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Be Nice to Your Genius
In this mini episode Kate talks about the importance of the words we use when we talk about ourselves and our artwork because our inner Creative Genius is listening. She shares a simple daily practice we can incorporate into our lives that will help us notice when we are being unkind to ourselves so that we can stop doing that and be kind to our Creative Genius - otherwise they are unlikely to come out to play and show us all the amazing things they have to share.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
Hello, friends, it's me Kate Shepherd, host of the creative genius podcast. And I'm coming at you right now with episode three of what I was originally calling Sunday minis. But I realized, it doesn't really matter when you listen to this. And I think a better name for them might be genius moments. Because the intention for these little short episodes is to share little bursts of brilliant ideas or moments that deeply resonated with me this week, or insights or epiphanies, useful little tidbits that I think can carry you through your week. And so genius moments feels a little closer, closer to that I'm really excited about what I want to share with you today feels very alive for me. But before I do that, I want to just remind you, my you know, I'd love to hear from you, I'd love to share mail from you on the show. If you have, you know, an idea that you want to share or an epiphany or a light bulb moment of your own. And you want to share it with the other listeners, please email me, Kate Shepherd creative@gmail.com. You can also find me on Instagram @KateShepherdCreative as well. And I also want to remind you about the creative genius family on the Facebook page, we have if you go to the creative genius Facebook page, we have the creative genius family. And it's a it's an online community for us to have, you know, ongoing conversations about what's going on for us. And already it's a small group, it's just growing, we just started it. But already there's some beautiful supportive conversations, people sharing a challenge that they're having. And then other people coming in and saying, well, here, here's some support, or here's an idea, or here's how I did it. And, and or just here's a piece of my work that I'm working on right now. What do you think, and then people are giving each other beautiful feedback, it's a really great place. You're welcome to join us. And all you have to do is send us a request, and we'll let you in. And we can be in community together. So I wanted to talk today about how about how we talk to ourselves, about our inner voice. And I said, there's a couple different ways I talk about inner voice, I talk about inner voice, sort of the quiet, soft, quiet voice inside of us that nudges us to do things, you know, the the knowing voice, the one where when it speaks, we know it's right, we got I got to do that thing. It was the voice I heard when I had the idea to do this podcast. I've heard the voice before as I'm driving down the street saying turn right, not turn left. And I've avoided accidents that way. I mean, we have this inner intelligence inside of us. That that speaks to us. So there's that inner voice. But there's another inner voice too. And in fact, there's a whole committee of these voices. And I've referred to them as my board of directors, I feel like I've got this kind of group of people inside my head that are sometimes really hard on me, you know, they're, they want me to do well, but they, you know, it's that voice that's like, well, you're not doing that very well. Or what about this or no, you can't do that, or that will never happen or you know that that inner voice. So it's that inner voice that I wanted to shed some light on today. Because it's I think it's so important for us to remember that our inner artist, our creative genius are that energy inside of us where creativity comes from is listening to every word you say. And, and it's watching to see which thoughts you believe. And it's so important that we I used to have a very dear friend who would say you need to stand guard at the door of your mind. And be very careful about what thoughts you let in. And I love that I
think that's so important. I saw an old friend this week call herself a hack. You know, she's learning a new art form. She's trying to master a new, she's, she's working on printmaking. And she's new at it relatively new at it, and she's working with some of the greats. And I can understand you know, when you're first mastering something, and when you're first getting into something, you're not a master yet, but you're also not a hack. And that the words we choose to, to use to describe ourselves are so important because that soft, quiet inner artist inner creative genius is listening. And when we talk about it in these terms of of self deprecation and, and putting it down and you know, we warn people before we even start to sing our draw or dance or write or whatever Oh, I'm not very good. You know, I'm I'm a hack. I'm not very good or I don't know what I'm doing or I'm just playing or I know I'll never be very good at this Sir. And we do that I understand why we do that we do that to protect ourselves, we do that to protect ourselves from getting hurt. We do that to preempt criticism, we do that too, to protect ourselves from the embarrassment of, of other people's judgement. But really, what we need to do is become an advocate, and a guardian for that soft, quiet inner artist, and not let those voices speak to it. Because how can it be? How can this inner artist this vulnerable, curious, playful, it's very childlike, right? How can that come out and play and be vulnerable and take you unexpected places and show you new things. If it thinks that you just think it's an idiot, or doesn't know what it's doing, or it's a hack, or it's rudimentary or basic, or whatever it, it can't, it can't show you any of the things that it wants to show you. As long as you're talking about it in a way that makes it feel stupid, basically. So all of this is really about saying, Just notice, I mean, and now don't start beating yourself up because you've been beating yourself up. That's not the point. