Stepping Off Now: Support for Neurodivergent Creatives

It is notoriously difficult for creatives and artists to judge their own work. We cycle through extremes: one day we think we're awesome, the next we think we must have been delusional to believe we had any talent. We're even worse when it comes to other people's judgements of our work: a single critical comment can derail us for weeks, months, years. Given our sensitivities, how can we ever know the true value of our work? How do we know if it's any good, worth spending time on, putting out into the world?

In this episode I give you some new parameters to use in judging your own work that will help you have a more stable assessment of its value. Why is this important? Because using the wrong parameters for judging our work is a major reason we get blocked. When we have self-confidence in ourselves as creatives/artists and in our work and its value, we'll find ourselves reliably inspired and motivated to continue on in the face of the many challenges we encounter on our path to achieving our creative dreams.

This episode's accompanying blog post can be found here.

Here is my blog post on maintaining motivation over time.

I've never been the type of person who has one feeling about anything. As an Enneagram 4, I put equal value on the lighter and the darker emotions, and I've never understood our cultural obsession with positivity. Lately, though, many people have been speaking up about toxic positivity, a type of social pressure put on us to perform positive thoughts and feelings. I couldn't be more wholeheartedly in favor of opening up space for darker emotions.

My hope is that we can move to a place where not only the challenging side of the emotional spectrum is accepted and even embraced, but it's normalized to talk about just how complex emotions can be. I often have contradictory, even paradoxical emotions, and I don't want to feel fear or shame about that. In fact, I see this as necessary to the creative and artist, because it is our job to be translators and meaning makers of the human condition. We need to be familiar with the entire spectrum.

This episode is my "coming out" as a complex person who experiences a wide spectrum of feelings and emotions that I treat with respect and curiosity. We all can seek to live with the essential dignity of owning and accepting our complexities, particularly our dark emotions that are not as socially acceptable. 

In this episode Matthew Bellringer and I flip the script on neurodiversity, exploring it from a generative and validating perspective. Matthew is one of the most eloquent speakers I've come across on the subjects of neurodiversity and what it looks like and feels like for a neurodiverse person. As someone with ADHD and who also identifies as an HSP, Matthew speaks to both. His perspective is science-informed yet anchored in the subjective individual experience, which matches very well with my own way of seeing the world. We discuss different kinds of creativity, its links to neurodiversity, seeking accommodation at work and in life, and more. This felt like a conversation made in heaven for me, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Matthew is a wanderer and educator. He works with those pioneering approaches to deep-rooted, complex problems. He specialises in supporting neurodivergent people, and the establishment of technology-enabled regenerative practice. You can find out more about him and his work, as well as episodes of his live-recorded podcast Delightful Dissent at https://www.matthewbellringer.com

My interview on Delightful Dissent

Delightful Dissent YouTube channel

Matthew Bellringer's website

Is being performative always bad? Not when it functions to give you a better understanding of your true nature. In this episode I discuss performativity and authenticity, and the cycle of separation from and return to the self that constitutes fulfilling our potential as human beings. Learn the difference between the discomfort of straying from your true nature and the uncomfortableness of going against convention or expectation, as well as how to use performativity as a counterintuitive methodology for developing more self-confidence and greater peace with yourself and the world. This will especially resonate with INFPs and INFJs, who are inclined toward authentic engagement.

If you're interested in more about dealing with performative spaces, check out this blog post.

What happens when you've been living to-do list free and decide to make one? Listen to find out! You'll hear about the astonishing experience I recently had when I decided to make a seemingly benign to-do list to help me find activities to fill some of the open spaces in my life. I thought it would help me fill that time with activities that have value to me, but it had totally unforeseen and unfortunate consequences. I discuss the two different ways to view and experience time, which one modern Western society socializes us into, and why I have a strong preference for the other way.

Here is the blog post I mention about making decisions about time based on energy.

I sought out regular treatments for decades to help me manage my depression, and nothing worked until I finally decided to step into my identity as a creative & artist and commit to making creative practice the center of my life. In this episode I talk about how and why creative practice is my anti-depressant of choice, why it's the only thing that's worked for me, and what my creative practice looks like (it's not just sitting down to write!).

My standard disclaimer about mental health subjects applies here. This is my personal story. I'm not a medical doctor and my PhD is not in psychology.

You can find info about the book The Van Gogh Blues here.

Does this sound familiar? You start off a creative project full of enthusiasm, and in the beginning you're able to regularly put in the work needed to reach your goal, but over time your motivation fades, you have to increasingly discipline yourself into doing the work, you start slacking off, and then finally are unable to make yourself do any work at all. You've failed, and you castigate yourself for being lazy and undisciplined.

Good news! You're not lazy or undisciplined, you just haven't figured out how to develop motivation for long-term projects. Self-discipline works well in the short term, but for long-term goals it works better to use LESS self-discipline, not more. This is because human beings have a limited capacity for self-discipline in the absence of motivation, and we are not taught how to generate and maintain motivation for long-term goals that require a process-oriented practice. That's where I come in. In this episode you'll learn about the two different kinds of motivation and how to use them both to develop a consistent and productive creative practice to reach those long-term goals.

You can find the blog post this episode is based on here.  

Frances Khalastchi runs Better Bolder Braver (along with her partner Simon Batchelar), an online community for coaches that helps them learn how to market themselves in a way that feels natural, ethical, and authentic to them. In this episode we discuss her fascinating and winding path to starting her own business and the many meanings and uses of art. Frances has a background in art history and has an informed and interesting perspective on these issues. As I discuss in my summation at the end of the interview, my own perspective on my creative work has been broadened and enriched by our conversation.

Find Frances on her website, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Happy New Year! In this first episode of 2022 I'm doing things a bit different. As I evolve as a creative, so does my work here on the podcast and elsewhere. That's how I keep things fresh for myself, which keeps me motivated and inspired. In this episode I discuss why it's not too late for you to achieve your creative dreams no matter what age you are, and suggest that when we feel discouraged we ask ourselves, what would Betty White say?

Read the blog post this episode is based on here.

My wish for all of us going into the new year is to NOT clutter our brains up with goals, resolutions, self-improvement plans, and the like. I want to encourage us to see the new year as an opportunity for personal empowerment through connecting with our true desires AND developing our confidence that we can actually achieve them. This is not an episode that includes tips, directives, or prescriptions. Instead I offer a visualization that can help us come back into ourselves and locate our internal source of personal power.

The episode on goal setting is #8.

The episode on figuring out what you really want is here.