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Living A Creative Life with Dr. Eric Maisel · The Trauma Therapist

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Speaker 1: Trauma Thepist Podcast Plus listeners can listen to episodes early
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Speaker 1: going to Apple Podcasts searching for the Trauma Thepist podcast
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Speaker 1: and signing up today. Welcome to the Trauma Nevers Podcast,
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Speaker 1: a show about the incredible people dedicated to helping those
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Speaker 1: who experienced trauma. My name is Got macpherson, and my
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Speaker 1: mission is to raise awareness of trauma and to inspire
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Speaker 1: each of us to help those around us. All right, Eric,
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Speaker 1: you ready to yep? All right?
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Speaker 2: Here we go.
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Speaker 1: So five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome
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Speaker 1: back to the podcast. Very excited to have as my
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Speaker 1: guest today, Doctor Eric Mazel. Eric, welcome, great to be here.
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Speaker 1: Appreciate it so. Eric is the author of more than
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Speaker 1: fifty books. His interests include creativity, the creative life, and
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Speaker 1: the profession of Creativity Coaching, which he found issues of life,
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Speaker 1: purpose and meaning, Mental health and critical psychology also known
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Speaker 1: as critical psychiatry and anti psychiatry and parenting in a quote,
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Speaker 1: mental disorder age. Doctor Mazel's most recent book is called
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Speaker 1: Redesign Your Mind, The Breakthrough Program for Real Cognitive Change.
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Speaker 1: Doctor Mazel writes the Rethinking Mental health blog for Psychology Today,
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Speaker 1: and is a regular contributor to mad in America, where
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Speaker 1: he founded and edited its parent resources section. Eric. Welcome
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Speaker 1: to the podcast.
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Speaker 2: Wohem, thanks for having me you welcome. I got tired
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Speaker 2: of listening to that, So.
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Speaker 1: Before we go in here, share with the listeners where
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Speaker 1: you're from originally and where you are currently.
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Speaker 2: I was born in the Bronx. I grew up in Brooklyn,
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Speaker 2: went to high school in Manhattan, to a math and
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Speaker 2: science high school called Stuiversant thought I was a math
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Speaker 2: and science boy. Went to college too young at sixteen,
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Speaker 2: flunked out by eighteen, joined the army in nineteen sixteen,
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Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera, ended up in California. That's where
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Speaker 2: I am now, near San Francisco, and I've been here
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Speaker 2: for a long time now. But you can't take the
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Speaker 2: New Yorker out of you can't take New York out
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Speaker 2: of the New Yorker. So I'm a Brooklyn boy.
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Speaker 1: Well as a New Yorker myself, I thoroughly agreed. Now
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Speaker 1: let me just pause a second. Can you lift your
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Speaker 1: screen up so your heads not being yet perfect perfect?
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Speaker 1: All right, so super interesting? How now correct me if
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Speaker 1: I'm wrong Stuyvesant, is it don't do I specialize in math.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely. I thought I was a mad find's boy. I
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Speaker 2: thought I was going to be a physicist or and astronomer.
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Speaker 2: At the same time, I was reading existential fiction and
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Speaker 2: existential literature as a kid, and that was actually more
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Speaker 2: interesting to me than physics and chemistry and all of that.
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Speaker 2: So I didn't know that I was shifting into the
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Speaker 2: existential world as a kid, I just was lost. But
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Speaker 2: by the time I started college, I had lost interest
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Speaker 2: in science. When I got out of the army, I
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Speaker 2: got my first degree in that thing you do when
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Speaker 2: you don't know what you're doing. I got a degree
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Speaker 2: in philosophy and started writing books at about the age
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Speaker 2: of twenty four, and I've been doing that for fifty
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Speaker 2: years or so. That's been my main thing, writing books.
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Speaker 1: You know, reading your bio obviously, creativity just jumps out.