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying, notice how you talk about yourself. Notice, and I think a great practice for this is to have a sketchbook. Even if you have no interest in being a visual artist, this practice applies to you to have a sketchbook or notebook or whatever, and a pen and a paper and, or watercolor or whatever it is you want to use. And just do a little daily sketch, you know, give yourself a prompt where you, you look around the room in the morning and you say stapler, okay, today, I'm gonna draw stapler, cup or mug, or you can even get one of those, I think there's, there's a book that's like 500 Drawing prompts or something, you just flip open a page, and it will just say, like scissors, or toy soldier, or Daisy, it just gives you a prompt, and just sketch that out. And then look at that sketch. And notice how you feel when you look at it. And this goes back to an episode we had a couple of weeks ago with Sheila Darcy. So go back and listen to that, because she's written a whole book called sketch poetic, where you do you have a sketch practice, where every day you sketch, and then you sit with your feelings about your work. And it isn't about the work. It's about your narrative about the work. It's about your relationship to the work. It's about your self judgment. It's about, you know, oh, that cup looks so dumb, or I hate the lines of it or hate the angles. Okay, well, why? What don't you like about that? Because the truth is, the thing that you don't like about your art is actually the thing that makes it so magnificent. You know, I was looking at one of the somebody on the creative genius family Facebook group, posted a picture of her work this morning. And I know this artists from another online community. And her work is very distinctive. And it's beautiful. And I love it.
It struck me when I was looking at her this piece that she shared today, how, what a miracle it is that our that everything we do really does have our energetic fingerprint on it all. It's infused throughout the whole thing. And it's so important that we can become friends with and fall in love with how we're different, and how our work looks different. So what if the mug that you do is wonky and weird, or every time that you try to draw a dog, the eyes are just way too big. That's your thing. That's your style. That's your voice. And people spend years and years and years trying to find their voice and their style. And it's really just right in front of you. It's just that it's the thing you're trying to transcend. It's the thing you're trying to make go away. It's the thing that's different about your work and you're trying to, you know, stop doing that. Fall in love with how you're different fall in love with how you're weird fall in love with the quirkiness of your voice. If you you know when you're singing and there's just that one note you never get that's your thing. That is your signature. That is your that is you. And that's what makes you so amazing. And that's what we're waiting for. So there's you can either fall in love with that and be excited about sharing that different crazy, quirky, wonky thing with the world. Or you can call yourself a hack and shut that part of yourself down and, and really actually trap yourself into in a place where you're not able to really ever grow or create or Splore or express, you kind of you kind of just put a kink in the hose, and then nothing can come out when you do that. So I wanted, I felt really passionately about this this week, I did a little reel about it. And I'm sharing this with you now, because I think it can go unnoticed, it can go unchecked, it can go, it's, it's so acceptable, really, culturally, for us to say, Oh, you have to be good, or you have to be, you know, of course, you can't call yourself an artist until this, this, this and this, or you've done your 10,000 hours or you've whatever. And I'm here to just call bullshit on that, because that's not true. You already are the artists do you think you have to work so hard to become you already are that it's already you already are 230 here, if the thing you have to do is get over your idea that you need to be something else, to be something better to be something other than what you already are. That's the hardest part. And if you can do that, then you get to just bust out and express the thing that's been trying to get out of you since you were 10 years old, maybe even younger. So that's what was on my heart today, what I want to share with you go get messy, go do something, you know that, that read off to think about it, go make some ugly art, go make some ugly music, go write a terrible poem. Just let yourself be free. And and notice that notice what you your tendency, notice the thing you want to say to yourself, notice the tendency to be so hard on yourself. Notice that don't and but please do not be hard on yourself for being hard on yourself. Just notice that notice that you do it. Because we all do it. And and really I promise you just noticing that you're doing it is going to be enough to help you get some breath around that. And and maybe not next time. Maybe you'll just draw the wonky cop or the dog with the big eyes at the terrible palm or the note will come out wrong. And you'll just go Oh, there I am. Have a really beautiful week. We have an amazing episode coming up for you next week. I can hardly wait. It's very hard for me to not tell you it is. But it's amazing. So stay tuned. And yeah, send in your emails. I really want to hear from you. And if there's somebody out there listening to this right now, and you want to come on one of these genius moments and have a conversation with me about something related to your creative process or an idea you had or realization you had or something big that you learned that you think would be useful to share with other people. Drop me a line and we'll see what we can do about getting on the show. Have a beautiful day. And go be nice to your genius
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