ART WORKS FOR TEACHERS PODCAST | EPISODE 032 | 45:29 MIN
The Creative Cure
Susan
Well, hello, Jacob. I’m so glad that you’re joining us today. Can you introduce yourself to our audience just in case they may not know who you are? Don’t tell us a little bit about you and your background, please.
Jacob
Everyone’s favorite thing, come up with their own introduction, right? Well, let’s see. I am an astronaut. No, I, first of all, I’m just happy to be here. I’ve spent time with your materials and your site. I just love what you all are up to. So thank you for the invitation.
Susan
Thank you, that’s kind.
Jacob
Yeah. I’m a writer. I’m the founder of the Heal + Create Community Platform and the Institute for Creative Living. Those are kind of the headline things. I came to this a long sort of crooked way. And unlike a lot of your guests, I don’t have the academic background in this. What it came from was really a deep exploration for me to find my life again. I woke up at age 34 and realized that I had created a life that I didn’t know what to do with. I didn’t love. And I found myself stuck. And I’m like, I need to reset. And I really had no idea how to do that. And so, that began this process
15 or so years ago of really diving deeply into self discovery and then realizing how much I wanted to share that with other people.
Susan
That’s so powerful and I specifically because I think many of us have been to that point of I’m stuck or this isn’t what I imagined it was going to be. What was that moment for you? What was that impetus for you that you just realized this is not what I want and that you want something different?
Jacob
Yeah, wow. I was 34 and I woke up in the middle of this life, several companies I had founded and was working in and was completely overwhelmed. All the external markers of success though, this big house and I just built this beautiful new office and so much to be proud of, which is why it was especially terrifying to keep waking up at 3 a.m. in a cold sweat and wondering is this all there is and oh no, this road I’ve been on is, it’s not taking me where I want to go. And honestly, that was, it didn’t happen all at once, but it began to be this preponderance of experiences like that, that let me know something has to change.
Susan
Mhm, mhm. And honestly, I’ve been there myself. I can pinpoint the day that I, I mean, I remember the moment it was for me, I was in central office working in a job that was supposed to be my dream job as an arts integration specialist for a county system. And I remember pulling onto the beltway, having no idea how I got there. Like, you know those moments when you’re driving and you suddenly look around and you’re like, how did I get here? That was just scary. It was in the middle of the pouring rain and I had to merge over four lanes of traffic to get where I needed to be. And I just remembered like a thunderbolt of lightning just hit me and was like, this is not what you are supposed to be doing right now.
Jacob
Wow.
Susan
And yeah, but that’s, while that’s kind of like, wow, that was great, like it was a big moment. I remember going, okay, you got my attention now. Like, but then the next step, the very next step for me, I’m sure for you is well shoot. If it’s not this, what the heck is it? Because I’ve spent so much time cultivating this dream, right? And so to give it up for what? What? That’s a scary next step.
Jacob
So I’m hooked. What happened next? Ha ha ha.
Susan
So, so, so for me, I mean I ended up driving that day down to central office, but at the time, you know, our site was a blog. It was under a totally different name, under Education Closet. It was me blogging on the side. In the evenings, I couldn’t get enough of being able to share with teachers and I kept hearing things from teachers like this is great, this is so helpful and so for me it was I’m gonna this is the passion point so I’m gonna pour into this and see if I can make this grow and and cultivate that more and it’s you know because of that then I shifted that focus and of course where you put your your attention is where things end up happening, so within a year I had left that job and I was full time in our site and hiring people and from there we just kind of blossomed. But at the moment I didn’t know what I was going to do and I know for many of our audience, particularly for teachers right now, right? We’re in a state of just shock, I think. So many people are like, this is, I dreamt of this since I was a little kid that I wanted to be a teacher. And I got here and now it’s nothing like what I thought it was going to be.
I’m burned out, I wake up in a cold sweat because I’m thinking about what did I not turn in? This is not it, but I don’t know what the next thing is. So how did you take the courage to take the next step to figure that out? Because I’m sure you’ve got the trappings of success, right? You’ve got the big house and you’ve got the office and you couldn’t just walk away from all of the responsibilities of that, right? So what did you do next?