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Speaker 1: How did that begin to manifest in you? This?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, when I started training, Well, of course I was
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Speaker 2: being a creative person. In my twenties. I had a
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Speaker 2: postwriting career, was writing fiction. But at some point we
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Speaker 2: had young kids. I wasn't making enough money. It didn't
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Speaker 2: seem honorable to keep writing, so I retooled and became
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Speaker 2: a California licensed therapist, and as a therapist, I began
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Speaker 2: to notice that artists weren't a particularly serve population. I
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Speaker 2: was just curious about who was working with artists, and
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Speaker 2: I wasn't really finding anybody who was. So I decided
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Speaker 2: to work with artists primarily almost immediately as a therapist,
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Speaker 2: actually with artist couples, which is about as a bit
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Speaker 2: of work as you can do, having two artists in
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Speaker 2: the room together. But it was quite rewarding, except I
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Speaker 2: stopped believing in the pseudo medical model of therapy, so
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Speaker 2: I had to make a shift to what I first
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Speaker 2: called creativity consulting and then creativity coaching, and that's what
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Speaker 2: I've been doing for the last many, many years, thirty
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Speaker 2: five years working as a creativity coach with creative performing artists.
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Speaker 1: Now this is really resonating with me because I started
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Speaker 1: out as a musician. I went to what was Philadelphia
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Speaker 1: College of Art at the time for a year, dropped out,
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Speaker 1: played more music, and have been creative all my life
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Speaker 1: and kind of did the opposite to you. I kind
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Speaker 1: of moved out of that and I've been struggling yep,
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Speaker 1: and part of me wants to say help, but.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do it. Let's do a coaching session. Absolutely,
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Speaker 2: Oh my god, let's get the band together.
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Speaker 1: It's been so it's it's let me let me rephrase
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Speaker 1: my question here, what do you find? So you hear
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Speaker 1: what I just said, And I'm sure a lot of
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Speaker 1: people come to you with what are you finding? What
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Speaker 1: are you hearing from people who are struggling in this
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Speaker 1: in this way.
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Speaker 2: Lots of different things. One is getting the work done.
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Speaker 2: That's one of the primary problems that creative folks come
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Speaker 2: in to me to chat about, that they're not getting
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Speaker 2: their writing done, or they're rehearsing done, or this or that.
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Speaker 2: So it's just getting the work done is probably the
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Speaker 2: number one issue making money from it. The career issues
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Speaker 2: is so much competition and so much difficulty. There the
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Speaker 2: special sadness, I don't want to use the depression word.
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Speaker 2: The special sadness, the existential despair that comes with our life,
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Speaker 2: Wondering if what we're doing really matters, having meaning leak
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Speaker 2: out of the enterprise, wondering if the world needs another
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Speaker 2: song or another photograph or another poem, the kind of
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Speaker 2: understand why the world needs bread or medicine, but another
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Speaker 2: poem doesn't really need it. So there's that existential questions
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Speaker 2: about mattering special anxiety issues. Most creative folks don't understand
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Speaker 2: the extent to which they've been silenced by anxiety. Just
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Speaker 2: tendrills of anxiety. Don't mean big panic attack stuff, but
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Speaker 2: just the anxiety that comes with For instance, choosing the
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Speaker 2: creative process is one choice after another. Put there red hair,
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Speaker 2: put the blue there, one choice after another, and choosing
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Speaker 2: provokes anxiety. So creative folks don't quite realize that they
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Speaker 2: need anxiety special anxiety management skills in order to persist
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Speaker 2: in their life. So those are some of the sorts
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Speaker 2: of things that folks come to me with. There are
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Speaker 2: all kinds of other issues, Choosing among loves, showing up
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Speaker 2: each day, dealing in relationship ways with the person who
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Speaker 2: maybe is making the money in the household and not
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Speaker 2: feeling like a parasite or not feeling like you're not
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Speaker 2: contributing to the household income. Bazillion issues that you know
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Speaker 2: are all nameable. It's not really mysterious. They just teased
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Speaker 2: the part and together they make the creative life.
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Speaker 1: Well let's me if we could. Can you give us
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Speaker 1: kind of a case, how do you deal with this?
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Speaker 1: Someone walks in, maybe you have someone in your mind
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Speaker 1: right now, how do you And again with the understanding
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Speaker 1: that each person is different, this situation is different.
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Speaker 2: But I have lots of talking points, so I think
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Speaker 2: I can begin to address the question you're asking. One
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Speaker 2: is I invite a pair of paradigm shifts to all clients.
