#087: Are You Too Much... Or Just Finally Yourself?

I want you to remember that we're allowed to be works in progress. Greetings, creative community. This is your Connections and Community Guy host Dwight, joining you for another solo

Allowed To Be A Work In Progress

edition of the Creative Community and Becoming from For the Love of Creatives. The occasion for today's solo episode is actually a matter of practicality. One issue that we have is that we're at a time when, because of vacations and craziness with schedules and just trying to get things to line up with the featured guests that we uh have on the show, well, we're at a

Why A Solo Episode Today

point where we don't have a whole bunch of them. We've got a few that are scheduled, and they are scheduled far off. So in the meantime, I'm building up our backlog while also building my muscles as a speaker, a content creator. I'm doing all the hard things to show up and to get in the practice and to demonstrate what it is to be a creative, to be in the heart of what it is that you're doing. Uh you're you're seeing necessity being the mother of invention, but also you're seeing me do the hard stuff because I am quite seriously working against a hard edge for myself. Something I'll share with you is that I listen to every single one of my episodes. I listen to all the episodes. I'm always trying to grow. I I will use this podcast as a lab for the things that I'm doing for working with other people, for working with my uh one-on-one uh coaching clients, for uh workshops that I'm doing, for any of the

Turning The Podcast Into A Lab

speaking engagements, I look at this and I evaluate how are you using your instrument? How are you showing up? Are you using enough vocal variety? Are you doing everything that you can to employ different ways of showing up? Am I using enough regularity to make it so that I'm easy to follow? But introducing enough novelty to keep it interesting, to spark a little bit of uh pitter-patter inside the listener's head and make it so that they want to actually see what's around the corner, what's coming next. I do this in order to grow. I've recently shared with a few of my clients that my happy place would be showing up in a monotone and having very little movement and very little happening. I'm usually quite a low energy guy. And you've probably seen some of that in the ways that I've appeared on some of these episodes. Because no matter how much we try to grow, we are always moving from where we're starting from. It's like we're a rubber band that's expanding. And I've done things to try to expand my rubber band. I engage in some goofy exercises when I'm not on mic in order to make it so that I can go to the extremes and make it so that I can show up however I need to. I'm looking at ways to practice a lot more off-mic, but welcome to what is also part of my lab. I want you to appreciate that it's normal for you to look for opportunities to grow. And you should be willing to show up more fully yourself in spaces where we've probably all been told the lie that we need to do what we can to be professional. That means check your personality at the door and do your best to adhere to a very

The Myth Of Professional Masking

narrow script for what is expected. What are the norms of behavior? That playbook is long dead. It's uh gone, it's going the way of fax machines, uh, 80s big hair and shoulder pads. We need to just show up fully who we are. And I will temper that to say we we need to be respectful of other people. Not everyone may be on the same journey that we are. And we need to have a little bit of understanding about what it is that's that's normal for some people. I will I will share that I have been in those situations where I realize that I might have done something that's a little too novel for some people. Um, but as I have mentioned on prior episodes, a lot of the things that we're telling ourselves about how we may be too much may just be us, because most people don't have time to try to police everything that you're doing. Most people don't care. They're too caught up in whatever drama they've got in their own head because of their own childhood bullies or their mother or whoever it was that put them in the prayer closet and said, they're all gonna laugh at you. Anyway, I I just want you to feel safe with being a little messy because sometimes that's where the spark comes that's going to be uh something that leads to something big for you. Oh, I know that you may sometimes be plagued by that inner critic. Yeah, I joking aside, yeah, we don't have to uh have the visions of all of the girls in Carrie throwing the feminine hygiene products and saying plug it up or uh pick your own bully scene from uh a movie

Making Peace With The Inner Critic

that really scarred you and you you get the idea. But we carry around our our own inner critic. And that critic is there to help us. It's because it at one point it it served us, it helped us, saved us. But we need to be able to move past whatever it was that was dangerous in the past and try to embrace the curiosity of stepping into what's what's in a brave new dawn. I will I will share with you one thing that an inner critic of mine that's it's actually kind of nagging at me now in a way that's a little playful. And maybe you'll maybe you appreciate this, or maybe once I point it out, you'll see it. And uh hopefully it won't annoy you as much as it annoys me. But I noticed that as I listened, especially to my solo episodes, that I can fall into a weird pause pattern that is reflective of how it is that I'm thinking or I'm putting things together. But it's also just a little bit too much the same. It's a little bit like I am singing a song that has uh its own weird cadence. And it's especially annoying to me because I can recall listening to another creator who had a very similar pattern. And it I realize now that the reason that I found that pattern so irritating was because it was a little too familiar. It was a little bit too much like what I carried around by myself. And in this age of uh rage bait and and uh making it so that uh everyone's canceled for calling things out and things are out of context, I am going to share the name of that creator at the risk of having the internet come after me, but that's okay. I'm here for it. I got broad shoulders.

