There’s something that I often see in my young children, that we lose in adulthood, and it’s the ability to abandon fear and ego, and to create. In today’s interview Brooke Schultz calls creativity the backdoor to personal progress, and I couldn’t agree more. Her outlook will inspire you to see the potential to create in your day-to-day life by adding a little intention and fun in to the things you already do.
Brooke is a multi-passionate creative who shares the highs and lows of her creative pursuits. She has several ways to help ignite the creative flame in your own life, and invites you to have the courage to take just five minutes and do the messiest version of your vision. The impact of your creativity goes beyond just yourself, it is worth investing in because you never know what the ripple effect is going to be.
About a few other things…
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Songs Credit: Pleasant Pictures Music Club
TRANSCRIPT
Monica: Brooke Schultz, welcome to about progress.
Brooke: Thank you, Monica. I have this huge grin on my face. Such a treat.
Monica: Well, so do I, why? Because it’s about time and I like, and now I wanna do that song. Like, is that the Lizzo song? It, that’s what it feels like right now because I have been a fan of yours and I’ve loved learning from you. I got to be on your podcast and I’ve been so excited to have you on. You have a really an amazing community of creatives, and we’re gonna be talking about creativity, but maybe not in the ways that women are like, I automatically don’t qualify because I’m not the quote unquote creative type.
And actually, that’s where we’re gonna start. Why you think women need to begin by acknowledging that they are creative and why? What does that look like? Tell us all about that.
Brooke: Yes, we’re creating everything in our lives constantly, and everything that we do is creative from the way that you get dressed in the morning to the way that you comfort a crying child. It’s all creativity. So it’s just a matter of first acknowledging that and acknowledging that maybe where you aren’t feeling super creative is in those areas in your life where you’re not infusing very much intention and maybe some fun into those things. So maybe you are getting dressed intentionally every day, but a lot of us aren’t. And so with anything you can infuse more intention and more fun and that helps it feel super creative.
Monica: And is that what you think? The cre, you know, creativity, if you were to break it down, it’s intention and fun?
Brooke: Yes.
Monica: I’m.
Brooke: Mm-hmm. , the ingenuity. Kind of that classic definition of creativity where you’re thinking of new ideas, you can bring that to everything from your mundane life to a formal creative practice like jewelry making, painting, or starting a business.
Monica: So why does it matter that women acknowledge that they’re creative and and try to insert intention, fun, ingenuity into what they’re doing? What difference does that make to their lives?
Brooke: It’s so fascinating because we think that it’s extra. We think that it’s something that we do If we have extra time at the end of the day, maybe after all the kids are down for bed and we can kind of tap into ourselves at at that point. But when you own your creative power, you are happier, you are less reactive, you’re less ragey, you have these deep wells to draw from because you’re consistently connecting to the deepest part of yourself to be a creative person. Like everyone is a creative person because to be human is to be creative, and we, you cannot go through a day in your life without creating something. Have you ever seen that movie?
It’s a wonderful life where he sees how his, how his world would be so different if he was erased. That’s the same with your life. And think about the the power that you have in over and in all your environments and throughout your entire day. And the funniest thing is we think that we know what’s gonna happen in a day.
But we really have no idea. we have no clue. And Covid has taught us that if nothing else, right, and when we can really embrace this creative power and creative spirit, then we can lean into both sides of it, both this assertion side, this powerful side and this flow side where we can really say, yeah, life is one big improv dance and I have no idea what’s coming next.
And I can, you know, have fun in.
Monica: And it feels like to me, also more empowering because, because we don’t exactly know what’s gonna happen every day and even moment to moment, it gives us more choice in how we’re going to steer the ship and how we’re going to react or respond and all that. I’m, I’m curious, brick, have you lived out this difference?
you know, between not having this creative power part of your day-to-day life and having it more so now.
Brooke: I’ve always been someone that has been voracious for creativity. When I was younger, I would make lists of color names. That was my creative thing. I had, I would write novels. As a kid, I was always singing, so I always had this intense drive to make things. And actually one of my favorite definitions of creativity comes from Brene Brown.
She says, creativity is meaning making. And I love that so much because we are constantly encountering new stimulation, new information, new circumstances in our lives that require us to make meaning and creativity is such a gorgeous outlet for that. So for example, I have four kids. I have a special needs kiddo, and I was in therapy a few months back just trying to get a handle on this, trying to get a handle on, okay, this is my life.
