Mak: 0:05

is it customary to celebrate in some way for your 10th episode?

Valerie: 0:09

why not? We're gonna celebrate all of it I mean for you.

Mak: 0:13

This is like I don't know how many episodes over 50 has it been over 50 I definitely think it's been over 50, but for you and me it's 10, but anyway, it's all.

Valerie: 0:23

One big one, great big podcast yeah, and thank you for being here. This is the unbound creative podcast for our 10th episode. I am valerie mckeon I am mac and we are excited to be here talking about the things that fire us up, which is mainly talking about creativity and creatives helping you get out of any perceived or real box that you have put yourself in. We just believe that everybody has magic and we want to see you unlock it.

Mak: 0:57

And even if you're feeling like you know what is this life, it's on repeat. I'm feeling like, okay, there's something else out there, but I'm not sure what it is. It's probably could be fixed with being creative, even if you've never considered yourself to be a creative person. Even having a new thought about something is creative. It doesn't mean you have to be an artist. It doesn't mean you have to be a singer, a dancer or any of the things we traditionally consider creative. We firmly believe everybody is creative and we want everyone to live into that creativity in an unbound way, and that's what we're here to do.

Valerie: 1:33

You have an instinct within you that is one of your absolute greatest superpowers, and not only a superpower, it is a wayfinder.

Valerie: 1:49

So if you are feeling lost, if you're feeling stuck, we change as human beings. We go through different phases, we go through different times of life. I feel like we are all in the middle of something, because you might be waiting for a different change state of life to come in and you just are kind of like feeling in that in-between spot, you maybe have lost yourself a little bit and there is an instinct that is already within you that is going to be your greatest wayfinder through those pivots, through that middle, even when you can't kind of see and you're like, have I lost myself? Who am I? What do I, what do I even like anymore? And that instinct is delight, delight and delight, I think, gets kind of shoved aside of the list of things to do or accomplish. We're all about productivity right in our culture and it's like I have to do this and I have to do this, and we have to cross the things off the list.

Valerie: 2:59

Am I getting it done? But delight is like very, very, very, very, very bottom of the list. Since when have you ever put on a to-do list? I need to seek out delight for myself. Today. That's just not something that we do, and yet delight is a superpower.

Mak: 3:18

And when was the last time you remember saying to yourself you know what that's delightful, I'm delighted. It's not even really a word that we use a whole lot each and every day, or even in a week, because I don't think it's at the top of our mind and what we end up doing is we hustle and we do all the things that we're told we should do because the end result will be delight. Yeah, but the truth is, and even the most successful people in the world, who have gotten where we all think we want to be, when they get there they go. You know what? I'm still in the middle. Oh, there's something else, I gotta, I gotta do something else. I, there's something else. I got to do something else. I got to create something else. Even the wealthiest people in the world who have had all the success Look at Richard Branson.

Mak: 4:13

He's been all over the news lately to do anything else and he's still building. He's still searching for things beyond probably what he even thought he was capable of doing when he was I don't know how old 20, 30 years old.

Valerie: 4:37

You know who that reminds me of? It's very unrelated, but kind of Jim Carrey. Because, I've heard him say before I wish everybody could be rich and famous to find out that it's not the thing. And what an interesting guy. He's an artist now. He's like a philosopher and very deep and really very rooted in his creativity. But that wasn't. That wasn't the answer.

Mak: 5:03

And another great example of that is Shaq. Like I keep reading about this guy. He has 355 businesses spread throughout the entire United States. He owns like 150 car washes. He owns a bunch of Auntie Anne's, he owns a ton of Five Guys franchises and a bunch of businesses a ton of five guys franchises and a bunch of businesses and he at the height of his career the peak was not making as much money and doing what he's doing as he is now and he's one of the greatest basketball players of all time. And look, look where it has led him. He now enjoys being an entrepreneur and owning all these businesses and doing all this stuff. So it just goes to show you that I don't ever really think you get there. The delight is in the journey.

