Get Your Creative Mojo On: Believing in Yourself Like a Boss!

Create Art Podcast Commentary Don't Stop Believing part of the Make Fun A Habit series hello friends, this is Timothy Keem O'Brien, your head instigator for Create Art podcast where I bring my over 30 years of experience in the arts and education world to help you tame your inner critic and create more than you consume. So this is a continuation of the Make Fun a Habit series that is based on Mike Brennan's book Make Fun a Habit.It's a workbook to help you do what it says. It's 30 days and what I'm doing is I'm taking each day making it into a podcast episode.And what it does is it reminds us that we need to have fun in our creativity.Now I did do a podcast about his podcast, Creative Chats on my other podcast, Find a Podcast about and we talked about his journey and all that good stuff. But I really loved this book when I got it and I've been using it. And today's episode is especially poignant to me.I'll use a $64,000 word there, poignant. So let me tell you about how the workbook is set up.Basically what he does is he gives you like a story relating to whatever the theme is, and then he'll give you questions to think about, he'll give you action items for you to do and then tips that will really drive home the point of the idea he's trying to get through to you. So definitely check it out for yourself.The links will be in the show notes for you to pick up a copy of that book and listen to his podcast and listen to my podcast too. So for this episode we're going to be talking about belief in yourself. The actual title of it is Don't Stop Believing.And Mike starts off with a story of him being 13 and having a crush on this girl at a school. And you know when you're 13 you get really shy, you're really awkward. So he went and made a piece of art for her and gets it to her house.And I'm not going to ruin it for you. You need to go ahead and read the book on this.But the big takeaway is that he believed in himself enough to fight through his shyness, to fight through being that 13 year old boy. And he delivered on something. Now, how it turned out, you'll have to read and see what happened.But let's go ahead and jump right into the assignment, into the question section here. The first is what does belief look like to you? And what do you believe?And I Think this is really an important question that we all need to ask ourselves. You know, what does belief look like to you? What do you believe?Because if you don't know what you believe, then how are you going to progress further? How are you going to follow that?How are you going to be able to use that belief in order to help you complete the task at hand, in order to share your artwork and to share your creativity? So I'll start off, and I'm interested in what you have to say, so make sure that you let me know.Email me timothyreateartpodcast.com and I definitely want to hear what. What's going on with you, because I think we. Well, we're going to start off with belief.I think we all have tapped into this collective unconsciousness, and I think we all have bits and pieces of the truth. And what I do is I try to figure out in my head, in my perception of reality, what is true, you know, what I'm seeing.And I try to share that with other people, to kind of compare notes and figure out what's really happening in this world that we're all living in.So that's one of my main beliefs, is that we're all tapped in somehow, whether it's through God, spiritual, this collective unconsciousness that I kind of buy into the dao, whatever it is, it doesn't have to be religious. For me, it's not really a religious thing in the traditional sense of the word religious, but that's kind of what I believe.And I think my mission is to take a look at these things and share it with everybody else out there and compare notes. The next question is, how has belief helped you in the past?And for me, I know when I was doing job interviews or when I was teaching job interviews, a skill that I have, a quality that I have is tenacity. And where do I get that tenacity from? It's a belief in myself that I can accomplish whatever task is in front of me.Now, sometimes that is also to my detriment because I don't often ask for help. And that's something that I'm continually working on, both in my professional life and in my personal life.So belief has helped me get to where I am, and it has shown me that I can accomplish whatever I set out to do. Now, it may not turn out the way I thought it would, but it always turns out to be something that puts me in a more.More positive place, a better place than when I started. So the next question is, how can Belief help you experience more fun and enjoyment. I'm not sure. I am not sure this one.I think that it can show me that I was right to believe in my abilities. When I'm doing a project or a task or something like that, it's kind of that confirmation that I do have the skill set, I do have the intelligence.I can tap into that collective unconsciousness and do, you know, if I have a weird idea, I can do it now, how other people respond to it, I can't control that. But it's a lot of fun when, you know, I initially think or when people tell me, yeah, you can't do that. It reminds me of high school.I'm going to delve into a high school story here for you.So it was my senior year in high school, and picture this, if you will, me, leather jacket, chains on the jacket, spiked hair, ponytail, black fingernail polish, eyeliner. And going to honors econ class. And I have to take the class in order to graduate.And the teacher there said, there's no way you're going to pass this class. He told me straight out, you're not going to pass. And I told him that I am going to get an A in the class. I'm going to do pass.Not only pass, I'm going to get the highest grade in this class. So I worked my tail off to make that happen. I put it out in the universe, and sure enough, I did get the highest grade in the class.And weirdly enough, I used the lessons and the information that I learned in that econ class in my day job. So that definitely helped me out. The last question is, what is an area you need to grow your belief? So again, I think it's the initial.The initial action of doing a project. Because, you know, there have been. I have a lot of ideas for projects, but do I have the belief that I can accomplish them? So it's the initial.I got a lot. I got to stop letting it swim around in my head and actually do it. And, you know, I have a strong fear of failure.I don't want to fail at a top, at a project. I don't want it to turn out to be a big old painting that looks like a mud pile. So for me, that's an area that I need to start at the initial.Once I get it going, I can do it. But it's that initial push that I need to work on. So now we're going to be moving on to the action items.And the first one is to take a