How do I accept it? How do I, how do I feel powerful? How do I move forward in this? And my therapist was great and she gave me some good tools and then at a certain point I realized that I had a creative project that was calling to me and it was actually to write a musical about motherhood and about family life, and I got so excited, so jazzed about this idea.
I started on the musical, got this huge stack of books, researching, started with just voice memos in my phone of little melodies, little riffs, ideas. A couple sessions later at therapy, I realized I don’t need this anymore. I’m good. I’m getting so much more juice, meaning making and therapy from my creative practice.
Now, of course, it’s not to discount therapy for anyone, but that just shows the the power that can happen when you answer that creative calling.
Monica: Mm-hmm. . And I see a real fork in the world for myself in my past. Like I can make that connection and see you know, for me it was about reclaiming myself, but a big part of that was leaning into creativity in ways I hadn’t for so long. Because like you said, I had put it on the back burner. I had made it the last thing I did.
I wanna spend a little bit more time on what is getting in the way, just like that. What is getting in the way a woman embracing the creative power?
Brooke: They think it has to be productive. And to, for it to be productive, they think it has to be perfect. And I know that’s something that your audience really relates to, but the , the funniest thing about creativity, of course, is that the more you try to boss it around and make it perfect before you and, and think it, Into perfection, think it into being, the less, the less good the work ends up being. And I see this over and over again with photographers and other creative people that I work with where they overthink everything and the double-edged sword and the fun of a creative practice, whether it’s, you know, your, your medium that you’ve done for a long time, or you’re starting in a brand new medium in which you have no skill, is that the only way out is through.
The only way to get that creative power is to do and to do poorly . Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly and the also the ,personal growth that you encounter when you embark on this creative journey where you’re not good at something in the beginning and you want to be so good at it. And there’s a famous quote by Eric Glass about, How you get into something because you have good taste and you see these, these amazing creations that your heroes are making or someone on Instagram is making, and you just think, that’s so incredible.
I want to do that. And so you start doing it and your work is so bad and the, the process of trying to close that gap is actually I think one of the most delicious backdoors to personal growth, that’s that nobody’s really talking about because all this, all the personal growth stuff that we talk about so often to me, sometimes feels just boring and like, oh, I don’t wanna add one more boring thing to my list in the day.
I have enough mundane going on. So if I can get that same benefit from this mysterious romantic dance with creative inspiration, I’m gonna pick that every time.
Monica: I love how you’re breaking this down and it is helping me see why I stopped for a while and it was, you know, putting productivity first and it was overthinking. It was knowing that I was gonna be terrible at it and what actually helped me get started. was the idea that I was allowed to be mediocre at stuff.
And you’re leaning into that heart, it sounds like you’re trying to say like that is how you access a creative power is by allowing yourself to not be good at things and knowing that is the whole point. Even that’s, that’s where the development lies.
Brooke: Yeah, I think a lot of us, especially high achieving women or women who tend to have perfectionistic qualities, tendencies, were told that we were smart and talented. growing up, and that’s very well intentioned, but smart and talented gives us what Carol direct defines as a fixed mindset, right? And that creative practice is all about the growth mindset.
It’s all about, I don’t know what I’m doing and that’s part of the fun and I, that’s a complete I reprogramming for me, as someone who was told that I was smart and talented, I thought that I had. Prove that I was smart and talented. I had this fantasy when I was 10 years old that I was gonna be the first singer that got famous by being discovered like on a street corner.
By the way, I would like sing while I was riding my bike, thinking that producers like such, such a 10 year old girl thing to do. I thought that I was gonna get discovered and that I was gonna become famous and be the first singer to not ever have formal voice training. And I was so enthralled with that story, and I think a lot of us are fed that story of like, if you’re not a child prodigy, if you didn’t start dancing at age two and continue all the way and never, ever stop and never ever give up, that sort of like hustle, grind mentality that gets applied to creative practices.
We think if I don’t have that, then it’s over before I even begin and we fail before we start. We fail ahead of time. Whereas if we can instead, embrace this dance. Embrace this. Embrace the gorgeousness of a beginning. Like if you imagine how you felt when you first fell in love and. Maybe you’re in a longer term relationship right now, and that relationship shapes, shifts so much over time and that relation, like the depth of love that you have right now, you probably wouldn’t trade.
