And so I was curious, like, are there other things people can do to access this more authentic, creative part of themselves?

Yeah.

I feel like it's interesting you brought up Martha Beck's work and that, the sense of anxiety, and I feel like sometimes people need a big enough reason why to actually do it.

And I feel like that, it can become one of the most powerful reasons, Kristin, is to say, "I feel a lot of anxiety." If we can unhitch our creative work and expression from money and fame, that's not to say this can't all happen, but let's just unhook it from that at first because a lot of people feel so blocked by that.

It's like, "Well, this will never be good enough to sell." Unhook it from that and hook it up to, "This will bring me greater peace of mind.

This will help me ground.

This will bring me into my center." What we discover, and I, [laughs] I know you know these things, I love the polyvagal chart, fight or flight, freeze, and that green zone at the bottom, I've had that virtually tattooed inside my skull because whether I'm driving around or sitting in a meeting or whatever, I can kind of watch, "Oh, I'm up in fight or flight right now." So the more that we can bring ourselves down into that ventral vagal zone, where our bodies are releasing serotonin and oxytocin, and we're feeling safe, and we're opening ourselves up to- The resources and ideas that are around us, we're feeling connected to ourselves and to other people.

If people are like, I love talking about the ego, and are we in spirit self? Are we in ego self? Like, talk more about how ego plays a role in creativity.

"... become the hunter-gatherer tribes." Um, what are your thoughts on this?

[laughs] Well, I, I intentionally framed it with two pretty fa- pretty far apart extremes, um, because I think that that's alive in our zeitgeist at the moment.

I think people are, are either like, "Hey, we have to just go all in on this," and as you said earlier, kind of cede a lot of, a lot of our personal involvement with the work, or, or we're gonna be, you know, dealing with some sort of Mad Max, uh, hunter-gatherer situation.

Um, I don't like, I don't like to cede the ground to either extreme on that.

I feel like there is a middle path.

And one thing that's really important to me though, Jim, as I've used, uh, our, you know, the AI tools out there, and I do sometimes, um, I won't use them to write.

Uh, I won't use them to create the thing that's coming out of my heart, and there's a reason for that.

Is there a way that we can use creativity to take a step forward instead of just, just the coping side of things?

Hmm

...

some behaviors, you know, over time.

But, uh, yeah, you asked the question, and honestly, uh, Dave, that's why the publisher asked me to write The Creative Cure eventually.

Um, he said, "Look, there are...

People respond to this," but he said, "A lot of people are also..." I was working for that publisher at the time when I published Blessed Are the Weird my, on my own, and he said, "The problem is a lot of people don't really view themselves as, you know, the punk or the artist or the rebel or whatever," but he's like, "They, they have a longing to do that." And he, and he said, "I would love for you to write a book that was more, um, directed to people who wouldn't self-identify as creative." And that was one of the core things that we n- began with, which is so many people say, "I'm just not creative," or, "I don't have a creative bone in my body." Uh, my brother Nate is a great example of that.

When I was writing that book, we were walking through the office of this, um, tech business we had started, and he was managing at that point.

Mm.