Finding And Fixing A Vocal Pattern

This creator, who I respect greatly, is a writer and a traveler, and uh someone willing to take all kinds of creative risks by the name of Colin Wright. When I listen to the daily, the the daily recordings that he he did, I don't know if he still does them, he he reads the news in such a way that is in a pattern that I tend to emulate. And it's it's something that I naturally do. It's not something I attempt to do, but it's something that is weirdly familiar. And I want to avoid sounding too much like that because it's it's definitely particular. It's definitely something that is um how can I say it? It's in a pocket. It's something that's just a a little bit um too easy to do an impression of. So one of the things that I am striving to do is to be a little bit more unpredictable, to do things in such a way that reflects that I have an appreciation for what it is to engage with a good children's book in a way that will keep a child entertained. You know, uh, make it so that they know that I'm someone who reads stories in a fun way. I'll do the voices. You get the idea. Look at every time that you get to show up to do what you do as an opportunity for you to practice. And I get that sometimes things are high stakes. I get that there are those opportunities when it really is a do or die, a real decision point where someone's going to either choose you

Treat Every Performance As Practice

and launch your career and make it so that you are going to get to do something fabulous because you showed up and did that one thing. But every single time that you show up to perform your art, to speak into a mic, to address multitudes, to write your blog, to do whatever it is that you show up for. It's just practice. And appreciate it for the practice. Let me tell you, I'm looking forward to the day that I can come back to this, listen to this recording, and just find everything about it cringe worthy. That may come sooner than I would hope. But the reason that I'm looking forward to that is because if I can listen to this and realize that I am better than that which I'm listening to, that's a sign of growth. That is letting me know that I have put in the work. I'm listening to the reps there in that recording. And there's the proof. There's something that shows where I was at a point in time, and I can celebrate that I am moving beyond what was the most for me then. And I'm able to grasp at new goals, new, new ways that I can excel at what I'm doing and help more people. When I I ponder what it is to look at those edges when it comes to communicating and the way that we show up, the way that we're perceived. I I find that it's the kind of thing that I work with people on, whether they're creatives or leaders, we all reach those points where we're having to wrestle with needing to be more visible, needing to make our message clearer, to have more clarity, more visibility, and to

Clarity, Visibility, And Natural Gifts

show up in a way that forces people to listen. We need to uh find a way to mine attention and to direct those that we wish to have listen in such a way that they will be hypnotized or enraptured. They they will want to follow what it is that we're saying because we're able to show up in a way that they find comforting, that they can um they uh we we make it so that we are able to offer something that is helpful or soothing, or in some way uh endears us. It's not an easy thing to do, or that can be the perception. A lot of people think that they need to do something special in order to make that happen. And I do my best to encourage the people I work with to lean into their natural gifts. You can't overcome whatever biases people carry with them, but all you can do is show up and show up in a way that is honest and clear and true to you. And believe me, that comes through no matter what the expected script was for you to follow. I'm a big believer in falling in love with yourself, in nurturing yourself, uh, taking care of yourself, because there are so many ways that the world beats us up. We've all experienced some kind of bullying, whether it comes from an off-handed remark

Self Trust After Bullying And Doubt

from a caregiver or uh the classic uh recessed schoolyard bullies that uh might have uh beaten you up and taken your lunch money and made you paranoid about uh not wearing the right color socks or whatever it is that that they might have given you a hard time about. But we can move past those things. Those scars of our past can be in the past, but they can also just be something that informs us that we can live through some hard things. I'd like for you to take a moment to think about all that you've achieved to get to this point. And I say that because no matter how it is that you found this recording, you've been able to pass through the filter. You are a miracle. Celebrate that for a moment. And as you listen to me sharing how once again I'm practicing in public, I'm going on the mic and exposing what is a rather tender wound about how it is that I am trying to grow in a place where anyone in the world can hear this. I want you to think about all of the ways that that you can show up, all of the ways that you can try things that maybe they start out as hard, but they only get easy because you practice. They only get easy because you stumble a little bit at the beginning. And I want you to just think about what it would be like to have someone that you can practice with, a listening ear, uh, someone that's able to give you some outside perspective, some feedback. That's one of the things that I do with the people

Grow With Feedback And A Partner

that I work with. But it doesn't have to be me. It could be someone else that you think of that you'd like to go on this journey with. Maybe it's someone that you can share this podcast with and listen and have some nice long talks over a cup of your favorite warm beverage and talk about ways that you can grow together. Growth can come in many different forms, and you need to find the one that's gonna work best for you, your situation, your availability, your resources, your time. I want you to remember that we're allowed to be works and progress. If we're not growing, then we're we're slowly dying. And it's good to have those opportunities to stretch. I would love to hear from anyone listening about anything that they're doing to stretch in their creative ventures. We're really easy to reach. You can grab a screenshot of this and post it to your social and tag for the love of creatives on whichever social platform is your preference, and we'll see it. I look forward to another opportunity to spend some time with you on one of these journeys, whether it's just me here on the mic alone, or if it's in the company of Maddox and a featured guest. Thank you for joining us on Community and Becoming for the love of creatives.