But that beginning, that first falling in love, it’s so intoxicating and it’s so fun and you can get that same feeling without, you know, getting a new partner. You can just get a new creative practice. It’s the best
Monica: This is so fun and I have to say like if people should be watching in real time, you posting about this motherhood musical that you’re creating and just how you’ve been the past few days. You’ve been, I’m like a to a total stalker right now, but you’ve been sharing your process of it and the mess of it and kind of that dance of it that you’ve been sharing.
Part of that dance is hard work. . It requires work. And I think expecting that and knowing like you don’t have to be again good at it or that it’s not too late to be bad at something too, will just help you move that through that a little bit better. And this is where I would actually love for some more tips for the woman who are like, okay, I’m ready to embrace.
It’s not too late for. To access my creative power to even find out what that looks like in my life and how to insert it or how to make it a practice, or how to explore a medium. It’s not too late. I can do it messy. What tips do you have for them who are interested in getting to in touch with this creative power?
Brooke: Yeah. The first thing that I would suggest is actually looking to your favorite creations. Maybe it’s your favorite book. What’s your favorite movie, your favorite song, and then the very first baby step that you’re gonna do is some sort of riff on that creation. So maybe it’s that you. Write a song for the end credits of those movies or of your favorite movie, or you make a piece of jewelry that you, that a character in that movie would wear.
Maybe you write a short story based on one of the characters in your favorite book. It can be even just an another verse to your favorite song. But having that. That piece, that parameter to start from is going to give you everything that you need to get rid of that blank canvas, blinking white screen of death, a blank page, you know,
Monica: overwhelm.
Brooke: It’s totally overwhelmed. And once you start, the funnest thing about creativity is that once you start, then you start to get all these ideas.
Because if you’re a fan, if you’re a hardcore fan, you have favorite authors or favorite movies or you know, favorite, whatever that is your preferred medium of consumption. And creativity, then you might have this feeling that many of us have, which is, it’s all been done before and my heroes have already done it so much better than I ever could.
So why would I even bother? And when you engage in this way by riffing on something that already exists, , then you naturally start to see all of the unique ideas that you have and all of the unique ideas that just wanna play with you. They’re like knocking on your door and begging you to come out and and do something with them.
And so just getting started in that way is a really delicious way, especially if you don’t have a current creative medium that you’re attached to. Just starting with writing. Everybody interacts with words all the time. Just start by writing a short story or a poem or something little based on something that already exists.
Monica: This is reminding me of this time in high school where I wrote Harry Potter fan fiction.
Brooke: Yeah.
Monica: I don’t know if you ever got into that, but, but yeah, you’re right though. It picks away the overwhelm of you having to like, create a whole world or to be really good at something. It’s, it’s, it gives you that platform to, to move off from, from, you know, to blast off from, it’s such a good tip.
What else would you say?
Brooke: Yeah, I think a lot of people think that they’re stuck or they don’t have time, and what they really don’t have, as we’ve already kind of alluded to, is courage. You need to generate courage in five minutes. It’s not that you need to have this, you know, two hours of un interrupted time, but that you need to do the cur, have the courage to do it messy in five minutes.
And I share a lot about the concept of a minimum viable creation. So in business, they have this idea of a minimum viable product. It’s like what’s the most basic, janky version of what you wanna create and how can you get that out into the market and get feedback on it. The same applies to creativity.
How can you make the most, the smallest viable creation and then add this next layer of sharing it. It can just be texting it to a friend, but the pattern should be ready, fire, aim. And we spend our whole lives doing ready, aim, fire, and we mostly get to ready, aim, and we get so little on the fire. And so if you do Ready, fire, aim, you just have so many more shots at it and you have so many more creations to go from.
I mean, at this point in my life, like the amount of the mass of creations that I’ve made. Just that in and of itself is so staggering and gorgeous to me because I’ve done ready, fire, aim, , and you make that your modality and you’ll be amazed at what you can create. Es even, and especially with so much else on your plate, it really does not have to take extra time.
I hope that people get that. And, and then the, the other aspect here. Well, how do I infuse this sense of creativity into my daily life, like into my mundane, you know? And I really recommend that it doesn’t take more time initially, that you just add that layer of intention. Maybe you’re lighting candles for a regular, you know, Tuesday night dinner, or maybe you’re adding.
A dance party that takes three minutes of a, of a great song that, and that’s how you’re asking yourself the magic question, which is, how can I infuse this day or this chore with more fun? And it’s not a question that we ask ourselves a lot. We’re like, how can I get it more done faster? Right? And when we ask when you ask a better question, you get a better answer, right?
