What are the lessons that you keep learning over and over again? Today I'll be sharing two of my lessons that I seem to keep having to learn.
Welcome to the modern Creative Woman exploring the art and science of creativity. This is the podcast for women who want to elevate their creativity and start applying creative thinking in their everyday lives. I'm your hostess and creativity expert, Doctor Amy Backos. I'm a licensed psychologist and a registered and board certified art therapist with almost three decades helping women live their authentic lives at the modern Creative Women, we are obsessed with helping you build your creativity and self leadership. Through her conversations and creative insights, I'll provide simple tricks and practices that will help take the mystery out of the creative process so you can start each day feeling empowered, creative, and ready to take on whatever comes your way. Let's get started!
If you're new here, welcome in. If you're a long time listener, welcome back. I am always grateful to have you on this audio creativity journey with me. Today I am talking about two choices I made over the last 5 or 6 years that I definitely learned from, and I'll talk about it framed in modern creative woman language, and I'm hoping that my lessons can help you take a look at your life decisions, choices, and day to day habits and see where you might want to take more value based actions. To get out of contemplative inaction. I remember the exact moment when I decided to retire from my position as chair at university, and truth be told, I had been thinking about it for over three years. This is my first lesson. It was about waiting so long to take action. I was in this place where I had been delaying making some really big decisions, and I'd been dragging my feet in what I knew I wanted to do for a full three years. That's a really long time to not take action on what you truly desire. My brain wanted to think of it as this was a mistake, and I'm not going to repeat it. And using strength based positive psychology. I quickly turned it around into a lesson that I learned. I really did learn from this, and it's something that many people struggle with. And many of the women that I work with inside the membership struggle with taking action.
Honestly, there's no way I could know now what I do about myself if I hadn't delayed for so long. I knew that it was going to be. A what felt like a big risk for me to leave my tenured professor job. It gave me opportunities to travel internationally for work invitations to teach at other universities. He gave me an inroad for publications. I was really focused on what I was giving up instead of thinking about what I could be gaining. So after thinking about it for two years, I just started to take some small steps of action. I began resigning from some of my committees at the national level. I rented an art studio space where I could start to build a different kind of practice seeing private clients in a studio space, which I've done often on for all of my career. Except this time I knew I wanted it to be my full time work. And I began talking to people about different business models and how things could work. So that was the last year before I retired. What was I doing for the previous two years? Who you ask? That's what I was asking myself. I was just so focused on the potential loss, the risk and the challenge of leaving a job that I had worked very hard to get and for a very long time, and it was one that I really enjoyed.
I spent those two years trying to ignore that. A little itch in my brain, or a yearning in my heart that there was something else calling me that I really felt I could make a contribution. It focused on my fears and the downside. However, when I began to take small steps just in the desired direction of my values, I called them little experiments to see, and I began to feel more clear when I took some action and I started to strengthen my voice. That just kind of became a little louder in my head that it was okay to leave the position that I loved for a position where I felt scared, and also more authentically suited to provide really unique value in helping more women in career change. It's called the big leap, where you are finally willing to take the leap and leave a job. That one you're really good at to you and others benefit from. And three, that people really like you doing that job. You're rewarded. You're good at it. This is some work from Gay Hendricks in describing how we make this final transition to take the big leap. The leap is essentially moving towards work that you are most uniquely suited for, and able to give the most unique kind of value to the world.
