574 - 3 Things to Do When You Can’t Change Your Circumstance

Creative Pep Talk

The episode explores how to find agency and joy when trapped in unchangeable life circumstances or careers. Using the metaphor of a childhoo

Key takeaways

• The 2008 recession served as a period of significant economic hardship and professional stagnation for the host.
• Tom Holland uses napping as a strategic way to reset his day when feeling discouraged.

Main topics

• Managing unchangeable circumstances
• Neurodivergence and ADHD strategies

Notable quotes

If in those times where I can't change the what, I have to exercise my right to change the how.

Conclusion

The takeaway is that true creative and personal freedom comes from exe

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Are you stuck doing what you hate? Are you in a situation right now that you've tried to get out of a million times, but you can't get out of it? It's a season of your life. It's a season of culture and circumstance and the economy and how things are right now. You've tried everything you can and you cannot escape. this circumstance and what you are doing in this current moment. If that's you, this episode is for you. I have been there so many times. There have been times like when I graduated in the 08 recession and the economy was so bad and no matter what I did, I just couldn't. make things different because the world I was in was stuck in this place. And so I was stuck there. I had to figure out how to get through that. There were jobs that I was stuck in that I couldn't let go of because I couldn't get a better job that I hated. There were so many circumstances in my creative journey like that. And over time, I learned something that has massively helped me. dramatically change my experience, even when I can't change my circumstance, into something that I not just learned from and created a breakthrough for me in my creativity, but also found, at times, fun in. And so that's what this episode is going to give you. Stick until the end. I'm going to come back. I'm going to be here the whole time, but I'm going to come back at the end with a creative call to adventure called let you count the ways and it will help you maybe not change the circumstance right now, but dramatically change how you experience and experience it and what you get out of it and make it more fun. And before that, I have to. For any of that to make sense, I have to tell you why you need to mow like nobody's watching. Let's do it. On Speaker 2 (1:51) the creative journey, it's easy to get lost. But don't worry, you'll lift off. Sometimes you just need a creative pep talk. Speaker 3 (2:10) So, you know, you're really truly stuck in something like the universe has put you here. You're not getting out when you have tried everything you can to get out of it. You know, you might be in a contract that you have to finish a project on that you were like, this is a huge mistake. Or you might be in a house or you might be in a job or you might be in a career or whatever it is, a season of life, a season of this. country, the season of America. Like you're like, can we just get to the next season? This is not, it's way better once you get past this first season, that kind of feeling, but it's your country, that sort of thing. You know, you're stuck in that belly of the whale moment as a creative hero that you are. If you have tried everything you could try to get out of it and it's not changing and you probably have. I have been in those circumstances so many times. One circumstance that I tried everything that I freaking could to get out of was my chore as a young teen was mowing the lawn once a week. And I freaking hated it. I hated mowing the lawn. And I tried everything I could to convince my parents to give this job to anybody else, any of my other siblings. And I was probably 13 years old, 12, 13, 14, when they gave me this job. Probably about 12 is when I started mowing, had to mow like certain parts of the yard. And my older brother got to do the riding lawnmower, which definitely seemed more fun. I had to do the push mower. And I just freaking hated it, man. And I tried to do everything I could to get out of it. I would even... Fake injuries. Okay. I'm not proud of it, but I was just a kid. I was like, oh man, I pulled something going down that hill and lost control. And I just got to, you know, someone else going to have to take it from me this week. And I just tried anything I could. Nothing works. Every week it would come back around. I'm like, oh my gosh, how am I going to get out of this? How am I going to push it back? You know, get out of it for a few more days. Cause it was just so freaking boring. And I tried everything to get out of it, but I could not change. that circumstance, I could not change what I had to do. And it wasn't until I realized that I could change how I did it that everything changed. There was more than one way to mow the lawn. And I started to change up the order in which I mowed things. I went from the back to the front, the front to the back, to the middle, to the outside. And I did that, little things like that. Then I realized like, oh, I can tape songs off the radio, create a little mixtape and Listen to my favorite songs. And then I even went further than that. And I was singing these songs at the top of my lungs because it helped me get through this thing. And I actually did that until podcasts were invented. Okay. I was doing that in my first house that I owned with my wife when I was in my early twenties, like our mid twenties, I was mowing the yard, singing