Latest / The Daily Writer / Artist Mike Brennan on Daily Creative Habits and Becoming a Student of Yourself

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Artist Mike Brennan on Daily Creative Habits and Becoming a Student of Yourself · The Daily Writer

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to the Daily Rider Podcast, where we bring you tips and inspiration each day to help you build habits for writing success.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_03: For more resources, including your free Daily Rider Starter Kit, visit DailyWriterLife.com.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_03: There are a lot of sad words in the English language, and one of the saddest ones is someday.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: How many dreams have never been fulfilled?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: How many books have never been written?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: How many great works of art have never been created, all because someone thought they would get to them someday.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: That's why I'm really excited to have my friend Mike Brennan as a guest on today's episode.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: Mike is going to share the importance of a daily creative habit that will help you bring your someday into the realm of today when you can start to make your creative dreams a reality.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: Mike Brennan is a creator and communicator telling stories on pages and stages.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: He inspires creators and entrepreneurs to show up consistently on their quest for creativity and innovation through a daily creative habit.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: Mike's childhood dream was to be a cartoon.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: When he realized that wasn't possible, he became the next best thing, an artist.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_03: Mike loves sharing experiences and making connections through his art and helping fellow creatives establish a daily creative habit of their own.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_03: Mike is the host of the Creative Chats podcast, the author of the Daily Creative Habit Journal, which will take your creativity to new heights and several other books.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: You can sign up for his free email list at dailycreativehabit.com or connect with Mike on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, all those links will be in the show notes.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_03: In today's conversation, you'll learn much more about Mike's story, the importance of a daily creative habit, and why you must become a student of yourself.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: Mike also shares some really great advice for those of us who have always wanted to learn to draw but had no idea where to start.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: This was a really fun interview, and I know I say that every single interview, but my goodness, I have a lot of really cool guests on this show, and I'm just honored that I get to talk to so many really, really cool people, entrepreneurs, artists, authors, and business people.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: You know, honestly, it's just really a blast hosting this podcast.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: And today's episode is absolutely no exception because you're really going to love this conversation with my friend, the amazing artist, author, and creative thinker, Mike Brennan.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: Mike, it is really great to have you on the Daily Rider podcast.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_03: I'm so thrilled that we have connected and was so grateful to be on your podcast recently as well.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_03: So welcome.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's really good to have you.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Kent.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I appreciate it.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I always love connecting with you.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_03: So we're here to talk about creative habits.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, mental health is something I want to dive into a little bit later in the episode.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_03: The importance of play and having fun and all kinds of fun stuff that sometimes those topics are not always part of the conversation when it comes to writing.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_03: Because I don't know if you've noticed this, but a lot of writers take what they do really, really seriously.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's almost sort of like this emotional burden that a lot of writers carry, like, I'm an author, and it's such a serious thing.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm writing this serious book with the capital B.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_03: And um, sometimes I think that those of us who primarily identify as writers could just use a little fun in our lives, a little creativity.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm curious, let's dive into your story a little bit.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_03: I'd love to hear about all the things that you're doing in your business and your creative work.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: And just help us understand more of who you are and your story.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: So um, my story, like many stories, is is very windy.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, currently, how I talk about myself is I say I'm a creator and communicator that tells stories on pages and stages.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've kind of I've kind of, yeah, a little soundbite, right?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's really good.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Copywriting, right?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um so um the the way I break that down, because obviously that leads to more questions of like, okay, so what does that actually mean?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, pages and stages and communicating and creating.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I say on the creator side, it's really birthed out of visual art.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: That is my background, uh, graphic design and then illustration.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And there are some other little offshoots from there.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but primarily that's what that entails.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then on the communicator side, um, I'm also sharing a lot about my own experiences, my own journey, and learnings along the way so that I can help other people be creative.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so that can look like my podcast uh in terms of communicating.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: It could look like me speaking at events or leading workshops and helping people establish what I call a daily creative habit, which has come out of my own journey.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are sort of some different creative expressions that run the gamut uh and have over the years.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And what I've really tried to do is drill down to what is the thread that that keeps all these creative expressions and habits together so that I don't necessarily fixate too much on one particular thing, um, especially because I have multiple interests.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think like a lot of creative people uh, you know, can resonate with that, where they're like, there are there are things that I want to do, there are things that I want to try, and I don't want to necessarily be put in the proverbial box, right?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but at the same time, needing to become excellent in something and have something that uh people can know how to talk about what you do, and you know how to talk about what you do, right?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So for my journey, this really started when I was a kid, uh, much like many artists that you talk to, you know, I was drawing and painting and just creating art because it's kind of what I love to do.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um some of my earliest memories were centered around me creating greeting cards for family members that included things that were part of my world, which was like Looney Tunes and Saturday morning cartoons and all the, you know, that stuff, uh fed my creativity.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was drawing my version of these characters and I'd put it on a card and I'd give it to a family member and I'd see their face light up.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I like how this feels.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And looking back on that, I realized, oh, there's something that was happening there.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: There was an exchange, right?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: I created something, I gave it to somebody else, and either their, you know, what they received was joy, their face lit up.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: There was a smile.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but more than that, there was a connection that was made.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so I realized, again, this is looking back, because as a kid, you're not thinking this, you're just thinking, like, I like to do this.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: I want to do more of this, you know.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but as I got older, I'm like, I need to do more of this in my lifetime, which is creating and connecting, uh, using what I create as a connection point.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so that looked like graphic design as I went to school because there were conversations with my parents that they were like, you know, you sure you want to be an artist?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you want to be a doctor or a lawyer or something that makes money?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I I completely understand those concerns, you know, being a parent myself.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I was pretty, you know, stubborn and I was like, no, you know, I'm this is what I want to do.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so they said, okay, well, can we at least compromise and go into graphic design because that's at least commercially viable, you know, you won't be the quote starving artist on the street trying to sell paintings, you know, whatever.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I did that, went to two top art schools in New York City, and um went into the field of graphic design.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so that continued to kind of morph and change throughout my uh journey uh until I finally hit a point where I was like, uh, I don't know if this is it.