Valerie: 5:54

But I think what we do is we say things like when I get to this point, I'm going to feel all of the delight. And we're kind of conditioned this way in our culture as well, where we're told you work really, really, really, really hard all year so that you can get one week of vacation. That's sort of in our heads, this idea that you have to earn delight. And how dare you just go out and feel delighted for no good reason? And the other thing is we almost put it on a pedestal even like in order to feel delighted, I have to be on vacation or I have to have a day at the spa or some massive thing. But why can't we bring back or recognize these tiny bits of delight? And it seems cliche sometimes to say but what about just that lick of an ice cream cone and that first taste of a strawberry and all of these things. We've lost our sense of delight as a culture.

Mak: 7:03

Well, I was going to say, even on a more micro scale, even all the best gurus who say, okay, make a to-do list, here's how you get through your day. You do the toughest things, first the things you don't want to do and then the things that you want to. You know that will help you move whatever your project is forward or whatever. And if you get through these five items, then you're allowed to treat yourself with a Starbucks, and even that is saying I've got to do this hustle that I don't want, but once I do it, because I'm not going to like these things, this isn't going to be fun. Then I get to reward myself with a coffee drink. That in and of itself is a microcosm of the problem, because even the hard things we do, we can find delight in them, rather than it being a hustle and reward, hustle and reward, hustle and reward system.

Valerie: 8:05

You know, I think that this just brings up kind of an overarching concept that we are obsessed with do. Everything is do do. What do I have to do? And especially if you're feeling lost or you're feeling stuck or you're not sure of your next move and I think in this episode we're really talking to you that if you're in the middle, first of all recognizing that there really is no arrival point, because just the nature of our lives means that we're going to change. And all of these people who have been wildly successful, as we just said, they go through times of pivoting and change and we all do it and it's fine.

Valerie: 8:49

But for those who feel that way and you feel lost or your brain is a little bit spinny and not sure, I'm not sure of my next move I think the inclination and the instinct is what do I have to do? And we say that about everything, anything we want to start. Or the other thing we say is I have to figure it out. That's a big one, as if all of the answers are up in your brain and I have to figure it out and think my way out of a hole, and so it's all about the doing and the thinking harder, but we de-emphasize a lot of the being and just who we are being and more of a softer approach of an allowing, allowing ourselves to be delighted, to be in those states of curiosity and wonder. It's almost like a forcing kind of an energy versus a what if I stop and just be content and be in the present moment, because in the present moment there's always points of delight to be found.

Mak: 10:14

Well, and I think that's the point, and I think that's a really good illustration of the to-do list thing where you're, when you're doing, when you're knocking out these things on your to-do list to get to the coffee or the cookie break or whatever it is you're going to have, you're not actually living in the moment of that thing. You're thinking about what I'm going to get next, and that's a trap that people get caught in, that totally shut off delight. It totally shuts down the brain and all of your senses from being able to experience delight, because if you're not present, you will never experience it. The times that we feel truly delighted when you're at a movie that you like, or you're really wrapped up in a really great book, or you're taking a walk and you smell the honeysuckle, or you're at a concert and you get lost in the song. That's delightful and you're present in that moment. But if you were thinking about all the things you have to do tomorrow, you wouldn't be experiencing the delight right now.

Valerie: 11:13

And I think we breeze past those things.

Mak: 11:16

Yes.

Valerie: 11:16

Because we think it's not important or we think, oh, that's silly or frivolous. But it really building a life filled with delight isn't really in the big moments that come, it's in this collection of just these tiny moments that we are able to experience by being in the present moment. And when we can collect these moments of delight, they're going to be arrows, that's glimmers. I've heard like the opposite of a trigger is a glimmer and these little glimmers that just light us up and make us feel and feel something, and it's interesting. So this is something that I've always thought is a little more nuanced than this, because sometimes we confuse our delight for staying comfortable and maybe almost numbing behaviors or something like that. And that's not what we're talking about, because I think that some people will say, oh well, it would delight me just to.

