Dreams and Steps - a podcast by Jai//Em

from 2020-01-09T18:00

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Quick Notes & Links:

When I sit down with a new dream or idea, I require 3 things. That my creative steps be:

1) DOABLE - A step I can do. Something I can take action on.
2) USEFUL - A step that is necessary for my specific goal.
3) REQUIRE PRIORITY - A step that has a specific place in my list of steps. If this step can happen at any point in my process, it might not be crucial to achieving my dream.

You probably already have a list of steps you are taking as part of your creative process. As long as you make sure your steps are doable and useful and prioritized, you’re putting yourself in a great position to accomplish your dreams.

Links to Ideas/Tips/Advice on how to approach your creative goals:
VIDEO: Tedx Talk How To Achieve Your Most Ambitious Goals
Make Your Dreams Come True in 9 Steps
Creative Dream List
Neuroscience: Write Down Your Goals If You Actually Want to Achieve Them

Start creating this habit for yourself. Dreams. Steps toward those dreams. Evaluate if your steps are doable, useful and prioritized. Rinse and Repeat! It's important to understand the difference between Dreams and Steps. It's important to build the habit of finding time for both dreaming and taking steps. And it's important to make sure your steps are the best steps to take.

You can find us on Twitter and/or Instagram: @Creative4evr.
Don’t forget to be creative this week. Even if you just think about it. Later.

Full Show Notes:

Hey, hi and hello! Welcome to Creative4evr. The podcast dedicated to keeping you forever inspired, forever motivated, forever creative, and forever YOU. I am your host, Janet, a.k.a. Jai//Em, a.k.a. the voice inside your head, a.k.a. your biggest fan, and together we’re going to get some creative shit done.

I’ll start by saying again, happy New Year. Happy 2020! It seems we are gonna be doing that thing where we refer to this decade as “the roaring 20s.” There are already images of flappers popping up online, and there's lots of roaring 20s talk, so we may burnout on that pretty quickly... but right now, I’m embracing it... I can clearly hear my own voice not sounding very excited about this decade being referred to as, “the roaring 20s,” but I assure you I am. It just doesn’t sound like I care. But I do, I care. Frankly, I’m just exhausted. You know how it is, you go to a New Year’s Eve party and stay up ‘til 2 in the morning, then your next day is messed up then, then the next, it snowballs, then you’re back at work— it’s hard. That’s what I’m dealing with right now, but I am, am, am excited about the roaring 20s. “Janet, why do you hate the roaring 20s?” I don’t! I don’t hate the roaring 20s.

Alright so today’s episode, number 2, we’re gonna talk about something that applies to the creation of this podcast. Something that explains why it took me such a long time between starting to record episodes and releasing them, and that is… DREAMS and STEPS.

Okay, I want your dreams to be big! I think creative people should have gigantic dreams. I think they should be big, and messy, and wild, and crazy, and slightly improbable, but also wildly improbable, romantic and sexy! I want your dreams to be important! Important to you, important to other people, I want your dreams to be ambitious, even if they are unpopular. I want them to be difficult, hard to accomplish. I want them to be bold and I certainly want them to be creative. I want them to be OF YOU, I want them to be unique, and very personal, and something that you care deeply about. That’s what I want for your dreams, that’s what I want for my dreams.

But, what I also want for you, what I want for myself, is practical steps toward those big dreams. That’s where I got in trouble starting this podcast. Big dreams, I listed them all out for myself, I recorded my mission statement podcast and listed them out for you, and then sat down with no steps. No practical steps to make those big dreams happen.

I said in the 1st episode of the podcast that we would be hearing stories from other creatives, which meant I would be interviewing other people. I said we were going to strengthen our creative habits, which requires me to do research on the best practices for strengthening creative habits, which requires me to talk to other people about what they do to strengthen their habits, and requires me to think about what I do to strengthen my own creative habits. I said we were gonna stay aware of the world around us, which means, research! I have to be aware of the world around us in order to talk about the world around us. I said we were going to take care of ourselves, which again is research— talking to people, and thinking about how I take care of myself, and sort of understanding that before I convey anything to you. I said we were going to discuss TV, books and movies with a focus on books. Well, MY GOD, that requires that I watch TV and movies. That requires that I read books, that I then do the work of breaking these things down into chunks so that we can talk about them.

