Jeff Leisawitz is a musician, artist, and writer whose mission to to help everyone be more creative. His focus is on teaching the power of using creativity as a tool to be seen, expressed, and healed.
What You’ll Learn
- How he accidentally wrote a book
- The impact of creativity on the world
- Jeff’s advice on getting more creative
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
About Jeff Leisawitz
Resources
- Jeff Leisawitz’s website
- Book: Not F*ing Around: The No Bullsh*t Guide for Getting Your Creative Dreams Off the Ground
- Camp Log-n-Twig (now closed)
- The Deliberate Creative on C-suite Radio
- Leave a review on iTunes
Weekly Challenge
Create a new habit! What would serve you well – writing 10 minutes a day, a drawing a day, a poem a day, look for more beauty in the world? Make that small change and reap the tremendous benefits.
Transcript
Feel like reading instead of listening? Download the free transcript or read it below. Enjoy!
Transcript for Episode #089: Creativity as a Tool to be Seen, Expressed, and Healed with Jeff Leisawitz
Amy Climer: Welcome to The Deliberate Creative Podcast Episode 89. Today’s episode, I am interviewing Jeff Leisawitz. Jeff is a man of many talents. He is a writer, a poet, a musician, a filmmaker and photographer. Throughout his career, Jeff has really tapped into his creativity and brought it forward in many different ways. In that process, he has developed this philosophy around creativity as a tool to be seen, expressed and healed.
He recently wrote a book. It is really like an advice book if you want to be more creative. It is an adorable little book with some great illustrations. He is going to talk today about that book and share some advice and stories around being more creative in your own life. I certainly had a lot of fun interviewing Jeff so I think you will enjoy the conversation. All right, here is Jeff.
Jeff, welcome to The Deliberate Creative Podcast. Thanks for being on the show today.
Jeff Leisawitz: No, no, no, thank you! I love it. I love being here.
Amy Climer: Yay!
Jeff Leisawitz: Yay!
Amy Climer: Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Jeff Leisawitz: Jeff Leisawitz. Who am I? I have been a creative type my whole life, really. I started out as a young kid sort of making up worlds, playing by myself in the corner, those kinds of things. Got into music as I got a little bit older. I was at summer camp in the late 70s.
Amy Climer: It is all about summer camp.
Jeff Leisawitz: Aw, Camp Log-n-Twig. If anybody out there is from Camp Log-n-Twig, call me. It is at the summer camp. I was a little kid. After dinner every night, they would have what they call Free Play. Just run around and do whatever. There was an empty cabin in the summer of 1978 and a counselor brought up his drum kits and like a big 70s hi-fi stereo. Every night after dinner, this guy would go into this cabin and crank up the records and play the drums. I would sit maybe 30, 40 feet away under this tree and I would just like, “Wow, that’s something! That’s cool.”
One day, this came out and he is sort of standing on the porch, he is looking at me and he is like, “Hey kid, do you want to check this out?” I am like, “Yeah, sure. Okay.” I go into this cabin. It is an empty cabin with a drum kit and a stereo and this guy puts on The Who – Baba O’Riley. I remember the song.
Amy Climer: Wow! I am impressed.
Jeff Leisawitz: This was a long time ago. He starts railing on the drums and it is thunder, it is magic, it is just bang! I walked out of there that night being like, “I want to rock. That’s it.”
Amy Climer: He did not let you play?
Jeff Leisawitz: No, he did not let me play. Too bad, I did not even think of that.
Amy Climer: That is so funny.
Jeff Leisawitz: But just sitting there while this guy played the drums, it was so out of me. I never experienced anything like that. The music was so great; The Who. Are you kidding me? I started learning guitar — a couple of years later — electric guitar. It was a great moment when I announced to my parents that I wanted to be a rock star. And they were like, “We said you could be anything you wanted to be, but that doesn’t count.”
Amy Climer: “Don’t take us literally,” right?
