This week, Jessica ponders the rebelliousness needed to opt out of existing cultures instead of skating along with the status quo, and she shares a list of 12 things she personally is choosing to opt out of more and more in her own life (but yup, totally done all of them in the past… quite unhappily). This is an episode for anyone who strives to be more bravely authentic vs. self-abandoning. 

Topic: The rebellion needed to opt out of old ways of being 

00:57 The rocky road of rebellion

3:07  To play along, or self-abandon?

7:45  The Rebel Dozen

15:25 Brutal truth from George Carlin

Quotes:

"Here’s the rebel conundrum: Do you 'play along' with what you don’t actually believe in, or with what isn’t aligned with your values, in order to 'stay safe' in some way? Or instead of safe, maybe it’s just accepted? Or chosen? Or hired? Which, to me, at its core, is essentially a question of dissociation or self-abandonment. How much of yourself are you willing to suppress or ignore in order to be accepted into something?”

"I’ve learned that this kind of dissociation from true self, or self-abandonment, eventually brings me back around to the same place. It’s like a cul-de-sac. It’s just a detour to come back to the same brutal but essential lessons and growth, that I could face down now, or I could waste a lot time on a lot of cul-de-sacs and eventually end up back at the same place, reckoning with the same things.”

[Referenced:

Arianna Huffington

Peta Kelly

Nicole LePera

George Carlin]

More writings & musings from Jessica @jessica.ann.wilbert 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Work, grind, push, hustle, strive, go go go, don’t rest. In Episode 8, Jessica explores the cultural currency we’ve developed around struggling and hustling. We say we don’t believe burnout is good, and yet companies are glorifying it. We attach worthiness to working hard. We’re obsessed with extremity. We literally wear the hustle T-shirt (this one spotted on someone in a sports bar). Jessica considers the problems with this paradigm and argues for one that values slowness, joy, listening to the messages of the body, and how much we express our essence instead of how much we struggle.

Topic: The myth of hustling

1:56 Deriving value from struggle

4:45 Our false currency of worthiness

5:47 An obsession with extremity (and the t-shirt and TV show to match)

9:26 Is major growth only available via extreme experiences?

11:18 A new paradigm that values presence over pushing

Quotes: “If you can succeed basically just shy of burning yourself out, that’s the ideal [in our current work culture]. That’s valuable. We can stand there and say burnout is bad, and we can say it and even think we believe it, but then we essentially turn around and glorify it. Or require it in our work environments.”

"Do we think that major growth is only only available via major extreme experiences? Because I’m going argue that those things are not actually always equatable, or that one doesn’t necessarily always follow the other. It’s like we think in order to have major breakthroughs, or major change, or major accomplishment, or any kind of major value… it’s like we think that we have to majorly push to get it, or have some kind of major extreme experience to get it, or even suffer to get it."

"There is another paradigm where we actually can do less and accomplish more, or maybe we work more efficiently and joyfully and calmly, and that’s how we accomplish more. Where we value presence more than we value pushing. Where we value joy more than we value struggle. Where we measure success, not by suffering, but by how smoothly and even effortlessly we are expressing our gifts in our work and into the world. Where we don’t trade time for money, we trade essence for money."

More writings and musings from Jessica @jessica.ann.wilbert.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have you ever felt like you didn’t quite fit in, are never the chosen one, or are always left out of some set of experiences that other people seem to have? In this episode, Jessica examines a common calling card of creative misfits: feeling like we’re on the outside looking in. Rather than viewing it as a bad thing, though, the episode asks us to consider whether sometimes we are the architect of our own separateness, and also how sometimes being on the outside can be a huge gift—especially if the "parties we’re not invited to” aren’t actually that great to begin with.

Topic: How feeling like the “misfit” can be both an invitation into self-reflection, and a gift.

00:30 Everyone gets to go to the ball but you

2:50 The upsides of creative misfittery

5:26 Architecting our own separateness

7:17 Separate also means you see more

8:52 An exercise in professional and personal aloneness

10:21 Crumbling foundation, dysfunctional party

Quotes: "On the one hand, I think this [being on the outside] is probably a good thing, in some ways. For all the imagination and unique sensibilities and weirdnesses and unusual talents that I feel like creative misfits bring to the table, I don’t think we would have those gifts if we weren’t in some ways 'out of the norm,' in some way off the beaten path."

"On the other hand, I wonder if we are also sometimes architecting our own separateness. What I mean by this is, do we sometimes also identify—or over-identify—with our separateness? Is the fact that we feel like a misfit and on the outside, are we maybe making that part of our identity?"

“Sometimes I don’t mind being a bit on the outside. It’s an interesting vantage point to life; you see more. You see where things aren’t right, where things don’t make sense, where old systems and structures and ways of doing things aren’t serving. You have a little bit of this quiet eagle eye. There is a sacredness in aloneness, which allows you to experience the deeper parts of yourself without so much of the noise and distractions of the world.”