Another thing about the big leap kind of jobs is that it's often not a job that looks clear or secure, and it often doesn't even look like a logical next step to anyone on the outside. When I was getting ready to retire. I had a lot of thoughts about having been really broke in my adult life, and it made me scared to leave a job that offered security. What I was imagining for the world was not anything that I had seen before. I had never seen someone integrate the art and science of creativity for women, and it was really unique. As far as I could tell. I wasn't walking into a clearly defined niche or audience, and I didn't know there would be any demand for this kind of work. I kept my vision to myself for a really long time, but I was working on it. I was writing, making art about it. I wanted to know what it was that I was really imagining before I told anyone. I wanted to be clear and sell myself on it before I started pitching it to the stakeholders in my life. And I brought it up to my husband, who had for a long time said, how come you're doing so much writing and not so much art? And for a long time he'd been pushing me to move into creativity in as many places as I could. And he said, well, that sounds really great. That made me feel good, but it didn't deter me, or it wouldn't have deterred me if he had expressed hesitancy because I had kind of sold myself on the idea. 1s
Then I brought it up to my parents and I. I was sort of more worried to talk to them. They're both retired teachers. My mom's a retired professor, and in their generation, it's really important to have that kind of one job that you stay at for a long time and gives you security. And when I told them they were excited for me also, and again, their approval or in approval wouldn't have changed my mind at that point. However, it felt really supportive that the people I interact with and share supportive, loving relationships would also supported my vision. When I tell this story now, it kind of mostly makes sense about moving towards my vision. But at the time I really thought, oh my gosh, we might end up on welfare again. This might not work. So here's my next lesson based on a strategy that only recently no longer fits me at all. So when I retired from the university two and a half years ago, I've been kind of making this mistake over and over again. And I don't like it. And it's a mistake slash lesson that I think makes sense now.
But during this last bit of time, I was kind of confused and the mistake was over relying on the expertise of others for being in the world and talking about my business now, I feel like I do really authentic work and I understand art therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and of course, creativity. And I really do believe in what I'm offering to women has incredible value, that they can take so much from this integrated way of thinking and feeling and taking action. Yet I was not having that same kind of trust in myself when it came to marketing or selling, or even just making sure that people knew what I was offering. Most of my career, I have told people I was an interior decorator because as soon as you tell someone your therapist, they start to tell you their problems in like social situations. I think it must be true for other professions as well, except that when we're talking about therapy, I was hearing just too many stories out of context that were upsetting, and I wasn't really able to give people the time and attention they needed. So I just said, um, interior decorator. It's a great metaphor, right? If they got to know me and knew me later, they would appreciate the metaphor of I'm an interior decorator. So I was really a lot out of practice in telling people about my work. People could find me on Psychology Today, and I could tell people I was a professor. They understood what that is, but describing my work in detail was something I'd never really done before, and I found myself really stuck in this place that I was over, relying on the models presented to me.
People had advised me not to use the word art therapy that it would be off putting to, you know, both potential clients who thought they weren't artists, or maybe they felt they didn't need therapy and they were only looking for the coaching and consultation that I do. When I looked at social media with all the funnels and the clicks and attempting to capture people's attention, I just kept thinking, I need to know more. And I was really over relying on what else I was seeing. I need to know more, and if you know me, you might suspect that this is a reframe. In my life, I always feel like I need to know more, and I feel so lucky that I have been able to create opportunities for my own education and sharing that education with others. It's so wonderful. I'm always learning and growing from the work that I do, and I do need to know more.
I really strive to be a humble scholar, to research and present material that both agrees with and contradicts what I teach. I try and present alternatives, but I was having thoughts that I needed to know more and more and more about business and other people's models. I need to hire more people. I know I need to go to another mastermind before I take a different kind of action. And here's where the lesson comes in. I realized my same confidence about my work could actually be applied to all these other ways that I'm approaching business and moving forward. It was such a huge wake up call to realize that I was not using my strength based approaches in my own business. These are the ones that I teach and I live by in other areas of my life. I was simply not metabolizing my learning and filtering it through my unique lens.
Did you ever do this? Just accept what other people show you without making it your own. There are many, many examples of people who are excellent in their profession and co-workers. Ask them, how do you do it? But other people are unable to replicate the same kind of success, and the same holds true for when we're learning new inner techniques and strategies to be more creative, to rely less on thoughts and focus more on values, we can really run into a problem of trying to replicate other people's values or other people's strategies that allowed them to feel good. There's also really a developmental curve of learning any new thing.
