The Creative Exponent

What happens we experience success as creatives? Success can be a catalyst for more success, but it can also, very subtly and unintentionally, create a set of unspoken expectations we place on ourselves and our creative work. This week, Marian and Shaunna talk about this reality, and share their own personal stories of how the best of their past has been the enemy of their present good. How those nagging questions can sneak up on us….”Maybe my best ideas are behind me.” “Maybe I’ve done my best work.” “How can I possibly recreate that moment in time again and again and again?” They are in this with you, and share how they have moved through and around these paralyzing doubts surrounding success or even periods of ease in their creative pursuits and business. We can move around these blocks, if not through them entirely.

You can find Marian and Shaunna at www.thecreativeexponent.com where they continue their passionate conversation around all things creative.

Based on a creative biography exercise from the book The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharpe, these mini-episodes were born. Marian and Shaunna share their own creative biographies, and a lot of laughs, honest, off-the-cuff answers, and truth telling around each of their creative journeys.

In this mini episode, you’ll hear Marian and Shaunna answer questions like:

When confronted with superior intelligence or talent, how do you respond?

When faced with stupidity, laziness, hostility, or indifference in others, how do you respond? When faced with impending success or the threat of failure, how do you respond? When you work, do you enjoy the process or the results? At what moments do you feel your reach exceeds your grasp?

They hope you leave this series feeling connected, understood, and a little lighter as you tackle living out your own creative biography.

Creative Biography Exercise credited to The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharpe.

You can find Marian and Shaunna at www.thecreativeexponent.com where they continue their passionate conversation around all things creative.

Marian and Shaunna relive their brainstorming weekend of developing The Creative Exponent and share the moment where Marian “stroked out” creatively. We all do it. We are plugging along with our creative work and out of nowhere, we hit a wall. One of the worst things we can do when hitting these walls is to try to push through it because of deadlines and pressures, both externally and internally. Marian and Shaunna talk about how they deal with their own walls, developing your own strategies, and tools we can all use to push through the ups and downs of our creative inspiration.

You can find Marian and Shaunna at www.thecreativeexponent.com where they continue their passionate conversation around all things creative.

Based on a creative biography exercise from the book The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharpe, these mini-episodes were born. Marian and Shaunna share their own creative biographies, and a lot of laughs, honest, off-the-cuff answers, and truth telling around each of their creative journeys.

In this mini episode, you’ll hear Marian and Shaunna answer questions like:

What are your habits and what patterns do you create? Describe your first successful creative act and one word attitudes towards money, power, praise, rivals, work, and play. Who are your favorite artists?

They hope you leave this series feeling connected, understood, and a little lighter as you tackle living out your own creative biography.

Creative Biography Exercise credited to The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharpe.

You can find Marian and Shaunna at www.thecreativeexponent.com where they continue their passionate conversation around all things creative.

It is really simple to feel like creative work is scarce. We struggle to find and hold our own place in the world, to hold our own space creatively. Do you believe that there is a limited amount of success, joy, love, or creativity in the world? This week Marian and Shaunna talk about how easy it is to fall into the trap of getting stuck in a mindset of scarcity, which can ultimately destroy our creativity and keep us in a toxic place. Shaunna shares her own story of abundance to scarcity, and back to abundance again. When we are living in a mindset of scarcity, we become a part of what limits us. Can we break into a mindset of abundance to free ourselves and our creativity? Can we, in a very physical way, own our own place and share our creativity around us?

You can find Marian and Shaunna at www.thecreativeexponent.com where they continue their passionate conversation around all things creative.

Based on a creative biography exercise from the book The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharpe, these mini-episodes were born. Marian and Shaunna share their own creative biographies, and a lot of laughs, honest, off-the-cuff answers, and truth-telling around each of their creative journeys.

In this mini-episode, you’ll hear Marian and Shaunna answer questions like: What’s the best idea you’ve ever had? What is the dumbest? What is your creative ambition? What are the obstacles to achieving that creative ambition? What are the vital steps to you achieving that ambition?

They hope you leave this series feeling connected, understood, and a little lighter as you tackle living out your own creative biography.

Creative Biography Exercise credited to The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharpe.

You can find Marian and Shaunna at www.thecreativeexponent.com where they continue their passionate conversation around all things creative.

Thinking of taking your creativity and turning it into a business? There are a few things you should be doing first. This week Marian and Shaunna talk about the things you should be doing before you expand into the world of creative business. They talk through the lessons learned, and what they would say to themselves about a decade ago. They would tell themselves, and you, to create privately for yourself, to decide if you REALLY want this to be a business, to establish your why to create filters for yourself, and to set it up properly from the get-go. Some of these seem intuitive, but as creatives, we often skip over some or all, and these are vital for our internal satisfaction as well as our early success as entrepreneurs. They share personal stories and laughs, and Shaunna’s dog makes a guest appearance, all in the hopes you leave with questions to ponder before you take the leap into your own creative business, or that you have the opportunity to revisit them again.

You can find Marian and Shaunna at www.thecreativeexponent.com where they continue their passionate conversation around all things creative.

7. Make An Appointment With Creativity by Marian Parsons & Shaunna West

Here’s a little secret to spill. Those numbers you’re looking at to tell you that you are doing good work...those numbers are people. This week, Marian and Shaunna talk about analytics and the numbers, and while we have to be aware of them, we cannot be controlled by them as creatives. They pose questions for us to consider: Are we looking to the numbers for worthiness and validation

When are the numbers enough? How much more genuinely will we share our work and creative voice when we put faces to the numbers we use as our personal rating scale? They remind themselves and us all to see the numbers as what they truly are, a gift to each of us. To remember these numbers are people, walking alongside us as we build our body of creative work.

You can find Marian and Shaunna at www.thecreativeexponent.com where they continue their passionate conversation around all things creative.

Have you ever been paralyzed to begin a creative pursuit because everything isn’t just quite...perfect?

Marian and Shaunna talk about the realities of waiting until everything is perfect for you to get moving and how much the creative process needs a little freedom. Marian shares a personal story of her own and you hear the benefits of allowing people to join you along your journey. They encourage you to be practical, sure, but to give yourself a little grace to begin before everything is in exactly the right spot. And in doing so, you will knock one of the most important things off of your creative to-do list:

You will begin.

You can find Marian and Shaunna at www.thecreativeexponent.com where they continue their passionate conversation around all things creative.