Today I’m talking to guest Carrie Alyson, an incredible professional visual artist and graphic designer. Carrie is an extra special guest for me personally.  We met back in 2021 when we were both part of a program called Creative Alchemy, which was run by artist and author, Amber Rae. Carrie’s energy was so warm, friendly, supportive, generous and engaging that she stuck out among the 70+ person group.  We connected more 1 to 1, and she eventually became a private coaching client.

We recorded this podcast in 2021, so be sure to check out what Carrie is working on now at aspenhearted.com or on IG @aspenhearted .

From a young age, Carrie learned to adjust who she was in order to fit in and feel accepted. She navigated the universal struggles of seeking external validation and feeling imposter syndrome whenever she didn’t express her creativity according to other people’s expectations. As her anxiety ran rampant and she continued to deny her authentic self, Carrie eventually burned out, which caused her to take an extended hiatus from creating.

Being the resilient woman she is, Carrie refused to quit. She embedded herself deeper in creative communities and brought in the support she needed to heal.

Through our coaching sessions together, she developed practical mantras and expectation-free experiments that helped her let go of the limiting beliefs that were holding her back. During this journey of self discovery, Carrie shares how she learned to let go of the outcome by refusing to put limits on her creativity.

Join us on her empowering evolution from a woman just trying to fit in to an authentic and inspiring community leader, creating for others the accepting, exploratory spaces she longed for herself.

Our guest today is Zamir Dhanji. He is a Yoga Teacher - Storyteller - Holistic Counsellor and Founder of @the.mystic.yogi and the Inner Path Deck.

A true creative at heart, he is is strongly influenced by developments in modern biology, physics and chemistry as he believes they provide a holistic and paradigm-shifting understanding of the body-mind system -  one that complements the scientific knowledge of ancient yogis.

Zam and I go waaaaay back. He and I grew up together in Thailand and have developed a sacred bond over the decades

In this episode, we explore the limiting beliefs that “we are not enough” and that “the world is not a safe place”. We dive into how our reactions to trauma often cause us to feel disconnected from nature and disoriented to life. Through deeply personal stories, Zamir leads us through the path he’s taken towards reorienting himself to life, death and a sense of purpose.

From rejecting traditional studies on international relations to traveling with an empty wallet through Asia to sharing sacred final moments with his beloved grandfather, Zamir shares his revelations about the cycle of giving - the life practice of learning to give and receive freely with an abundant heart in spite of worldly traumas.

Join us as we envision what the world can look like when we all open ourselves to this interconnected lifestyle of abundance and joy.

Our guest today is Molly Elizabeth, a professional artist, imagination doula and founder of The Darling Revolution. She helps creatives come home to themselves so they can imagine & birth a better world.

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As a Creative Professional, Molly has daily studio practice where she makes mesmerizing abstract expressionist art. She primarily works with acrylic paints, blacklight reflective pigments, collage or any other materials she can get her hands on. She also hosts a creativity focused podcast, also called The Darling Revolution, which dives into creativity, emotional literacy and finding your voice.

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She believes that often, we are conditioned to stay quiet, stay small, not make too much of a fuss, and stop trusting our desires and imagination. If we can have a safe space to come home to these parts of ourselves, we can find the inner power source that we need to revolutionize our world.

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But Molly wasn’t always the colorful, provocative, out-spoken creative doula she is today.  Molly grew up within a very conservative evangelical family and community, where she married young, had kids and eventually rose all the way to becoming a worship leader within her evangelical church community.

Then, she experienced a deep loss that shook her faith in everything she had known.  She began to question her faith and the deeper she got, the more disconnected she became from what she had known.

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On the podcast today, she shares her story, how had to lose everything in order to discover her truest self and how she uses her creative practices and communities to maintain the connection with herself and those around her.

Our guest today is Nuno Queimado, a professional actor and acting teacher.  But his journey to get there was far from linear.

Nuno made the difficult decision to pursue a degree in psychotherapy, rather than the more traditional and personally appealing path of becoming an engineer.

As part of his training to become a psychotherapist, he of course had to undergo psychotherapy himself.  Through the experience of having his own therapist and learning to process his deeper emotions, feelings and experiences, he uncovered a life changing desire: he wanted to be an artist, and specifically, he wanted to do musicals.