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Speaker 2: One is the movement from the idea that life has
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Speaker 2: one purpose to the idea of life purposes of life
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Speaker 2: purpose choosing. It sounds simple, but it's a big shift
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Speaker 2: when a creative person realizes that maybe many things are
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Speaker 2: important to her. Creativity is one of them, but family, relationships, activism, career, service,
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Speaker 2: many other things may be important. So kind of puts
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Speaker 2: creativity in perspective for them, so they don't have to
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Speaker 2: feel like they're putting all of their eggs in one basket,
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Speaker 2: so you feel like they have a life. So that
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Speaker 2: one shift from the idea of there's only one purpose
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Speaker 2: to life to the idea of multiple life purposes matters.
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Speaker 1: Why does that help that that particular paradigm shift, because
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Speaker 1: how does it help?
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Speaker 2: I think it takes a bit of the importance or
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Speaker 2: investment out of creativity. There's this dance of attachment and
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Speaker 2: detachment that every creative person has to do. You invest
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Speaker 2: in it, you attach to let's say the symphony you're writing.
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Speaker 2: Let's just pick something you attach to the symphony you're writing.
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Speaker 2: But then of course you have to let it go
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Speaker 2: when you put it out into the world. You have
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Speaker 2: to let the world decide whether it's wanted in all
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Speaker 2: of that. And so that kind of investing can make
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Speaker 2: a person anxious and also sad if nothing's happening for
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Speaker 2: the work or to the work. So this gives them
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Speaker 2: other things to feel good about, or other things to
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Speaker 2: be doing. To say it, simply, other things to be
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Speaker 2: doing that also count. I think it's so, to use
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Speaker 2: a cliche, it's a more balanced life to imagine that
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Speaker 2: many things are important to you than to put all
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Speaker 2: of your eggs in the creativity basket. That just overburdens
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Speaker 2: that basket.
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Speaker 1: And if you're not being quote unquote creative at that.
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Speaker 2: Time, then why are you even alive?
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Speaker 1: Right? Right?
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Speaker 2: So that's right. Folks need to understand that there are
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Speaker 2: other things they could be enjoying that hour in the
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Speaker 2: park with their kids. Rather than pining for the novel
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Speaker 2: they're not writing at that moment, they could be enjoying
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Speaker 2: life in other ways and keeping keeping the existential underpinning
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Speaker 2: of their life going by virtue of this s in
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Speaker 2: thinking to many things being important. Similarly, there's a shift
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Speaker 2: from seeking meaning, which is a two thousand year old
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Speaker 2: metaphor that everybody's kind of stuck with. The meaning's out
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Speaker 2: there somewhere, you know, the famous book man Search for Meaning,
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Speaker 2: Victor Frankel's book, The idea that got to go find it.
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Speaker 2: So I sell the paradigm shift to the idea of
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Speaker 2: making meaning rather than go looking for meaning. My idea
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Speaker 2: is that meaning is actually just a feeling. We each
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Speaker 2: have our psychological subjective, psychological experiences, and some feel meaningful
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Speaker 2: and some don't, and that's all it is. And when
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Speaker 2: you get that idea that it's just a feeling, then
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Speaker 2: it makes sense that it will come and go. Meaning
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Speaker 2: comes and goes. This is really helpful to creative people
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Speaker 2: who maybe, let's say they spend three hundred days writing
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Speaker 2: a novel, and two hundred and sixty three of those
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Speaker 2: days it doesn't feel very meaningful to be sitting there
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Speaker 2: because the novel's sloggy and not working and drumpy and
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Speaker 2: all of that. When they get this idea this there's
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Speaker 2: no reason why it should feel meaning. If there's no
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Speaker 2: reason why it should feel meaningful, then they can relax
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Speaker 2: and not be so hungry for meaning once you get
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Speaker 2: the idea of the means. But my analogy is joy.
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Speaker 2: You would not expect every moment of your life to
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Speaker 2: be joyful. That would be a little strange to experience
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Speaker 2: to expect that. But if you believe, you begin to
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Speaker 2: understand that joy comes and goes, and you can sort
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Speaker 2: of coax it into existence. You can try things that
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Speaker 2: might bring you more joy. Meaning is just like that.
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Speaker 2: You can try things that will bring you more meaning.
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Speaker 2: And I invite clients to try things that will bring
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Speaker 2: them more meaning. But it doesn't matter if it doesn't work.
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Speaker 2: It doesn't matter if the meaning doesn't come. As long
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Speaker 2: as you're living your life purposes, then your living life
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Speaker 2: as you should.