risk and I just mentioned this. That initial thing of, you know, is it going to turn out? Is it going to be a big old pile of mud? I need to myself learn to take more risks.And, you know, I fully intend to and I'm trying to with things. So I think our first action item is right on the money. You know, take that risk. Don't worry about the outcome of it. You're not there yet.Just take that initial risk and see where it leads you. The next action item is practice positive self talk. Oh boy, do I need to work on this one. I, my worst critic.I know how to push my own buttons and I know how to stop myself from accomplishing things and from doing things. I can give myself a thousand excuses of, you know, why waste your time with this?So I need to change that to why not, you know, take a chance and do the project. So something I need to work on. Maybe that's something you need to work on.And then the last action item, which I think wraps this up nicely, is visualize yourself achieving your goals. So, you know, that initial phase of, oh, I don't know if I'm gonna, you know, make my goal of whatever this is going to be.Let's visualize that we do make that goal and backwards plan from that. You know, what do I got to do right before I hit the goal? What, you know, what's the, you know, five steps I got to do before I hit the goal?Okay, so what does step five look like? What does step four look like? What's step three look like on down, you know, on down to step one and then go do step one and start that journey.So definitely that can take the initial fear right out of it. You know, think about that goal. Hey, if I achieve this, wow, this is what it, this is what I want it to look like.Now we're going to move on to Mike's tips. First one is be open minded again. That's going back to that self talk. That's going back to taking those risks. Go ahead and do it.What's the worst is going to happen? You fail. Oh, boy. You know, we fail every day. We fail at things every day. It's okay. Just give it a shot. The next tip is to practice gratitude.So be happy with your belief, okay? If you have a gratitude journal, put that in your journal. You know, be grateful that you have a belief in yourself, even if it's not strong.Start there and then grow with that and get that belief even stronger by, you know, giving gratitude. To have any belief Tip three is spend time in nature. Mike likes to spend a lot of time in nature, I find.So definitely getting out of your studio and getting out into the world and, you know, maybe you go out and look at some birds, walk through a forest, whatever it is, get outside and get out of your head and get out of your space. Maybe it's your, your space that you've created, your studio that you've created that isn't conducive to that kind of stuff.Just go outside, spend some minutes outside and then come back to it. Step number four is meditate or pray meditation. I do, and I do it with a guy called Yogi Brian that I found him on TikTok and Instagram.Chris is like a sailor and it's, it's the kind of meditation that I can get into. So give that a try for yourself. You know, whether it's with Yogi Brian or with something, you know, somebody else that's a little bit more tame.I tend to like mine on the wild side, but that's me. Number five is read inspiring stories. There's thousands of books created every day. Find something that inspires you.Find somebody that has done whatever you want to do and read their story.And the last tip, tip number six is surround yourself with positive energy that can be with music that's in meditation, that's going outside in nature.You know, sometimes we just got to turn off the news and this morning when right before I started recording this, I was having a hard time sleeping and I got up about 5 in the morning, came down to my man cave and I just, you know, couldn't get back to sleep. So I threw on some Bob Ross on the TV and laid down and crashed out for about two hours.And, and it was great and it really propelled me to do this episode.So maybe it's just, you know, you throw in some Bob Ross, you throw in some nice jazz, you know, you're reading the inspiring stories, getting in your gratitude journal, doing the meditation, but surround yourself with that positive energy because we have so much negativity out in the world, especially here in 2025. Turn it off and turn on some positivity for your life. Alright, well, I hope this episode and this chapter of this book has helped you out.It definitely has improved my mood today. So this one was one I'll be definitely going back to.If you got something out of it, I'd ask you go ahead and share it with a friend that may need, you know, this, this kind of encouragement. You can always reach out to me.Timothyreateartpodcast.com and let me know if you've bought the book and are going through the book and like to have your thoughts on this book, on this workbook or if you want to, you know, talk to me about what's going on in your neck of the woods and you know, if you like to be on the show, email me. Definitely go ahead and do that for yourself.Something that I haven't been a friend of mine just, just yesterday was telling me is that, hey Tim, you, you have a business that you're running and you're not really promoting it on the socials.So the new business I'm running is TKB Podcast Studio and that's where I help my clients, you know, lead through the noise, through quiet professionalism. Basically I help them with their podcasts and I am open for business.So if you want to go to tkbpodcaststudio.com check out my portfolio there and you can see what I've done with other folks. I definitely would love to work with you on whatever project that you have going on.So give it a look, see and then the last thing I'm going to ask is for the survey. I have a 2024 listener survey.Yes, I know it's in 2025, but you can go to createartpodcast.com survey and you know, give me some ideas on topics that you want to go ahead and look at or have me look at or is the music too long or do I need to change my voice to James Earl Jones or something along those lines. The survey is there for you so that way I can improve the show and make it a five star show in your eyes.So definitely, if you've got a few minutes to do that survey, I would highly appreciate you going ahead and knocking that out because I want this show to be the show that you're referring to other people to. Alright, that's all I have for you today. I want to thank you for taking a listening to this episode. I hope you got something out of it. I know I did.You know, just reading through this, through this chapter of the book really pumped me up today. So I'm gonna let you get back to your day. I need to get back to my day and go out there, tame that inner critic, create more than you consume.Go out there and make some art for somebody you love yourself. I'll talk to you next time. Sa.