person, and I've got to work in an office 12 hours a day. Otherwise, I'm not productive. Illusions, illusions, illusions. So break them down, but rebuild it with habits based in joy, working towards you paying attention to what does matter in your life. [00:14:12] PF: Love that. So we'll talk, first of all, what it did for you before you even launched this course. What did it do for you? Because of your experience, you then knew that was going to work for other people. So talk about your experience with that first place. [00:14:26] AG: So as a business person, as I said, I have a team of people that work with me, with social media posts and videos and things of that nature. One of them came to me. The video person came to me, and he said, “You really need to do a bunch of shorts.” The minute he said the algorithm likes it, the minute you tell me an algorithm likes it, my New Yorker comes out. You would not be able to put it on this podcast. I do not live by algorithms. However, I do live to engage audiences because the work you and I work in and all of the people you have on the show work in works. It shifts the quality of your life, no matter who you are or what you're doing. So he planted that seed. I got snotty. That's why normal – I'm going to tell you something. [00:15:17] PF: Things don’t work sometimes. [00:15:19] AG: Know your learning pattern. When I am resistant, when I catch my resistance, when someone makes a suggestion, I am trained well enough in my own psyche to make note of that. So what this did was I started challenging myself. The challenge was get a video up. It started out with the proverbial one day at a time, and I already knew from past experience that trying to do something every day doesn't work in my work schedule or my life. What does work for me is blocking out time and doing a few things. So that's what it did for me, it caused me to examine my resistance about a goal and then create a system that works in the way I mentally and physically like to work. [00:16:15] PF: That makes so much sense. So then you put this together. [00:16:19] AG: Right. So the first thing – [00:16:21] PF: Like how did it all come together? Because you've got so many parts to it. [00:16:26] AG: Yes. So probably around the second week of me doing, working through the process of I went from every day to then one day, like I built on that. Then I thought, “Oh, gosh. It’s silly to let this all just go away after these 60 days.” I will have learned what I need to learn about putting videos on YouTube in a consistent fashion, but that means the people I care the most about in this process, those that engage with me, I know that it goes away. The thing about habits, the thing about repetition is that it's the most important thing for us to achieve next levels of anything. I wanted to create something that, in fact, solidified the work, and that was satisfying to me. I needed to see something because numbers on algorithms do not satisfy me. One of the many other things that I am known for in my social media post is that I would rather have my name on your heart than my name on a building. That's my legacy. I don't have visions that you're going to remember me after I'm gone, and I'm good with that. That is a very deeply grounded spiritual belief for me. It is not one that most people I work with align with. I work with a lot of people who have lots of names up on lots of buildings, and we talk about that, though. So I wanted something that left joy, respected the work I had done, is helpful. So by about the 15th, the 20th day, I had made a commitment that I was going to do the draft. [00:18:16] PF: So let's talk about these tips. Let's tell people what kind of tips they can expect to find. I think I'm just sitting here smiling as we're talking because I've looked at the book. I've been through it. It just makes me smile, even thinking about it. So talk about the tips and what people can expect to find in there. [00:18:35] AG: Okay. So the very first one, I love the very first one because this is the one we generally don't do and tortures us the most. I made a dump list. One place, all of the notes and ideas, all of the things that you think you have to do, want to do. Make it in one place. Then the other tips actually start taking you through. Okay, what do you do with the stupid dump list? Like I am a person trained in org dynamics. I was to be a consultant in companies and to build reports and have the one, two, three, four, five steps. But I was resistant to that because I knew he didn't use it. So a lot of the other steps will call you back to the dump list because I know you really didn't stop and do it like, “Oh, this is cute. Let me watch the video.” [00:19:23] PF: At some point, it’s just like, “Oh, man. I better go do that.” [00:19:26] AG: That's exactly right. I'll tell you very functionally how it worked today. I was having a conversation with a millennial who's part of the tribes of people, who have decided to relocate their work and their entire lives to a geographic different location. But in the process of doing it, and they realized that they were becoming overwhelmed by all of the things from childcare to where's the work going to come from, to where are we going