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm I'm cranking out deadlines every two weeks, and I'm like uh not feeling completely fulfilled, feeling like I'm part of a machine.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And um, there was another part of my life that was very much focused on people and serving and helping.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I ended up leaving uh, you know, graphic design and that whole world for about 10 years, went into full-time industry.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a whole other life uh experience and lifetime, it feels like.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um wonderful, but also stressful, and also ultimately led me to a place of depression where uh I was really functioning in roles that were not in my gifting and not doing anything creative whatsoever.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that combined with some life events, um, really led me to this dark place and had to leave ministry, didn't really know what I was gonna do with my life at that point, was feeling chewed up and on the side of the road.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that was actually my entryway back to my personal art.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it was at that moment where I felt like, you know, at one time this did bring me joy.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is it possible to get back to you to this place?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And um that led me to explore that question, to be curious, and on it led me to a 365-day art making journey, which eventually blossomed into more than uh a year where I showed up every single day to create stuff.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And um this year, as of this recording, this will be my 11th year of doing something every single day uh creatively and pouring into what I've now called my daily creative habit.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, I love that.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: That as you were writing, I was I made five or six little notes here of things that I wanted to explore a little bit more because your story is so fascinating.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I spend a lot of my time around people who are pretty much doing books, publishing, writing, um, you know, things of that nature.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_03: But it's not really every day that I talk to somebody who I consider is like a master artist, creative person who does visual type of work.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm just really, really fascinated by that.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um one thing that I want to explore a little bit, and this is strictly a question out of curiosity, and I'm totally showing my ignorance, which is nothing new.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_03: Like I feel like I do that very well at this point in my life.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_03: I show my ignorance constantly.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_03: What would you say that your art style is?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: Because I see your your artwork, particularly your drawings of people who are speaking or on stages, your your podcast artwork.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I've was honored to be featured recently um in a podcast episode that I did on your show, where you did sort of an illustration of me, which is really cool.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_03: And my dad was like, Hey, that's really accurate, you know.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_03: Like I thought that was really cool because it was obvious who it was, even though um, you know, even though it was a drawing, which I thought was cool.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_03: So, how would you describe your your style, particularly in that realm of drawing podcast guest speakers and that sort of thing?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I actually have a couple of different styles that I move in and out of, to be honest.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that particular style is a little bit more graphic in nature, um, meaning that there's it's not like soft shading and um it's not highly rendered.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so I've through the through my journey came to embrace that I'm a mess and I need to embrace that mess.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I tend to include even now uh because I'd say probably 90% of what I do is digital art, uh, I still do splatter marks that are digital um and lines that are kind of more loose and flowing, um, you know, things that are not highly precise because I came out of this background of things being very precise.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I found that it was frustrating and suffocating.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually it was like me feeling like I was trying to be somebody that I wasn't.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't until years, years later when I came back to my art for personal reasons that I had to shed some of the lies that I believed that I wasn't a real artist because I couldn't draw a photorealistic style.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And um that for me, whatever reason, that was the benchmark of what a true artist was, what a skilled artist was.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I knew that there were other artists that would do things that were not that style and who were successful and even famous, but for whatever reason, that's what I attached to.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to unpack a lot of those lies that I believed that I couldn't draw really, and I couldn't do a certain style, therefore I wasn't legitimate, you know?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so you know, the the style thing emerged as I just kept trying different things and was open and was part of the self-discovery process of my daily creative habit.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_03: So is there a thing in the art world?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I assume that there is, probably there is in every industry.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_03: So you mentioned this idea of not feeling sometimes like a legitimate artist in comparison to those who could draw photorealistic images.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: Is that a thing in the art world where there is sort of a ranking or a hierarchy or at least a perceived hierarchy, like, well, you're only a real artist if you can do this certain style or you can do this certain kind of thing?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: Because there is in the book world sometimes where people will sometimes feel like, well, if I haven't been published through a major publisher, I'm not really a real writer, or if I haven't done this certain type of book or whatever, which is totally bogus.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_03: But is there an analogous thing in the art world to that?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it it depends on the circles that you run into, right?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but certainly there are what we would term like the gatekeepers, right?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the people who typically have are in a position where they have a little more clout um and authority in what they say.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: And those people tend to be the ones who say, this is the way that things should look.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: This is the path you should follow.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, now a lot of times they have a vested interest in that, of course, you know, um, but for art school, it was a lot of um, you know, look to the masters of the past and specific ones who would, you know, do a lot of the figurative art that was um again, photorealistic style.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: It was more about the rendering, it was more about you know, perfect proportions, um, and the skill of and uh the technique that you would do, uh, which again I found very frustrating.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so me not having this natural ability for some of that stuff, and uh along the way I've learned some just different tricks and things, um and and go like, you know what, if we get to the same place, who really cares?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and I think there's a certain point where you get older and you just have that attitude too of like, you know what, like I'm kind of doing what I'm doing, and I'm totally fine with it.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And like, you know, in the in the in the grand scheme of things, do I really need to play by your rules?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think so, you know.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um so and I think that there's a certain level of comfortability you need to have with your own skill set and knowing yourself also and having a certain confidence to be able to move into that because otherwise you're gonna always be in this place of trying to please somebody else, listen to somebody else's rules.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and regardless of whatever your creativity looks like, whether it's you know written word or visual art or or something else, um, I I think there's a certain ownership that you need to have over your own uh yourself, your process, and your craft.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, that's that is such a good insight.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: I've never really thought about it that way.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_03: I suppose there is I'm trying to process once I have like four lines of of things because every time I talk to you, and that's you know, there's certain people in my life where I talk to them and every conversation, it's like all these sparks go off because you're you're giving me such great insights.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, one thing that it that it occurs to me is that uh I I'm curious what you think about this, Mike.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_03: Is there a sense in which all of us are born with certain kinds of what am I even trying to say here?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_03: We're born with a certain voice, we're born with a certain way that we can best express ourselves creatively.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: And there does come a point in our lives where yes, we can grow, we can expand, we can learn, and we should do those things, but there is kind of an innate ability that we have and and an innate voice.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_03: And if we try, if we spend our whole lives wrestling against that voice, we're constantly frustrated.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: But there does come a point, like you mentioned, where we have to stop fighting it and just embrace this is the way that we're wired, this is my voice, this is my style, this is the way that I do things.