Creative Is a Verb with Patti Digh

Welcome to Mama Goddess. I'm your host, Alexandra J. Johnson. This podcast is all about rocking your goddess life, creating vibrant health and celebrating motherhood and family life. It's about living an authentically awesome life. Let's have. Hello and welcome. I'm Alexandra J. Johnson and today we have a fantastic guest as always, Patti Dye. She is an author of eight books, a speaker and a teacher. And she explores how to love well, live fully, let go deeply and make a difference. And I just love her wisdom. You know, I've read, I haven't read all of her books, but I have criticized creative as a verb and I also have read life as a verb and I read her blog and she's just the real deal. You just get full on realness and authenticity about the creative process and just about life. So I welcome you, Patti, and I am honored to be chatting with you today.

What a great introduction. Thank you. It's just an honor to be here. Glad to connect.

Yes. Fantastic. So let's start off with creativity. You know, you write about creativity and you're very prolific and just awesome. So talk to us about creative. I think in one of your books I saw, what did you say? Like, if you're alive, you're creative. So I think a lot of us think that maybe we're not creative. So can you talk about how we can find our own creative genius and express it in the world?

Yeah, that's the subtitle to Creative as a verb. Because I started hearing from people, they would submit things for my books. So all my books are illustrated by readers of my blog and people would submit art for the books and they would say, oh, but it's not exactly what I wanted it to be, or I'm not really an artist, but I wanted to do this because I love your work and I know you can't use it. So 90% of the stuff that was coming in had a disclose and I started thinking about that because we do that a lot. Oh, you know, it's not my best work. I stayed up all night or the kids were sick or. And I started thinking, well, I've always withheld my best work. I think because I wanted an excuse. If you didn't like what I wrote. I wanted to be able to say, oh, it was nothing, I wrote it overnight or it wasn't my best work. And so I think we diminish ourselves in a lot of ways. If you think of, of how we live our lives, really has a direction to it. So we're either expansive and generative. Or we're dismissive. And this comes up in a lot of different ways. So when I was doing a lot of corporate work, I was doing a seminar one time with a lot of experiential training, and the CEO was very nervous. Everybody in the whole organization was having a blast and learning a lot, but it was kind of new to him, so he was really nervous. And I heard him describe what we were doing as that little exercise. You remember that little exercise that we did. So I really challenged him on the use of the word little, like, how do we minimize ourselves in the world? A guy that I used to work with said to me one time, why, when people ask you what you do, don't you ever say you're a writer? And I said, because I'm not really a writer. I mean, I'm not like Herman Melville or showing my age, my English degree. And he said that you've written hundreds of articles, and at that time, four or five books. Like, what is the bar for you to be able to say you're a writer? And so we went to lunch the next day with somebody, and he said to me. The guy said to me, what do you do? So I looked across the table, and I was very excited because I had an answer. You know, I said, well, I'm a writer. I was very proud of myself. And the guy said, well, what do you write? And I said, I just write these little essays every Monday. Afterwards, I got the debrief of, you just write these little essays every Monday. So what is it about creative work that we want to diminish the impact of that in the world, or we want to diminish our offer in the world? So as I started to write Creative as a verb, it was really driven by that understanding of, wow, we make ourselves small in a lot, a lot of ways, and we don't even recognize it. It's just part of how we are in the world. And as a result of that book and just my own writing and my own experience, my work in the world at a large level, is to open up space for people to express their creative selves and to be able to do that and make a strong offer. And when I say strong offer, a strong offer is an offer that you do without diminishment. It's an offer that you do without excuse. It's an offer that you do without attachment to the outcome. Barbara Kingsolver was in Asheville a couple years ago, and somebody said to her, how do you deal with bad reviews? She said, well, when I was A young writer, I recognized that I would read all my reviews and I would ignore the good ones, and I would memorize the bad ones. And I think we do that as human beings. So, you know, your job as a human being, as a parent, as a office employee, whatever we're doing in life, your job is to make the strongest offer that you can and to accept the offers that are made to you or open space for them, but we can't be attached to outcome. This is one of the things you mentioned in the intro. My tattoo is these three questions from Buddha. How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go? And it's the letting go part that's really, really tough. Your job as a creative person is to make the offer. Your job is not to anticipate what the audience will say or think or feel, because you can't. I mean, it's individual. And your job is to move on to the next offer. So, you know, that's where the fourth question that Buddha didn't ask, but that I ask a lot, is, did you make a difference? I think that's the part where we can make a difference. So I don't know. That little rant.

That's amazing.

Well, it's.