Jacob
No, I couldn’t walk away from the responsibilities and I wouldn’t have wanted to. And every once in a while, fate or life or whatever we call it intervenes and the financial meltdown of 2008, 2009 came along. Most of my investment was in the financial world and I got wiped out. And it was this I say that glibly like now like, oh yeah, it was just this thing. No, it was terrifying. It turned me upside down.
It was such an interesting thing, Susan, because I remember sitting on the sidewalk out in front of my house as I was getting ready to move my then wife and three little kids to Austin, Texas, where we didn’t know anybody and didn’t have jobs. We just felt like we need to have a chance to start over where not hundreds of people don’t know me by this certain story. And I remember sitting there and just realizing, and I didn’t say it out loud because it’s something that feels almost but I’m like I’m the free for the first time in my life.
Susan
Yes, yes, that idea of freedom. This is totally off, by the way, we have a structure for today, everybody, and we’re totally off base, but that’s okay, because I’m loving where this conversation is going. And I wanna ping on this idea of freedom because I was having this interesting conversation not too long ago, and with a peer of mine, and she looked at me and she’s like, the American dream when I was growing up was, you know, a house, a car, maybe two cars, two kids, a dog, a picket fence, you know, that being able to have a stability in your job, that was, that was the American dream.
But it’s not the American dream anymore, which we could agree on. And she was like, but what is the American dream? It took me a really long time to really ponder through, but honestly, I think it’s freedom. I think it’s lifestyle freedom. I think it’s financial freedom. I think it’s the freedom to do and be and, you know, pursue whatever it is that is lighting you up. I think that idea of freedom is so powerful and when you have that moment of, my gosh, I’m free finally, it opens up possibilities, right?
Jacob
It does, and I think one of the most difficult things about freedom, Susan, is that it comes with so much responsibility, right? And so when we’ve been living in the template that says, you know, I’m of Generation X, and we were probably the last generation that totally bought the idea that if you get on this conveyor belt, that on the other end of that is the dream, and all you have to do is stay on the belt, right?
Susan
Yes. Yes. Yes. Right there with you. I mean, that’s what we watched, though. That’s what we watched happen. And so the alternative to that seems a little scary, but I think so worth it.
Jacob
Yeah. It’s so scary. Yeah, and I mean, I think that brings us to, I don’t wanna jump ahead at all, but one thing I’d love to stir in here is the transformational experience of self-discovery. And for me, Susan, this is one of the, probably the key and most primary point is, I can’t, so many people would ask me during that time, what do you really want? And I could not answer it. And that felt somewhat shameful also, because we’re trained in school to have the answer, to come up with the answer. And so I felt afraid saying, I don’t know what I want. And in my quieter moments, I had to admit, I don’t really know who I am even, you know?
Susan
Yes. Yes. So talk to me through the process then of this transformation.
Jacob
Well, it included starting from scratch, you know, I moved to Austin and I tried to put together a resume and I realized very quickly that I hadn’t had a resume for many years because I had been an entrepreneur. And so when I put down, I was trying to get a job mowing lawns back then because I did that as a child or a young person. And when I submitted my resume, they would call me back and they’d say, are we mistaken because your resume has CEO of this and inventor of that? And why do you want to push lawnmowers?