Jeff Leisawitz: Yeah, “Don’t listen to us,” that kind of thing. Anyway, I continued to pursue that, did all kinds of bands. The story is just so long But I got into music for film and TV, I have done tons of stuff like that, so a lot of music. Produced other artists, won a music award, Best Independent Electronic Artist in the World in 2000.
Amy Climer: Wow, congrats!
Jeff Leisawitz: Not bad.
Amy Climer: That is pretty cool!
Jeff Leisawitz: Yeah! I thought I was going to be up there with Moby, because Moby was the big deal at the time and I was like, “Moby, what’s up?” But we did not quite get that far.
Amy Climer: Never too late. You never know.
Jeff Leisawitz: Yeah. In the meantime, I have also been into photography. My grandfather — when I was a little kid, about the same age, probably, he gave me a little plastic camera. It was a real camera, it was not a disposable camera, but it was like a kid version of the camera. We would go into his dark room and develop the film into prints, and if you have ever done that…
Amy Climer: I have.
Jeff Leisawitz: Black and white film, that is magic. It is beautiful. I just lit up with that. I totally have been into photography probably since I have been seven years old or something. I have done it professionally and some fine art stuff here and there, but that has not been a huge focus. But I still love it and do it, not all the time, but I do it enough.
Also writing; screenplays, tons and tons of poems, stories. I was a music journalist when I moved to Seattle. Just on and on and on with all this creativity. At the same time, I am also into empowering people, myself and others. What does that look like? These days, I teach songwriting at the college, so that is cool. If someone would have told me years ago that I would be getting a job teaching college students to rock, I would be pretty psyched about that. But the world is weird.
Also, I am life coach. I studied life coach and got all that kind of stuff. And also practice something called NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Re-patterning), which is a set of tools that help people untangle their subconscious blocks to become their best selves. I put all this stuff together, wrote a book one fine day and now I am doing podcast and teaching classes and stuff.
Amy Climer: That is awesome. Thanks, Jeff.
Jeff Leisawitz: Yeah, sure.
Amy Climer: I love hearing about the summer camp we talked about. I do a lot of work with summer camps and so it is so cool to hear how they impacted your life and that moment sounds really…
Jeff Leisawitz: Huge!
Amy Climer: Do you even know that person’s name?
Jeff Leisawitz: Yes.
Amy Climer: Have you ever talked to him?
Jeff Leisawitz: I do know his name and there is a little bit more to the story. I was there as a kid and I went to the summer camp for eleven summers.
Amy Climer: Nice!
Jeff Leisawitz: I came back as a counselor years later and this guy was like a lifer there. He was in his probably mid-30s or something when I was there.
Amy Climer: Which was like so old, right?
Jeff Leisawitz: Oh my gosh, so old! Mid-30s, wow! I told him of this and he remembered it.
Amy Climer: Oh wow!
Jeff Leisawitz: Yeah! And I was like, “Dude, that moment affected my life in a huge, huge way.” At that point he did not have the drum kit at the camp, but he had one of those little digital pads and we jammed. We played together. I played guitar and he play electronic drums.
Amy Climer: That is really cool that he remembered you because I think, often, we have these experiences as kids that are just really impactful. But then when we go back years later and talk to that adult, they do not remember. They are like, “Who are you?” That happened to me. I reached out to this teacher who just blew me away. I had her for three different years. She did not know who the heck I was and I was like, “What? Oh my gosh!”
Jeff Leisawitz: I know. It is a little disconcerting.
Amy Climer: It is.
Jeff Leisawitz: A couple of years ago, for my dad’s birthday I wrote top ten awesome moments with my dad, and he remembered about two of them.
Amy Climer: Nice.
Jeff Leisawitz: I am like, “Dad, no these are like our best moments,” he is like, “I sort of kind of remember…”
Amy Climer: “No, you are just making it up.”
Jeff Leisawitz: Yeah, I was just making it up.
Amy Climer: That is funny. Jeff, what was it that led you to write your book? Why did you do that? And maybe first say a little bit about the book.
How Jeff Accidentally Wrote a Book [08:55]
Jeff Leisawitz: The book is called Not F*ing Around: The No Bullsh*t Guide for Getting Your Creative Dreams Off the Ground. The title, I hope, says it all, with minimal cursing.
