572 - Listen to Unlock Flow Now, Prep for Big Projects and Courage to Put Yourself Out There

Creative Pep Talk

In this episode of Creative Pep Talk, host Andy J. Pizza addresses common creative challenges through a listener Q&A format. He explores how to enter

Key takeaways

• Embracing nervous energy as excitement rather than trying to suppress it can enhance performance in creative and social situations.
• Teaching is a powerful tool for deepening one's own creativity and understanding through active recall and knowledge internalization.

Main topics

• Entering the flow state
• Overcoming fear of public exposure

Notable quotes

"We can talk about design or we can design. Or we can do both." – Debbie Millman, cited as a guiding principle.

"The best way to learn is through active recall—being able to explain it to someone else."

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a call to action: listeners are invited to choose one of three

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) This is a timely message because applications are closing in two weeks. So if you're struggling to start and finish your creative ideas or projects, you feel jaded by all the times you've started and then stopped, or you feel completely unable to get any perspective on your own creative practice because you're just too in it, listen to this. I've felt... these things tons of times. And it's why I love working with creative professionals and helping them strategize and stay on track with their plans and have some accountability there. That's why I'm going to start coaching just five creative professionals on an ongoing basis. One 60 to 90 minute call per month where we strategize and problem solve your current creative season to help you break into the next level. This is not for hobbyists or part-timers. This is for established full-time creative pros and freelancers. Applications are open for two weeks and will close on September 18th. And there are just going to be five spots. If you want to see if it's for you, go to andyjpizza.com slash pep talk for more information and to apply. And if you're not quite there yet, join our supporters on Patreon and Substack. And we have two monthly calls, group calls where we talk about episodes of the show and apply ideas. as to your creative practice. But if you're ready to apply, go to andyjpizza.com slash pep talk. Speaker 1 (1:50) taking action to really spark that when you're not feeling it because time and energy are limited. And so you've got to channel it when you've got the space. And so that's what this episode is. It's a smorgasbord of activators that will help you get into that space. We're going to talk about all kinds of things. I'm going to answer a bunch of questions from listeners. We're going to talk about the fear of putting yourself out there. How do you get over that? We're going to talk about why I think every artist should have some component. of teaching in their practice at some level and why that's really important to your own creativity. We're going to talk to the ADHD neurodivergent creative folks who have a difficult time. you know, finding something that works and then sticking at the thing that works instead of getting distracted by the new thing where I spent so many, so much time trying to find something that worked for me. And then once I found it, I was like, what's the next thing to do? I want to talk about how I manage those different capacities in my creative practice and why that's essential. I'm going to share a tool with that. And then at the end, I'm going to come back with a creative call to adventure. It is your choose your own activator. I'm going to give you three choices in the last question that I answer that can help you activate that holistic right brain creative energy. You know, that feeling of like, oh, it's just flowing. Everything makes sense. It's all connected. That feeling of like, oh, I love art. This is why I do this. I'm going to give you three options for how to activate that right now today. Let's get into it. Speaker 2 (3:30) Sometimes Speaker 5 (3:31) you just need a creative pep talk. Speaker 1 (3:44) Ah, I've forgotten how to talk. Do you ever feel like that while you're trying to have a conversation? Because I do, I work alone in my studio a lot and with the remote work and global stuff in recent years, it just feels like conversation has become harder than it ever has before. And that seems like something that a lot of people are going through. That's what made me check out the class, The Conversation Advantage with Harvard professor, Dr. Alison Wood Brooks on MasterClass. tons of helpful ideas in there, but the most powerful shift for me was when she said that when you get nervous before a social outing or a presentation, it's natural to try and fight that and force yourself to calm down, which rarely works, but it's much easier to embrace it and go into the situation feeling energized. Like I'm gonna use this as energy and excitement. I love that Masterclass allows you to get access to the greatest minds in their respective fields and that there's a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can try it worry-free and see if it's for you. Masterclass keeps adding new classes so there's never been a better time to get in. Right now, as a listener of this show, you get at least 15 % off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash pep talk. That's 15 % off at masterclass.com slash pep talk. Pep Talk, head to masterclass.com slash peptalk to see the latest offer. Speaker 1 (5:05) This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. I freaking love having Squarespace as a sponsor because it's easy to sell it when you love something this much. I'm a big fan. Squarespace is an all-in-one website platform designed to help you succeed online. Here's what I love about Squarespace. Their intuitive and super versatile drag-and-drop tools mean you can make a custom website without knowledge of code that makes people say, whoa, who made that for you? Looks like you built that from scratch. People have really said stuff like that to me about my site and I built it myself. quite easily with Squarespace. You can check it out at andyjpizza.com if you wanna check that out, what I did with it. It doesn't look templatey and it screams my creative brand. I also love that I have all of my domains through Squarespace now, which makes it seamless and easy to manage. I know the first thing as creative folks do