to live, all of those things, who's going to be my tribe in this location? Everything that we do that keeps interfering with our thoughts on what I want to achieve today. They said to me, “I stopped, and I decided to make a list of everything.” We had a conversation. I said, “You have just lived a dump list because that's all it is.” Then from that point, you have a record of all of these crazy thoughts that we know through research just blocks up our minds. You've got a landing place for them. Then you can start to put it into procedure of, okay, what do I really have to do? Like do I really have to start buying Christmas presents in March so that I’m set up at the end of the year? No. I may need a new place to live. Or I may need new clients, that kind of thing. Yeah. [00:20:47] PF: Then as you went through, I like that you bring in other people. Like we have to think about what other people mean in our lives and how they affect it. Can you talk about that? I really – [00:20:56] AG: So what I did was merge the functional. How do you create a habit repetition? Have it written down, categorize, with all of the psychological skills and physiological skills that we know work through good research. So I did the daily habits that you should have, whether you ever want to achieve another goal or not, such as the reading, the writing, the meditation. Things like pick someone 10 years younger than you and go play with them for a day. Then another tip may be pick someone 10 years older than you and go play with them for a day. All the time trying to take what the crap that's going around in your mind and apply it to the process. Because once you step into the possibility that you can be joyful as you go through the angst of figuring out what you're going to do next and creating a habit, that alone helps. So it is a merging of the functional tests that we know works in creating good habit, with the spiritual and psychological tasks that research has shown us as you add them into your life that helps. [00:22:13] PF: Yeah. I could see this being applied in so many environments because I could see workplaces using it. Like if you're a manager who wants to enact change, this is a fun way to do it. But I also could see it being really effective for families to do together and make something fun and be able to create more joy and make a real difference in their dynamic. [00:22:38] AG: So here's one of the things that actually cause this to come to life. In the same exact first week, when I had done the lunch with the business person and I had my unicorn, a few days later, I was asked by a classroom, a fourth grade classroom, with Teach For America school to come in and do a career day. What is a success catalyst, and what is an applied positive psychologist? I showed up in this fourth grade class with my unicorn. I walked in, and I said to them, “Did you ever think you could have a job where, in fact, you could do this, and that job have a very serious aspect to it?” So it is your point about the spectrum. I have right now a one sheet being prepared because one of my many loves is the one-hour Zooms that I do, especially for hybrid teams now. I've always done it on the language of success and all the things in positive psychology, the tips that you apply to make the workday better. This is the next iteration or an additional iteration. So one sheets being prepared for my corporate clients, where when you're calling your people together, and they're all on these different schedules now, they'll have the factual stuff to do in a way that is more humorous. [00:24:01] PF: That's so huge. There's just not enough levity in the workplace, and we understand business is serious. But sometimes, we take it so seriously that we suck the lives out of ourselves and others. [00:24:12] AG: Yep. [00:24:12] PF: We're going to tell the listeners how they can find you and get this free book and start doing their 60-day Unicorn Challenge. I feel like this has so much potential to really put a smile on people's faces, like it's done with me, and really make a difference in how they live their lives every day. [00:24:28] AG: Okay. I'll challenge you to just pick one of the 60-day things. And when we get to talk again, let's come back, and we'll compare notes on what worked and what didn't. [00:24:37] PF: You got it. I love it. Andrea, thank you again for sitting down. It's always a treat to talk to you, and so looking forward to sharing this with our audience. [00:24:45] AG: Thank you, and I appreciate the opportunity as always. The more happy, joyous people succeeding in our world, the better our world is going to be. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:24:57] PF: That was Andrea Goeglein, talking about her 60-day Unicorn Challenge. If you'd like to download your free Unicorn Challenge e-book, learn more about Andrea and her other books, follow her on social media, or check out her Hey, Boss Lady! Podcast, visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. Now that the month of February is here, we're starting to think about our annual Happy Acts campaign, and we'd love for you to do the same. Throughout March, we're offering a full month of daily suggestions to help you make your world a happier place. It's kind of like an advent calendar for happiness. We invite you to visit the Happy Acts section of our website, livehappy.com, to learn how you can be involved and how you can host a happiness wall in your home, office, church, or school to celebrate the International Day of Happiness on March 20th. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you have to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Unleash Your Creativity With Steven Kowalski [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 402 of Live Happy Now. Creativity is a driving force of innovation. But have you thought about how it can change your life at work and at home? I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I'm being joined by Steven Kowalski, a leading voice in the global movement for conscious creativity. In his new book, Creative Together: Sparking Innovation in the New World of Work, he explains that all of us are creative, whether we think we are or not, and he tells us how to find our own creative style. Then use that to find greater satisfaction, both on the job and at home. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:44] PF: Steven, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:46] SK: Great to be here. [00:00:47] PF: This is such a great topic to talk about because we talk about creativity in our lives, but you are really taking it into the business space and looking at how it affects us at work, at home, and all these different ways. So I'm excited to talk to you. I guess before we dive in, can you tell us what you mean when you talk about conscious creativity because this was interesting to me. [00:01:09] SK: Yeah, super. I think conscious anything, conscious leadership, conscious capitalism, conscious creativity, we're hearing a lot of that these days. What that really means to me is that we're bringing attention and intention to what we're doing. So there's a component of self-awareness. There's a component of being clear about what I'm aiming for, reflecting on how results are mapping to my intentions. Intention and attention is probably the shorthand. [00:01:36] PF: Yeah. How does one start giving more thought to that? Because I do think in the past, we've been like either, “Oh, I'm creative, or I feel creative,” and not really thinking about our control over it. [00:01:49] SK: Yeah. So in the book, Creative Together, I talk about how most of us are walking around with what I call an ability-based definition of creativity. What that means is we think it's an ability that we have or don't have or have to some degree, and we just kind of settle into – In some ways, maybe that's even comfortable to think, “Well, maybe I'm not that creative. So I shouldn't expect it that much for myself.” But we all have the opportunity to move to this different way of thinking about creativity, but it's a potential. So I talk about this in Creative Together that shift is really critical. Because when I approached my life and my work as if creativity was an ability, I may or may not realize all the opportunities that I have to bring it forward and bring it into work, into the teamwork that I do, into the business. That's the first part about paying attention and bringing more intention, more conscious creativity is understanding that we're operating in this old story of what creativity is, and the first thing we need to do is to change the story. Then we can change the story of who we are as creators and then create more effectively with others. [00:03:01] PF: Right. Because that is one thing, and you bring it out so beautifully in the book that we've kind of been taught, when we think of creativity, we think of artists and writers and musicians. So someone who is in a business space, someone who's an accountant doesn't think, “Gosh, I'm a creative person.” We've been told that our entire lives. So how do we start thinking about creativity differently and seeing how it is being used in our daily work so that we can tap into it? [00:03:33] SK: Yeah. I like to think about creativity and propose this definition. Creativity is really this potential that we have to invent new solutions to problems we either face. So pandemic – [00:03:47] PF: Oh, is that a problem? [00:03:48] SK: Flooding, job losses, whatever, right? Problems we face or problems that we designed for ourselves. Like I have an aspiration to write a book. I'd like to start a business. When I call them problems, it's really opportunities, right? [00:04:03] PF: I love that. [00:04:04] SK: That's a big part of the switch. But creativity is just our potential to invent new solutions, new approaches, new in the face of these challenges and opportunities we might face or design for ourselves. I think that's critical as a starting point because then, anytime we face a challenge or an opportunity and an accountant or a scientist, or an IT professional, or an HR professional, or an engineer, or anyone from any industry at all, in any domain or line of work, is going to face challenges and opportunities, some of those we’ll design for ourselves, and some of them will be impinging on us. If we pay attention, we start to see evidence that our creativity is there every day, moment to moment, as we need it. That's, I think, the critical piece. In the potential definition, it shows up when we need it. In the ability definition, it's supposed to be there all the time, and some people just have less, and some people have more. [00:05:08] PF: So what do people need to do to kind of start changing their mindset and realizing, “I am creative, and this is creativity at work.”