More writings and musings from Jessica @jessica.ann.wilbert.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Episode 6, Jessica explores the quirky ways of the Creative Misfit—a catalogue of creative misfit weirdness. But aside from humorous lists about strange habits and weirder hobbies, this episode also touches on how all of us find ourselves on the outside looking in at times, and why the world needs more misfits to push it forward.

3:20 The Kiddo Edition: The Creative Misfit Child

5:22 The Grown-Up Edition: Things Creative Misfits Do That Other People Don’t Understand

Quotes: "At Halloween, creative misfit children may bypass the boringly expected costumes like ghosts or superheroes and head way out into left field, such as: vintage circus showgirls, goddess of the moon, or Charles Dickens' Ghost of Christmas Past."

"Creative misfits may squint in dismay at typical LinkedIn bio lines and are more likely to list 'Witchy Wordsmith,' 'Purveyor of Pyramid Antiquities,' or 'Nocturnal News Personality' than something nauseating like 'Impact Architect.' "

"The thing is, I think we all feel like a misfit in some way, at some time. It might not be of this creative or quirky variety, but somewhere, at some point, we've all felt we’re on the outside looking in. And I just think that creative misfits understand this feeling.”

More writings and musings from Jessica @jessica.ann.wilbert.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Episode 5, Jessica ponders how we’re still tying professional value to time worked, gets vulnerable about professional failure, and considers a different way—a life where work and life are so intertwined that we stop counting hours and instead line everything up with the expression of our essence into the world. This episode is for those who show up in their “successful” career acting like they care but, deep down, dread Mondays and can’t wait to pop the laptop closed and bolt out so they can get to the part of life they actually enjoy. It’s an episode for those who have struggled with a professional presence on paper that doesn’t seem so “impressive.” It’s for everyone who would like to build an existence where work AND life both align with authentic self and feel successful inside and outside.

Topic: How our work culture still measures value by hours and impressive resumes, instead of valuing a life and work built to align with our essence AND with outside success.

1:14 How value still gets tied to time, and the ideal of a life/work symbiotic soup vs. a work self kept in a separate box that you close up at 5pm

6:52 Feeling like a “failure” on paper

9:28 When work is life, life is work, and your essence gets infused into all of it

13:13 The lies you’re telling yourself about work

Quotes: "In this old dinosaur paradigm of working, you have resigned to being someone at work who isn’t truly you, otherwise wouldn’t if feel so good to be you in your work that you wouldn’t want to stop? Wouldn’t your work life feed your life, and your life feed your work? At that point, you stopped counting hours worked per week a long time ago. You stopped caring, and you stopped counting.”

"I do not want to show up to a ‘safe’ or cushy career with my mask of professional competency. I do not want to fake enthusiasm for what I’m doing every day with my life, even a little bit. Every moment of showing up to work and acting like you’re in it, like you’re a professional and you're caring about these spreadsheets and meetings and goals… where you know, deep down if you’re really honest, that your heart and soul and being are not in it, that you dread coming to work, that you can’t wait for your time off, but that you simply don’t know what else to do or how to exit that gilded cage—every moment of that is like a little death. Life becomes something to 'get through,' something where you find all manner of things to numb, uppers, downers, or distractors in order to make it tolerable, where you have to turn off your expectation or hope of joy and aliveness and life force moving through you, and just get used to the slog. This is not a life. This is lying to yourself about work."

More writings and musings from Jessica @jessica.ann.wilbert

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Episode 4, Jessica asks some very rogue and rebellious questions: How would you work if there were no rules, no shoulds, and no being told how you had to work? What would your ideal environment, or combination of environments, look like? What would your ideal schedule look like? And why can’t corporate work seem to let go of the control handcuffs around how employees work? And would more freedom for workers really produce the dreading slacking off? This episode is for the post-pandemic workers who don’t want to be lured back into open offices with rock-climbing walls, for those who secretly don’t want to work 40 hour work weeks, and for the leaders who want happier, more engaged employees with more freedom AND productivity.

Topic: The diversity in how and where people work best, and the ways our work culture doesn’t accommodate it

1:20 A pandemic upside

2:00 The open office cockroach that won’t die

5:45 The takedown of the 40 hour work week

10:45 Will people slack off if you give them the freedom to work where and how they want?

13:22 Freedom & dignity: the final work frontier

14:23 The ultimate question for a new work paradigm

Quotes: “Once and for all, we need to really be honest about the environments that we’re building that we’re asking people to work in, and acknowledge the fact that there are going to be very diverse ways in which people are going to work best, and we need to build to that.”

“This old paradigm of work assumes that to be “good,” productive workers, we go into an office from 8-5 or 9-5. But what this completely ignores is, some people do really well with highly structured routine and schedule, and some people do better with a more inconsistent, flexible, and go-with-the-flow approach to their time. There is some stigma to unpack with this, because one is actually not better than the other, even though our culture would tell us that that “inconsistent” way is somehow less than.”