So you ask your brain to look for fun. You ask your brain to create fun. It’s a super computer. It’s going to find. More fun for you. It’s gonna say, put on the music while you’re making dinner and dance around like a crazy person in your kitchen. It’s gonna say, you know, try some crazy glitter eyeshadow just for school drop off and pick up. See if that makes you feel any different. It, those little things that create more intention and fun are really how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. So that’s the magic.
Monica: Another magic piece to this is the confidence piece. Like I think a lot of times we’re waiting for the confidence or the, the certainty. And I have found in that ready fire aim, I had a coach tell me that four years ago, and that really changed a lot for me. The weird magic that happens is that in the firing and the missing,
Brooke: Hmm.
Monica: you weirdly still get more confidence. Like the confidence builds even in the trying, even in the firing. And like you said too, it opens yourself up to suddenly you’re getting more ideas and becoming this filter almost of, of creativity, like as a, as an outside being even. It’s weird. It’s really weird. And, and like we said, magical.
Brooke: Everybody says, oh, I wish you great success. You know, you’ll be so good at that. That’s what they love to encourage people with. And I’m like, no, I, I really wish you failure . Like, I wish you failure.
Because when you get that first sense of ready, fire, aim, and you’re missing, and like you’re saying, you’re making mistakes and it’s really not good. You realize how much you can handle. You realize that it’s, the stakes are so low, especially in creativity. It’s so funny that we think it has to be so perfect to be worthwhile when theoretically it’s just self-expression. It’s just a book. It’s just a painting. It really doesn’t matter. But the. The beautiful thing is that, of course it does matter immensely because of what it gives back to us, but also how it reverberates across our lives. How this creation that I’m making of this motherhood musical like.
Even if it’s not a good musical, at the end of the day, the, the reverberation, the ripple effect that it’s having on my ability to show up as the best mom that I want to be, the most aligned person that I want to be is incredible. The ripple effect that it’s going to have of somebody out there watching me do this musical in a really, just like such an amateur way, is going to inspire them to create something.
And you never know what the ripple effect of your creativity is going to be. And I think that it’s actually a responsibility that we have, especially as women who are leading, other women who are leading often little people into the world. I cannot expect my kids to go after their dreams if they don’t see me going after mine.
I can’t expect them to live a wildly creative life if I’m not actively creating this creative life. So it, it, it just, it just matters across so many domains and when we think that it’s just extra doubly impoverishing ourselves and, you know, our posterity and all the people that are in our.
Monica: You said a word there. Double What was it?
Brooke: Doubly Impoverishing. Yeah,
Monica: So like meaning you’re not only denying yourself of it, you’re denying the people that matter most to you of it.
That resonates so deeply with me. And I also, it’s, it’s helping me see the times where people have said, oh, I’m so inspired by you. It’s never been about the finished product. It’s been when I’ve shared the mess in between and how that’s what’s given them courage to make a mess and try something new themselves.
And that is helping me remember to share the in between again, more often. I used to do that more and I. Just forgotten. Just like you’re doing with the musical and doing that with the people who live with us, the children that many of us are raising. What a gift. It’s beautiful. Brooke,
Brooke: Thank you. Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. people often think that it has to be grandiose, to be worthwhile, to be gorgeous, but my. Paternal grandmother, she died when my dad was nine, so I never knew her. And my grandfather was an alcoholic. My dad ended up having a really tough life and I mean, amazingly he pulled himself out of that and created a, an incredible family.
But my grandmother was a poet and she left a compilation of her poetry and this poetry that she left behind is such a legacy. And you know, she didn’t know that she was going to die in early death. She didn’t know that that would be what she would leave and. She wasn’t famous.
She never had an Instagram account, you know, but this gift that she gave of this poetry, not only she actually wrote a poem for my dad that has ended up being this guiding star for him throughout his life. And he sees her as an incredible matriarch who really foresaw so much of his life’s mission and gave him a vision when he was, you know, really struggling with all of these life circumstances that were thrown to him, and you just, you just think it’s so simple. You think it’s just comforting a child. You think it’s just getting dressed every day. You think it’s just making a meal every day, day after day. But when you do it in the way that only you can do it, you, you really can’t foresee the impact that it will have.
Monica: Hmm. Thank you for sharing about that.