Yeah, totally. I love the diminishment, you know, because I'm just listening for myself and women that I work with. That. That's a huge thing of how we literally, like, I mean, I even do it. I'm like, oh, I just do videos, but they're not like, super professional. And, you know, they're not. It's not a TV show or whatever, you know, but there's just little things all the time that we're. We're doing that it's very interesting self.

As you go through your day, because I do it as well. There are these little micro abrasions. So they're not big, you know, slits in our skin. They're just little like a little piece of sandpaper that every time you do that, you're. You're pressing on the same spot and it gets sore after a while, but it's every day. And it's just a little tiny piece of sandpaper so you don't notice it, but over time, it wears away. And there's a cost to that. And there has to be an awareness that we have around the language that we use in that way. These little exercises, just little videos, those kinds of things that I think have a greater power than what we think they have.

Yeah, okay. So I'm Curious, because I know that a lot of people have this issue, and I think women in particularly, there's this feeling of comparison. Like you compare, you know, and then there's comparison and perfectionist that I feel personally is like the killer of all creative impulse. So what do we do about that? What do we do when we feel the comparison or the perfectionist? And we're, you know, not a writer, we're not a teacher, painter or whatever. Like, what do we do about that?

I don't know if I wrote about this in Creative as a verb, but I've done a lot of thinking about this, that there are three blocks, three things that will keep you from being creative. And the first one is the one that you mentioned. It's false comparisons with other people. And the reason they're false is because you're not the other person. And so, you know, I used to look at, I don't know if you know who Gabrielle Reese is, the beach volleyball, you know, I used to look at her and think I could never look like that. And of course I'm never going to look like that. But the false comparison, it was like, well, why work out? Let's just go eat chocolate lava cake. Right? That's an all or nothing perfectionism kind of approach. So comparison is very much tied to having an all or nothing way of looking at life. And it will paralyze you because if you can't be perfect, you're not going to do it at all. Right? So if I'm not a great painter, I'm not gonna dabble. That's a perfectionism. That's an all in one thing. So the first block is false comparisons with other people. And I ask people in my online writing classes to write all the ways in which they compare themselves to other people. And if you do that exercise, you will fill up pages and pages if you're really honest about it. Oh, my cupcakes are not homemade. I buy them at the store for my kids thing at school. She always decorated really nicely for the holidays. And I don't do that on and on and on. I'm not as trim as she is. I'm not as healthy. Or, you know, we do it all the time. So to make note of those and to make yourself understand and be witness to every time that you do that is really important. So start a journal for 10 days. Write down every comparison you feel. Not that you say out loud, but that you feel to other people. Oh, you know, she's richer than I am. She's whatever, more Creative than I am. She uses language better than I do. Whatever. Cupcakes are tastier. And then read that list at the end of those 10 days and not to be weighted down with it at all, but to be honest about it. Wow, this is a lot. You know, it's a lot for us to walk away, walk around with the weight of. Of all that, and then on the 11th day, look at the list again and write about who you would be without those feelings. How would you feel if you didn't have those feelings? I would be free. I would be able to paint. I would be able to. And sometimes in acknowledging that I have those feelings, making them concrete in terms of writing them down, as shameful as some of them may seem to you, as you're writing them down down, or I should be more adult than this, or whatever, I'm smarter than this. Sometimes that's really potent for us to look at that list and feel the weight of it and then the next day give up the weight by saying, I'd be happier if I didn't think these things. I'd be happier, I'd be more creative, I'd be more fulfilled and to give them away. So I don't know if that's helpful.

Yeah, that's great. I think that's so awesome because I think just with that, I feel like you give in just sharing that you give us permission to, like you said, dabble. I think there's so much out there now a very, like, if you're gonna do it, you need to be successful, and you need to have 500 million trillion people following you on Facebook and your blog has to be making you $30,000, you know, whatever, that there's, like this idea that you need to be big and huge and perfect and grand in order for you to even think about doing it. So I just love that because it's like, oh, I love to do it. That's all that matters. I'm gonna do it.