"A bigger question here is around the freedom that we give, or perhaps don’t give, people in their work, and the dignity that I think we all actually deserve, which is to assess what works for us, how and where we can work in a way that works for us, and being able to plug our true gifts into our work."

More writings & musings from Jessica @jessica.ann.wilbert

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Episode 3, Jessica dives into creativity: how we define it, how we can be more of it, the myth of creatives vs. non-creatives, where creativity goes if we don’t access it, its relationship to fun and joy, its ineffable and immeasurable quality, and how the corporate world and creativity often don’t play well together. This episode is for the card-carrying creatives AND those who think they’ve lost theirs (or never had one).

Topic: What creativity really means, how we can nurture it, and how corporate culture often squashes it

1:41 Lessons from Einstein

3:10 Creativity, rest, and joy

4:44 Lessons from 6th graders

7:35 Why corporate doesn’t play well with creativity

9:30 KPIs vs. creativity

10:53 Lessons from Bob Ross

11:54 A creativity recipe

Quotes: “We have this thing in our culture today where we evaluate merit based on level of overcommitment. But if you really want to access real creativity, you have to build in some unstructured, freer, quieter, alone time or time in nature.”

“Because creativity tends to defy predictability and even measurability—it has this ineffable quality—this old paradigm work culture just doesn’t know what to do with creativity, or it’s actually often squashing it. It’s like corporate wants creativity’s amazing results, but they’re not actually hospitable to its visit. It’s like, 'Think outside the box!' but what they mean is, 'Give me some version of: not the box we have, something better, but not actually that different, not so different that it makes us uncomfortable.' When in actuality, creativity might just burn the whole box down.”

“Creativity has this inherent element that’s ephemeral, it’s not always logical or measurable, it’s not super predictable, it’s very unique to each individual, it’s ever-changing, it even defies definition, and it’s inherently vulnerable and messy… but, creativity is also essential for true growth, whether personal or corporate."

More writings & musings from Jessica @jessica.ann.wilbert

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Episode 2, Jessica talks about the ways in which creative misfits feel like they can’t—or don’t want to—fit into corporate culture, including the nausea of “team building,” corporate retreats that resemble sleep-away camp, hellish environments for introverts, so much jargon we don’t even know what we’re doing anymore, the myth of meetings, and echo chambers that prevent real culture change and true diversity & inclusion, from the inside out. If you, too, dislike some of the corporate Kool-Aid, listen on. We also play a little game with things found on LinkedIn (which is our host's personal favorite part and worth listening purely for the unintentional humor).

Topic: Problems with corporate culture

1:03 The nausea of “team building,” sleep-away camp corporate retreats, and other corporate environments dreaded by introverts

6:55 "I can’t see you, your corporate jargon is in the way” -- a little LinkedIn game

9:27 The myth of meetings & productivity

11:38 Echo chambers and the failure to shift culture and achieve diversity from the inside out

Quotes: "Our company cultures and in-person work cultures resemble a modern monstrosity of misguided collaboration. It’s like we dismantled the cubical model in favor of an open-office mosh pit of everyone working together side by side, out in the open. And this doesn’t work for everyone. In fact, maybe 50% of the population this doesn’t work well for.”

"Why have we built environments that are homogeneously tailored, instead of built with the assumption that people are very different, and they work very differently, and they thrive in different environments, and with different schedules?"

"If you can’t say what your company does in a couple of sentences that are so simple that a bright 12-year-old could understand them, I’m not actually certain you know what you’re doing.”

"If you’re constantly sitting around in meetings, talking or listening ABOUT what you’re doing, you’re not actually doing what you’re there to do. Whatever it is that you’re there to build, solve, or create, you can’t actually do it while you’re in meetings.”

More creative writings and musings from Jessica @jessica.ann.wilbert

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Creative Misfits Club! (It’s kind of like the Breakfast Club, but for 2022 creative weirdos who don’t fit in with the ways we’re told we’re supposed to work & live.) In this inaugural episode, Jessica talks about the podcast’s origins in her own professional struggles, and discusses the topic of separation of work selves and authentic selves—and how that has to go if we’re going to live a fulfilling and successful life. Brought to you live and raw from the living room floor, this first episode isn’t exactly the height of studio sound quality—but we’re working on that! Still bringing you golden nuggets of wisdom in a 10-minute mini pod of authentic goodness.

Topic: The separation of work self and authentic self & how we’re told being our authentic selves is a professional liability.

Quote: “All the posturing and contorting that a lot of us are doing in order to make ourselves palatable or presentable, or acceptable, or likable, or hirable… I think it has to go. It has to go if we’re going to have a successful life, inside and outside.”

More creative writings and musings from Jessica @jessica.ann.wilbert

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.