I said, I just want a job, really. And they said, no, we’re not going to hire you because you’ll clearly just start a company and go do something else. And I said, you don’t understand. And that helped me realize that I was very much defined by a story that was no longer true for me. And so I really had to start into the process of saying, oh, okay, how can I rewrite my own story and not falsify a resume, but how can I get myself free even of the definition I’ve had of myself. And so the next several years were such a deep process of that, Susan, and working three part time jobs, I worked in a little cigar lounge in Austin and also for a government office part time and I did website work on the side. And it was just enough to keep it together and feed my kids and all that while I was going through this process. I remember one time my oldest son who was then 13. And he had just had his spectrum diagnosis. And he’s such an intelligent… and also willing to ask really hard questions. And we were driving somewhere and he said, “Dad, didn’t you used to like own your own company and you’re the boss?” And I said, yeah. And he said, “What are you doing now?” And I said, “Well, one of the things I do is carry boxes from this warehouse to this government office in the back of the car.” And he sat there quietly for a while and he said, “it’s kind of a come down, isn’t it?” And Susan, I pulled over because I had tears in my eyes. And I said, “Nathan, yes and… this is the first time in my life that I’ve stopped long enough to even ask what I want to do, what I would love to create.” And I said, “it’s an opportunity I didn’t even know I’d ever have again.” And so we, we had this amazing conversation. And that I think is probably a good way to define that period of time for me. It was this sense of, no, I don’t know what’s next. And that’s where I began writing, Susan, and I had had had that dream since I was 10 years old.
And like many of us, I immediately dove into life and said, okay, someday I’ll write, but first I need to make the money. First, I need to establish security and all of that, because I came from a lot of very low economic status. And so for me, that became this huge priority. I need to make the money. Then I can buy my freedom to write and create. And I was grateful that I was given that opportunity. And I was grateful also that it wasn’t one of those stories of, oh, you made the millions of dollars. And because we have so many stories like that, you know, the dot com millionaires and the tech millionaires who, you know, they’re living these dreamy lives and creating and doing all these awesome things, but a lot of people who are more middle-class just feel completely stuck and they said that’s nice for you, but I have all of these bills, all these obligations, where could I even start, you know?
Susan
Right. Right, right. And I feel like that makes you, there’s a humbling process there, and it also allows you to understand that other perspective because you’ve lived it, right? So when you went through this process, were you following any kind of a system, or did you kind of create this as you went along in terms of how to be introspective and really think about what you wanted and who you wanted to be. And because those questions that you’re asking or that you were asking yourself at that time, I mean, we all ask those, but I don’t think any of us sit with them very long or very well, because like you said, it’s somewhat shameful. So how did you find, like what process did you use or did you kind of invent as you were going along that allowed you to sit with those important questions until you discovered what it was, and then that next step forward.
Jacob
Wow, I love that question. It kind of a combination, you’re probably not surprised to hear kind of a combination of all of those approaches. My father, who had been a stuck creative, he would have self described himself that way. He had handed me a copy of Julia Cameron’s, The Artist’s Way, just before I left town. And he said, I’m gonna want this book back someday, but I feel like it’ll help you right now. Well, I packed it in a box, Susan, it ended up in the attic or something. One day I was digging around, I found it and I took it back to my warehouse job and I sat there and started reading it in between box orders and I started, you know, I started crying. I just, I was, felt so much emotion because it felt like I was being invited to come home. And so as I began using the morning pages process and then the artist dates and the things that Julia talks about in there, little did I know that we’d eventually become actual friends and, and that, I mean, again, it’s just hard to even imagine that was possible sitting in that dusty warehouse with that book.
But that became, the morning pages practice became my lifeline to sanity. It also became my lifeline to being able to ask the questions and be so honest about everything, Susan, for the first time in my life. I’d always been very careful about here’s my image, here’s how everything fits together and inside of those pages I got to be a total mess you know and an honest mess.
Susan
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the messy middle is where it really starts to come together, right?
Jacob
That’s one of her phrases.
Susan
The messy middle. Well, I’m a big Julia Cameron fan. I got The Artist Way, way back when I was in college, it was required reading for us; I went to a music conservatory. So for us, that’s like living in that. And I remember at the time, not fully appreciating it until I got out and I was actually working on things that were creative for me that were outside of my natural creative realm, if that makes sense. And the artist way is a huge part of that. So I think, you know, she’s had such an impact on so many of us who have gone through that journey, which is incredible. Yeah. Yeah.