Amy Climer: I will say it is really fun to read because it is just beautifully designed and there are some really fun drawings in there, so I enjoyed it.
Jeff Leisawitz: Cool! Yes, thank you. I wrote it like it is simple, but it is chewy, I hope. Like big ideas in there, but easy to read. Perfect, just the way I like it, so I might as well write one, too. What is the book? The book is how to essentially get past yourself to identify what you really love, why you love it and then get past all the hurdles that it takes to step forward in your creativity. Because it really is a monumental task of courage and will and love and vulnerability to be creative. It is tough. I can tell you that from firsthand experience because I have basically had my head bashed against the wall in various ways for whatever, 30 years or something. That said, there are also huge triumphs and so much beauty and love and sharing and expression and everything else.
Why did I write this thing? I wrote it by accident. I was minding my own business when I went into a coffee shop here in Seattle where I am, as I often do on a weekend morning or something, and had my latte and started writing. Sometimes I would write poems or work on a screenplay or journal, who knows what. I just wrote something and I was kind of done with it and I was like, “Huh, this sort of sounds like something cool for a book. Maybe I should just write a book!” So I did.
Amy Climer: That is awesome! That is not the most common story you hear from authors.
Jeff Leisawitz: No. My friend is an astrologer and she looks at my chart — I guess that is what astrologers love to do — and she says, “You are like really Aries. You know what that means? It means ready, fire, aim.” I sort of fired with this book and I am like, “Oh, okay, now what?”
Amy Climer: That is awesome!
Jeff Leisawitz: So that is where the book is coming from.
Amy Climer: That is cool. One of the things that you really focus on is creativity as a tool to be seen, expressed and healed. Can you talk a little bit about that and what that means?
Creativity as a Tool to Be Seen, Expressed and Healed [11:28]
Jeff Leisawitz: Over time, I have realized that people are creative or do creative things for various different reasons. Sometimes they know why and sometimes they do not. By the way, just in general, you do not have to be creative to sort of know or not know why you are doing things. We act subconsciously in huge, huge, huge ways. What I have come to realize through my life is, you know what, when I was 15, being a rock star was probably based on, “Oh, you’ve got a thousand screaming girls and millions of dollars and David Lee Roth, I want to be that guy,” that kind of thing, or Billy Idol, whatever. All my favorites from back then. But what I have realized over time is that that is the superficial part of it and really not anywhere near the most important part.
To Be Seen
To be seen, to be expressed and be healed. What does it mean to be seen? In the world, there are zillions and zillions of people. It is easy to get lost. Online, walking down the street in your city or town or wherever, it is hard. You often may feel anonymous in this world. Also, even with our people, even with our friends, our lovers, our parents, teachers, peers, co-workers, all these kinds of things, I believe we often do not feel as if we are truly seen. Oh yeah, they kind of hear us, they kind of get us, maybe if you are lucky, but a lot of times, not so much. Creativity is a way to be seen that is different from trying to verbalize, trying to yap, yap and talk your way — express yourself that way. That is what the “seen” part is.
To Be Expressed
What is expression? To be expressed? My definition of this in this context is simply actualizing your potential. Let’s just say the dancer who is sitting in the corner and not dancing in that moment is not being expressed as a dancer. He or she might have all the awesome moves, but if you are sitting there is your potential rather than actual. So being expressed is actually doing the thing, whatever that is.
A poetry teacher years ago in college for me said, “You know what, a poet is not somebody with a bunch of poems. It is not somebody with a teaching gig. A poet is someone who writes poems. That’s it.” I was like, “Huh, okay. I get it.” That is the expression.
To Be Healed
Then the heal part. You are seen, you are expressed and then you are healed. What is the healing? I think we typically think of healing as something is broken and something hurts, those kinds of things. That is absolutely true. Being creative, I think, for people who do it with truth and authenticity it is a huge catharsis. It is a huge way to process or let out whatever kind of pain or trauma or suffering or whatever that you have got. Whether it is oh, my heart is broken — we have heard millions of those songs, those sorts of stories and things like that. It is the very struggles and triumphs. Just think of all the movies and books and paintings, just everything.
