Mak: 0:08

I don't think I've seen a sunset look like that in a very long time.

Valerie: 0:12

I know it's amazing and I'm not even going to try to photograph it, because the photograph doesn't ever do it justice. This is why I paint.

Mak: 0:20

It's so true, we've just got the most stunning sunset outside of our studio window right now. It's just beautiful.

Valerie: 0:27

It's incredible. We're so excited to be here with you again talking to you. I am Valerie, this is my husband, mac, and you are listening to the Unbound Creative Podcast. So today's episode have you seen? Who hasn't seen the? I don't know who needs to hear this, but I feel like that's like.

Mak: 0:48

that was like the headline on Instagram for a while I don't know who needs to hear this, but yeah, have you come on?

Valerie: 0:56

you've seen those posts.

Mak: 0:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen those posts like those memes.

Valerie: 0:58

I don't know who needs to hear this, but da da, da da da. And then they would say something and everybody was posting that. I feel like this episode is that. It's like I don't know who needs to hear this but that's what we want to share today.

Valerie: 1:14

Okay, so what is what is the thing that we just want everybody to know? We don't know who needs to hear this, but you. Just because everybody else is doing it, doesn't mean that it's good or right or what you should be doing. So many creatives get stuck and this goes for everything. I mean we could pull examples for everything but so many creatives get stuck in shoulds. I should be doing this, should, should, should. Let's get should out of our vocabulary, but I feel like the shoulds come from what we deem everybody else is doing, and just because that is the norm or what society says or what culture says, doesn't mean that it is the best thing for you or the best thing for creativity.

Mak: 2:11

Well, yeah, 100%. Most people in the creative world. They look at what's working and then they say to themselves well, I have to do that because that's what's working, and that is outcome-oriented thinking that is designed for vanity, ego, success, money-making, all of those things. That's what that thinking is, and, rather than being someone who follows trends and doing what everybody else is doing, you're a creative. Your job in the world is to set trends. Your job is to come up with the new thing. There doesn't have to be any pressure around that, because the new thing is just what feels good to you inside. It's that simple, and so I see this all the time where it's like, oh, I should be doing this and I should be doing this and I should be doing this. No, you should be doing what feels good.

Valerie: 3:09

But it's also like a macro level thing, I feel like, because, okay, I'm reading Beyond Anxiety right now by Martha Beck and it is incredible, I'm only one chapter in in full disclosure. But I've heard her give a few talks about it, I've seen a few reels of hers, I've listened to a few podcasts and now I'm a chapter into the book and what she is saying is really mind blowing. But basically that the left hemisphere of our brain is where the fear lives. It's the logic. Of course we've heard like oh, left brain, right brain and then the right brain is more of that joy center, the creativity, that's where that lives and they work like a toggle switch, which is really crazy. So our left brain is where the anxiety lives and it tends to be a lot louder and very shouty.

Valerie: 4:06

And there's a phenomenon with the left side of the brain that we deem it to be truth, like whatever comes from the left side, because it is built to keep us safe and it's rooted in fear. We automatically assume it's like the negativity bias and we assume that's true, real, happening, our anxiety is coming true, and then the right side that holds our creativity and holds those other feelings. We look at that as unreliable from the same thing, which is our brain telling stories, and they're just kind of hallucinations of our brain, but we believe the left side to be true. So what ends up happening is in our culture. We are just a very left-brained, centered culture and what she's saying is even in, even in the left brain issues like anxiety.

Valerie: 5:06

Our culture tends to want to put left brained solutions onto left brain problems. So for anxiety, for example, it's very left brain of us to be like beat it down, overcome it. I got to fight my anxiety, I got to get past. And what she's saying is, if we employ more right brain activity to the anxiety and come at it with gentleness and thinking, this is just a scared animal inside of us, how can we make space for it? How can we allow that to be seen and not just like beating it down and taking almost a warrior approach? My mind was blown by this.

Mak: 5:53

Which part of your mind, the left side or the right side? The?

Valerie: 5:56

whole thing, the whole thing. Because she's talking about all of these cultural ways of being, and then you just have this light bulb moment Because she's talking about all of these cultural ways of being, and then you just have this light bulb moment that goes oh my goodness, everybody's doing it. That is not a weird thing to say. I want to fight my anxiety. But yet, is that the best thing? No, it's actually not working. Is that the best thing? No, it's actually not working. So just because it's culturally said to be the thing doesn't make it good. So it's just putting me in this place as creatives, and especially as unbound creatives. How do we question norms, even cultural norms, from a macro level, how artists are treated, how creatives are treated Like everybody? If you've listened to any of our episodes, you know by now we are very against the struggling, suffering, starving artist cliche. So again, if that is what's most widely viewed about creatives and artists, that doesn't make it right, or?

