This transcript definitely contains errors. Be kind :)
My friend Anna, an executive assistant by day and comedy writer by night, is also a mother of two very rambunctious 3 year old little boys. She called me recently and honestly I was just so excited to see her name appear on my phone, I answered immediately. HEY there I said, so good to hear from you. I guess you aren’t dead. We both laughed wholeheartedly and then she said something I’ve been thinking about ever since, when I asked her how she was doing, with the boys getting older and she was back working full time and trying to write at night…. She said, “Parenting twin toddler boys is just like being an assistant, except nothing matters, everything is sticky, and your quote unquote bosses always act like they’re drunk.” I laughed about that for days. When Anna and I had more time to talk, which let’s be real, was easier over text, she confessed that she’d been in a rut, managing all of it–work, home, parenting, marriage. She would have weeks where she felt successful in one area but as soon as she did she felt the other areas drooping. Her executive function had seemed to do the trick in most of the places she showed up, she was the one with all the schedules and plans, and systems, and that helped manage the chaos at work, home and with her boys. But her comedy writing was suffering. Knowing I am a creativity coach, Anna asked me, maybe I’m just post-funny. Maybe the humor, writer, fun part of me died when I had kids.
This podcast is for Anna
It’s for anyone wondering about the different parts of their personality and how they interact
It’s for artists who are managing roles and jobs and responsibilities and wondering where their creative self fits in
This show is for anyone looking to debunk that “tortured artist” stereotype, for those who want to believe that the creative life can bring us deep satisfaction, healing, and even joy. I’m so glad you’re here.
I’m Merideth Hite Estevez, and this is Artists for joy the podcast
SHORT MUSIC BREAK
each week I will share stories of artists seeking joy… We’ll explore how so many travelers along this the artist’s way have left us bread crumbs—wisdom and inspiration that can help us stay joyful on the journey.
This week on the podcast, the second of our how to series…this very meta title. How to be you. I am going to tell you more about the conversation with Anna, especially about how i helped her find her way back to a joy for comedy writing and I’ll take you through a really eye opening coaching exercise I learned in my training to help you name your inner team members, resource their skills and cultivate a sense of self-compassion and grace for all the multitudes you contain. I’ll answer a listener's question about something and give you something to consider this week. But first here’s some more music.
The fall makes me feel all sorts of ways. Based on social media these last few months, I see that I am not alone. As a kid I loved school, and so the signaling of our return to the classroom makes me nostalgic for my hometown and my mother’s house. The greens give way to bright yellow and orange and the sun seems different. The darkness starts to settle in earlier and here in michigan the wind already has a chill. And even though it is technically my favorite season, the fall brings up a lot for me.
So whatever you are feeling in this season, bring it on over to this the podcast equivalent to my fire pit and we’ll talk it out.
This week I finally admitted to myself that I wasn’t going to be able to wear sandals anymore and so I began packing up my summer shoes. The fake birkenstocks I have worn almost every day this summer were first, and hardest to part with. Thank you for your service, I thought to myself, and then immediately I thought, how silly to thank your shoes. But when I did I dropped one and it landed on its top, the worn out sole facing upward now.
I couldn’t help but notice the odd way the sole had been worn down, I was clearly pronating both feet as I walked, both soles were completely worn down to the cork on one side while the toe box area and the center of the shoe looked like new. Maybe if it wasn’t fall I wouldn’t see this as poetic, but I couldn’t help but ask, have you looked at the bottom of your metaphorical shoes lately, how is your soul being worn? Soul spelled S O U L for the record LOL
As you travel down the roads of life, how is the world wearing you down? How are you coping with all you trudge through, what’s protecting you and your creative impulse as you drag your feet or run your race? How does it feel to be you in this season of life.
There’s a coaching exercise I learned in my training called “who’s in your car,” it was written by Graydin founders McKenzie Cerri and Quinn Simpson. I do it with my coaching clients and occasionally in my workshops, if you are in this round of the artist way creative cluster you experienced it on tuesday.
And it goes like this—as you travel down the road of life, imagine yourself in a car, you yourself are the driver. You are making decisions about where you are heading and what you are doing and how to shift when things go wrong, etc. But in the car with you, imagine you have your inner team. Those different aspects of your personality that you bring along with you. So ask yourself, when you are resting and relaxing with a great cup of coffee–who are you? When you are under a work deadline and getting things done—who are you? When you are at family dinner or christmas morning–what part of you shows up? Now, some parts of you may have developed because certain people in your life have had a huge impact on you or certain circumstances you have faced required you to react or adapt in a certain way, but remember for the purposes of this exercise, those people or those stories do not ride in the car with you. In the car are you and your inner team, aspects of your personality that you get to choose to listen to or work with, or not. In the exercise, you go through with the person you are coaching–asking who is in your car?. Where do each of them sit? Is your creative self locked in the trunk? Does the control-freak part of you get especially riled up when there is traffic along the route?