There is that, but besides the catharsis in healing, there is also, I believe, celebrating is also a kind of healing. When it is a love song, you are celebrating it, but guess what, you are also celebrating not being lonely. Not having someone.
Amy Climer: Or like celebrating moving past it.
Jeff Leisawitz: Yeah, exactly. Moving past it. As a creative if you are seen, expressed and healed, you then create this gift for the world, whatever it is, whether it is a song or a movie or a painting or a story or a dance or a quilt. Whatever it is, this is something that you do. And this gift is then something that the world can consume at whatever level. Whether it is a million people online listening to your song or your movie or something like that, or it is a poem that you give to somebody who you care about. That is the gift.
But here is maybe even the cooler part of the whole deal and that is when you are seen, expressed and healed in the world and you create the gift to give to the world, you become the gift because you show others that it is possible to be seen, expressed and healed. And if everybody starts doing that, guess what, the world is going to get a lot cooler.
Amy Climer: Absolutely. Let’s talk a little more about this, about what impact does being creative have on the world? What do you think? And if you have any examples or stories, I would love to hear those.
The Impact of Creativity on the World [17:18]
Jeff Leisawitz: What impact does it have? Without creativity, what are we doing?
Amy Climer: Yeah, right?
Jeff Leisawitz: We are sort of waking up, feeding ourselves, working, whatever that means, and then going back to sleep. We are relating in some kind of way to others, but without creativity — just speaking to each other is a creative act. Some people in some context more so than others, but it definitely is.
Amy Climer: We have been doing this since the dawn of time. If not, we would still be hanging out in caves with little bone tools.
Jeff Leisawitz: Yeah.
Amy Climer: Even then, like a bone tool, someone created that.
Jeff Leisawitz: That is right. And bone tools are cool.
Amy Climer: Yeah, totally.
Jeff Leisawitz: Nothing against them, but yeah, exactly. Being creative I really believe is who we are. We are creativity. And if we do not express that in whatever way feels right to us and in whatever way we choose to develop or not, it expresses us more as humans. You look at kids, kids are all creative. The little kid with the paintings and all the stuff and just the way they speak and the way they think, it is beautiful. It is amazing. And then what happens, you grow up and people tell you you stink, people tell you you cannot do that, people tell you you are weird — I got a lot of that.
Amy Climer: Me too.
Jeff Leisawitz: That is right. On the same level. It often gets squashed down in us as we get older. Reclaiming that, and again having the courage whether you want to share your creativity with the world or just doing it for yourself, it is a tremendous act, but it is really a huge act of humanity and kindness and love to yourself.
Amy Climer: What do you think happens when people do not express their creativity? How do you think it impacts them personally?
Jeff Leisawitz: I think people do a good job of keeping themselves disconnected from themselves in a whole lot of ways. That can be anything from staring at the TV too much to drinking too much to video games, all kinds of things that just distract us from ourselves. Creativity is a way to go in the other direction. It is a way to go deeper into yourself in various ways so that you can know yourself. That being seen part, it is great to be seen by the other, whoever that happens to be.
Also, seeing yourself — we do not often know ourselves very well. I talked to a writer one time and she said, “I write so I know what I’m thinking.” I’m like, “Oh, okay. That makes perfect sense. I totally get it because I do that too. I would not have come up with that line, probably, but I get it.”
Amy Climer: There are so many times where like I am writing in the morning and things come to me or they just sort of come out and I am like, “Oh, that is what I was thinking, okay.” It was buried so far back there that I did not know.
Jeff Leisawitz: Exactly. What is the benefit? The benefit is you become a bigger person. You expand your consciousness, you expand yourself, you know yourself, which means you will make better decisions in your life. Because if you do not even know what is good for you, you are probably not going to take the steps. If you do know what lights you up, what is real, what is important, what is valuable, guess what, you are a lot more likely to step towards that. And if you do that, guess what, your life gets better, and whatever that means to you. That means your heart gets bigger, that means your love gets bigger, that means you are just more awesome.