? What are some of those little baby steps to start looking at that? [00:05:20] SK: Yeah. In the book, I talked about the GIFTED methodology, G-I-F-T-E-D. So I'm going to use the first couple of letters as some of the answer to your question. So the G stands for greet the unknown with passion. I know I often greet the unknown with dread. [00:05:38] PF: Yeah. Or fear, terror. [00:05:41] SK: I try to control against it. So greet the unknown with passion, with faith in my creativity. So greeting the unknown is like one of the most important steps. There's uncertainty. There's volatility. There's complexity. We've heard this VUCA thing for many, many years now, right? There's ambiguity. What we need to do as a first step is not shy away from this because that's where our creativity will get activated. That's the G in GIFTED. I is ignite creative potential, and it's important to know what kinds of conditions give rise to creativity and to work those conditions. I call it the intersection of purpose, possibility, and constraint. All three of those things are essential ingredients for our creativity to show up. Maybe just at the very start is to think about like what are the unknowns in my life? Where are the arenas in which my creativity might show up? Maybe I'm getting a divorce. Maybe I'm looking for a new house. Maybe I'm starting a business. Maybe I'm recovering from a challenging illness, whatever. What are some of those unknowns, and how is my creativity showing up there or not? Or how can I bring more conscious awareness to how it is showing up and then work it a little bit more? [00:06:59] PF: You are really a fan of actually working on your creativity in terms of it's not just like becoming aware that I’m creative. They need to do some exercises, and they really need to do things to nurture and cultivate that. [00:07:13] SK: Yes, we all do. It's the most sustainable, inexhaustible resource we have, our creativity. I call it CDD, creativity disruption disorder. We're walking around, not realizing the amazing potential that we have and how to use it more consciously. [00:07:31] PF: Another thing that you say, and I love this, it's once we discover our creativity, we must have profound faith in it. That was just a really powerful statement. Can you explain what you mean by that? Then tell us why we need to have that much faith in it. [00:07:49] SK: I can and I'd also love to hear what went through your head maybe after when you read that, and it had that impact on you. When we rely on our creativity as an inexhaustible, sustainable resource, we can face these unknowns, this ambiguity, this uncertainty that where – It seems to me – I don't know. I don't think I'm unusual in this way, but it seems like there's more and more of it, and it's coming from every direction. I don't know how many inboxes I have now, with all the email inboxes that I have and the – Forget the mailbox. It's like old school, right? There's all these inboxes. There's all this input. There are so many demands. There's obligations. There's things I want to do, that time is running out. How am I going to manage this? There are so many unknowns that I'm facing, and I think that's critical. When I have faith in my creativity that it's going to show up, it's less overwhelming. These things are less taxing. I see them more as opportunity as opposed to trauma and adversity. [00:08:49] PF: That makes absolute sense. [00:08:51] SK: Was there anything that came into your awareness as you read that? [00:08:54] PF: Yes. Because I think it's almost like two sides of a coin because on one hand, I do take that creativity for granted, and that is doing what I do. I write. I write stories. I write books. I do a lot of things, in addition to podcasting. So I kind of take it for granted. But then on the other side, it’s almost like realizing I don't have enough faith in that creativity that it is always going to be the thing that I lead with. That's what I want to get into as well. I think sometimes, I need to lead with the idea and let the creativity catch up to it. You talk about that in the business sense of we're focusing on innovation, when we should be focusing on creativity, because that's the spark that drives it. The way that you put that all together, it's like, okay, I'm doing kind of the reverse. I've reversed engineered the way that it should be done. That is, as you said, so many businesses are doing that, placing the emphasis on the wrong thing. So can you talk about that, why it's important? We’re all talking about innovation and disruption, and this is how we lead, and you're saying like, “Hang on. That's not where it starts.” [00:10:04] SK: Well, I see innovation as a type of creative result. It's a creative result that yields value, new value. The interesting thing you could ask is like, okay, value for whom? What kind of value, like