I’ve been through this exercise with many people by now, and honestly it is one of my favorites. Artists first of all have such rich inner lives and so meeting their inner teams is often so interesting and thought provoking. I had one coaching client create paper doll puppets of each of her team members, which I’m using as this week’s image if you swipe up you’ll see it. I believe that so many of us have a hard time being ourselves because we don’t 1. Understand ourselves and 2. We don’t feel integrated or whole. We aren’t intentional about how we show up, we feel like we are at the mercy of the circumstances we face or the quality of our work. If life is a road trip then the road is bumpy, there are construction detours everywhere, we’ve driven 30 miles on E, and the check engine light is on.
And what I love about the inner team exercise is that is confirms something I suspected long ago–that along the road of life, throughout whatever season you are in, whatever shoes you’re walking in, being who you are is not some simple or even unified thing. That walt whitman quote comes to mind “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Yes, artists do, but I’d say everyone does. We all have personalities that are shaped by all kinds of things, but if we stop seeing them as a liability but outline them like an inner team that can help you when you need it, it feels possible to believe that it is truly possible to be you, with intentionality, asking things like “How do I want to show up here?” or “who do I have in my inner team that could help?”
And the person with the best answer to that question lately was Anna, my friend, mother of twins, comedy writer who felt creatively dry and blocked. When I took Anna through the whos in your car exercise, (yes I do it with my friends too hahah) she realized that her responsible self was in the passenger seat and she always wanted to drive. And in a lot of ways that felt useful because the responsible Anna got things done, it was like a button she could push. But, Anna realized quite dramatically that the comedian, the fun Anna was in the way back. She was listening to headphones and dozing off because she felt she wasn’t needed. By never calling on her, Fun Anna felt like her skills were obsolete and so she had checked out. When I asked Anna, what would it be like to show up as fun Anna at home with the boys? And that’s when she started to tear up. She knew she wanted her boys to know the real her, the smiling, joyful, raucous person she was. And so she started first giving Fun Anna something to do. When they were heading up to take a bath recently, Fun Anna asked them to choose an animal to act out as they walked up the stairs to their room. She hopped like a frog and gave her most convincing ribbit and the boys loved it. Were they a little late getting to bed that night? Maybe. But after they were down, Anna got to work on a screenplay she had abandoned months ago.
Being fun Anna was just what she needed. Sometimes being you means inviting some long abandoned parts of yourself into the passenger seat, letting them pick the music for once. Life really is a journey, just look at the bottom of your shoes. And yet the seasons change and the car keeps going no matter how much we’d like it to stop and rest. But what if there was a team along for the ride with you? What if you weren’t at war with yourself, but accepted the motely crew that makes you who you are? What if you were allowed with the help of your inner team, to be a manager one minute, a maker the next, what if we can choose how we show up, how we want to be in any given moment? I happen to know that this mindset shift can help you feel more creative, more joyful, freer, more content.
So how to be you? With intentionality and self-awareness, with radical self-acceptance, resting in the grace that you are the only you we have, that all your multitudes that you contain, the whole carload of you is welcome and loved and capable and whole. If Life is a road trip, who’s in your car?
I’ll be right back.
Today’s listener question was submitted via email. This person asked:
Merideth, I am a writer and that means I am also an online content creator and I am having trouble thinking of ideas for posts on social media. I feel like I have to be in all places all the time with clickable brilliant sharable content and video and reels, I just do not feel inspired or authentic in what I’m making. I love seeing the direction you go with your episode topics, your instagram posts, etc. and I’m wondering what process you have for creating that stuff. Thanks in advance, social media sucks but I need it to get a book deal
HAHAH These fake names are really just getting more and more creative. I know how you feel, trust me, I do! And First thing I’ll say is I created an episode where I talked about in the who do you create for episode, so go back and listen to that one from season two. So first of all, but basically the shift in the mindset…to one of service and pouring into people. Stop seeing it as a platform and instead make it a bench, where someone can stop and sit and think and chat and be known. (Stole that image from hopewriters by the way, it is not my own) but this shift changed EVERYTHING for me. Ask yourself, how can I help the people I am serving online? What kinds of things are they struggling with? What encouragement can I offer them? So that’s one esoteric kind of mindset thing, but the second tip for the day is a very practical one. Find who your people are reading, and quote them. I’ve built an entire business of Julia Cameron’s book the artist’s way. The posts where I quote her get so many reshares and likes and comments and stuff because that’s my psychographic, as they call it. My people are reading that book and so when I quote it it reminds them that they are in the right place. What is that book or books for your community? Sharing other people's words, that’s part of social media. Don’t feel like you have to say something deep and profound all the time and it has to be personal and all about you. It does need to be personal sometimes, at least I think so, for a writers platform, but not all the time. Release yourself from that pressure. Lastly, test different types of content and see what 1. Sticks and 2. Is fun and sustainable to make. Maybe your people love reels. Maybe it’s intimidating to make them but once you learn it actually kind of fun. Have an open mind that literally all you have to do is try something, just try it. The only way you won’t learn something is if you do nothing. The mythological algorithm rewards you for trying, so just do it. Most of my post or episode topic ideas come from coaching clients, conversations with friends, books I’m reading, things I see on social media that resonate with others…it’s just living my life with my eyes open and taking notes as I do, not being afraid to give something a go and see what I learn. Hope that helps.