Amy Climer: That is a good thing, I think.
Jeff Leisawitz: I think so too. And if everybody is more awesome, guess what, everything is more awesome.
Amy Climer: It is just like a great cycle.
Jeff Leisawitz: It is a great cycle so let’s do it, you guys. What are you waiting for?
Amy Climer: Let’s go.
Jeff Leisawitz: Rock this thing, yeah.
Amy Climer: That is it. What if someone is listening and they are like, “Yeah, this is making sense. I probably could do a better job of understanding myself and expressing myself creatively, now what?” Now what do they do?
Jeff Leisawitz: Now what do they do?
Amy Climer: What advice do you have for someone who wants to get started with that?
Jeff’s Advice on Getting More Creative [22:28]
Jeff Leisawitz: I would say create some kind of simple and attainable habit that is appropriate for you; how much time you have, how much energy you have, whatever, that you can actually do and that you will do. And I would also suggest that you make a very clear feedback system. I used to do this before I got an app. I would have a calendar up on my wall. Every day I would work out, I put a little gold star.
Amy Climer: Nice!
Jeff Leisawitz: It sounds ridiculous. It is like, “Come on, really dude?”
Amy Climer: But it works, right?
Jeff Leisawitz: It works!
Amy Climer: That is the thing.
Jeff Leisawitz: And then you are like, “Wow, I did five out of five! That is pretty good this week.”
Amy Climer: And then you get like a bigger star.
Jeff Leisawitz: You get a big star, exactly. What is interesting about habits is habits will build the rest of your life. If you say I am going to write for ten minutes in the morning and you are a writer — even if you are not a writer you should do it, if you ask me — but write ten minutes in the morning before you go to work or whatever, however you want to do it. After about a month, your brain, your nervous system, your whole chip will sort of tune to wanting to do the habit more than not wanting to do the habit. If you miss a day you are going to be like, “Oh man, I got to write!” It is just like, as you may have experienced, going to the gym. It is tough to get going at first, but you do it for a while and you are like, “Oh, I got to hit it. I feel like my body or my mind, my spirit needs this stuff.”
Amy Climer: That is a great example of like going from this concept of extrinsic motivation where I am going to do this habit; I am going to write ten minutes every morning and I am going to give myself a gold star on the calendar. It is kind of you are setting up this extrinsic motivation, but then it translates, as your body gets more and more used to it, it becomes more intrinsic and you are just motivated by doing the actual task.
Jeff Leisawitz: Yes. Hack yourself.
Amy Climer: Yeah, there you go.
Jeff Leisawitz: We should make a T-shirt for that. That would be cool. Here is another idea. People often think like, “I’m not inspired. I am not inspired to do my creative thing.” Like okay, great. I actually argued this point with that poetry teacher I was telling you about way back in college and guess what, she was right and I was wrong. But I have come around.
Amy Climer: What was she arguing?
Jeff Leisawitz: She was arguing that you should not wait for inspiration and I was arguing that it is all about inspiration, because I am 20, I know what I am talking about. I thought I had a pretty good stance there, but anyway.
Amy Climer: Every 20-year-old thought that.
Jeff Leisawitz: Exactly. Now what I have come to realize is you will be inspired when you do your thing. Like I am into Photoshop. Sometimes I am just like, “Oh, I don’t know what Photoshop project to do,” whatever. I would just pull up some image, “I’m not inspired. This stinks.” And then I will sort of move stuff around and do some filters or whatever and I am like, “Oh, that’s kind of interesting.” Three hours later I am like, “Dude, look at this! This is an awesome shot. This is so cool.”
Amy Climer: And you could never have imagined that unless you sat down and got started.
Jeff Leisawitz: Right. Do not wait for the inspiration. Just do something and you will become inspired, sooner or later.
Amy Climer: I often say that if you are waiting for inspiration to strike, you are going to be waiting for a long time.