Jacob
Truly remarkable. Yeah. Well, and I found that by asking the questions, I eventually developed a process using four morning pages that really matched me, and it’s three simple questions. In fact, I’m delighted to give it to anybody who wants to on here. It’s creativeselfjournal.com is where you can find it, and it’s totally free. And I’ve talked with Julia about that. And I said, listen, this is a little bit different from morning pages. And she looked at it, she said, please tell everyone they could just do their morning pages using these three questions. Okay. Wonderful. Um, so it’s Julie Cameron approved, but the three questions, Susan, uh, how do I feel right now, which when we look at it from a very kind of surface level, it’s just a wonderful grounding thing. And when we look at it from more psychological and emotional intelligence standpoints, it really has the ability to bring us out of being disassociated out of being an autopilot and say, how am I feeling right now? Not how should I be feeling, how do I want to be feeling, how do I feel? So many of us are cut off, and I know you know this because you work in education, you work in all these areas and developmentally so many of us are cut off starting about age one or two and then progressively more so from how we feel and actually many of us internalize the message whether it’s explicit or not that our feelings don’t matter and so using a very simple process like that is to me one step towards self-discovery that can feel like this great relief admitting this is how I feel right now, you know?
Susan
For sure. So that’s the first question. How do I feel right now? What are the other two?
Jacob
Second question is, what do I need right now? And I’m always interested to see the sort of mundane, quotidian things that come through, like I need to pee right now. You know what, I’m tired and I need a nap. And then often larger things, more existential things might come in. But a lot of times, the signals that are coming from my inner self are often very simple. And what I’ve discovered, Susan, is that beginning to communicate with our inner selves as if it’s a toddler we love very much, that’s about the right tone and about the right experience I think because when we begin to be so simple, no longer in concept, we’re in our bodies, we’re in our experience, what do I need right now?
And the third question, is what would I love right now? And whenever I’m going through a really challenging time, it might not be this great, you know, thing out in the future. It might be how would I love to feel right now. I’ve used that so many times ahead of a meeting that I didn’t feel qualified to handle or so many things and asking that question How would I love to oh, we know what I’d love to feel more confident right now. I’d love to feel more peace and there’s something and then to be to use it as a Creative, the expansion of that is becomes this creative visioning tool of what would I love to create? But usually when we’re going through times of turmoil or anxiety, we have to keep it really close to home: Well, how would I love to feel right now?
Susan
The powerful questions, but again, so simple, which is oftentimes what I find. The simplicity is some of the most powerful work that we can do. So fast forward, let’s fast forward because you’re not still in the warehouse. So how did that journey end up for you? Where did it take you?
Jacob
Well, I wrote my first book, which was a creative nonfiction and self published. I entered this, It was called the Next Top Spiritual Author Contest, which sounded like a funny thing to me, but then I entered it and didn’t win the contest, thankfully. But I did meet a guy who was one of the publishers who was putting it on. And after I moved back to Boise in 2013, 2012, he hired me from a distance and I became his marketing director to help him publish books and produce events, so I got to work with amazing people like Byron Katie and Dr. Joe Dispenza and the Ruiz family who wrote the Four Agreements. I mean, just some truly remarkable humans and got to attend those events. And little by little, he began inviting me to teach at those events as well. And over time, that developed this sense that I wanted to dive a lot deeper into the question of what is creativity, what is it even? And it didn’t start as an academic thing for me but I began to realize when I would hear it coming out of the mouths of my friends and my family, Susan, you probably hear this all the time, too. I’m just not that creative. I’m just not that creative.
Susan
Yes. Yeah, and so what is your answer for that?
Jacob
I’ve learned not to contradict that because that’s a tape that’s running, it’s a societal script that’s running. We wouldn’t have heard that in two or 300 years ago, before the Industrial Revolution really took hold and we began to realign ourselves with the needs of a machine world, where everything needs to be conformist and fit in, and also be very specialized. We wouldn’t have heard that because people were much more generalists back then. So you might be able to fix a fence and write a poem and shoe a horse and make a dinner or whatever. Nowadays, we get ourselves so narrowly, you know, focused into the thing that we are doing to make money, that a lot of times we lose the generalist curiosity about life, about ourselves, about the world, and about what we’d love to do right now, you know, what we love to make.