Mak: 7:06

or true?

Valerie: 7:07

or true?

Mak: 7:08

yeah, it doesn't make it true and uh, it's definitely not true.

Mak: 7:12

I mean, for, for so many people you can, you will like live out the thing that you believe of yourself totally the stories that we tell yes, and so if you are an artist of any kind and you come at it from the standpoint of every movie ever made or every book ever written, where it's like, oh I am the, you know, I'm the artist struggling in the streets trying to make things work and connect the dots, then that's exactly what you're gonna do. Also, that doesn't have to be the reality of it. That doesn't have to be true. You can literally change your perspective and change your life overnight, that quickly, and you can say no, I am a confident, strong, creative person who is going to succeed and I'm going to create from a place of joy and love and I'm going to bring beauty into the world in any number of ways, because this is what I meant to do.

Mak: 8:19

Now, feel the energy between those two juxtapositions. So the anxiety that you're talking about is very left brained, and you're right. Like the left brain can't can't come up with a solution for its own problem. That's the beauty of the right brain. The right brain is a really fantastic problem solver, but we've been conditioned as a society to not accept the solutions from the right brain. However, unless it's Disney, unless it's Steve Jobs, unless it's Elon Musk, then we accept the right brain solutions.

Valerie: 8:58

But not at first.

Mak: 8:59

Exactly. But this is what I'm saying is, everyone has like it's. There is this meme that the that, that because you know, an engineering mind, which is the left brain, says there's only one solution to a problem and once we find it, and it's the most efficient solution, that's it. There can be no other solution. But the right brain says, oh no, there's a thousand other solutions. They may not be as efficient, but when did efficiency become the key factor? You know what I mean, like. So that's what's really fascinating about what you're saying. What I'm really interested in about this topic is I actually think the right brain has been and always will be, the better problem solver.

Valerie: 9:42

Yet in the world, in society, society, we bow down to the left brain well, because the right brain isn't rewarded in the way the left brain is, which brings up a whole other topic well, worse than that.

Mak: 9:56

The right brain is often called crazy and has to prove itself in order for people to go. Oh wait, you wait. You know what? That isn't crazy.

Valerie: 10:04

Well, that is another one of these kind of going against the grain things, not only the starving, struggling, you know kind of meme that we see, but also just, oh, that's the flaky, flighty creative who's like a little bit off, or they're seen as rebellious, which was my story.

Mak: 10:26

I they're seen as rebellious, which was my story. I was always seen as rebellious and we've been talking about school a lot lately. In in high school especially, I was hated by, and not like by, my teachers. They literally did not like me because I didn't. I just didn't fit, it didn't work for me and I didn't just fall into line, which was a very left brain, like school is structured, very left brain, and I was just like no, I'm not going to do homework. You gave you had me for six hours today. That's what I'm giving you when I go home tonight. I'm going to create and I'm going to do things. So it's often seen as rebellious too, but that's not the case. Like I could have a lot of really great right brain solutions that go against everything the left brain says or left brain thinking group says. And because you dare present those ideas, you're seen as rebelling, when it's not that you're just trying to like.

Valerie: 11:25

Add to the conversation but it kind of is rebelling just because of the society that we're in that is leaning that way, and the institutions that are built that way, so much based on fear and non-risk, taking and and falling in line and everything so almost to be a creative and to be unbound. It is an act of rebellion. But what we're seeing is what if that is correct? Like what if that is the better way to be or the way that we are actually wired as human beings to be? And I want to say too that nobody is saying left brain is bad or wrong. That's not the case. It's part of the human experience and the human just existence. We need both. I think the issue becomes when we are so heavily weighted on on one side without having a whole brain understanding about how we can operate in the world at our most, like, our best, our Well, yeah.

Mak: 12:39

I don't think we're even coming across that we're saying left brain is bad. But I will say this I think for a long time left brains have been saying right brain is bad and that's not the case. Both are extremely necessary and needed and useful. And I want to go back to my point about rebellion. My point there was we have labeled rebellious as bad.