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: Sort of like if you know, if if Miles Davis would have tried if he knew that he had a natural gifting, let's say, for trumpet, for those for that style of music and for jazz, but if he if he had listened to the Beatles and thought, you know, later on that, well, I really want to try and and make music like the Beatles, you know, this sort of bubblegum pop music, uh, at least kind of how they started out, he would have really, really been frustrated, even though he may have been very good at it.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: But don't you think there comes a point at which we have to stop fighting and we just have to embrace this is how I'm wired.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: This is my voice, and I'm gonna be happiest and most successful if I embrace that particular voice that I am just wired to to speak to the world with.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that touches on two things.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: One, there's the kind of natural ability or natural talent, if you will, that some people say, you know, well, this person's just more talented than I am.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: They were born that way.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it comes with ease, you know.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly we've seen examples of that, and we can't, you know, um certainly uh argue with that.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I think at the same time, so much of what we do is a learned skill set.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it comes to practice repetition, you know, and that's coupled with our experiences and our makeup, right?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: How we're wired.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's it's really becoming a student of yourself, like learning how to harness and develop self-awareness enough so that you're knowing how you need to show up and what that looks like and and willing and able.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: And this is part of why I always talk so much about daily creative habit, is because for me that was a place and continues to be a place where I allow myself to play, to explore, to experiment, to be curious outside the realm of some other constraints of responsibilities and paychecks and and some other things.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and sometimes of, you know, there's bleed over, but it it's it's a gift you give yourself where you say, I need to know myself well enough to know how I need to show up and what that looks like.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I need enough times to keep trying that to know what that looks like.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because it's not something that's just gonna come down from you one day from heaven of like, you know, the clouds parted, and it was like a gift.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it just, you know, a little bow, and here it is, here's your voice, here's your style, here's what you know, what it should look like in your life.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and plus, there's an evolution to our creativity, I think, too.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it's complicated, but it's it's a thing, I think, that uh when you're a creative person, uh it's it's like not a choice.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: You have to uh show up and create and be involved in that process.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it's it's important to um, I think uh give yourself challenges to figure out like, okay, like for me, I knew enough that I I wasn't going to be happy if I was trying to just keep pushing into this like very controlled, very precise type of work.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I'm like, I know, like my desk is a mess, and like I, you know, I spill things, yeah, I have little accidents or whatever, you know, like I'm like I try, but you know, hey, it is what it is.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And at a certain point, you go, am I gonna keep fighting that or am I gonna embrace that and figure out how to use that for good, not evil?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like I think that's really where that's the difference, right?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's also this point of like, you know, you mentioned music.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: So like in a former life, I I had a lot more to do with music.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was a musician, played guitar and and sang and and even wrote some songs and had a band and stuff.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I do less of that these days, like probably like 0.5% of my life.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but at that point, when I was learning, um, you know, it was this thing of here's the music I love, here are the songs I want to learn how to play.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was learning how to play other people's songs.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the whole thing of like cover bands, right?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm playing somebody else's song and doing my take on it or trying to emulate them as best I can.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: You're only going to go so far if that's where it ends.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: You you will be the person who emulates somebody else.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: You will never figure out, okay, well, how do I take those influences and put them in a blender along with the other things and come out with my own thing?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that maybe you're listening to something and you hear traces of these influences, but it's not a copy.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think the same thing happens with our creativity.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: And again, regardless of however that looks, if it's written word, if it's visual art, if it's music, there are influences that we have.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: There are things that we try to emulate early on because we're learning how to do this.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: But at a certain point, we need to push past that so that we have that ownership and we start showing up in a way where like, okay, you can still see traces of the influences, but we've we've made it our own, you know.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: It does make it hard because it seems like imitating others for a lot of people, that's what pays the bills, and that's what gets views on YouTube.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_03: And particularly I'm talking about cover bands.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I you know, I think oftentimes of what Todd Henry uh says on his podcast and his books.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, he's the guy behind the accidental creative, and he says cover bands don't change the world.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was like, wow, that's that's really true.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, if you're a band on YouTube, that's what gets The views nobody wants to hear your original music, and you have all these groups out there on YouTube that are you know they're covering this group or this group or this group, and it's it's it's kind of I feel frustrated on behalf of those people because I'm like, I know you see their musical talent and you know they're really, really gifted, but they put their original stuff out there, and most of the time people aren't that interested in it.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: They want to hear their cover of Journey or their cover of Backstreet Boys or gosh, I'm dating myself to the 90s.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the cover of Ariana Grande or Taylor Swift or whatever it is.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_03: So I I wonder how we can balance how we can balance that that need to explore and be original, but also emulate the people, the people styles that we really enjoy or that people relate to, or those kinds of things.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I guess it depends on what your area of art is.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_03: You know, with music, it's easy to be a cover band.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_03: You can't really be a cover band as a writer, you can't just like plagiarism.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_03: But that is that is sort of funny because with music, it's like, oh yeah, there's cover bands, and we we do, you know, we're a Garth Brooks tribute band or whatever, right?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but with with writing, that's plagiarism, and that's yeah, and now it's interesting, it's interesting now with AI stuff, right?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: And writing.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, well, that's kind of a little bit of cover band.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's like there's there's pieces of things that are, you know.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's a part in there where you're like, okay, we can't necessarily put creativity in the box um to say, well, I'm just going to do my own things that are always going to be original and I'm going to be my own person and play as my personality.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, exactly.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: And and there's also, I've seen this in terms of like client work versus passion projects, too.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: So um if someone has a creative skill and they want to make a living from that, a lot of times what happens is, okay, well, the logical thought here is let's go to school for this, let's get trained in this, let's go then graduate, get a job in someplace where I'm being hired to perform this creative skill and get paid for it.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then a lot of times there's a frustration point of, well, I'm making a living for my creativity, but it's not quite what I thought it was going to look like.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a frustration of, I want to say and do more things that actually have my fingerprints on it, but I know this isn't the right forum, but yet I don't know what the right forum is.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I certainly feel like I don't have energy or or can put the effort out when I get home after creating all day long for somebody else to then switch gears and create something that I might feel passionate about, create something for me.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: So people stay in this loop and this cycle for a long time.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And what I've seen happen is that people get burned out and sometimes leave a field altogether because they're like, this isn't working.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I have these conversations a lot of times to say, you know, it's not necessarily an and or.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's not, well, either I need to leave this job and go pursue my passion projects and the things that I want to do that are original and whatever, um, or I just harness all my creativity towards client work and that's it.