Any other tips for that woman then who’s ready to embrace? That story to live that out.
Brooke: Yeah. I think a lot of times we stop ourselves because we think I have all these constraints. I don’t have enough time, or I don’t have enough money, or I don’t have the right tools, or whatever the reason is that we’re not getting started. But when I realized that, Constraint and creativity is actually essential.
Then I started to take back a lot of that power and a lot of that narrative. So artists from Mondrian to Picasso have employed constraint to really hone these styles. So think about your favorite artist or your favorite creator, anyone that you would think of that has a particular style. If you have them in your mind, and you could describe a few things about their style, maybe some salient characteristics of that style, what might those.
Style is just selective Constraint style is just self-imposed constrainted. And so they did this study that was super fascinating where they asked participants to write greeting cards. And they gave one group just blank cards, just write a greeting card. Go ahead, go ahead, . And then they gave another group nouns that they had to use in their greeting cards.
And the group that was given words that they had to use were. More creative than the ones who just had a blank slate. And I mean, we already kind of touched on this, about riffing on something that’s existing, but it also applies to the constraints that you have that you think are limitations and the things that you think about you that are just really not going to work for you and your creativity.
Maybe your voice is too loud, maybe you feel like you’re too big, too old, too young, whatever it is, those constraint. Are essential, and those are going to be the calling cards that let somebody into a world, an idea that you are trying to communicate that they would never be able to hear from someone without that particular constraint.
Monica: Even just our constraint of time. You know, like we, yeah, you’re right. We look at that as a limitation. But what if that was like a constraint where you just go for it. Just make a mess in that amount of time and see what happens. I can see what a difference that will make too. Beautiful. These tips have been so empowering, Brooke, and.
so much bigger than us just becoming cross stitchers or, you know, writing a song or, and all those things matter too. But to me they’re just, that’s what we want them to really get. The, the bigger picture here, why it matters. If there was one small way that you think women could get started on this, what do you think it would?
Brooke: yeah. Beyond riffing on something that’s existing or making that idea of a, of a minimum viable creation that we’ve already talked about. If you have something that you’ve done in the past that you wanna pick up again, really back up the bus and ask yourself what you might need. Maybe you’re, maybe you’re gonna order some paintbrushes on Amazon today.
Maybe you’re gonna get a, a little section. Corner of your bedroom that you could set up, a little desk that you could write at or some environment, something that will help support as you talk about all the time habits, what’s gonna support this new version of you that is in touch with her creative self.
And if, if you don’t have anything, if you’re like, oh, I really don’t have any medium that I wanna explore right now, the last suggestion that I’ll give for that type of person is to. Engage with the world in creative presence, and this can be in any format that makes sense to you. It can be notes that you take on your phone of little snippets of overheard conversation that you like, or it can be little voice memos that you make to yourself of describing the natural world that you see while you’re at the park with your kids that really speaks to you.
Maybe you’re super drawn to the sky, maybe you’re super drawn to leaves. Maybe you have just a moment in the day where you take a second and breathe in. The creativity of the world. That’s all around us, right? Everything was created here. And when you, when you start to engage with the world in this creative presence, then you have this really deep well to draw from.
You have this notebook full of notes. You have a voice memo app full of your, your musings on, you know, just whatever you’re overhearing, whatever you’re experiencing day to day, that then becomes, Fertile soil from which to draw and plant your seeds of what you wanna create that’s unique to you based on your experience.
Monica: Brooke, I just wanna keep talking to you. I think you should do a course and our book on this. You have so much to offer and like I have said a few times, one of the biggest things I think you offer is an invitation into what it looks like and the in-between. So for women who are ready to take part in that, to witness it and to be inspired by it, where should.
Brooke: Yeah, you can follow me at Brooke b Schultz on Instagram. I’m over there and if you are a podcast listener, I also have a podcast called Wildly Creative Life. You can just search wildly creative life wherever you get your podcasts, and I can be in there giving you more creativity, tips and advice and actionable goodness over there.
Monica: Wonderful. Thank you so much.
Brooke: Thank you, Monica. It’s been a pleasure.
Monica: we go,
Brooke: think that everybody Sorry. I should have had
Monica: You’re good. Do you need to go get some Cuz you really can.
Brooke: I not like it.
Monica: I might get a drink on Your Honor, like Steve
Brooke: No, I should had that by me. I’ve just been talking really loud a lot today, I guess.