Valerie: 12:36

I'm thinking of, like, the cynics view of this concept and it would be oh well, it would just delight me to sit there and watch Netflix all day and binge on Oreos, but I can't do that. That's not good for me. I can hear that as a cynical response, but that's not what we're talking about. It's not these comforts or these almost the dopamine hits or something that your brain needs, but it's actually not great for you. We're talking about that deep sense of delight that leads to wonder, it leads to curiosity, it leads to that elevated version of you that is the soul you and the part of you that becomes open-hearted and able to move from that place.

Mak: 13:33

A false delight is a real thing and I just made that up. I'm not saying that like experts have used that term, but false delight anything. So you're not creating delight if you're avoiding something and I think that's what a lot of us tend to do it's something overwhelming happens, maybe have a bit of anxiety. So what we do is we shut down and we watch Netflix. It might even be a really uplifting show, but that's avoidance and you can go to the gym to avoid something. Like you could be doing something really good for yourself. You could go play golf, you could, I don't know.

Mak: 14:10

But if you are doing something to avoid the feeling of anxiety or overwork or you know, then that's not true delight and I think that that can creep up on you and and you have to be very careful about that to understand exactly what Val is saying is true delight it's like you know, it's when your hair stands up and you start to light up and you go.

Mak: 14:42

My goodness, I'm overflowing with ideas and in the moment you just want to start sharing your heart with people and things like that, like it's a true sense of of joy and wonder and I feel like when I'm at my highest point of delight. I just want to. I just want to. I just want to share it with as many people as I can. I'm going to bring as many people as I can in around me and help, and just try to help them feel delight and feel happy. I've never felt that way watching Netflix or going to the gym or doing things that we tend to use as numbing. It would be like saying, oh yeah, I feel delightful after two beers. It's like no, that's a blanket.

Valerie: 15:31

Right beers, it's like no, you're, that's, that's, that's a blanket right. Well, I think the point is that that delight, this inner part of us that that lights up in that way, it really hits on almost a state of childlike wonder. I think it's that part of you who is still you and you never lose that part, but I think it just gets buried under a lot of crap. That part it whispers in adulthood because, again, delight is at the very, very, very bottom of the list and maybe we have our numbing devices or the things that we get for dopamine hits like scrolling on social media.

Valerie: 16:12

I don't know if anybody would say that that is delightful to them, but we use these things to make us quote unquote feel good. But they're really not. But, like you said, the sense of delight is something deep inside of you that just, it almost aches, it's like an aching feeling, but it's because it hits something true and it hits something that you love and I think that that type of delight is whispering, it's not shouting. It's really easy to put that type of delight or looking for it or seeking it, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way down on the list, because all of the other things, the to-do list and the strategy, and I have to think myself out of this. All of that is very loud, it's very shouty.

Mak: 17:06

Well, I think what you're really illustrating here is the difference between what I'm calling a false delight and what true delight is. Is the false delight the things that we try to do to create it? It's all up in the head, but true delight you feel in the heart. It is this, it is this radiant thing, that that that moves you, and I think a lot of us are even afraid to feel that because it's a vulnerable feeling, and so when those whispers come, we're quick to dismiss it, or we try to hide it or put it away it, or we try to hide it or put it away.

Mak: 17:54

Just the other day I can't remember what it was that I was listening to, but it was really. It was really strange. I think maybe we were talking about Mr Holland's opus on the on our group coaching call this past week, and I haven't thought about that movie in forever. But. But we were getting in a little bit of a deep discussion. I was using it as a metaphor for something and I started to get teary eyed. That was delightful, it touched something deep within me and typically I would be like oh no, don't let anyone see that I'm starting to get teary eyed, but instead I, I was, and and what I did in that moment is I really sat in it and I enjoyed that moment.