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's important to figure out your path forward in that.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then even if you have a, you know, quote, day job that is creative that you're harnessing for other people and clients, you still have to have a place that is your own creatively.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: You have to have passion projects because if you don't, you're robbing yourself of the ability to create things and have breakthroughs and figure out some of the things that really are important to you and express things in a way that can't be touched by clients and certain budgets and all the rest of that.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you're the one who's in control of that.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody else is going to make you do that.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody else is going to, you know, necessarily even cheerlead you on to do that.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um it has to be a priority for yourself.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of people just don't realize the importance of that because it seems like one more thing to do and add to my list, which is already packed, you know.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_03: And you don't have to monetize everything.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_03: There's a huge pressure in the entrepreneur/slash creative slash artist world today to everything that you do, you've got to turn into an income stream.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: And you don't, you don't have to do that.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think if you can turn something into an income stream and you can still enjoy it and love it, that's wonderful.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_03: But but it is good to have some things that don't have that pressure attached to it.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes there's more freedom there because totally, totally you don't, you know, it's it's a terrible thing when you shackle something you love with the pressure of making money because then all of a sudden you can't be as free.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: You're worried about too many different things and you've attached too many different constraints to your creativity, as opposed to going, you know what, it doesn't really matter if this quote succeeds or fails, you know.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm gonna have fun in the process of doing this and I'm gonna learn something.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because if you're if you're like I have to create something that is marketable right now, today, that's very different.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and it's different if you if you've been been doing it for five or 10 or 15 or 20 years and you know what you're doing, you could probably take a newer idea and you have the experience to know how to monetize it in a way that will work and that's doable and sustainable and and all that.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, if you're somebody like me who's who's just I've only been in my business a couple of years at this point, full time, I'm still learning a lot of things that you know, somebody like you, Mike, you've been doing this long longer than I have.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_03: And you know the ins and outs, you know the ropes of this, and you know, we're all on a learning curve.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: And for me, the client work has been really, really important.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_03: That's what really financially has sustained our family the last couple of years.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: But um now it's to the point where you know, the the other things I'm doing, like the podcast, my daily writer group, uh, my membership group, and other things are generating more significant income.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, okay, now I am more comfortable figuring out how to add more value to those things and you know, shifting the weights of uh shifting the percentage of where my income comes from and those kinds of things.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: But it just takes time, you know.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: If if I would have set out from the beginning and said, I've got to make money from this like right now, then you it's almost like you kill the very thing that can bring you a lot of joy over the long term, which is not good.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, not at all.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: We'll get back to the interview in just a moment, but first, a word from today's sponsor.
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• 29:31
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• 29:37
  SPEAKER_03: That's trivellum.com slash daily.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: And now back to my conversation with Mike Brennan.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_03: I want to ask about your daily creative habit, which is a guided journal.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_03: This is a really, really cool resource.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_03: I'd love to hear where this came from, how you developed this, and what kind of things people can expect when they grab this book and start using it in their lives.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: So this came out of my own journey, as I referenced, you know, earlier, where I started calling this a daily creative habit because that's what it looked like for me.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it was me showing up, it was creating a habit where I didn't have to um exert so much energy and effort to show up and create.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in other words, uh previous to that, I was going in fits and spurts with my creativity.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: I would wait for large blocks of time that I could carve out my schedule.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: And if that time came, and I say if because we all know, you know, intentions go by the wayside in our scout, you know, that's we're like, eh.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so if I found myself like, okay, I have the time now, then I would waste so much of that time in setting up to prepare to actually create.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so for me, you know, being a visual artist, it was like gathering my supplies and setting up my environment and getting my head right and figuring out what am I going to do, you know, the blank canvas, the blank page kind of thing.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I would find I've wasted more than half my time on actually setting up instead of creating.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: And and now I, or I'm now set up and I don't know what to do.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: I feel uninspired.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so I realized that short intervals, you know, daily deposits of creativity were the way for me to go.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: And coming out of nothing for 10 years, coming back into it, I said, I need to figure out how to do this if it's even possible.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I started with 10 to 15 minutes a day.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, it was humbling because at one point in my life I had so much more capacity, but I had to exercise grace for myself and say, listen, this is now a mental health thing for me, also.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm showing up so that I can connect with myself, connect with God, and connect with my creativity through this activity.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it was pen and ink drawing and going, like, okay, this is pretty bad, you know.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, close the book, but I go tomorrow.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to show up and do something else and keep building on things and keep exploring.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then going, what kind of um material do I want to use?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of subject matter do I want to explore?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: So all these things of this being curious and asking myself questions and part of this process, there were certain things that emerged that were principles for me in this.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what I talk about now when I do some creative coaching or when I'm talking about the daily creative habit journal or workshops, those kind of things.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm leading people through this creative process, really.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it starts with your mind.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: It starts with thinking and asking yourself questions.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't start with gather your supplies or here's a technique or here's a method in your craft.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's there's other people and there's other ways that you can certainly, you know, I mean, you just go on YouTube and you'll find tons of things that tell you and teach you about certain techniques and methods.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but for me, I was like, you know, the starting point is really making a decision for me to show up for my creativity, first off, because realizing the importance of it.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: So the journal came about because these were things that I was talking about.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to put it in one place where it was a helpful resource for people who said, you know what, I may be in a couple of different categories.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm a beginner and I want to try to figure out how to develop creativity in my life, and I'm not really sure what that's going to look like yet, but I need some guardrails.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I need some guides.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: This can be helpful.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe I'm somebody who I was creative when I was younger and I had to put it on a shelf because responsibility and family and demands and et cetera, et cetera.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm in a different season of life and I'm coming back to my creativity and I'm asking the questions of can I come back to this?
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's been so long.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: What does it look like?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: Does this have a place in my life?
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like it to.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so helping people in that category, or even in the other category of, you know, I'm a creative professional, but yet I don't have that place of passion projects and personal creativity.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: How can I tap into that?