Mak: 13:05

And so when you are creative and I know I'm talking to, I know I'm talking to some people right now listening when you're creative and you dare go against the grain and suggest something and someone and people label you as rebellious for having an idea and that could be in any situation, it doesn't even have to be with a piece of art. If you found that you're on a committee or you're in an HOA or whatever and you have a really creative solution to a problem and you bring it up and then people go, I can't believe you would even suggest something like that. Rebellion isn't always negative, but it has a negative connotation and so that can force a creative to shut down right away because we don't want to be seen as like a negative person when the idea itself was not born out of someone trying to like be a rebel. They just had a creative idea and I'm saying that's okay, don't get yourself labeled.

Valerie: 14:03

Well, I think we need to just break down the essence of creativity at its core, which is inherent risk-taking. Without the risk-taking there's no creativity. There's no creativity Without doing something differently. You don't ever get anything new. So it really just comes with the territory of trying different things and you're going to fail at some things and you're going to make a mess and it's not going to work and there are going to be all of these solutions that don't work. That is just par for the course. That's inherent to it. But the beauty of it is we're made for that as human beings. We are natural puzzle solvers. We why do we love mystery? Why do we love? We love to figure things out. We love trying different solutions like a puzzle. But again we have so many voices saying, including our own fear, which again we realize, gets really, really loud and tries to tell us that it's the truth, that that is unsafe because it's not familiar to us.

Mak: 15:19

I love that because my left brain does present me with a lot of challenges every single day. But what I have found is when I'm caught up in something that is stumping me or holding me back if I go for a walk or I meditate, sometimes I'll jump in the shower and it like gets my right brain going and the right brain it tends to be what helps me solve the problem is like where I solve the problem when the left brain is hitting me with an issue.

Valerie: 15:51

Well, that's. What's so cool about it is that we have this. We have this toggle switch that we're able to go between, but yet so much of the voices are against that they're more in that left side of the fear-based and the figure it out and the logic side, where so much of a solution to a problem is actually not going to come from logic. We think somehow that we're going to think our way out of a box, but often the answers that we want don't come from that at all, that we're not going to think our way out of certain problems, but yet our left brain tricks us into thinking that it's all about the thinking.

Mak: 16:39

Well, I think we're taught forever that logic is the solution to every problem, and it's a solution to a lot of problems, but it isn't the solution to every single problem. I mean this. This sort of reminds me of like one of my comedian I don't even remember who it was at this point, but he had a joke and he said why is it that two people marry each other, one who is super unorganized and one who's really organized? And when the person who is unorganized comes home and they put their keys on the counter, why is it that the organized person says, no, you have to take the keys and hang them on the hook by the door? And it's that the unorganized person is wrong. Why is it never that the unorganized spouse says to the organized one why are you hanging your keys up on the hook when you can just chuck them anywhere?

Mak: 17:32

And that's funny because it's real, because who says that that's the right way to do it? Yeah, you want to know where your keys are all the time. Fine, logically, that's where you put them, but in the moment, maybe chucking them somewhere was the best motion. So my point here is that I feel like throughout history, all the logic, the logical thinkers, the logic, all that stuff has been crammed into creatives' faces, saying you must conform to the logic. Somehow it has become what is accepted. When creativity is what drives a vast majority of problem solving out there, there is a good marriage of the two, then that's the ultimate solution art and science. But for some reason I feel like the more logic, scientific-minded idea is what is prevailing and saying no, we don't want creative solutions, we want logical solutions. And that leaves creative stranded.

Valerie: 18:42

Well, I think we see where this came from in school. We kind of talked about that a little bit ago, that that system, and we've been talking about school a lot lately because I'm seeing just part of the algorithm of reels that I'm seeing and I've just gotten into a bunch of things about education and finding out that the current school system is as a result of Rockefeller and all of the industrialization that they wanted children to be able to sit for long periods of time doing mundane tasks, answer to a bell, to make them good workers, to put them into the factory work workforce and everything.

Mak: 19:29

So creativity everything everything standardized make everyone the same right.

Valerie: 19:36

So doesn't it make sense now and this is new, I just found that out this whole system is less than 200 years old, or something like that. Yeah, so now we are seeing a culture who has been influenced by this way of being, and it makes sense that creativity culturally at the moment just is not viewed in in maybe the the best, the best way.

Mak: 20:11

Yeah, it's so funny because it is I think we mentioned this a couple episodes ago where if you, if you say, I want to go be an artist, that's what I want to do for a living. I want to make art, and it can be any kind musician, singer, visual art, whatever. I want to be a dancer, I want to be on Broadway, I don't care what it is, you want to make art you are laughed at and people are pretty much saying well, what's your backup plan? What's your backup plan? If you say I want to be an attorney, nobody asks you what your backup plan is.