Mak: 18:34

And then I said to myself okay, what did that touch within me that made me feel this way? I need to explore that. What about this emotion touched me to the point that, bringing me spontaneously to tears? And how do I get in touch with that? How do I what? There's something there and we're so quick to dismiss those feelings or even write them off as, oh, I'm just being emotional or oh, this is a, but no, those are the moments, those are the feelings that you have to embrace. It's like when I listened to a song and it makes it and I get you know goosebumps you have to embrace. It's like when I listen to a song and I get goosebumps, I try to go okay, why, what's happening here that this is getting me goosebumps?

Valerie: 19:21

What is the feeling? Because that's such a delightful moment. It's so much in the noticing of that. And isn't it interesting how we do we are so quick to ignore or write off the idea that what feels good, what brings us that delight, could be our truest guide.

Valerie: 19:42

That there is some nugget there that it's touching on. We ignore that, because if it feels delightful, it just feels easy. Or again, we have all of this it's frivolous, oh yeah, that it's silly, I don't know. I just I just love flowers or whatever, and it's almost easy to ignore the fact that that could be some of the best clues that we possibly have to our next steps. To our magic, to the delight of that, leaning into that a little bit more can change everything in the best way. And so this also brings me to a point of somebody's magic, their inherent magic, that we believe everybody, every human being, has that you have it that kernel inside that is just your truth and light and delight and creativity unlocks those parts of us and freedom.

Valerie: 21:00

I want to put that in there.

Mak: 21:02

Yeah, because when you can truly express who you are, then nothing else matters. And that is true freedom.

Valerie: 21:09

And delight is kind of like a key to that part. Why do we write it off? It's like holds the skeleton key.

Mak: 21:19

It's a flashlight in the dark pointing on something, but I think that we write it off because so many of us think that it's frivolous. A it might be like oh, that's super childish, I can't pay attention to that, I have to be a grownup.

Valerie: 21:40

Or we're just dysregulated from life that we don't even notice.

Mak: 21:44

Or B, c. Oh, is this C? I can't even remember now.

Valerie: 21:49

I think it's B.

Mak: 21:51

We're being like Buzz in Home Alone. Now I'm like, maybe I think it's b I'm being. We're being like buzz and home alone. Um b I'm gonna say it's b the. We're not allowed to feel good. Right, we tell ourselves you know that felt really good for 15 seconds, but now I have to go back to feeling like crap because I'm meant to go through life feeling like garbage. Life is not meant to be enjoyed. Life is meant to put your head down and work and hustle to earn your seven days or your 15 minutes of kind of fake happiness and then go back to work again happiness and then go back to work again.

Valerie: 22:32

Right, it is this messaging of well, being an adult is hard and life is hard and there's all this stuff that's hard and we need to suffer, and it is. It's very counter and it's almost rebellious to say I'm going to seek a life that it just delights me. Uh, our friend wendy wendy harrop. She said I am not available for anything that does not delight me. She says that all the time. That's her phrase and you know I am not available and that is is like controversial counter.

Mak: 23:09

do you know how many people that would piss off? I know that would be like oh screw her.

Valerie: 23:15

What are you talking about? Yeah, you can't.

Mak: 23:17

That's not. Yeah, okay, okay, yeah, I'm not available for anything. What a jerk she is, but it's like maybe you're the jerk, because why, why can't? Why can't someone live a life that's purely delightful, which sounds right?

Valerie: 23:35

If, especially, and because we know this to be true, delight is the skeleton key. Delight holds the. I don't know why I just had this vision of Candyland going through my head. It's like delight is the path we follow, these little bits of delight like the colors on a candy land board, because that is touching on the truest parts of us well, here's okay, this is great.

Mak: 24:02

I love the candy land analogy. It's the light on the path, but do you know what else it is? It's flipping over the ice cream card. So you might see the light on the path, but when you lock into your delight, you skip everything and you go right. You go right to the sweet spot, the best spot on the board. You're poised to win, you're poised to have everything that you want. The path is now illuminated and you can see the end of the tunnel when you are living in that, when you are living in full delight, and the people who live in full delight are the ones who are doing amazing things.