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so this really simply is a it's a guide for people, and it's it was inspired actually by um the the uh five-minute gratitude journal.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: I loved it.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: I use it myself.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I was introduced to that uh probably a year and a half ago.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, at first I was kind of like really like I don't know, what am I gonna write in this thing?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm thankful for my bed, I'm thankful for this food.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like you kind of go there, especially as a native New Yorker.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of like my eye roll is hard.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of like, really?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_03: That's hilarious.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I had to push through my own skepticism and just say, you know what, let's give this a try.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: And what I found was that slowly I started to actually become really grateful and thankful.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I started to look for things.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was setting an intention uh and making me check in with myself and uh practice the self-awareness piece, right?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, well, what if I develop this journal so that I'm helping people set creative intention?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm asking questions that are leading and causing people to engage with that place, as opposed to just, I don't know, I'm kind of going with the flow here.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we'll see what happens, you know, because things never happen when we do that.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's designed so that there's a creative quote for some inspiration from various different people.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's a series of questions in the morning that is designed for you to basically just even if you take the five minutes in your morning, you know, put this on your nightstand or whatever, or someplace when you're eating breakfast or or whatever, and just go through the series of questions asking you, like, what are you going to create today?
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: And where are you going to put it on your calendar?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: And like, what is it going to look like?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: And how are you going to celebrate?
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: And just a bunch of questions that it repeatedly asks you over a 90-day sprint.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the the idea here is that with the repetition, you start to own these questions more and that you are looking to be proactive in this process as opposed to reactive.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's it's helping you look for areas where you can show up for your creativity, helping you define what that looks like.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then you go and then you hopefully you've done what you said you were going to do.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, you look back on a series of questions, then, and again, maybe in five-minute stretch, and you just answer the questions.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so like what motive did my creativity look like today?
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: And how am I celebrating?
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the things that I said I was gonna do.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: Did I do them?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you didn't do them, you know, you have tomorrow.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, pick up where you left off.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like keep engaged in the process and the journey.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so it's been great to hear some feedback early on.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this has only been out a few months, but people already are saying, you know, this is this is a tool that's helping me.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's giving me a system to leverage for my creativity.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: And again, it doesn't matter if it's if it's a visual artist, if it's a writer, if it's a musician, you know, whatever the creative expression is, um, you bring that to the table.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I always say, you know, this process is something that came out of my own journey.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: I know that it works because I'm proof.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not just me, it's bigger than me.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's why I love teaching people this and helping people engage with this process because, you know, these people now that are doing this, they're starting to see some results, even after just a few weeks of going, I'm excited about this.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm starting to have some inspiration and I'm starting to feel a little curious and and feeling some like life and some passion come back to something that maybe was dormant for a while.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's it's such a beautiful story of how this really amazing resource came about in such an organic way.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: As opposed to thinking, well, I think people would like this and I'll put this out.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_03: Not that there's anything wrong with that, you know, to use Seinfeld language, I guess.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_03: Again, I'm dating myself back to the 90s for some reason.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_03: Not sure if I keep doing that, but I don't know.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_03: But uh I think that's that's really great.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_03: How would you uh how much time would you recommend people set aside for their creativity each day?
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_03: Would you recommend 15 minutes as a great starting point?
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a starting point, yes.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it's very personal because everyone has different parameters that they're working with.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Some people have more available time than other people, right?
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I've talked to people where they're like, you know, my schedule is really packed.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I also have a lot of either family responsibilities or other things where I'm caring for other people and and, you know, or I'm working two jobs or whatever the scenario is.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and it's it that's always a concern and a constraint.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Time.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: How do I prioritize for my creativity?
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how to fit this in.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think it's examining your life, it's examining your schedule and saying, where are the time blocks that you can start to set aside and like protect it with a machete because it's that important.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so for me, when I came back to this again, it was really like I don't have the energy to be able to do this.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have the capacity to be able to do this.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like I had the time, kind of, but I was also then, you know, working uh a full-time position on a staff, you know, when I was attempting to come back to this.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, where are the pockets of times that I that I can redeem and steal back?
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was like a lunch hour.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: So 15 minutes of a lunch hour, I'd go and just sketch in a book.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I started to think, okay, where else are these little time frames that I can steal?
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was waiting in line at a store, and normally you're just kind of waiting there either on your phone or looking at tabloids or like, you know, judging yourself because you jumped on this line and the other line's moving quicker and you're like, you know.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, like instead of all that stuff, what if you actually used that five, 10 minutes that you're in line?
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, hopefully it's not 10 minutes, but you know, that five minutes and going, okay, let me pour into my creativity here.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: And people go, well, what can I possibly do in five minutes that's really going to move the needle?
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, you'd be surprised because it's not necessarily, you know, we we all have this idea that we need to sit down and create the masterpiece every time that we sit down.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we want something great, we want, we want big and bold and grand, and you know, the soundtrack to to come up and swell behind us as we are creating and the, you know, but so often it's no, you know what?
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: I had five minutes and I allowed myself to be free in my mind, where I just jotted down a couple of words that I want to explore or some concepts, or there was a quick sketch of something that I saw when I was in line at the store.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: And now that's all of a sudden sparking some ideas for a larger project.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's collecting things, it's noticing things and making that part of our creative process too, not simply just the sitting down and execution and skill part of our creativity.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and it's it's it's really it's really important to recognize that we can get a lot of done in a short amount of time.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_03: Even just and I I talk to writers about this all the time about man, if you just write 250 words a day, you can actually write a whole book in just like three months.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't really take that long to to sit down, write a few hundred words, and and after a while you have a whole complete book there.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_03: So this illusion of we gotta have these huge blocks of time to accomplish anything of significance is just simply not true.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_03: And also if you think of how how were all the great works of art created, I mean we think of like um you know, Michelangelo with Assistine Chapel, how that's one of the greatest works of art in the world.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_03: How was that actually created?
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_03: Well, just one brush stroke at a time, really, with him lying on his back, and of course he had a team of people working with him too, but you know, in a very uncomfortable position just day after day going up there and doing it.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_03: And that's that's how these things get get created through this daily creative habit.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's funny, you know, with the people who we consider the masters and the people that we celebrate their work, there's a sense of like the museums and the history books, those are the highlight reels, right?
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like Instagram today.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was the same kind of thing where we're and and that work we should celebrate, right?