when we get an idea is to grab that URL. Now you can keep track of all your websites and your domains in one place that's super intuitive and easy to manage. Head to squarespace.com slash pep talk for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use promo code PEPTALK, all one word, to save 10 % off your first purchase of a website or domain. Speaker 1 (6:17) All right, let's go to our first question. Here it is. Hey, Speaker 4 (6:22) Andy. My name's Maren. And first, I'd like to just thank you for your super encouraging podcast. That's also full of practical advice for all of us NeuroSpicy creators out there. I do have a question and I want to preface it by just saying I am getting back into my creative practice after almost two years away after a flaming burnout and then having a baby. Part of getting back into my practice has been listening to a ton of podcasts and watching a ton of YouTube videos. And I've really become attached to the idea of starting a YouTube channel and probably a podcast as part of coming back to my creative practice. Something I see you do really well is creating authentically while also building and fostering a creative community and audience. So my question is, how do you find that balance? Finding the balance between creating authentically and building a community. On top of that, how can I work through the resistance of being seen? And I don't mean physically, but like putting my work out there to be seen. I've been procrastinating writing my book and starting my YouTube channel and starting my podcast. Because there's this little voice in my head telling me that it's not okay. So that's my question. Well, questions for you. Thank you in advance for your advice. And thank you again for your podcast. All Speaker 1 (7:53) right. Great question. So I have so many thoughts about this. I think there's a couple of things going on here, but they're connected. The first one is about how do you strike a balance between what I think is like talking about what you're doing and like observing it and analyzing it. either privately or publicly versus actually doing the stuff. And I really am a huge fan of this phrase that comes from the Design Matters podcast with Debbie Millman. Every episode starts with her saying, we can talk about design or we can design. Or we can do both. Like there is an option to do both of those things. And not only do I think it's an option, I think it's essential to your well-being as a creative person to have that arm of what you do. I'm a big believer in... science generally, but I know that the studies say that the best way to learn is what they call active recall. And that means being able to internalize something to the degree in which you could explain it to somebody else. And the best way to do that is teaching. And so I'm a huge believer in teaching. I also just want to say like, there's a lot of shame in the creative space if you teach for part of your practice or all of your practice. And I just think that's such a shame because I'm such a big believer in education. But then on top of that, I think there comes a time in your life as you get older, usually, but it doesn't have to be. But as you get older in your 30s and 40s, like every other industry, every other sphere of work, people are having to scale their expertise, meaning they have to, it's not enough to just do the work, they have to have a team of people that they're teaching and managing. And that's what happens in the corporate world. As you work up, you do less accounting and you start managing accountants and maybe you still are in the day-to-day, but eventually most people move out of the day-to-day. Now I... personally don't ever want to do that. But you see it also in the design world. You see people that start as graphic designers or, you know, junior graphic designers to mid to senior to art director to creative director. And eventually it's about scaling their expertise and also passing on and spreading out their expertise. So I think part of it is just knowing that this is a natural evolution of growing older is teaching, mentoring, scaling your work. And for me personally, it was important from the beginning of my show to not lose touch with being in the field, being in the creative field, actually doing the work face-to-face with clients, making books, making stuff for people, never losing that. But then also being in the lab with Creative Pep Talk, like being in the lab, thinking about what I've learned in the field and kind of comparing those and making sure that the podcast is always informed by having an actual creative practice. And so one of the things I think is sometimes a misconception about this show is that this is like most of what I do. I'd say Creative Pep Talk is like a day a week, maybe a day and a half a week. And then the rest of the week, I'm working as a full-time illustrator and author. And so part of the reason I think there's a misconception there is because I... don't really have a strong taste for casual podcasts. So I don't lie. I'm not like super, it's not, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, but I'm not super into the podcasts that are big, ranty, long, like, I mean, sometimes we get ranty. Sometimes they go long, but I try not to front load it with a bunch of catching up, just shooting it with people and just trying to. chat about general stuff of what's going on with me. I don't start with like, yeah, I've been up to lately, dah, dah, dah, dah. I'm not usually talking about updates about my creative practice. If I talk about my creative practice, which I usually do, it's related to something that I'm trying to share with you for your value. I'm very intentional about making this show as value-packed for you and as much about you as I possibly can rather than about me. And so what I don't usually get to is, yeah. I'm recording this podcast. It's Friday. But this week I've worked on two editorial illustrations. I've been hustling on this book deadline. I have been taking calls for a big talk that I have coming up in the next couple of months. And I did a story time last night with schools, I think outside of Chicago, which was. tons of fun. So I'm doing all these other parts of my creative practice, but I'm not starting the episodes of this show saying, yeah, I've been working on this and that and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's just not my style. And so, but because of that, I've realized like, oh, because I don't do that,