Mak: 20:52

But you are in that category of okay, this is probably not going to work. This person's life is going to spiral out of control. They're going to be poor, they're going to be all these terrible things until you make it and then then you're fine, then everything's great. There's no middle. You know it's like. It's like people could say I want to be an attorney and go to college and fail the bar 10 times and they've got to do like out of wait tables or do whatever they need to do to get by, but nobody looks at that as bad because that's an accepted profession. You know that's like oh OK, no, you're going to be fine doing that, but if you want to go be a dancer on Broadway, well then you're crazy.

Valerie: 21:42

Well, I think the sad thing is that way of thinking that's maybe been so prevalent in our culture stops so many people from even having an endeavor and a hobby, because that becomes another level that people say oh, you want to spend real time and real money doing some of these creative endeavors or just going down an artistic path. I think immediately people say, well, where's it headed? That's very left brain again to think of. Well, where is this leading?

Valerie: 22:16

What is the point in doing this, what is the outcome? And if it's not going to be your outcome, and if it's not going to be your profession, or if it's not going to be something that you end up making money from or that becomes, I think, the natural thing that people will ask like, oh well, where's it going, what are you doing with it? But it almost can't be just for the joy of it and for for the love of it and for the love of it and because we are literally wired and built for it.

Mak: 22:43

And likewise so many people. Well, not likewise. I'm going to further your point. So we have what's unfortunate is a lot of people going into. They get MBAs or marketing degrees or whatever and they go out into the quote unquote real world and they get into the corporate America and they get those jobs. But they would have been fantastic artists because they were shut down to the idea of leaning into their creativity and I think later in life you see that start to come out in other ways because they begin to regret the fact that they didn't act on it properly. When, when they had all the when you can take all the risk when you're young and you can take all the risk, you don't, and then you regret it later.

Valerie: 23:30

Well, this is another thing. This goes with another example of what we're talking about in this whole episode is, just because this is what the norm is, or what the masses do, does not make it the right way. Why don't we ask more questions, just in general and in our society? Why are we pressuring 18 year olds 18,? Why are we pressuring them to have their whole lives figured out? Why are we taking childhood and essentially make it resume, building for what they're going to do for the rest of their life and how much pressure that is? I remember feeling that pressure. It didn't feel like you could make a mistake. I'm going to choose the wrong college, I'm going to choose the wrong major. I'm going to screw up big time and I was. I've said this before on the podcast. I was a school person, I was very much, and now, as an adult, I'm like, oh my goodness, I was looking for such external validation and I think a lot of people pleasing is coming from it.

Mak: 24:38

I think that's a huge part of it and I'm getting the good grades and it's.

Valerie: 24:42

I'm pleasing.

Valerie: 24:44

I'm pleasing to the teacher and I'm doing what I'm told and I'm you know, oh, how much that goes into it. And then you couple that with being 18 years old and it's so much pressure, like you're gonna make some kind of huge mistake with your whole life, because that's how people are talking. This is gonna be determining your whole life, because that's how people are talking. This is going to be determining your whole life and you have to choose this. It's like, oh, my goodness and I think that a lot of people, whether or not they even want to make a profession out of the arts but maybe there was just a different path, maybe there was just something else that would have been chosen, with a little bit of a less pressure and a little bit less of the should word.

Mak: 25:33

Well, and the thing is is OK, obviously, not everyone who wants to sing is going to become Taylor Swift, and not everyone who wants to dance is going to end up on Broadway. But you never know where that's going to go if you're allowed to experiment, and that's exactly what you're saying. So, okay, you might go to New York to try to become a dancer on Broadway, but you end up meandering your way into another job or another profession or another creative outlet that you love even more. And it isn't about fame and fortune, it's just about finding something that fills you up. But this left side logical thinking says nope, you've got to have it figured out before you start and you got to stick to the plan. And if you deviate from the plan, then you're going to fail. So don't deviate from the plan, Don't be creative, Put your head down, do the work, get a job, buy a house, go into debt and live. Live that life, because that's what everybody else is doing. That's what everybody else is doing. That's the American dream, and what we're saying is not so.

Mak: 26:45

If that's you, okay, like I want, let's give some practical advice here. If that's you, if you're in that right now and this is resin, and it might even be making you a little mad. Then here's here's what I would say it's never too late. It's never too late to begin to explore something a tugging deep down. I don't care what it is Something deep down that's a little creative for you, that you've. You could even just be like tinkering in your garage with you know, taking apart electronics, I don't know Just something that you've always wanted to do and mess around with. Start doing it. It's not too late. Do and mess around with.

