Hmm.

I think the very act of having someone sit still to engage with creative practice for a few minutes forces them to pay attention to something.

And my job as a facilitator, whether it's in a workshop or teaching or even in my own work, is to swing the spotlight onto something that we might otherwise not pay attention to.

And that's r- really done by, I think, by asking someone a thoughtful question and then giving them some protected time to either write their answer or speak their answer or draw their answer.

And so to me, it's really about finding a kind of question that unlocks what someone is ready to ponder, whether that's, you know, a boring chair in a conference room that reminds them of a chair they sat in as a child and whatever, or a shoelace.

Or we used a bunch of different examples in Attention Club to show people that there's really complicated, interesting stories behind stuff that they normally would just rush past.

But to me, it's the question that you ask somebody, um, that kind of forces them to pause and be like, "Oh, yeah," because so rarely do we have time to, to pay attention to a tiny detail.

So how do you get people to believe that? 'Cause you, you both do a lot of work with people who t- probably don't initially believe that.

Laurel Braitman continues from the TED stage.

I had been living my entire adult life in a way to prove to myself that I was good.

I was using achievement and all of the shiny things that come along with it as a way of anesthetizing my own bad feelings of shame, regret, and fear.

Those feelings were so big, I worried that if I let myself feel them for even a minute, I would never, ever feel anything else again.

But you cannot kill negative feelings, sadly, with work and avoidance.

[laughs] And mine came back with a jolt.

On the outside, I was successful and thriving, and on the inside, I was anxious, terrified, and questioning my worth.

Mm

Hmm.

Even though this looks nothing like the person, and I think that from the, from that place then you're like, "Oh, okay, we've reframed, like, who is bad and good at this." And the point isn't to make it look like the actual thing or the person, and I think that's huge.

Goes back to, you know, what we were saying around how to help people, you know, feel more creative, I think, and how they lose it.

I think part of it is not just being shamed perhaps by someone in your life saying like, "Oh, well, that doesn't look like our house," but it's also because you start to have tastes that you can't possibly meet.

Hmm.

And so instead of pushing through to get to the place where you find your own unique way of doing it, you're so intimidated because it doesn't look like your heroes that you also shut down.

And so I think all of this work is really about showing people, like, you know, we're bad forever, all the time.

You know, even though those of us who do it as a job.

Laurel Braitman continues from the TED stage.

I had been living my entire adult life in a way to prove to myself that I was good.

I was using achievement and all of the shiny things that come along with it as a way of anesthetizing my own bad feelings of shame, regret, and fear.

Those feelings were so big, I worried that if I let myself feel them for even a minute, I would never, ever feel anything else again.

But you cannot kill negative feelings, sadly, with work and avoidance.

[laughs] And mine came back with a jolt.

On the outside, I was successful and thriving, and on the inside, I was anxious, terrified, and questioning my worth.

Mm