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: We should acknowledge that those are amazing things, but we we also do a disservice by not sharing the failed attempts and all the iterations that led up to those great works.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so what happens is we isolate these things, we put them up on a pedestal, literally, and then we compare and we say, Well, you know, these people were geniuses, they were masters, they were, you know, whatever.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't allow ourselves to also look at their failures and the the parts of their journeys that were really jacked up, yeah.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that we we resonate more with, honestly, um, and go like, oh, you know what?
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, maybe there's not such a divide between us.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe I won't be ever considered a quote master or or have somebody look at my work in a museum or or you know be celebrated at a certain celebrity status, but that doesn't mean that I can't do authentic, amazing work that touches me and makes an impact on the people who interact with it.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, if you think of the greatest artists in history, the the vast majority of them had significant personal problems.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, my goodness, you look look at Da Vinci.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_03: I mean talk about a guy who had a lot of conflict and a lot of personal problems.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um Michelangelo was a hothead.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_03: Vincent Van Gogh had uh serious mental health issues.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um Abraham Lincoln, you know, not an artist, I guess, but but somebody who struggled with depression a lot.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, my goodness, it's it's really actually rare, I think, to find a great artist, quote unquote great artist who we would look at today and think of as they're just like a normal, stable, average kind of a person.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's almost as if those those quirks and those quote unquote problems or those personal problems or those deficiencies that those somehow funnel into those artists' greatness.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_03: Not that we have to be like this really messed up person to to not not that that's a a prerequisite to creating something great, but but it seems like there is some kind of a commonality almost like I guess what they call creative madness.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_03: Any sense.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_03: Well I think there's scary it is.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's a there's a certain amount I think where struggle produces something in you and through you that can't happen otherwise.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not to say I think sometimes we go too far where we think well I need struggle then in order to create great work.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and you know you were talking earlier about the the sense of play and the sense of you know we we take ourselves too serious sometimes.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's true because we feel like we need to push, push, push.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: And um there's always something we're building towards there's always something that we're trying to wrestle to the ground and and have breakthrough on uh some next level or or thing.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: But um to to to say that we have to put ourselves in that place I think is dangerous.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um because then we're just constantly setting ourselves up for um I think a life that is filled with struggle and striving and angst.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: And um I think there's something to be said by learning through those things and letting it develop what it needs to, but then coming through some of the other side and going, okay, here's the redemption in that here's the here's the goodness that can come out of the pain and here's what I'm gonna now bring to the world um as I process this.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_03: You know it's almost like we have the this illusion now I'm speaking now of a of a person in modern America we've had this illusion you know for the past probably since probably the 1950s of you know American life w Western life should be calm predictable just filled with all fulfilling all of our fantasies it should be this nice easy you know journey through life but for the vast majority of human history life was filled with death and bloodshed and constant threat of war and and famine and plagues and all kinds of things you know which which we're entering into a season now where the last few years we've seen a lot of these things we we've had to face them more directly in our everyday life.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah so it's almost as if the the more that we just accept that the nature of life the basic nature of life is struggle that it's kind of like oh I've got problems today well that's kind of a normal you know a day where we just coaster and there's no problems and everything goes great that's actually I think most people through history would look at that and go, that's really strange.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_03: We don't really know what to make of that because that's not our experience.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wow and most of the great stories that we love are filled with some kind of either struggle tragedy uh a darkness that someone had to endure um it's the hero's journey right it's um it's the stories that resonate with us to the core and if we don't have that journey there's something that feels a little incomplete um and and we can't necessarily resonate with it completely.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know if you see somebody and all you see from them is oh they have a life of ease and success and they don't seem to have any problems ever.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: We we categorize those people differently than we would someone who we're like you know what like I'm watching this other person my friend and I'm like I totally understand what they're going through because I've been through that too or I'm going through that now or there's something just about that struggle or that um having to endure that almost brings a uh a bond um right and and and and brings us together as opposed to separates us and makes us compare and you know think oh well I just can't relate to that person I was really surprised the other day when I I watched a I want to share this super quick story then I want to lead into a question.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_03: I'm curious your thoughts on this I was watching a documentary called Spielberg on HBO it's on HBO Max I guess is what it's called and it was interesting because you know in the 1970s Steven Spielberg had a lot of really big successes he was the hot new young director and then he made this movie in 1941 that was a huge box office disaster if I recall correctly he talked about how for about a year he was really depressed he was really discouraged he wondered if his his best days were over you know as a director and then and then he said then my George my my friend George Lucas came along and rescued me.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_03: Meaning he came to him with the idea for um the first Indiana Jones movie Raiders of the Lost Stark and that totally revitalized Steven Spielberg's career.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_03: But I thought it was cool that Spielberg you know he's the greatest living director probably in most of our estimations that he was really candid about he was was really down and somebody came along and they rescued his whole career basically and I'm curious what what you think about what is the line for those of us who are professional creatives on some level what is the line between projecting an image of professionalism and the idea that we are professionals, we kind of have our stuff together yada yada versus those times when maybe we should be candid about our struggles and our problems and our frustrations and how we're how we're getting through something or how we got through something for you personally how do you determine what that line is between projecting that professional image but also sharing just candid things about hey I struggled with this or I'm going through this or whatever the case might be?