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Speaker 1: There's so many cliches around this topic of you know,
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Speaker 1: the artists struggling, and for me, I found myself. I mean,
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Speaker 1: I'm relating a lot to what you're saying. I found
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Speaker 1: myself devaluing my creativity and my love of creativity and
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Speaker 1: feeling like I needed to satisfy my father and you know,
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Speaker 1: get into more business stuff.
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Speaker 2: And that's why that first year of college is actually
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Speaker 2: the last year of high school, and the first year
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Speaker 2: of college is so hard on my students because all
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Speaker 2: along parents have been supporting their creativity. They go to
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Speaker 2: the concerts, they put their little drawings up on the refrigerator.
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Speaker 1: All that.
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Speaker 2: Suddenly suddenly the conversation happens and the senior year of
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Speaker 2: high school where the kid says, I want to go
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Speaker 2: to art school and the parents say, what are you
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Speaker 2: talking about? That's that's we're not paying for that. That's
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Speaker 2: absolutely not okay. So this shift happens right around the
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Speaker 2: junior and senior year of high school. It's very demoralizing
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Speaker 2: and very disrupt and then when you have to pick
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Speaker 2: your major in college. That's why that first year of
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Speaker 2: college we use the cliche of adjustment disorder or so
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Speaker 2: many kids have an adjustment to in that year, but
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Speaker 2: they're really struggling to make sense of this conflict that
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Speaker 2: you just described. Some go for the art direction and
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Speaker 2: have fights with their family and all of that. Others
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Speaker 2: please their parents and take up accounting, or maybe take
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Speaker 2: up graphic art rather than fine art, to make this
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Speaker 2: sort of compromise somewhere somewhere forty six percent in the
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Speaker 2: middle of it all, somehow, this is what goes on.
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Speaker 2: And that's why college is so hard. It may be
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Speaker 2: easy and easier at MIT for math student, but they
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Speaker 2: know they're doing math. But for a humanity student, for
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Speaker 2: an art student, I think college is really very hard
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Speaker 2: because they're struggling with this precise conflict of do I
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Speaker 2: get to manifest my creativity or should I do something sensible?
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Speaker 1: And it truly is and can be calm for a
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Speaker 1: lot of us from an existential crisis because you feel
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Speaker 1: like you're not being who you are? Right, I mean,
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Speaker 1: do you feel like you're not valuing who you are?
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Speaker 1: There's a constant questioning about your worth and the insidiousness
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Speaker 1: can be so subconscious and demoralizing. Right, how did you
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Speaker 1: get to a point where you felt you could address
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Speaker 1: this and work with people in this context?
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Speaker 2: Well, of course I had the lived experience of many,
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Speaker 2: many years of living a creative life. I also loved
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Speaker 2: reading interview books with artists. Well, there are all kinds
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Speaker 2: of interesting interview books out there. I found them, found
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Speaker 2: them better than sort of theoretical books about creativity. I
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Speaker 2: don't find theoretical books about creativity that rich, but interviews
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Speaker 2: with actual working artists about what they've There's an interesting
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Speaker 2: book called Musings from Chaos and Ash first strange title,
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Speaker 2: but it's about it's interviews with visual artists who recently
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Speaker 2: have received an HIV positive docsis and how that changes,
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Speaker 2: how that changes their lives, how that changes the subject
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Speaker 2: matter of their paintings, even etc. So this is what
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Speaker 2: informed me is really being interested in the real lives
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Speaker 2: of artists and so doing it now for thirty or
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Speaker 2: forty years, kind of seen everything in that world.
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Speaker 1: What do you say to people who just are struggling
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Speaker 1: with not feeling as though their creativity matters. I mean,
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Speaker 1: it feels like such an exidential question to me. And
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Speaker 1: then let's segue to get into your course.
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Speaker 2: Sure, I have lots of different sorts of things to say.