Valerie: 27:26

Start doing it. It's not too late. The left side is going to shout and say where's it headed, Where's it?

Mak: 27:34

headed. What's the outcome? Where is all of this going? What's the strategy? Oh, that is the big one. Can you make money? Can you make money doing this? Do you have time?

Valerie: 27:41

Right.

Mak: 27:42

Yeah.

Valerie: 27:43

But knowing that that is going to shout at you because that's how it's just wired to do, then you can know all right, I'm retraining myself just to go toward these creative aspects and try it out, and it doesn't have to go anywhere. You don't have to know. There is no strategy here because, just as you said, Mac, the best stories, the people with the best stories who are doing really cool things. That tends to be the story.

Mak: 28:14

Yeah, that never started out, they're meandering their way there.

Valerie: 28:17

Exactly how many podcasts do you listen to of people who have done really, really cool things in creativity, in business, in art, in anything, and their story is this. So I sat down and I wrote up a hundred page document of exactly how it was all going to go, and I mapped out that this was going to be what happened in a year from now, and then in five years I'm going to do da, da, da, da, da da. And then now, here I am, on this podcast talking about the thing that I did Never.

Valerie: 28:50

Never, ever ever.

Mak: 28:51

Never once, never once in the history of anything has that happened. No, as someone who has written multiple business plans, because when you want money from a bank, you have to write a business plan, even though they never read it and I know they don't, because I would put things in it that they would obviously mention and no one ever read them. But a business plan. When I'm working with a new client, if they have a business plan, the first thing I tell them to do is throw it away, burn it, get rid of it, because you might miss out on 10 or 12 different opportunities. You might miss out on 30 opportunities. That would be explosive growth for your business because it wasn't part of the plan.

Mak: 29:38

Because we've been taught that we need to stay inside the lane that's cool and stick with the plan and the plan. You. You need to, in your life, be fully capable and willing to pivot at any moment and embrace the pivot. It might feel difficult or weird for a moment or two, but embrace it. And if you so, if you are, if you are running a business right now or whatever, and you have a business, there's nothing wrong with having goals and having frameworks and systems. Those are all good things that are needed, but if you have like a five or ten year plan, I'd get rid of it because you never know where you're gonna go.

Valerie: 30:23

And this just goes back to school again. There is that very defined path in school and getting good grades and there is no room for failure, there's no room for experimentation, there's no wiggle room there at all. But is that how we as human beings are designed? And the answer is no. And if we think about, like we were saying, the stories of the people who have done these really amazing things and really creative things, even if somebody says, hey, I knew, like I always just wanted to dance, or I always just knew I wanted to do that, I still guarantee the way they got there looked differently than what they expected and it had the twists and turns. And, exactly like you said, we won't see the opportunities that are there if we are so laser focused on an outcome. Laser focused on an outcome. There could be 10 different options here to go down. That could be. That could lead to a very fulfilling life but we get stuck.

Mak: 31:37

You can see a microcosm of this almost every time you watch beat bobby flay, which you know.

Mak: 31:42

I'm a big fan of that show and I think I'm a big fan of it for this reason, because a lot of times, bobby himself, the chefs who are on there, bobby himself they're going to say this is what I'm going to do, and then, oh, they burnt the onions, or the oven wasn't hot enough, or the ingredient was missing, or they forgot to do this, or the salt was too much, and they have to on the fly because they only have 40 minutes, in some cases 20 minutes, to correct.

Mak: 32:15

Now imagine if they had a plan and they said yep, no, I'm going to, I'm making tacos and that's what I'm doing, even though I don't have any tortilla shells. And so they go back to the beginning and they start making tortilla shells with three minutes left. It wouldn't work and I have seen it happen so many times where Bobby is literally changing the entire dish within seven minutes of the bell going off wins, because he's not rigid. He understands that he's got to be creatively flexible in the moment in order to get the outcome, and the outcome could be 180 degrees away from where he started, and that's how you want to live. That's how you want to live your life as a creative.

Valerie: 33:03

And exercising just your creativity in general helps you be that way. That's something that I am constantly preaching is that having any type of art form or being in just the creation process making something, baking, gardening, painting, any of that it will actually teach you on this smaller level how to let go, how to be flexible. If you are able to not fear a blank page and you're not afraid of making a mess on a blank sheet, then you can take that into your greater life, because that skill is a skill that is going to get you.