constructive, destructive? I don't know. But innovation at its core is about new value, new markets, new customers, new benefits, new whatever, new value. As a creative result, if I'm not working with my creativity and my relationship with my creativity is kind of in the closet or – In Creative Together, I say where is your creativity? Is it out in the lobby checked out? Imagine you're in a theater. [00:10:48] PF: It's waiting in the trunk. [00:10:49] SK: Out on the balcony, like unreachable or – Where is it? So I don't have that daily connection. If I'm not leveraging it, if I'm not drawing on it, if I'm not stepping into the unknown with faith, I'm kind of disadvantaging myself. [00:11:05] PF: So what should leaders be doing to foster that creative thinking and to really encourage it in employees? [00:11:14] SK: First thing I'll say is clarify the purpose, the reason why people's creativity should show up. Because if it's just about the routine or if it's just about delivering business as usual, creativity won't show up. The thing about that is it's so sad to me when people are in jobs, or their work is sort of routine day to day, and they start to think, “I'm not creative.” The truth is the work that I'm doing, I'm not being asked for that. My manager, my leader is not being asked for that. He’s not asking me for that. So I say the first thing that leaders need to do is to clarify the purpose, the reason why people's creativity should come up, come forward today. Why do we need something different than the status quo? So that's number one. The second thing is we all have a tolerance for ambiguity in our self, and I find that leaders often limit the degrees of freedom that they allow for folks to do their work. So if I'm a leader, and I've got a low tolerance for ambiguity, and I don't give degrees of freedom, I need to see results right away. Creativity needs room. There's exploration that's part of it. There's prototyping and things that work out and things that don't work out, right? If I'm micromanaging or if I'm stuck in having it done my way or the way I think it should be done, I'm not getting the degrees of freedom that are necessary for creativity to emerge. So those are two things I might answer in a short answer. We could talk about that. [00:12:49] PF: Exactly. That could be a whole episode right there. So what then happens to the individual, as we're allowed to use more creativity on the job? How does that make us happier? How does that make us more productive at work? [00:13:03] SK: Yeah. I immediately go to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and I think self-actualization is kind of at the top of that pyramid. It starts out with things like safety and security and just getting my basic needs met. At the top of his pyramid is self-actualization, and I think creativity is part of our feeling like we're self-actualizing. We're making a difference. We're learning. We're transforming in ways that we're seeing changes in our lives. So creativity is intimately intertwined with some of these processes that make life meaningful and help me connect with others. [00:13:40] PF: Then as we become happier, we're going to take those feelings home. There are so many studies that show if it's not working out on the job, you're taking that home. You're not going to feel great when you get home. So obviously, the reverse is true. So what happens? What have you seen in the people that you work with, as they begin implementing more creativity in their work? How does that spill over into their home life? [00:14:04] SK: Sure. I'll share a story about an IT professional, a leader in the IT department of a company that I worked with. We were talking about the voice of judgment and how that inner critic that we have – Arianna Huffington calls it the obnoxious roommate. There are so many names for it. We were working in this concept because the inner critic can really stifle the expression of creativity. The inner critic is there to keep you safe, right? So we were talking about the inner critic, and we weren't focusing in on business, and what are some of the declarative statements that stakeholders are making, that customers are making, that we're making about what's possible and what's not possible? Sure enough, the next time we got together, she said, “You know, I went home, and I really reflected on my relationship with my 15-year-old son, and I realized there was so much critic operating and running in my head. The stories I was telling, the questions I was asking him, that I was shocked and stunned at how this was getting in the way.” So the practices that help us access our creativity and bring it forward more effectively also can help us in our relationships, and in our communities, and the work we might be doing with nonprofits and all kinds of things. I think that's some of the ways that people can see this interchange between work and life. [00:15:26] PF: Yeah, because you can't really compartmentalize creativity. Once you let it out, it's going to take over. Let's talk. You mentioned someone with their 15-year-old son. What is it that we as adults, as parents can do to bring up children to nurture that creativity, so they don't have to wait until they're on the job, and