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Speaker 2: One is I invite them to remember what it felt
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Speaker 2: like at the age of five or six or seven
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Speaker 2: sit in the corner of a room reading a book,
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Speaker 2: and just that the way they were in love with
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Speaker 2: that experience. Nobody had to tell them to love that book,
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Speaker 2: or love that song, or love that move. So I'm
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Speaker 2: trying to reconnect them to love and all the synonyms
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Speaker 2: of love, curiosity, enthusiasm, passion, all of those words, trying
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Speaker 2: to reconnect them to that. Then I share with them
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Speaker 2: the idea of what the avant garde artists of the
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Speaker 2: turn of the twentieth century would say, namely that they
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Speaker 2: were looking for an audience of one that if they
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Speaker 2: could move one other person, that that was valuable to them. Now,
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Speaker 2: of course they really wanted an audience of billions. They
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Speaker 2: were narcissists, like we know they were, but still they
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Speaker 2: used that phrase to communicate to themselves, to keep themselves,
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Speaker 2: to keep their own passion afloat for their work while
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Speaker 2: they were doing Cubism and what have you. So that
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Speaker 2: resonates for my clients the idea that they don't have
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Speaker 2: to worry about doing this thing which feels so hard,
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Speaker 2: getting a huge audience. Maybe if they just move one
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Speaker 2: other person, that would be sufficient. There are so many
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Speaker 2: different kinds of talking points, but they swirl around existential
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Speaker 2: support them reminding themselves or maybe saying for the first
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Speaker 2: time that they and their efforts really matter. They have
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Speaker 2: to decide to don that mantle of feeling like their
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Speaker 2: efforts matter and finding that place of love again. And
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Speaker 2: then tactics, the main tactic being to be with the
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Speaker 2: work every single day. What I say to them, and
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Speaker 2: they realize this is true. They know that if they
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Speaker 2: miss three or four days of practicing or writing or painting,
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Speaker 2: months go by, they just vanish. Because as soon as
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Speaker 2: we're out of touch with that work, the rest of
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Speaker 2: life just infiltrates that time. And so that's not a
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Speaker 2: good thing to lose months and years. So on the
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Speaker 2: tactical level, we talk about daily practice. I talk about
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Speaker 2: the idea of morning practice so that you can receive
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Speaker 2: the benefits of sleep thinking, which is a particular idea
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Speaker 2: the way we think while we sleep, and how that
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Speaker 2: can increase our creativity by making use of that. So
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Speaker 2: there's the existential stuff, but then there's just a tactical
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Speaker 2: stuff of when to create, how often to create, what
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Speaker 2: kind of commitment you want to make with me the coach.
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Speaker 2: Do you want to check in with me every day?
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Speaker 2: I'm happy to do that. I don't mind check ins.
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Speaker 2: What's the amount of time you want to try for
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Speaker 2: Most new clients will say, I want to spend twenty
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Speaker 2: minutes on X on my novel. So they don't want
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Speaker 2: to disappoint themselves again by making too big a promise,
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Speaker 2: so the promise has to be calibrated. So these are
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Speaker 2: all the sort of the tactics and techniques one learns
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Speaker 2: over time in working with great and performing artists.
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Speaker 1: So let's talk about your your course, your workshop laid
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Speaker 1: out for us. What's it called?
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Speaker 2: First off, Yeah, there's a big new thing coming that
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Speaker 2: I'm running called an Existential Wellness Coach Certificate program, which
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Speaker 2: is a mouthful. Happens in the spring of this year,
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Speaker 2: and it's a program that I'm running in conjunction with
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Speaker 2: an organization called Noble Manhattan Coaching out of the UK,
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Speaker 2: and it trains you to become an existential wellness coach,
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Speaker 2: which is a new creature under the sun. They are
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Speaker 2: existential coaches already, and there are wellness coaches already. I'm
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Speaker 2: trying to marry those two ideas. It's not. An existential
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Speaker 2: coach typically talks about certain kinds of ideas, like we've
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Speaker 2: been talking about life, purpose and meaning and those sorts
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Speaker 2: of things, and a wellness coach typically talks about what
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Speaker 2: wellness looks like to that coach, whether it's focusing on
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Speaker 2: health or some other aspect of wellness, emotional wellness. I'm
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Speaker 2: trying to combine those two ideas and use a new
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Speaker 2: helper who can who can find the different pillars of
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Speaker 2: wellness in a person's life, the existential pillars, the psychological pillners,
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Speaker 2: the physical pillers, all of that and support a person
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Speaker 2: in every aspect of their life. So I think it's
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Speaker 2: an interesting program. I'm running a dozen free Existential Wellness
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Speaker 2: Coach webinars during the during the spring, so folks are
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Speaker 2: interested in that, they can just visit my website, Ericmasell
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Speaker 2: dot com and learn about that. There are a lot
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Speaker 2: of free offerings, So that's that's a good way to
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Speaker 2: be introduced to this idea.