Susan
So now you address this question, I know, in your book, The Creative Cure. So tell me a little bit about the synopsis of that and the thesis that you were working with in that book.
Jacob
You know, it really changed for me. I wrote a book just before that one called Blessed Other Weird, and that was based on this little poetry piece that had gone crazy viral. And so I wrote this book about it. What was interesting though, Susan, is that I was not happy with the sense of exclusivity, as if it’s only for those eccentric types, the artsy types. And the manuscript, the first draft of the creative cure, the first line was, we need to rescue creativity from the arts. And the publisher eliminated that line, which I was okay with, but there’s a reason I said that and that’s because not so artists don’t get to have it anymore. Of course, artists will always have that, but the idea of creativity, when I sit with people and say if we didn’t have a word for creativity, can you describe how it feels in your body? Usually not at first, but as we get into it, I’m gonna say, I say take a breath. Your body is using oxygen and air to create something right now. Breathe out. Can you feel your heartbeat? That energy is part of the creative impulse of the universe. That is the energy that is keeping your eyes lit up. And so when we begin to bring creativity out of being a concept or something that is only the bailiwick of those who make a full-time living in the arts, we begin to realize, oh, creativity is more like the sap in a tree or the blood in our body. It’s meant to flow into every single part, and it’s meant to restore the parts that are not in good health, if that makes sense.
Susan
I love that, that the idea that it is something that is the life blood, that it’s continually flowing. Generally, when people ask me my definition of creativity, it’s always the fingerprint of the human spirit, because I feel like it’s so unique and it’s something that we express and that everyone has one, similar to your point, that everyone has this ability. But I love the imagery of having it be something that flows and that it both washes us clean and it also fills us with the necessities of life. What a beautiful way to think about that.
Jacob
I find, thank you, and I find that people’s eyes light up when they hear that, because what I’ve found, Susan, is often when people come to me for creative guidance sessions, and we’re working together on what they see as their primary block, and I’ll say, rather than try to smash that or push through it, why don’t we walk around it for a while? Why don’t we ask it its name? Why don’t we see what it has to tell us? Because that block, what I’ve discovered, and I’m so really grateful to be working with so many credentialed people and neuroscientists and psychologists and therapists who’ve been able to help me understand all of this better. But what I find is those blocks are almost always related to traumas, unprocessed traumas that generally happen to us between the ages of zero and eight. Almost always, that’s what that block is. Yeah.
Susan
Yeah, yeah, which is, I mean, so incredible to think about that how much, how much occurs to us and through us in our early years. So elementary teachers, if you’re listening, this is, you know, we know that you are rock stars, but this is why some of this is so important. In your book, you talk about the three creative enemies. So I’m curious, can you tell us what they are, and how we can overcome the enemies?
Jacob
Yeah, and I love that you just shouted out to elementary teachers. I grew up, Susan, outside of the usual educational system. So I was raised in a very fundamentalist Christian cult thing. So we were not put in public school at all. And then I raised my children mostly in public school and charter school. And that gave me such a better understanding of what’s happening at school and how much hard work teachers are putting in and how little reward they see for it. So I’m with you in that shout out. Thank you for that.
And I think it leads us right to that, the three enemies. So the three enemies of creativity as I see it are socialization, which is an interesting one because it’s not an enemy that we can get rid of. Like socialization, how we learn how to be humans is mostly through imitation. So we actually are socialized by observing and then by copying. And we eventually then, we learn how to use the toilet, we learn how to eat and read and write and talk and everything, mostly through imitation of others.
But that socialization, depending upon the environments in which we’re raised, that socialization often hands us beliefs and templates for seeing the world that are often extremely limiting. So that’s one of them.