WHEN, people of earth? When was I going to do all of this stuff? I didn’t take the time to think about the Steps that I needed to take in order for my dreams to become a reality. This is why we end up abandoning projects. This is why we end up starting so strong and then being disappointed and feeling like we failed.

I have gone to bed countless times thinking about the big ideas, thoughts bouncing happily around in my mind— I am gonna do this and it’s going to be so great, and the next thing you know you I’m answering fake interview questions in your mind because my idea has started winning me awards, even though I haven’t started working on the project! I’m in my head in this fake interview like, My mother has always been an inspiration, and I thought if I could just be as brave as her, that I could create this. But I never dreams…thought it was going to turn out this way. This is a dream… come true. Total BS. Total dreamy, bullshit, BS. How am I being interviewed about something I haven’t even done yet? But it happens! BECAUSE DREAMS ARE SO FUN!

Sometimes we have to take 5 steps, sometimes 35, sometimes 105 and then 10 more after that because it has to be done. Steps are not dreams, steps are not fun. They can be, but usually they are hard, and slow, and inconvenient, and always, always, always cost us something. Whether that be actual money, or our time and our freedom.

People that are serious about becoming dancers or filmmakers or streamers have to find the time to take the steps toward those goals. This especially applies to those of us that have day jobs, which means less time hanging around watching Netflix, less happy hour drinks with friends after work on Fridays, because Saturday morning is the only time we have 6 hours of free time and we need to be fresh, we can’t be hungover. I know I am not the only one that has opted not to travel during a major holiday— made up some excuse— so I could stay behind in an empty apartment and WRITE, because who in their right mind would give up $450 dollars for a plane ticket that could go toward a book edit later, or a piece of tech needed for a project. Not to mention I would have a Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, to work, to write, to do what I need to do. And if it’s toward the end of the year holidays—sometimes you get two-weeks off! I don’t want to go anywhere! I want to sit in my room and work and pretend I don’t have day job, pretend that being creative is my full-time gig.

It’s hard. Steps toward our creative dreams require constant personal inconvenience, and sacrifice. It’s a fact. How many awkward conversations have we had with family members or friends because we don’t wanna do some casual, fun thing, we kinda want to go home and work, right?

Okay, say you want to be a YouTuber... So you go out and bought a camera, and a mic, and some lights, and you find this cool plant to put in the background of your shots. You start working on your channel name and your catchphrase and you’re figuring out what username you can use across all social media without having to add “I am” to the front of the username. You’re feeling good because you’re ticking everything off the list. That person I just described is still in the Dream stage of their idea. They are still riding the high of, I’m gonna be a YouTuber! They haven’t started plotting their episodes, they haven’t learned how to use the camera they bought, or researched ANYTHING about the YouTube channel they want to create. They don’t know if someone is already on Youtube doing the exact thing they want to do. The hard stuff has yet to be touched, but they might feel like they are on their merry way to becoming a YouTuber when, in fact, none of that stuff except the camera really matters. If you don’t have any content, who cares if your lighting is amazing or you have a plant in the background?

Alright, so what steps can we take as creatives? What can we do?! You won’t be surprised when I say, there is a lot to read on the internet. A lot of people have ideas on the best way to approach your creative steps, the best way to approach your creative journey, and I will link a few in the show notes:

VIDEO: Tedx Talk How To Achieve Your Most Ambitious Goals
Make Your Dreams Come True in 9 Steps
Creative Dream List
Neuroscience: Write Down Your Goals If You Actually Want to Achieve Them

I do this because, 1) I’m not the expert and 2) At the end of the day, everybody has to do what works for them. And I think that this show should be a jumping off point for you to think about these creative things, right? I am not here to answer every question you have, I am here to spark the questions. I am here to encourage you to get out there and get answers for yourselves. I’m gonna offer my take on it, but also click the links, also read what other people have to say about steps toward creative dreams.