Jeff Leisawitz: That is right.
Amy Climer: If you are okay with that, that is cool, but if not, get started.
Jeff Leisawitz: But if you really want to do this, you do it.
Amy Climer: Yeah. What advice do you have for someone if they want to do something creative, say for instance, Photoshop or if they want to be a musician or whatever yet they do not have the skills yet to do it at the level that they want to do it at?
Jeff Leisawitz: I would say you are in the best time of all of history because there is a book, there is a blog post, there is a video, most of it for free, out there. You know you already have your internet connection, so you do not have a lot of excuses, really. You can make them up. You can sit there and make up excuses all day long, but at the end of day all you have is excuses. If you want to learn Photoshop, get into Photoshop. Just do it.
And of course, it is just like anything, something like that is a huge endeavor to really know and understand, but go for it and you will learn something and you will build on it and then you build on that and you build on that. If you quit in three days or three weeks, well that is as far as you are going to get. If you do something a little bit for three years — do Photoshop for 15 minutes a day for three years, guess what, how cool is that going to be? Something cool is going to happen.
Amy Climer: That is cool. Have you had experiences where you have been trying to learn something that you did not quite have the skills yet and you had to go out and figure that out?
Jeff Leisawitz: Yeah, everything, every day.
Amy Climer: I guess, so that was a dumb question.
Jeff Leisawitz: Even just like with this book, I am like okay, I wrote a book, cool. So now how do you sell this thing? Like how do you market this thing? Like email? How do you do these newsletters? How do you do social media effectively and make it interesting and creative? Everybody has got a different opinion on all this stuff and you got to do it, fail. Like one of the chapters in my book, Fail First, I am like the master of failing first. I will just step on the gas and drive into the wall. But the trick is you have to realize that it is not actually failing, it is actually moving forward.
The whole deal is okay, what did I learn from accelerating into this wall? Because you did learn something. Somewhere in the shadows there is some wisdom. You take that and you stick that in your little bag and do whatever you are doing then get back in that car and step on the gas again. Try to avoid the walls, do not try to run into them, but they are going to be there. Every successful person, creative or really anybody that I have ever interviewed, I ask them about failure and they all say like, “Oh, that sucks and thank goodness for it because it is the only thing that gets me moving forward.”
Amy Climer: I cannot imagine how you would move forward with just about anything without some failures. I am just trying to envision what that would be like. I have never done that. I have never done any sort of project or learned anything creative without messing up or just like, “Oh man, that’s a waste.” That is what I say to myself, it is a waste, it is really not because like you said, you are learning from it. And that is really the key, is that connection between the creativity and the learning.
Jeff Leisawitz: That is absolutely the key. If you give up — if you internalize I am a failure instead of I failed, that is a huge difference between what you are creating as part of your identity and just something that happens in the world. And if you get into the point where it is like I am a failure, that is tough. That is where fear and stuff comes in. We have to get in there and be like, “No, no, no, you are successful. You are okay. You are all these beautiful things that you are.” You have failed and that is fine, but make the difference between who you are and what happens or what you do.
Amy Climer: Absolutely. Jeff, one of the things I like to do at the end of every episode is give listeners a weekly challenge, something that they can apply this week based on what you have been talking about. What would be a weekly challenge you would give listeners?
Weekly Challenge [31:07]
Jeff Leisawitz: I am going to go back to what I said a little bit before, which is just create some kind of new habit. Make it simple. Make it attainable. Make it a little bit of a stretch. It cannot be like oh, I am going to brush my teeth.
Amy Climer: Hopefully, you are doing that already.
Jeff Leisawitz: Perhaps, it is writing ten minutes in a day. I have been doing one for almost a year now, writing a poem every day. I got this little tiny notebook, which I would show you if we were on video, and I would just write a little poem. It literally takes me a few minutes. This little change in my life has been tremendously cool, healing, lovely, because I just get to express. I do not even go back and read them. I just do it.
Amy Climer: That is cool.