Now for today’s coda…
In music history this coming week, on October 6, 1802, Beethoven himself wrote a letter to his two brothers which is now known as the heilegenstadt testament. It’s an important letter because in it he admits that he is heading towards full blown deafness, a fact that he had admitted to no one. He addressed the letter to his brothers, but it is almost like a testament to the world, sharing what he had been so afraid to share, that it was true, that he was indeed losing his hearing, and explaining that this was the reason he had isolated himself from all people and left for the country. He says “Ah, how could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than in others, a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, a perfection such as few in my profession enjoy or ever have enjoyed.”
I’ll link to the whole letter in the show notes. It is a harrowing look inside the struggling artists mind, often painful to behold but beautiful as you see someone so gifted processing his life right there on paper in real time, grieving, but choosing to live…to keep on trying to produce all that he felt capable of producing, he says. Reading his words now almost exactly 220 years later, in maybe the similar fall spendor Beethoven himself might have seen outside his window as he wrote, I feel even more in awe of him than I usually do. Side note: he was 28 when he started having problems with his hearing. By the time he was 45 he was totally deaf, he died at age 56. And to put into perspective, he wrote most of his symphonies with little to no hearing at all. The music you’ve been hearing in this episode now is a piano reduction of his seventh symphony, which he never heard a note of in his earthly life. It also happens to be my favorite.
So my question for you today is this…is what ways are you letting your circumstances define you? I’m not here to make light of anyone’s suffering. Beethoven’s letter is first and foremost a reminder to be gentle, for everyone is fighting their own, often internal, battles. And yet, what it brings up for me today is that it is possible to live beyond what happens to you or the stories you tell yourself about what happened to you–to seperate yourSELF with a capital S from your circumstances, especially painful ones. Beethoven was a great composer who also happened to be deaf. And so let it encourage you to be an artist who also happens to be struggling with addiction, or going through a divorce, or dealing with abuse or injury or an eating disorder. Beethoven made the choice to keep going in spite of what he had lost, and based on other facts from his biography, I think that was a choice he had to make every day sometimes. And yet, he did keep going, and as he did, he completely revolutionized music forever.
Part of being you then, means making the often difficult choice to leave behind the you you thought you’d be, and fully accept yourself as you grow and change and life happens to you. It means taking those versions of yourself that others have given or reflected back to you, and throwing out of the window of the moving car whatever is not true or resonant. And that is one reason why the inner team can be so helpful, because believing that the whole of the symphony of voices representing who you are is greater than the sum of your parts, that you have a choice for how you show up, how you respond to whatever you face, that you have the resources within the car already to cope and thrive and live, in spite of your current circumstances. That there is an eternal you there that remains intact no matter how your body fails you or whatever seasons come and go. And so you keep riding along the road of life, and like Beethoven, your creative practice becomes the truest way to be you. And on that road, in spite of all the pain and suffering you may encounter along the way, the symphony still crescendos to an ode to joy.
That’s its for today’s episode of artists for joy. It was written and produced by me, Merideth Hite Estevez.
This week’s music featured the piano reduction of beethoven’s 7th symphony transcribed by franz liszt and performed by Lambis Vassiliadias, and Marnie Laird performing Beethoven’s moonlight sonata.
Artists for Joy LLC is a woman-run small business that helps artists craft a more joyful creative life through resources, workshops, and one-to-one coaching. You can learn more about us by following @artists for joy on instagram or checking out our website artists for joy dot org. That’s artists for JOY dot ORG. If you want to be a supporter of this podcast then click the link in the show notes to learn how.
I would love to meet with you to help you discuss and resource your inner team. I offer a half hour free discovery call for anyone interested in coaching, click the link in the show notes to learn more. I am a trained and certified coach through Graydin, which was the organization that created the who’s in your car exercise. So let’s meet on zoom to unpack what you learned today.
Next week I will be back with a musical meditation episode featuring some of today’s music and an additional self-coaching exercise that will help you continue to learn more about how to be you.
Here we are 2 full episodes in to season 2 and I wanted to do my usual plug…have you left us a review on apple podcasts yet? If you could take a moment to do that, it helps us move up in the apple podcasts charts and helps us find more artists to join this community.
Grace1289 wrote recently in their review: This is such a much-needed podcast for artist of all kinds. It’s so encouragin, and reminds us of the essence of what dres us to our creatfts in the first place, which is creative joy and wonder. The world is tired and being an artists in a tired world is…tiring. This is a breath of fresh air under our wings.
Thank you so much for those kind words. I absolutely love hearing from listeners, so please visit the link in the show notes to leave a question for the show, or remember we have a google voice number 302-415-3407 where you can call and leave us a message that we can play on the air.
Thanks so much for listening, take good care.
Today’s sounds of joy is a rare look inside my car lol…I have an inner team member who is literally always singing and I realized that as I was listening back to edit this episode, so here is me working out my issues by singing myself through it. Please let me know in the comments for this episode on instagram if you do this.
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