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah I think that's a great question.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you know we see so much posturing today and positioning because people do want to make sure that they're seen in the best light or if especially when it's attached to their business and with more and more personal brands, you know, it's it's my business but it's also attached to me as a person as I'm showing up.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so the lines get blurry there and it's really easy for people to want to gloss over I think things.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you know at the end of the day it's it's a personal decision.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's what you feel comfortable with.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: For me I've always been someone who I I value and champion authenticity.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like as I've gotten older I've realized the valuable asset that vulnerability is and it's tricky because when you're vulnerable when you're willing to be the person who starts a conversation by saying you know what like this is something I went through and I wouldn't have chosen this but this is what happened and I'm willing to speak up about this because I I think it's going to help other people.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: I want it to be a bridge and a connection for people so that somebody else can raise their hand and say you know what I'm so thankful that you said that because me too.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like I thought I was the only one.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the more and more that I'm willing to be vulnerable the more I'm hearing those things and I'm realizing the power there.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now I think there's a danger because when you're going through things you don't want to bleed on people.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right you you can't share something that is so fresh and so timely that you haven't quite processed it or gotten some healing on yet.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think you need to be able to do the work that you need to do to get a little bit of distance to get a little bit of healing and perspective on things um and so then share from that place of going yeah you know what like I talk about mental health all the time um and it's you know something where I'm like it's part of my story.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean honestly it's it's what again I I brought me back to my art.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: Without that I don't know that I would be who I am today.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that I would know the things I know in my artistic endeavors and had had the experiences and the opportunities.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now did I enjoy that but no do I and you know like the fact that I still struggle with things you know at certain times even like seasonal depression type things you know certain times of the year.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: No I don't I don't like that and I'm actively working on those things.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_00: But it's a part of my journey it's part of my story.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think the way that I live my life again this goes back to even how you asked me how my artistic journey started it's about connection right it's about creating connecting and so realizing that so much of my life is about connecting and whatever it is that I do creatively is just a vehicle and the same thing in my life where I share my experiences the struggles being real with people that's creating an opportunity for me to connect and I I know that not everyone is going to have great motives.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: I know that not everyone's going to understand or relate and that's fine.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's part of having agency and ownership over yourself as a person um to know you know I am who I am and I'm not going to be for everyone but the people that I am for great let's rally together and if I can be a voice of encouragement if I can be a help somehow for someone else who is struggling with something that either I've come through or there's a um a piece that we can connect over to say you know what I understand I see you I hear you empathy is huge you know and um it's a big value of mine uh I've come to to to really lean into those moments and say you know there's there's still a lot of things that I I need to continue to learn and grow in and um as I speak and as I teach and as I show up to help other people I have more and more opportunities to make the decision to say I'm going to be real and being real doesn't necessarily mean sharing everything but it means sharing what's appropriate.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: And also somebody once told me you know not everyone has earned the right to know your whole story.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: Protect yourself and protect those parts of your story that are only for certain people.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: But within the larger context there are certainly ways that you can show up and be vulnerable be empathetic and share authentically of what's happening.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to throw the gates wide open and have you know have everybody have complete access to you.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's healthy either.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah um but do enough where you're you know be a be a person be a real person you know I mean somebody needs to write a book with that title just be a real person.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: Seriously like you know I think too many times we get too caught up in like the the positioning and the you know the whole just that that end of things of of image and and um you know at the end of the day if I'm sitting across the table from somebody we're having coffee and we're having a heart to heart talk about something like that means so much more to me than any amount of you know likes and shares and whatever else on on posts that I have on social media or whatever.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah I think it's personal you need to own that and figure out what your level of comfortability is but then also sometimes push past that um and look for a place to value your story and yourself and in a way that it can also be helpful for other people.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah gosh that's that's really good.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_03: That's really really good.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna have to go back and listen to this again because you're you're just sharing some stuff that's just really really good and that I need to hear right now as well.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_03: I think the part where I I feel like I struggle a little bit and here I I'm just you know talking about just confessing things that we struggle with in my own attitude something that I do wrestle with a little bit right now is particularly on social media and I guess particularly on Facebook really is what I'm talking about where we've almost kind of like embraced this culture a little bit of I guess I would call it the I'm struggling culture or I'm having a bad day culture.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_03: And there there is a lot of that kind of thing where I'm just struggling today and and maybe it's because I'm I'm more sort of ensconced in the Christian world a little bit where you know guys I'm struggling pray for me I'm just having a bad day and but it's but but many times I see the same people sort of sharing those things over and over and over again sort of with no with no intention to like improve their circumstances or it's kind of like hey we're just sort of gonna wallow in our brokenness which we all need to do at times but you know sometimes I I kind of just want to go well let's let's figure out a way to help you you know like do you do you do you want to get better or like you know Jesus asked someone one time in the Bible um do you want to be well do you want to be healed?
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes I think that's that's a good question but it has to be balanced out with the empathy and yeah and everything.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_03: I don't I don't know what the line is there and social media could be such a weird place for all that stuff too.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny you know my my creative expression although it's obviously still visual art uh I have embraced more writing as especially over the past year or so.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've always enjoyed writing and it's been a part of my processing in terms of journaling and things of that nature.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: Even as a kid I had a typewriter which I used to pretend to be a writer on it was just kind of funny.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: But then I thought to myself again like like well I I spelling is is a problem for me a lot of times um and so you know and also like grammar sometimes whatever.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_00: So like those type of things I I told myself well I could never really be a real writer.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then of course you know you fast forward and it's like oh well we have these tools that help you with that stuff.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_00: And really it's it's your perspective and your voice and how you see things.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm learning like oh so much of that is showing up in my writing um and even now I'm sharing things and looking at things in my own life and I'll I'll write posts just because I'm exploring an idea or I had this experience and I'm like I want to share this in a way that like here's my insight and and learning that all of that is attached to how I see things.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's not simply just visual art but it's how I see things.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's truly I think at the heart of creativity is how you see things and what you do as a result of that, what you create as a result of that, you know um and so but even that rolled into empathy and sharing and being vulnerable I found that the more I'm willing to push into that in my writing, the more it resonates with people.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: And again I'm not doing it because I want people to be like oh let's you know boost this and like this and blah blah you know it's more of how can I do this so that I know it's going to connect with people.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_00: And and I've found some redeeming quality of this and so now I want to share that insight because I think it might be helpful for somebody else.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_03: Well Mike I want to respect your time we've been chatting almost an hour.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_03: I can yeah it's like it goes by so fast when I'm talking with you but I do want to throw out a couple more quick things before we begin to wrap this up.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not sure really how to ask this except okay so here here's my deal is I've wanted to learn to draw my whole life.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_03: It is something I've wanted to do really badly but I don't have the skill I don't even know where to start with learning how to draw at least at a basic like second grade level which I don't even have that yet.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_03: For somebody like me who does not have any I would say I I don't have any natural skill with being an artist or with drawing where would somebody like me get started with that should I take a course should I get a book to help me what what's the best way for somebody like me to begin to develop those kinds of artistic skills I think it I would start with asking yourself like why like why do you want to do this?