Second one is rejection or the fear of it. And this is such a primal one, as you know, I mean, it goes down deep into our lizard brain. The fear of rejection for our predecessors was something that if we did something, we violated a tribal rule and got kicked out, we likely would physically not survive. So somewhere in our brain, somewhere in our DNA is this message, don’t step out of line or you will die. Even though our rational minds knows it’s not true, still it’s that powerful in us. So rejection, the fear of rejection, the fear of standing out too much, of doing anything differently, of being different. I love watching Gen Z and Alpha kids right now because they, I mean, my children are in their 20s and I love watching them. My partner, her children are younger. I love the fact that they don’t seem to be burdened with our generation’s belief systems. They just show up and they’re like, that’s dumb. My kids would actually say stuff like that. Like, why? Why? Why that? That sounds dumb, dad. And I would stop and go, you know, you’re right. I’d never even thought about it. But you’re right. That is actually dumb.
Susan
Yeah, and they don’t take anything, they don’t take anything at face value, which I kind of enjoy as well. My daughter is very much that way. She’s 13 and it’s like, have you ever stopped to think about what this is? Like really stop and think about that, mom. Oh, you’re right. You’re absolutely right.
Jacob
Isn’t that jarring?
Susan
Yeah, so, so how, how can we maybe not overcome, but if these are the three enemies and some of them we can’t avoid like socialization, or even fear because we’re always going to have that. What are some ways that we can work with or maybe play with these enemies that allow us to kind of move around them or grow through them?
Jacob
Yeah, I love that. I didn’t mention the last one, even though I referred to it earlier, which is trauma or traumatic experiences. And you know, what’s interesting is I find a lot of people have a hard time, especially men, have a hard time with that word trauma, because it sounds like, oh, I’m admitting to being wounded or broken or weak or something. And I love the fact that that’s changing now. I feel like that’s part of the answer to what you just asked. I feel like… I know that teachers are so often tasked with triage in situations and it’s really not part of their job description, but it’s just the reality. They’re having children come in who are tremendously traumatized, either capital T trauma or all the just hundreds of thousands of other ways that we get traumatized in our youth that seem normal, like low key bullying, you know, all of those things, or just even a home where you might not register anything on the ACEs assessment.
Susan
Yeah.
Jacob
So no capital T trauma, but maybe that home is just seriously critical or harsh. Maybe there’s a lot of punishment in that home, but that doesn’t quite rise to the level. So I would say one of the first things to be aware of for most teachers and people who are seeking to like change the story here is understanding that while we can’t change the situation at home, what we can do is create a safe space in these learning environments. We can create safety.
And I think that often requires slowing down. The same with socialization. I feel like creating an environment where we can ask the questions that we didn’t even know we should be asking. I just went to a leadership training that was super intense, Susan, and above the room for the entire training was this question that they didn’t even address. They just left it up there for us to ponder, and it said, what are you pretending not to know?
What are you pretending not to know? I love that. It’s like a Socratic, powerful question. And I think that taking that idea with us into these spaces where we’re seeking to invite people back into their own true genius, into their own expression, and being able to ask them in various ways some form of that question. If you didn’t have to protect anyone, what would you say about this? If you wanted to approach the situation and fix it, what would you say? And I think that that by itself actually is a creative activator because when we ask a question and allow that to happen, allow the answers to come forward, we are truly engaging our creative natures in that on both sides of that question.
Susan
Mm-hmm. I love how you talk about creativity, Jacob, because so many times and you know, I am an artist by trade and and I speak with teaching artists and artists in general. You’re right. It does come from this space of what we can physically do, what we can maybe mentally do and and work with one another. But the way that you talk about creativity is as a healing presence almost.
It is something that we can interweave into so many of the things that we’re facing throughout the day, almost like everyday creativity, which I love. I love this idea. So what are some of the transformative practices or exercises that you use to help you tap into that?