So going to school, working on a business, becoming a parent for the first time, we have to gather a lot of information, and then we learn to integrate it and apply it. It's really a developmental process of doing new things. And so many women don't want to try a new thing because they feel uncomfortable in that process of learning and then integrating and then applying. People want to apply right away and spend a lot of time taking action without having a clear sense of values. And what's important for so many of the women that I work with, they focus on gathering more information. They'll take another class to another program, and they'll wait until they think they know enough before they make a change. I have worked with so many dissertation students who feel they need to read more of the literature before they start to write their dissertation, and nothing could be further from the truth.
Writing is a way of knowing, and there's things that we simply cannot know about our research perspective and how we begin writing it down. The lesson here, for me and for all of us, is remembering how to use our strengths and really trusting that it will work when we take time to slow down and integrate what we've learned. Now, I'm not down on myself for learning or listening, quote unquote, too much to other people who are the perceived experts. I am, however, celebrating that I am now metabolizing the information to make it my style.
Do you know about the quilts of Gee's Bend? That's where I get the phrase my style. They are. A group of women from Alabama, and they are a community who survived slavery, the antebellum South, the Civil rights movement. And they largely did not participate in the Great Migration. They stayed in Alabama, and they passed on these amazing quilting techniques. And their quilts have been, you know, originally for practical purposes, made from old clothes or whatever. They had to work good. And now I was just in target the other day. And you can find products with the quilts of Gee's Bend pattern on them. What they call my style is when one of the quilters creates a style that hasn't been done before, that they make unique to themselves. So much of quilting is creating standard patterns in the fabric, stitching them together, and then my style is a way to honor and recognize when the quilter makes creative decisions to make it their very own style. And I love this lesson. It's a phrase I often ask myself, what's my style here?
The my style of the quilts of Gee's Bend. What would be my way of doing this? There's simply so many layers of our art, our authenticity, that we have to really keep pulling back what no longer suits us and move towards what's most important to us. I think we often struggle with the idea of self-doubt seems pretty common. And then your strategy for dealing with it? For me, I always meet self-doubt with I think I need more information that can really slow me down from taking action. So when you're confronted with self-doubt, are you aware of your usual strategy of dealing with it? We also have to learn what actions move us towards our values and our values can be in all kinds of areas in career, relationships, romance, parenting, education, health, spirituality, whatever's most important. So what are the actions that move us towards our values? Versus what is fear rearing its head that's keeping us still, which is essentially moving away from values? It's a question that we can continue to ask ourselves our entire life. What action moves me closer to my values? What step can I take today that gets me closer to what's important? Values are different than goals. Values are. Ways of moving in the world that represent how you want to show what's important to you. It's all about what's important in how do you act on it.
These last few months, I kept thinking about what I know about strength based psychology and how we can apply our current strengths to really shore up the other areas where we are less strong. And I believe this is where you can learn how to apply your strengths to yourself for taking action. What am I good at? How can I use that skill over here or in this new area? When I think about needing more information and moving towards my strengths, I started reflecting on what I already know. And I know a lot about integrating and metabolizing and presenting authentically the material that I'm teaching. I have almost three decades of teaching and therapy experience. I'm very confident that what I'm offering is really incredible, the teaching and the techniques that allow you to change your relationship forever with your thoughts and your feelings, and take effective action.
To be able to execute your dreams and not sit around and wait for three years like I did. But even knowing that I have these strengths that I know how to integrate and metabolize information, I am still unpacking and unfolding my automatic response, which is I need more information. And I've really been reflecting in writing and in art on the areas where my worries are kind of pushing up or over dominating my thoughts and taking some perspective. I know that I need to get more information is just my familiar refrain in my brain, and I shouldn't apply it to every action that I take.
So you can also allow your strengths to support you in the areas where you feel less confident and apply them in ways that will serve you to kind of shore up some of those areas that you find you're struggling. It's one of the things that I teach. It's one of the things that I'm always trying to do, and I work on it over and over again. But I know I have the creative thinking skills to think broadly and make changes, even when they're sometimes kind of slow. It's always exciting to have these aha experiences, and while we're growing to be our most authentic, so an aha experience doesn't come very often, it allows us to focus on where we're going, what's most important to us, and then our constant reflection can lead to the aha experience where we have a new insight. And that's ultimately the goal is that our value leads our actions.