Mak: 33:51

so so far, I just heard a great interview with Jerry Seinfeld and he said there's no such thing as writer's block. He said all there is is someone who is scared and afraid to make a mess. He goes writer's block is not a thing. He's like you're just afraid to fail, you're afraid to look like an idiot, you're afraid to be stupid. And he said but you're going to be stupid, you're going to fail, you're going to look like an idiot, but you just write and you write and you write Until you're no longer afraid. There's no fear of the blank page anymore when you get over the mess, when you get over needing to have a plan or needing to know the outcome before you begin.

Mak: 34:41

Some of the best stuff that I've ever created had nothing to do do with I was starting in one point and got to another point and it was way better than anything I could have dreamed up at the beginning. And that's that's I. That's like every every billy joel talking about writing new york state of mind. He wrote it in what? 15 minutes or something. That's not. He didn't sit down with a plan to write this epic song. That would be like career defining. He just was in the moment and he wrote something.

Valerie: 35:12

I think it's really cool that how we often do one thing is how we do everything. So it's easy to write these things off, these practices, these creative ways of being. But it all is a muscle. It's all associated to a creative muscle. We've said before, business is creative.

Valerie: 35:35

The more we can infuse everything we do with this mindset of make a mess, not be tied to the outcome. Let's see where it leads, let's be flexible. What you're going to end up doing is you're going to trust yourself. You're going to realize, oh, I can make a mess and survive. I can take those pieces, I can turn it into something else. Or if it goes in the trash, it's okay, I can try again tomorrow. If you look like an idiot, it's okay. You know, this is part of the journey. The more you exercise that muscle, even in small ways, it will change your life, and I will shout that from the rooftops. Painting, creating these creative things not only will heal you and, as Martha Begg, we talked about beyond anxiety will show. That is a toggle that will silence the anxiety part of us, but it also becomes a training ground for life. We are built that way, we are made that way. So if you have had a tug on your heart to try something. We just want to encourage you that go for it. That is what's real.

Valerie: 36:48

It's not what everybody else is doing. It is not what culture is saying.

Valerie: 36:52

It's not what society is saying. It is you trusting yourself and we want to give you the permission slip that you are made to create. You are made to be creative. That is what is to be trusted, not the shoulds, not the. Go to school, get a job, get a degree, get a how da, da, da da, like all that stuff that is, if you're feeling like there's something in your body saying this feels true for you, it's because it is, and you get to trust that.

Mak: 37:23

So do that today. If it's a little step, take a little step forward. Take a little step forward. And if you're someone who is in a creative industry and you've been holding back, now's the time to let go. You have permission. Say the weird thing, do the weird thing, make the mess. Don't worry about looking like an idiot, because everyone will forget about it five seconds after it's over. They about looking like an idiot because everyone will forget about it Five seconds after it's over. They're going to move on to the next thing. Just do it. Just go for it. Just start. Please, just do it.

Valerie: 37:54

The trade-off here is you in your power and in your magic, and we truly believe that every single human being has that unique flavor of magic and a spark that only you have. And you tapping into that, you tapping into that light within you and cultivating safety around, doing that at a true bodily level, especially if we have all of this conditioning on us to not be that way. But the more you do it, the more you cultivate that safety around it, and then the more comes from it, the more you will start to feel like you. I'm always saying what I'm doing isn't teaching people how to paint, I'm teaching them how to come home to themselves and their creativity and their magic and their fire. And their creativity and their magic and their fire. And from that place there's no telling what is going to happen. And it's you living lit up, you living unstuck.

Mak: 38:56

Versus doing what everybody else is doing and walking through life like a zombie. Right, don't do it anymore.

Valerie: 39:02

So if you're hearing yourself say should, if you're looking at everybody else and saying, well, this is the norm, norm does not mean right, so we'll leave you with that. Thank you so much for being here and listening to the Unbound Creative. If this episode spoke to you, if it really helped you, we would be so thrilled if you would leave us a review that really, really helps us, that helps other creatives find this podcast. Subscribe too. That would be so thrilled if you would leave us a review that really, really helps us, that helps other creatives find this podcast subscribe too.

Valerie: 39:30

That would be a big uh big help, we would appreciate it because we're still at the baby stages of of this and we're doing things messy right alongside everybody with this podcast is not perfect, but we don't care, we're just plugging away yeah, so we really appreciate you sticking with us and listening, and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye, bye.