Jacob
Hmm, hmm. God, I love that question. And I, you know, it was interesting when I was pondering this ahead of coming on with you today, I was thinking, wow, you know, I wanted to come up with something really sophisticated. And the truth is, the truth is it’s so simple, Susan, that what I’m finding, what I find is that the inner creative self, and I think that it’s an important distinction to make, the way that our culture commonly talks about creativity is it’s either a gift or trait have more of and some people have less of or maybe none at all. And that, so it almost sounds as if it’s a special inheritance or, or it’s a bolt on. So a lot of the creativity work that’s out there now in the business world tends to be trying to bolt creativity on top of rather than realizing it comes from, it’s intrinsic, it’s essential, it comes from within. So I think one of the most transformative things ever for me is, and I, something I share with everyone and really seek to invite people into is self-discovery, but in a framework like the daily journaling. So I use it about 10 to 15 minutes a day. Sometimes it’ll run longer than that, but for people who are thinking my life is so busy, I wouldn’t have any time, honestly, sitting quietly and writing answers to three questions, to me, what it does, it sends this powerful signal to our psyche, to our subconscious that says,
I matter. My inner self matters, my feelings matter, my dreams and ideas matter. And we receive messages all day long, every day, that we don’t matter. And we sit in a nation that’s so deeply divided and so we get messages constantly that say, the forces that are making this world worse are so powerful, so overwhelming, there’s nothing I can do. So that’s one thing I really seek to change, Susan, to really reintroduce people to themselves.
It’s really not my process that’s going to make the difference. The medicine, the healing, the joy that comes from all of that comes from within. And so a little space around the self every day to answer that question, to answer those questions and then recapture the ability to dream a bit. And I’m not even talking about these grand dreams. If I won the lotto, I’d live on an island. I’m talking about what can I, what would I dream of in my backyard during one of the more depressing, scary times of my life that I didn’t feel like I had any resources. That’s something that happened and that was actually what began to open my eyes to this, Susan. Because I began walking around my house, I have this assessment that I use with clients and teach and workshops where we do a walk around the house of our lives and it’s a very gentle thing it addresses the big areas and I say if you can just pretend like you’re a very curious and also sort of humorous detective, walk around the house of your life including your physical home environment and just look for areas that aren’t feeling very artful, that don’t feel good.
And for me, that was like a convicting thing when I was developing that, because I walked out of my back porch and there were three bikes that my children had no longer wanted to use. They were kind of rusted out. And there was an old chair and there was this pile of dead flowers. And I’m like, I’ve been walking by this for months and months and months. And it’s, it’s something that creates a little bit of one of those like, oh, you know, just one more thing in my life that’s not artful. So I said, okay, I’m going to take Saturday and I’m going to do something about this. And a friend came over in a truck. We dropped the bikes off at a homeless shelter and and by the in an hour I went back and they were gone so made me so happy somebody else was you know gonna repair and use those bikes and got rid of the dead flowers bought some new ones added a little chair and for under $200 I created beauty in my backyard and that created space around me to then go, what else in my life can I restore, can I bring back to artfulness and that’s not just what we paint or write or sing or anything like that. That’s also in relationships and it’s also the work we do for pay. Like how can I become more artful? How can I experience my work in a more artful way? If I were to be willing to change something and have the courage to have that conversation with my boss or my manager, what I’ve discovered is most of the time when people go in with a specific plan or request, often managers and bosses are like, absolutely we’ll do whatever it takes.
Sometimes not, but there is so much surprising willingness to help us create artfulness around ourselves. And when I say artfulness, sometimes that can sound really fluffy and something to a lot of people. I have many people in my sphere who are engineers and, you know, very scientific types. And I remember walking through one of the companies I had started with my younger brother and he was running it then, and it’s this engineering company. It’s software. It’s all this stuff. And he said that to me as we were walking through. He said, I’m just not that creative.
And then we walked into his office, Susan, and he sat down in his chair and there were three screens and it looked like the matrix, there’s all this code. I watched his posture change almost as if he were sitting down at a grand piano and was a pianist. When he sat down in front of those screens, I watched him go into flow state and I put my hand on his shoulder and I said, brother, this is like watching you compose a symphony. This is one part of your art. And his eyes lit up, he said, I’ve never thought of it like that. I said, and that’s really Susan, what began to help me say I need to help change the conversation around creativity because it’s everyone has access to it and it’s meant to be used in every part of our lives.