He shifted courses quite dramatically and moved to London where he joined a theater group and learned musical theater.  Despite being several years behind his peers, he went all in and eventually made it, and in 2018 he landed the Alternate Lead role of Hamilton in the critically acclaimed and multi-award winning Broadway musical, Hamilton, which (up until the pandemic) he has been performing in London's West End.

On today’s episode, Nuno shares about how growing up in Portugal and learning to be a social chameleon left him feeling lost and disconnected from his own experience.  He shares his story of coming out o the closet as a gay man and how his work now centers around the power of creative expression to spread love, joy, empathy and connection.

Today on The Art of Lost and Found, our guest speaker is Cassey Shapiro. She is an Filipino-Australian living the dream in Amsterdam. We met many years ago when I was working with Impact Hub and came to the city often. Several years later when I moved to Amsterdam, Cassey quickly became one of my besties. Her smile, sense of humor and dedication to having a good time endeared me to her forever.

After having worked in Advertising at Saatchi & Saatchi Australia, she went on to work at several advertising agencies in London, where she gained even more experience working with clients like Emirates, Sky, L'Oreal, and Suzuki before making her way to Amsterdam, where she completed her MBA. Cass spent several years rising up the ranks at WeWork Amsterdam yet she left just before the big epic crash that company and landed another level up at Reaktor, a European tech consultancy and agency, where she still works today.

The heart of her creative reinvention story came in the wake of a great loss that encompassed both her personal and professional life. She had to break down her entire identity since everything she had relied on to help her create it was based on external factors: a relationship, a job and a comfortable living situation. 

Cass’ creative journey and reinvention was something I witnessed in real time and couldn’t help but be inspired by her journey.

Nicolette Ghariadeh is a Feminine Embodiment & Intimacy Coach and serves as a powerful guide for women on their healing journeys. 

What started out as an exploration of her own healing journey quickly evolved into full on creative transformation. After spending 7 years working in the adult entertainment industry as a stripper, she became increasingly aware of the parts of herself she was learning to heal and made bold decisions to shift her entire life to align with the true self she was uncovering. 

Now, Nicolette is working full time as a women’s coach offering private 1:1 coaching and is currently working on developing a guided group program that covers feminine healing topics such as self-love, sensuality, relationships & intimacy and feminine expression.

Today on The Art of Lost and Found, our guest speaker is Sophie Lloyd.  Sophie Lloyd is a professionally trained Dancer, Yoga Teacher, Poet, and Creative Writer who I had the good fortune of meeting at a deeply intimate and nourishing women's retreat in Portugal.

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In our conversation, Sophie shares her engaging backstory as a creative professional, narrating how creativity has always been a part of her life. We learn how she found her way forward, channeling her creative energy into writing and eventually becoming a published writer.

Sophie trained in dance all her life and went on to become a professional dancer when most people go to university. Investing so much in her dance career helped her evolve as an artist and taught her to stay focused. Coming from a family of professionals working in the creative space, Sophie was familiar with the uncertainty that came with the profession.

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Today's episode features Corey Johnson. Corey is an internationally recognized brand strategist and brand identity designer and the co-founder of Viral Impact Studios, which he created with Prince EA (the spoken word artist and global phenomenon of an influencer with millions of followers). In addition to his brand and consulting work, he also is a recording artist under the stage name Corey Iris. His music sounds like a cross between The Weekend and Drake, but with his own personal flavor that makes it uniquely his own. 

In this episode, Corey shares deeply personal experiences about his childhood and what led them into entrepreneurship and how a near-death experience at a Drake concert helped him to refocus on what matters and his exciting predictions about a more vibrant, diverse, and multifaceted future of the creative space.

For more information, head over to www.brookeestin.com/podcast

Today’s episode is my first solo mini-episode! On today's episode, I go over the pattern that I am starting to see after having done 20+ interviews with all types of creatives. What is starting to emerge is a pattern similar to Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey  or Maureen Murdock's The Heroine's Journey, but with some key differences.  I refer to it as The Creative's Journey.