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Speaker 1: Okay, And who is this workshop worse for?
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Speaker 2: It's for general coaches who have a general practice, general
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Speaker 2: life coaches who want this niche or this extra understanding.
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Speaker 2: And it's also for folks and be for therapists, existential therapists,
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Speaker 2: or just any any therapist who's interested in either adding
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Speaker 2: coaching to their life or move from the medical model
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Speaker 2: of therapy to the helping model of coaching or someone
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Speaker 2: who's in the arts or some place where they need
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Speaker 2: an extra revenue stream. You know, the great informed artists
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Speaker 2: have to cobble an income together from various sources. Typically
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Speaker 2: their art is not making them enough money. So this
21:22
Speaker 2: can be the sort of thing that an artist might
21:26
Speaker 2: do as an addition to their artwork, is to become
21:29
Speaker 2: this kind of coach and help people with their existential issues.
21:34
Speaker 1: The topic of social media, I think, is a big one.
21:41
Speaker 1: I think it can obviously be beneficial and help to
21:46
Speaker 1: highlight people's art people's art, but I feel it also
21:50
Speaker 1: can be hindrance for a lot of us. What are
21:53
Speaker 1: your thoughts on this?
21:55
Speaker 2: Exactly what you just said that both are true. The
21:59
Speaker 2: way I frame it to creative and performing artists clients
22:02
Speaker 2: is the following way. The rule is that artists won't
22:06
Speaker 2: make it. That's the rule. That's just the fact of
22:09
Speaker 2: the matter. That's the fact of the matter. So that
22:12
Speaker 2: means you, my client, you're going to have to prove
22:14
Speaker 2: the exception. This is my language. You're going to have
22:16
Speaker 2: to prove the exception. You don't want to be the
22:18
Speaker 2: rule here, someone who doesn't make it. You're going to
22:20
Speaker 2: have to prove the exception if you intend to make it,
22:23
Speaker 2: and that means you have to do some exceptional things.
22:26
Speaker 2: And what does that mean to you? For one person,
22:28
Speaker 2: that might mean I'm just I'm really going to pour
22:30
Speaker 2: myself into Instagram more than the next person and get
22:34
Speaker 2: three million followers on what have you? For another person
22:36
Speaker 2: who may be completely staying away from social media and
22:39
Speaker 2: doing something else. So I invite clients to think for
22:42
Speaker 2: themselves what this phrase proving the exception is going to
22:45
Speaker 2: mean to them. And I keep subtly hammering this idea
22:50
Speaker 2: across that they can't just do what other artists are doing,
22:52
Speaker 2: because other artists are not making it. They have to
22:55
Speaker 2: do something a little different, a little savvier, a little
22:58
Speaker 2: more strategic, maybe a little more exhausting. Maybe they want
23:02
Speaker 2: to exhaust themselves in the surface of their art rather
23:05
Speaker 2: than standing behind this word balance, which is an interesting word,
23:10
Speaker 2: which can mean I don't I'm not going to do
23:11
Speaker 2: too much, et cetera. So I don't have a short
23:15
Speaker 2: answer about social media. It has to be you know,
23:18
Speaker 2: the client's direction as to what they think about it.
23:21
Speaker 2: But what I do want to strongly suggest to them
23:25
Speaker 2: is they have to figure some of these things out
23:27
Speaker 2: for themselves and then throw themselves into it.
23:32
Speaker 1: You know, as you speak, Eric, a part of me
23:35
Speaker 1: is thinking. At some point you you one has to
23:42
Speaker 1: just shut up and get to work, right. You've got
23:44
Speaker 1: to if you feel you're an artist, if you feel
23:49
Speaker 1: you're creative, you've gotta You've got to do the work
23:52
Speaker 1: you've got to. You can't just too much thinking oftentimes
23:55
Speaker 1: goes into this process.
23:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where book that you mentioned, with the outset
24:01
Speaker 2: that's come out recently redesigned your mind. They need to
24:06
Speaker 2: be thinking thoughts that serve them in order to do
24:09
Speaker 2: the thing you just said. To show up. They need
24:11
Speaker 2: some anxiety management techniques in order to do the things
24:13
Speaker 2: they just said. They need often a better understanding of
24:17
Speaker 2: how addiction works in the creative personality, and why they
24:20
Speaker 2: have to be watchful for their risk factors and their
24:23
Speaker 2: triggers and what have you. There are many things to
24:25
Speaker 2: think about, but what you said is the truth. The
24:27
Speaker 2: bottom line is that all of that notwithstanding, they have
24:31
Speaker 2: to show up in a daily way. And I really
24:33
Speaker 2: mean a daily way, because as I said to you
24:34
Speaker 2: a moment ago, it can't be every fourth day or
24:37
Speaker 2: every seventh day. It doesn't work. Tchaikowsky has a quote
24:41
Speaker 2: I like, which is I'm inspired every fifth day, but
24:43
Speaker 2: I only get that fifth day if I show up
24:45
Speaker 2: the other four. And so I believe in inspiration, but
24:49
Speaker 2: I don't believe you can wait on it. We do
24:51
Speaker 2: have to show up to the work, and then we
24:54
Speaker 2: get the fruits of that showing up in the form
24:56
Speaker 2: of inspiration.
24:58
Speaker 1: Well, you seem to be someone who's really garnered and
25:05
Speaker 1: taken from a lot of what you've teached. I mean,
25:08
Speaker 1: you're creative, You've written crazy amount of books, and you're
25:12
Speaker 1: also out there helping other people. Was this a challenge
25:16
Speaker 1: for you to create a business around this? How did
25:20
Speaker 1: you come about it?
25:21
Speaker 2: The first the first challenge, this will sound funny, perhaps
25:24
Speaker 2: the first challenge was to care about other people at all.
25:29
Speaker 2: I think in my twenties, I was that typical cafe
25:32
Speaker 2: going late night, arrogant, narcissistic, grandiose guy. I was that guy.
25:41
Speaker 2: The first sort of introductory course therapy course, the course
25:46
Speaker 2: you took before you actually started the program, was a
25:49
Speaker 2: simple listening course. Listening skills like how to listen to
25:53
Speaker 2: another person or how to find the willingness to listen
25:56
Speaker 2: to another person. That was life changing for me because
25:59
Speaker 2: I'm not try ever listen to anybody else except to
26:02
Speaker 2: fight about some opinion or something or to argue, but
26:05
Speaker 2: to listen in the sense of which a therapist listens.
26:08
Speaker 2: That was new to me, and that was life changing.
26:10
Speaker 2: So that was a big deal transformation. But I'd always
26:15
Speaker 2: wanted to help. I'd never thought that creativity for its
26:19
Speaker 2: own sake was what matters. I was born right after
26:23
Speaker 2: World War Two nineteen forty seven. The idea of being
26:27
Speaker 2: a resistance fighter was in the air still, and something
26:30
Speaker 2: about that infiltrated my being that I was going to
26:33
Speaker 2: resist and that I was going to be helpful in
26:36
Speaker 2: the same way that a resistance fighter is helpful to
26:40
Speaker 2: his society or his culture. And so I've had that
26:46
Speaker 2: thing going all of this time, this helping part along
26:50
Speaker 2: with the creativity part. So that wasn't new to me.
26:53
Speaker 2: The new part was caring about other people. That was
26:56
Speaker 2: new to me. I probably having children had something to
26:58
Speaker 2: do with that too, where you have objects of affection,
27:03
Speaker 2: kids to love. Those were transformative things. Kids and that
27:08
Speaker 2: listening course, those two things together awesome.
27:11
Speaker 1: All right, Eric, what's the best way for people to
27:14
Speaker 1: get in contact with you.
27:17
Speaker 2: They can drop me an email to Ericmazel at hotmail
27:20
Speaker 2: dot com and that's the R I C and A
27:22
Speaker 2: I S E L at hotmail or my site, Ericmayzel
27:26
Speaker 2: dot com. Love to have people visit.
27:29
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll have those linked up. Also have the link
27:31
Speaker 1: for your new course coming up to Eric. Awesome talking
27:36
Speaker 1: to you man, really inspiring. Appreciate you taking the time.
27:39
Speaker 2: Great, thanks so much for having me all right, thank you,
28:04
Speaker 2: Doc