Mak: 24:37

You don't think? Richard Branson? We'll refer back to him. He hasn't set up a life that he just loves. He absolutely has. He talks about it in interviews, he's written books about it. Other people have interviewed him, have talked about it. He literally loves his life and he's created a life that he can just live in fully, delightfully, and just doing what he wants when he wants, because he's fully let up. And he didn't get there because he hustled um in the traditional sense. He followed what let him.

Valerie: 25:12

Well, we think that we don't deserve it.

Mak: 25:15

Yeah.

Valerie: 25:15

Until I will deserve it, when, or we feel like it's, again it goes back to I have to do, I have to earn, I have to prove, I have to suffer hard enough so that I am worthy or deserve having this delight, and I actually said it wrong. So Wendy says I am only available for what's what delights me. I love it, similar thought, but it's just. That is like you said, how we move forward, how we get farther on the path. Because I think that the thing is, the more we look for it, the more we say things like that and own that and seek out those points of delight. I think we realize those things are seeking you, you know, it's not a.

Valerie: 26:07

Let me think hard enough and figure this out and strategize it.

Mak: 26:12

You can't figure it out.

Valerie: 26:13

You can't figure it out. You can't figure it out. It's in a posture of allowing and softness and surrender. And I think when we get to that place and then we start to say I'm only available for what delights me, you're going to start to see it finds you.

Mak: 26:32

And one of the biggest blockers to this concept is the idea that so many people and this could be you.

Mak: 26:40

So if this makes you feel a little uncomfortable, I might be talking to you right now If you hold yourself back from feeling delight because other people in the world aren't, because other people in the world have it badly or have it poorly or are suffering through something, so therefore you have to suffer with them. But the truth here is that delight is abundant, delight is joy, and when you are living delightfully and when you are living delightfully, joyfully, full of life, that is actually something that spreads and it continues. If you are an example, okay, we're using Richard Branson, but how many people like we could literally sit here and list hundreds of people who live in pure delight, who we all would love to be like them, who live in pure delight, who we all would love to be like them. So that creates an aspirational vibe that other people go. Well, if this person can live like that, I can live like that. But the idea that you have to suffer because somebody else is suffering is actually control. You are trying to control to control.

Valerie: 27:59

You know you saying that that's a big truth bomb, because we can all look out and see a ton of suffering. We can look at it in our own circles. There is suffering. Of course we can look at it on a world scale and see just massive amounts of suffering. And this is not about not having empathy. Of course we are human beings, we are a collective of the human race and nobody wants to see that suffering. Of course we have empathy for what's happening. But to think that we are somehow doing something good by holding ourselves back from feeling delayed, because if we think, well, all of this stuff is happening, I need to stay in a place of suffering and keep myself down in that way, that is a shrinkage of your life force, the thing that could propel you forward, like you said, mac, and make change and create. It's like create energy versus shrinkage energy.

Valerie: 29:18

And isn't it interesting, okay, just saying the words, notice even in your body and like where this lands when you think about and hear delight, which is the path to all of our fun, creative friends, which are wonder, curiosity, playfulness joy.

Valerie: 29:46

Think about those things and just let that land in your body and I might just venture to say does it feel open, does it feel open hearted, does it feel almost like a relaxing in your shoulders and it feels expanded. Versus what, if we say suffering, fear hardship, struggle, poor, suffering, fear hardship struggle, poor when we think that the natural inclination there's a tightening, it's a tightening, it's a, it's a contraction, it is a closed off. So it goes to show that that posture is not a creating, bringing forth life posture.

Mak: 30:43

I think a great example of this is almost every movie ever written, and we have obviously great examples just in real life too. But what makes a great story arc just in real life too? But what makes a great story arc? You have someone who is down and out. They have trouble in their life, something isn't going right. Then they have the moment where they hit rock bottom and they realize who they really are. And then they have this overcoming this, coming to life journey, and we always root for that character. They discover who they really are and then boom they. They explode into positivity and joy and they build a really successful business, or they become the character they're the hero or the heroine in the movie and we all clap and go along with it.