Our value is how we choose our behaviors. And then we can stop over relying on all the thoughts and feelings that often point us in the wrong direction, slow us down, cause us to wait three years before taking action. I wanted to share this story with you, because I think it's so universal that we hear someone's vision at the end and we think that sounds good, and they don't tell you kind of the messy parts or the uncomfortable parts, and we're left thinking that our own discomfort. Is because there's something terribly wrong, or we've done something wrong, or we're not good enough to pursue our values. And it's simply not true. I think doubt is universal. Fear is biologically based. Having fears about your own safety and your ability to provide for yourself, or feel accepted and loved when you're making a big change, can bring up so many fears. It's such a primitive need to make sure that we have safety and support. And I mentioned earlier I was worried about finances. I was worried about the people around me thinking that I shouldn't make a change. So these are all really important for you to remember in making your own changes. I think what I offer is a unique perspective, and I think that's what you offer as well, that you can do things in your way that no one else can do the same way. It's in your personality, how you view things, how you think about things. All your past experiences contribute to your unique vision, and taking unique perspective on your values allows you to move towards your vision.
I feel really excited about the work I do. I was mostly scared for about four years of this and I'm still have doubts and fears of course. I'm really excited about what I see happening for the women inside the membership, the women who choose to do VIP weekends or retreats, I see that they are not the same after they learn these creative thinking tools to increase psychological flexibility and creativity. And I'm sure you have your own stories of unpacking something over and over again.
Sometimes women complained to me that they thought they dealt with an issue years ago, and they can't figure out why it's come up again, using a strength based approach, instead of feeling disparaging about the same issue coming up again, we can see it as an opportunity to increase our healing, to reveal more of our authentic self that's maybe been held down or even stifled because we were spending so much psychological energy on suppressing our emotions or trying to avoid feeling bad. And I think it's normal to feel disappointment, but we don't want to linger there when we make a mistake or we do something in a slow way, or we're learning the same lesson in a different way. It's just part of how we're getting there, and I hope hearing my process is helpful for you to be able to bounce some of your own ideas around and see if you can relate to it. I told you a couple of weeks ago that I scheduled myself a writing retreat.
And my plan on the retreat is to metabolize, integrate and really creatively synthesize my work here in the modern creative woman. I wouldn't be able to eliminate and streamline information for you, and I find it the best investment for myself to go on retreats. I've done a writing retreat every few years. I started doing it with my dissertation, and I've done it beginning all of my books, especially when writing like a textbook. I really needed to have some creative time before I launched into writing the lessons, taking the time to honor your vision and spend time with it and kind of romance it a little bit is so essential. I think it's great if you can go on retreat and you can schedule little retreats into your week, into each day where you're able to connect with yourself. I really want to encourage you to just keep going towards your authentic self and discovering and uncovering who she is, so that you can be the modern, creative woman that you've always wanted to be.
With your unique values and your unique way of doing things. It's your way, it's your style, and no one else can do it the way you can. And there's already other people doing it the other ways. So keep going towards your dreams and your authenticity, and take the time to reflect and tell the story in a way that gives you the lessons. You can also re author old stories in a way that highlights the lesson. Instead of highlighting the problems, the traumas, the loss that we've experienced. We can shift towards a more strength based way of telling our stories.
In all our stories, we have been resilient and we have overcome so many things. Being able to tell your story in a way that focuses on value, what's important to you and the lessons that you learn is a powerful way of embracing your own authenticity. Try telling your story in words and in art. It's a powerful way to re-engage with your values and your vision. You can create a small piece of art for each job you've ever had to tell a coherent narrative of your career. You can build upon these ideas, creating art to show what's most important to you. I find it incredibly powerful to write a little bit after I make art, even if it's a title and three words or phrases to describe your art. Putting those words down, shifting to other parts of your brain to get into the verbal and linguistic areas after creating art is very powerful. If you do these exercises, I would love to hear about it. You can find me on Instagram. You can find me in the show notes. Have a wonderful rest of your week! Now that you know about how to use your creativity, what will you create?
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