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's going to help shape what resources you might gather around you.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so if it's simply more like doodling and kind of um that kind of activity you might go to some resources as opposed to you know I actually want to learn how to do a traditional painting type scenario or whatever.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so that asking yourself why you want to do what you want to do would be a good place to start.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then look for resources.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_00: There are tons of free resources on YouTube.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say whatever you can do to start small, do that.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: Set 10-15 minutes aside to do some research on gathering where you can learn some stuff and then set another time aside where you actually start to employ some of these techniques.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_00: Be okay with being bad in the beginning because everyone is a beginner and everyone is bad in the beginning and you have to do a lot of bad work before you get to good work.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_00: Be open to what it looks like in terms of it's going to be something that is um is going to grow and evolve.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: The more practice you put in the better you'll get it.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: We know this other areas of our life and so to set anything you can do to set the expectation and lower the bar so that you have access to just get in and start doing things I think is important because one in it's in the doing that you develop.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so in terms of specific things um again I would I would just look for take take a um you know uh whatever you think this may look like if it's like I said doodling or watercolor or whatever look for beginner videos on YouTube.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_00: Don't invest a lot financially in this thing because you know again the more we we do in terms of I I have to go big I have to to buy a lot of materials and I have to you know buy this course and I have to do right like we we pump this thing up so huge.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then if we have results that don't match that we want to just jettison the whole process.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm like look lower the bar do small do free do whatever you need to do to access getting into a rhythm of this and then you can always add on to things.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: Then you can always say oh well I was doing this and I was watching this video and they mentioned something else.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm gonna rabbit trail over there.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow cool that's a paid thing okay maybe I feel like now I'm at the point where I can do that.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um so small start small um the other thing I always tell people to is schedule it right put it on your calendar because otherwise it's just going to remain a good intention and then have a way to celebrate what you do so that as you show up you're saying hey you know what if I said you know this whole week I wanted to show up for 10 minutes a day and you get to the end of seven days and you did it give yourself a reward.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like maybe you you buy yourself a certain brush or a certain tool or you you know take yourself to the museum or you know I don't know your favorite place that's uh serves your your favorite meal or coffee or something.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like reward yourself because what gets you know rewarded gets repeated.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we want to make sure that we're we're setting ourselves up for as much success as possible.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_03: Gosh that is such good advice okay so I know exactly what I'm gonna do I'm gonna look for some videos on YouTube and I'm gonna get your I'm going to dive into your your book to help me I'm gonna set 15 minutes a day.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_03: Where where this really came from is when my son, so he's gonna be 19 in April, when he was in middle school he was going through a really difficult time dealing with a bully or two and just the typical middle school stuff too is I started drawing a comic strip for him uh three times a week I would put it in his lunchbox it's called lunchbox comics and I did this all through high school so I've got like hundreds of these comic strips that I did for him and it was an absolute blast.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_03: But the only thing that I can draw is stick figures.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_03: So that's what I used in the comics it was they were silly most of them weren't any good they were funny occasionally but only because they were really bad you know but that evolved into a desire to really want to actually learn how to draw with some measure of decency.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_03: But then over the last year or two I've had number of friends who have published kids' books and I thought man I was so inspired as a kid by the books of Shell Silverstein you know and another artist who write their they have kids' books but they also do the illustrations in their own books and Dr.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_03: Seuss of course and I thought man that would be so cool to do some kids' books where I do the writing and also the illustrations that's kind of what's driving this so I'm totally going to take your advice I'm gonna start today and I'm just gonna dive into it.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_03: This is really good advice I'd love it.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really really excited actually good yeah do what you can to set yourself up for the success and um track and measure your your progress so that you know what it is that you're doing.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can see what's happening and it's not just the sense of like well I know I'm showing up but I don't really know what's happening.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_03: You know yeah yeah thank you that's that's fantastic now my final question is um I feel like I'm always lying when I say that because then I always like add one more at the end and like nobody trusts me anymore when they hear me say that um it's like the the public speaker who's like okay and for my final point here I think right but but seriously my my final thing here is let us know where where uh let listeners know where they can find you how to discover all the cool things you're doing that you've got a book, podcast website you've got all these cool things.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_03: Where can they find out more about you?
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_00: So the the main hub for all that stuff is my website mikebrennan.me from there you can find a link to the podcast to uh samples of my illustration to my site that's separate for graphic design in case you need those services for event sketching that I do that we kind of touched on briefly um all the things there as well if you're interested in daily creative habit there's links there or you could simply go to dailycreativehabit.com.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_00: I have a free newsletter that goes out twice a week with specific prompts and some resources for people who want to engage with their creativity and be part of more of these types of conversations as well as links to the journal and some other resources uh and I'm I'm got more in the hopper so there's just more and more resources coming to try to help other people with their creativity.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_03: I love it.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_03: Mike, thank you, sir.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_03: This has been an absolute blast.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_03: I appreciate your kindness and your empathy and your wisdom and your insight again I could I feel like we could like do a whole series oh absolutely things so this this has been a blast.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_03: I really appreciate making time to uh to do this and uh share your insights with us I've loved it and I'm so thankful that we've connected over these last few months and looking forward to our next conversation.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you Kent I feel the same exact way.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you sir.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_03: Hey wasn't that a really fun interview I was so encouraged and inspired by all the great tips that Mike shared particularly toward the end of the interview when he gave us some great tips if you want to learn how to draw I've had been wanting to learn to draw for literally decades and I've been stuck in this endless vortex of just not knowing where to get started.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_03: And Mike just gave us some really really simple advice to start learning how to draw so uh so if you're a person who's always wanted to learn how to draw I hope that you will take Mike's advice and just grab some YouTube videos and get started and most importantly get his daily creative habit journal which I've just got a print copy of a uh about a week or so ago right after we recorded this interview and I'm so excited to dive into it.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_03: Well if you enjoyed this interview which I'm sure that you did I want to encourage you to not let your interaction with Mike stop here.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_03: Make sure and sign up for his free newsletter at dailycreativehabit.com and I want to encourage you to again get his book the Daily Creative Habit Journal.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_03: It is a beautiful full color book it's really really nice and I promise you're gonna love it if you grab it.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_03: Well also before I sign off for today many thanks to my good friend Mike for making time to do this interview.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_03: It was a pleasure my friend to be on your podcast a few weeks ago and it was of course such an honor to have you here on mine.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_03: So thanks again for making the time to do this.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_03: And to everybody else thanks for tuning in and I will see you next time