Mak: 31:35

In America especially, we love the comeback story. We're big on the comeback story. We're big on the rags to riches tale, why? Because we look at that and when we see, oh my goodness, this person was living in this way and then the light bulb went off and now they're being a true representation of who they really are and they're spreading joy and happiness and delight and success and all of the great things we root for, that we relate to that and we go that could be me. We see ourselves in that person and then we close the book or stop watching the movie and we go back to being the person who that person was at the beginning of the film and we're all supportive of this. But what if the main character was like yeah, this, uh, I'm in a bad place, but so are all these other people, so I'm just going to stay in a bad place. We would hate that movie. We, that was not. That would not get off the ground. Like, what is the point of this? And and how would that help anybody?

Mak: 32:38

else it wouldn't, and that was where I was going is your story of living fully into yourself and into your creativity. Following those whispers and then acting on them seems scary because it's vulnerable. But when you overcome the discomfort, when you become comfortable with being uncomfortable and you start to live out who you really are and you start to feel, these delightful things and this joyful stuff come into your life all of a sudden it becomes a magnet and you begin resonating at a higher frequency and all of a sudden you become the aspirational story and that will actually inspire other people to do the same. Yeah, will there always be detractors? There will be people who don't like you because you're successful. That's jealousy. You don't have room or time for that and we don't want to be stuck in this place forever because we're afraid to listen to the whispers or we're afraid to feel delight.

Mak: 33:38

We were made to be here. Life is supposed to be good people. Life is supposed to feel good and you can choose right now, in this moment, to live a life of delight or keep living in a way that isn't delightful, and you can say you guys are crazy. No, life's too hard, can't happen. But there are countless examples of people from all walks of life who started with nothing and or started with the world, but they weren't happy. It's the other way too.

Valerie: 34:15

There's people who are really successful. The circumstance doesn't matter, is the point Exactly, it's right.

Mak: 34:19

It's like you can live in. I'm just trying to talk to some of the detractors out there, and if this conversation is making you uncomfortable, then that's probably good. This might be like hey, let's examine the delight in your life.

Valerie: 34:31

Right. It is a worthy wayfinder to follow those points of delight, and your entire circumstance doesn't have to change.

Valerie: 34:43

Your situation doesn't have to change we are literally talking about being open first of all, open to experiencing that and noticing those smallest. And noticing those smallest, tiniest glimmers, the little points of delight that you might easily just brush aside or think, oh, that's no big deal or that's something that I see every day. But being open to that delight is only going to bring more delight and as you do that, your life force. It opens you expand. Delight is an expander of the best parts of you and the parts of you that might be buried under all of this stuff. That is a wonderful first step.

Valerie: 35:33

Just to be open, I wonder what's going to delight me today. And then expect, expect to find that you living. That way, I can guarantee you you are going to have more of an impact. You are going to affect people in a much better way from your expandedness, from your openness, versus your smallness and your tightness. So let's look for delight and expect it and there's nothing that you have to do. Isn't that great? Something that isn't like all of these to-do lists, it's just let's notice.

Mak: 36:10

You can have it right now, literally the tiniest thing, in fact. Look around you right now, whatever you're doing, and look for one small thing to be delighted by right now, in this moment. You can find something if you look for it, something that will make you smile, something that you appreciate, something that smells good, tastes good, feels good, looks good is beautiful. Tastes good, feels good, looks good Is beautiful. What is something right now, in your personal space, that you can take 30 seconds and feel delight over?

Valerie: 36:42

Thank you so much for listening. Again, this is the Unbound Creative Podcast. We just love having these conversations. We're excited to have more, and if you enjoyed this podcast, if you found this to be helpful, we would love it. If you would subscribe, if you would take a minute to leave a review. That means the world. It helps others who need this podcast find it, and we would love to hear from you too. So drop us a line if this podcast resonated with you. Tell us your little bit of delight that you're finding, and we just hope that you see more and more and more and find your way back to yourself. Thank you so much for being here. We'll see you next time. Take care.