they're in their 30s or 40s and trying to figure out their creative side? How do we nurture that creativity as they're growing up? [00:15:51] SK: I'll tell a story. When I was young and I was expressing my creativity through art and I would take what I was working on to my parents. It was only partially done, or I had just started. They will say, “Well, bring it back to me when it's done.” Now, of course, if anyone who's familiar with agile and agile methodologies, right? One of the tenants of agile is early and frequent customer input. So in a way, I was there looking for input early and often, and I was getting shut down or like, “Don't come to me till it's done.” So sometimes, we don't even realize how we may be setting up weird assumptions and rules for our kids by just the simplest behavior or not even being aware. But I would say encourage exploration. If a kid comes to us with something that they're working on or something, provide some input. Ask them questions, instead of giving answers. These are maybe a few things that I think we could do in response to your question. [00:16:49] PF: I like that. Then the more you practice it at home, you're also going to keep doing it work. [00:16:54] SK: Mm-hmm, asking questions is one of our – [00:16:55] PF: It’s an upward spiral. [00:16:57] SK: It is. It is. Asking questions is one of our four superpowers that I talk about in Creative Together, and asking questions is such an important part of encouraging creativity, not just in ourselves but in others, whether it's business colleagues or kids or elderly parents or whoever it is. [00:17:15] PF: Yeah. We get caught up in the talking, especially we're in a high-output society. We got to tweet our opinions. We got to make our posts on Facebook, Instagram, and we don't ask enough questions. We don't listen enough. So I love the fact that you really emphasize that and show us the value of doing that. That's a big part of it. Now, let's talk about creative styles. I really enjoyed this part of the book because it's fun to say, “Oh, I can see myself in that one and that one,” but then find out like, “Okay, yeah. I definitely skew toward that, over it.” Let's talk about the three creative styles and that fourth thing with the styles. [00:17:52] SK: That's great. So this came out of my doctoral research at UCLA. During my dissertation, I saw in the work that I was doing in the research I was doing these different styles showed up. Because I was at the Department of Education, I was looking at teachers in a very bureaucratic school district most of them are. So how do teachers in that context express their creativity in relationship to this social system that they're in? That's all of us. Me and my job, I'm in a social system. Anyone in any industry, anyone in any, whether you're a nonprofit or healthcare or corporation or whatever, we're all in a social system. So the styles that showed up then that have stayed true over the years, the soloist, the soloist said – You're saying – You're putting your hands up. [00:18:42] PF: Yeah, yeah. That's me. [00:18:44] SK: I'm a soloist at my core too, and soloists love to sort of create within the sphere of influence that they have and share the products of their creations. I'll just say our creations because I'm there too. Once they're done or pretty far along, so that other people can benefit. But it's not really like a co-creating kind of thing. I have my space of creative in that space. I share with others. But let me do it in my space. So that's a little bit about the soloist. The second style that I talked about is the rebel. The thing about the rebel is the rebel’s motivated. The rebel’s creativity gets activated by the gap between what is and what could or should be. There's this sense of like what's right and just. So we saw this in any number of folks in the school system, and I see it in myself as well. When something's not right or words don't match actions, there's a part of me that gets activated. I want to deliver solutions or help solve that. My creativity gets activated there. But the thing about rebels is that right can sometimes turn into righteousness. If I go on a crusade, I’m going to alienate the folks I very much want to join me, right? So that's a little bit about the rebel. The entrepreneur, there's a lot of us that can relate to the entrepreneur, and anyone starting a business and anyone sort of initiating things inside of a business also might relate. We have this strong vision for what could be some kind of solution, a new service, a new product, a new marketing angle, a new market base. So the entrepreneur sees these opportunities, looks kind of broadly across the system. Okay, how am I going to work politics and resourcing and investments and all kinds of things to make this happen? The trick with the entrepreneur is that sometimes the vision that I have is so strong that it's hard for people to join me. When that vision may need to evolve or change, as it meets the real world and the realities and constraints of the real world, I may become disengaged or not lose interest. That's a little bit about the three styles. One of the things all three styles share in common is they believe that the ideas that they're having