So, when I sit down with a new dream or idea, usually it’s for writing something, here’s what I do. This is what I had to apply to podcasting. I require 3 things, that my creative steps be:

That’s it — Something I can do, something that will actually help me toward my goal, and something I can put in order of priority. If I can do those things I can usually churn out something creative. Say I wanted to become a synchronized swimmer— my basic steps would be: CPR classes (for safety which I think is doable and useful). A yoga class (for better breathe control, strength and agility—again doable and useful). Then the synchronized swimming classes (duh) because that is part of the goal to master synchronized swimming. Then I’d qualify for artistic swimming at the Olympics for 2024, because YEAH if I am doing this, I am going all the way. Finally I’d meet Oprah. In that order. Now along the way I would probably add some steps, but those are the most important ones for me at the moment.

Let’s talk about them. At first glance each step is doable and useful, and there is some sort of priority or order to them— you have to do one before the other. In terms of useful, I wouldn’t add diving to this list, even though it’s water related, even though there is a diving class right after my synchronized swimming class, and I could stay at the pool for another hour and also learn to dive. But diving isn’t directly useful for this particular goal of synchronized swimming, so I wouldn’t add it.

After some thought I would probably remove Oprah from the list. Not only meeting her ACTUALLY a part of my Dream of synchronized swimming, and not part of the useful, doable, or required steps I need to take. It’s certainly not useful. I will not get better having met Oprah, I might have a confidence boost, but my skill won’t improve. It’s probably not doable. Why on earth would I be meeting Oprah as a synchronized swimmer? It’s makes more sense if I was trying to meet Oprah because I was trying to do something in her field of positivity, talk-show host type stuff, but as a swimmer, I am not sure how that’s really doable. And finally where does Oprah go on the list? I could meet her after I win the Gold medal at the Olympics, I could meet her before when she wants to do a piece on me and my journey to the Olympics. I could meet her tomorrow before I take the first CPR class, and before I even put a toe in the water. She could slide anywhere on this list so there’s no real priority. This is telling me that she’s not necessarily important to this goal. But the CPR class and the lessons to learn how to synchronize swim are important and have priority. I can’t do either of those things AFTER I win the Gold medal.

So that’s just a fun example, but this can be applied to any creative project that you are working on right now. You probably already have a list of things that you are doing and as long as you make sure they are doable and useful and prioritized, I think you’re putting yourself in a great position to accomplish your dreams.

I want to leave you with one last thought. I find that I accomplish the most as a creative person when I dream as much as I take steps. Now I know there are a lot of us out there that assume because we daydream a lot, because we are always coming up with new ideas or adventures or projects that we have to STOP that or pull back because it’s childish or unrealistic and a waste of time. We either have been told, “Stop messing around and get back to work!” Or, “Stop messing around and pick a field where you can make some money and have a real future!” But we don’t have to believe that. Creative people need to be daydreaming, need to be coming up with ideas and having adventures in their head and thinking about new projects all the time. That’s a part of the gig and honestly, if we don’t do it…the other people will not. It’s our job and we do it well so we need to keep doing it.

The problem is when we don’t take steps to balance out those big dreams. So the next time you realize you’ve spent an afternoon daydreaming about a creative project or something you want to conquer as an artist, don’t write yourself off as being an idiot with your head in the clouds. Instead, say to yourself, Alright I spent 3 hours thinking about this thing. So I am going to balance that out with 3 hours of steps toward that thing. And I don’t mean you have to stop what you’re doing in the moment and start the 3 hours. It’s just the next time you have time. Instead of daydreaming or if you feel you have slipped off into imagination world, say, Oh, no, no, no, it’s time for me to take steps. I’m gonna spend the afternoon taking steps instead. You’re creating a habit for yourself. Dreams. Steps toward those dreams. All we have to do is understand the difference between the two and allow creative time for both.

Alright, that’s gonna do it for today. Thanks so much for listening, I hope you enjoyed. You can find us on Twitter and/or Instagram: @Creative4evr.

Don’t forget to be creative this week. Even if you just think about it. Later.

Further episodes of Creative4evr Podcast

Further podcasts by Jai//Em

Website of Jai//Em