Jeff Leisawitz: It could be that, it could be I am going to look for beauty in the world. That is a good one because guess what? What we look for is what we see. If you look for all the pain and tragedy in the world, you are going to see that. It is always there and is to be acknowledged, but if you are looking for the beauty in the world, you are going to see that too. So hey, you got a cell phone in your pocket? Raise your hand if you have a cell phone in your pocket. Look for beauty and take one picture a day.
Amy Climer: I love it.
Jeff Leisawitz: Something like that. Who knows, there are a million little missions like that, depending on your interests and whatever.
Amy Climer: Cool. Jeff, where can listeners learn more about you and your work and find your book?
Jeff Leisawitz: www.jeffleisawitz.com. Do you guys know how to spell that? No. But if you get close, Google will help you or Amy will write it down somewhere, I am sure. You can also get the book on Amazon. Of course, again, spell it anywhere near close and you will be fine.
Amy Climer: Awesome. I will put a link to your website and the book in the shownotes so no one has to worry about spelling it.
Jeff Leisawitz: Cool and beautiful. And by the way, when you sign up for the mailing list, you get three free chapters of Not F*ing Around.
Amy Climer: Awesome! Love it. Jeff, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate having you today.
Jeff Leisawitz: Thank you. This is great. You are an awesome host. I love it.
Amy Climer: Thanks. I think it is interesting what Jeff said there at the end for the weekly challenge. He suggested developing a habit around something creative, whether that is writing or taking a picture every day, whatever it is is not as important as doing something. Many other guests on this podcast have said the same thing. That it is all around developing some regularity around something creative. So if you want to be more creative, that is a critical aspect of it.
There is a subseries within this podcast that some of you have heard which is called The Creativity in Practice Series where I am interviewing artists or creative practitioners, rather than thought leaders, and of the people I have interviewed so far, every single artist said the same thing. That if you want to be more creative, developing a habit around your practice is critical.
I think we start seeing themes like that, especially from people who do not even know each other or living on opposite sides of the U.S. that is critical. That is where it is like okay, let’s pay attention to what is happening here or what is being said. I actually agree with that. See what kind of habits you can create in yourself. Even if you just do something for a week, what happens? Or maybe it is every other day, or maybe it is just weekdays or weekend days. Start small. Do not beat yourself up if you skip a day or if you mess up, just do it again. Start over. Keep going.
If you want to access the shownotes with the links to Jeff’s website and his book, you can go to www.climerconsulting.com/089.
Also, I want to say a big thank you to those of you who listen to this podcast. I really appreciate it. And particularly a big thanks to those of you who have taken the time to write a review for the podcast. Recently, iTunes made some changes in their setup of the podcast app and so I just wanted to point out how easy it is to write a review.
If you are listening on your iPhone, you can follow these directions with me. You just click on the purple podcast app and when you are listening to the episode, you scroll down and it says “See More Episodes”. You click on that and then you scroll down and there will be a place where you can rate the podcast. You can give it a one through five star rating, five being excellent. Then you can write a review. It just takes a couple of seconds, maybe a full minute to write the review. That will mean so much to me. I really appreciate reading those reviews and seeing them and it helps other people find the podcast. If you will take a moment to do that, I will be so thankful.
I also want to share that I have a few things coming up pretty soon. March 2018 is when this is being released. I am doing some webinars later this month. The best way to find out about the webinars and some other cool things that I am launching is to follow me on social media. You can find me on Facebook at Climer Consulting or on Twitter and LinkedIn under Amy Climer. Go there, follow me there. And if you go to www.climerconsulting.com, you can sign up for my email list, which is where I share the most information. Although, it is only an email about once a month, maybe twice a month sometimes, but I certainly will never ever spam you or share your email with anyone. I take that trust very — that is very important to me. If you would like to connect with me, I would love to connect with you.
You all, thank you, again, so much for listening. Good luck in creating your creative habit this week. Have a great week. Bye.
Note: The links on this page may be affiliate links. That means I get a small commission of your sale, at no cost to you. However, I only share links to products that I or my guests believe in. Enjoy them!
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