are mine, my idea, my idea to arrange the classroom this way, my idea to fix an injustice, my idea to start this company. You mentioned that fourth style that I suggest in Creative Together that we all need to bring forward a little bit more. The collaborator doesn't have the same sense of ownership of ideas. It doesn't matter who has the idea. From the collaborator’s perspective, it's like, “Let's move it forward. I'm playing a part. I'm contributing. We're co-creating.” You're not creating over there and then sharing it with me. We're actually making it together. We're jointly tangibly producing something together that we couldn't produce alone. So that's a little bit about – That was kind of long-winded. Sorry, but that’s – [00:21:59] PF: No. No, it wasn't. [00:21:59] SK: Talking about the four styles. [00:22:01] PF: That was great. So why is it so important for us to understand our creative style? Once we do, once we know that, what do we do with that information? [00:22:11] SK: Yeah. So I talk about developing a practice plan for bringing the collaborator forward because that's what I see in this new world of work, where things are so interdependent, where what I do here today impacts all sorts of possibilities for others and other parts of the system today and tomorrow. So bringing that collaborator forward is really critical, and first step is to understand my style, and maybe challenge some of the beliefs and assumptions that are behind that. For example, as a soloist, I may think that it's possible to create alone. But creativity is actually meant to be shared, and it's kind of an illusion that we can create alone. Even if I'm sitting in my room, and I'm doing something, I cannot separate myself from all the influences that are around me every day, the entire world that's around me. I'm taking fragments of ideas and fragments of conversations and pieces of information from something I read. I'm connecting them, right? So it's an illusion that we actually create alone. It’s also an illusion that the idea is mine, right? Okay. So maybe I realize that. I've come to terms with that. I want to develop some practices to you know, to help me open up, to help me join others sometimes, instead of having others just join me. [00:23:34] PF: I like that. I like that. There's so much wisdom in this book, and it's also fun. I was surprised like how fun it was because I thought it would feel more scholarly. This is something that everyone can really dive into. I wondered, as the author, what is it that you really hope that readers take away from this book? [00:23:54] SK: I think the big message is in this new world that we're in post-pandemic, with the pluses and minuses of how we're all connected with through technology, all of these kinds of things, in this new world that we're working in, strength will come from creating together. But it's not something we're schooled in. It's not something we're practiced in. It's not something we've been conscious about. So the book is organized as a journey to first change the story of what creativity is and who I am as a creator. If I had left it there as the author, I would feel that it was incomplete. Because the reason to do that inner work, the reason to reflect on what gifts I bring, what challenges I face, what tests I face, what my superpowers are, all those things that are in the first part of the book. The reason to do that work is so that I can create more effectively with others in business, in life through my communities, through my social activism or advocacy. Whatever ways I might want to express that, that's where the strength is going to come. So that's my core message. In the new world of work, we have to get creative together. [00:25:08] PF: That’s so excellent. Steven, I appreciate you taking the time today. This was a wonderful conversation. It's a great book. I've really, truly enjoyed this book, and I think our listeners are going to get a lot out of it as well. [00:25:21] SK: That's great. Thank you so much, Paula. [00:25:22] PF: Thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:25:27] PF: That was Steven Kowalski, talking about how to discover our creativity. If you'd like to learn more about Steven and his book or follow him on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're on the website, I'd like to invite you to check out our new podcast channel, Live Happy Presents. This sponsored podcast sees us partnering with like-minded brands to bring you information about products or services that can help improve your well-being. For our first episode, we talk with Megan McDonough of the Wholebeing Institute and learn how times of uncertainty often are the best opportunity for bringing positive change into our lives. We hear Megan's own story of how such an inflection point led her to leave corporate America and pursue inner peace and how that led to creating the Wholebeing Institute. Then we'll tell you about their program to help you take the next step toward personal happiness. You can find that episode called Take the Next Steps to Happiness with Megan McDonough on our podcast tab under Live Happy Presents. That is all we have time for today. We will meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]