Susan
Mm, that’s so wonderful. So before we wrap up, I wanna follow up with just one other question, then this is kind of, this is just based on our conversation, Jacob. So when somebody comes to you and they wanna begin this process, what are some questions or guidance that you use to help them start?
Jacob
You know, sometimes I’ll use tools, and I love that question, wow. I never go in with a set list of questions. Often the questions become similar. But a lot of times with people who are starting about our age group, we’ve entrenched ourselves so deeply that sometimes it’s hard to even know what to ask, where to start. A lot of times we’ll start with personality assessment tools such as the Myers-Briggs or StrengthsFinder. I use a number of them, sometimes all of them.
And what I find is that when people begin the process of self-discovery, they begin to realize, oh, this is who I am. Oh, and this is where I’ve distorted myself to fit in or to make a living or to be safe or protect myself from more traumatic experiences. And so what they’ll discover is so much clarity about who I really am inside of all of that. And then also clarity about the ways that we’ve developed into things that really no longer good for us, or are no longer alive or work. And so what I’ll do then is this very gentle and deliberate process of slowing it all down. No sudden moves. We’re not asking you to quit your job or get divorced or anything right now. Let’s just pause here in the reverence of this space and say, with this information in front of me, with this dawning and clarifying picture of who I really am and what I would love, what does that indicate and how can we be gentle with the places that we’ve really spent a whole lifetime developing away from that, because we don’t want to just yank that bent limb you know like the apple tree the limb was pulled back with a rope and it’s now it’s bent it’s grown crooked for 40 years you don’t just make it straight overnight, you’d break it, and so I really try to take that approach with myself and with everyone is how can we gently begin to move in the direction of what feels true and and real for us, you know.
Susan
That’s wonderful. Now, this is the question that I ask every guest so that every guest has an opportunity to kind of put their individual fingerprint on it. If there is one thing about creativity that you would like everyone to know, what would it be?
Jacob
Hmm. I love one of the simple definitions of creativity, which is the process by which something rare, original and valuable is formed. And when I sit with people who are so afraid that they can’t produce something rare, original and valuable, I say, the most creative project you will ever embark upon is becoming yourself. What if you are that rare, original and valuable thing?
And watching that change the conversation, watching them just sit up straighter and say, what if that’s true? And to me, that’s not just a pleasant thing to say, Susan. To me, that is the fundamental truth of this thing. Because the more people who come into the health of their own being, even if they don’t become crusaders or join some great campaign or do anything that we would look at as remarkable, if they take the joy and the health of that out into the world, when we look at physical science, a healthy cell is so many more times more powerful than a diseased cell. So people who live in this world that feels so full of fear and disease and turmoil and all that and feel overwhelmed by it, I want everyone to hear the message as you become truly healthy, as you become aligned with who you really are and begin expressing your life from that position, you are actually becoming the medicine the world needs. Just your presence here.
Susan
Wow, thank you so much for sharing such a powerful message with us today. It has been such a true pleasure. Can you let people know where they can find out more about you, where they can connect with you?
Jacob
Sure, they can go to JacobNordby.com. A lot of people drop that D, so I say it louder. JacobNordby.com, and I do have a message box there so they can send me a note if they’d like. I would love to invite, this is a little easier one to remember, CreativeSelfJournal.com. Go download that program, it’s free.
Susan
Wonderful. And we’ll link to that in our show notes for sure, so that people can go ahead and download that and get started. Thank you so much for being with us today. I really appreciated your message, and I’m so grateful that you’re here in the world helping all of us to become better humans.
Jacob
Susan, I’m so grateful to that you all reached out to me and I spent time in your site. I’m in love with what you’re doing. Thank you for doing. I know that’s really really hard work. Thank you for doing it.
Susan
I appreciate that. Thanks, Jacob.