Well, it's actually, you know, it's the same for when I teach writing. It's whether you're focused on the outcome or the process. If you're focused on the outcome, good. That's fantastic. But there's a lot of striving in that, and there's a lot of externalization of passion. And if you're more concerned with process, you're going to have a lot of fun because you're going to be engaged at a different level. You know, when Life Is a Verb was written, I wrote it for my two Daughters because I wanted to leave behind my stories for these two girls. And I really believe that the success of that book was completely aligned with that. I had a singular intention and my intention was to leave these stories behind. If your intention is to have fun, what better intention could you possibly have? And maybe there's an outcome, but it doesn't matter because the process is really the kind of muscle memory of what it is to fully engage in life and dive in. And frankly, you know, the Internet just wears me out. It wears me out because there's such striving. Here's the model for making a seven figure Whatever. And we've lost sight. Peter Block writes about this in the Answer to why is Yes. I think it is. I'll have to look up the title for you. The answer to how is yes. We've spent so much time on how to do things. Here's how you can use SEO to take over the world. And we've lost sight of why. Why am I doing this? You know, what is the direction of my intention? And do I have a split intention? When I used to work with companies, they would say, we would like to address diversity issues because we want to be a safe place, you know, equal opportunity employer. And what they really wanted was to be on the Fortune magazine best businesses to list. That's a split intention. So to be really clear about, well, what is my primary intention? For some people making a lot of money or making a name for themselves is their intention. That's fantastic. If it's not yours, best not to get sucked into the world where. And trust me, I say this from experience and it's really easy to be sucked into that. Wow, my books are good. Maybe I could do whatever. That's not really at the core of why I do the work that I do. And I know. So, yeah, I think the comparisons will lead you down a path. Shakespeare said comparisons are odious. And I think that's actually true. You know, it will lead you down a path that takes you far away from your internal voice. It will lead you down a path that at the end of it leaves you empty in some way or can. It doesn't always. So, yeah, I think step back from the interweb machine. Totally engage with people who get it, you know, engage with people and don't be sucked into. You have to do it this way in order to be fulfilled, in order to be rich, in order to be whatever.

Yeah.

And some of that comes with motivation. Like what is your guiding force? What is the motivation for what it is that you're doing in the world really clear and really transparent about that. I think is important.

Yeah, I love that, because there's. I mean, I've had, you know, I asked these questions, and I've been on my own journey of this. This inquiry of, like, my offering and who I am and what I'm here to do. And I think it's. I love what you're saying because it's coming back home to ourselves again and again and again. Because I can. I've gotten to start distracted, and I'm, like, striving, and then I. I step back, I'm like, what the hell am I doing? Like, I don't. I lose the joy when I do that. So it's staying creatively alive and joyful. And I found that that is a practice that I have to keep to keep alive.

Yeah. I was telling somebody yesterday about James Carse is. This is actually one of the books that changed my life in a lot of ways. And what I think about a lot of. James Karst has wrote a long time ago now, a book called Finite and Infinite Games. And in it. Do you know the book? Are you familiar with?

I'm familiar. And you know what? I haven't read it. I have it, but I haven't read it.

Well, the Cliff Notes version, which I think has a lot to do with what we're talking about, is that you see the world in one of two different ways. You see the world as a finite game, which, in a finite game, there's a winner and a loser. So football is a finite game. There's a prescribed set of rules. You play by those rules, and somebody wins and somebody loses. That's the point of the game. Right. And that you play to win. And a lot of people play life like that. I'm gonna win, and that means I'm gonna win the Internet, I'm gonna win against my competitor. I'm gonna. There are a lot of different ways that that shows up. It shows up a lot for individual human beings by the way they express what they believe to be failure. I failed. Right. That's a very much a finite game way of looking at the world. An infinite game is a game that you play to keep it going. So Hacky Sack is a great infinite game, because the whole point of that is to keep it in play. There's no winner or loser. And instead of playing to win, you play to learn. If you adopt that way of looking at the world, that there's no win or lose here. I'm learning And I'm incorporating that learning and keeping the game going. It's a vastly different way of seeing the world. So if you as a creative person, for example, are seeing the world as a finite game and your art is not selling, or your art is not picked up by a big company to sell it, or whatever your aspirations are, then in the finite world, you're losing, right?

Yeah, totally.

In the infinite world, you're getting lots of experience that can be incorporated into how you continue on your journey. It seems very simplistic. The book is really well worth reading. That's the gist of it. And so a lot of times I have to think to myself, oh, my God, I'm seeing this as a finite game, you know, but. But my job is to see it as an infinite game, to just keep incorporating learning and keep the hacky sack going, you know, keep it up. And it's actually. It's remarkable the difference that that will make. That frame will make for you.

Yeah.

So that's one of the things that I think when we think about creativity, we think we still think of it in terms of win or lose. So even people in my writing classes will say, oh, I'm behind. I'm behind in the class. I'm a loser. I should have kept up with it. I feel terrible. And my response is always, just notice what you notice about what this tells you about yourself. There's no right or wrong way to engage with anything. It's just really good data for you. Everything is free data. So if this is a pattern for you, that you engage and then you let it go, or you don't engage at all, then notice what you notice. But here's the thing that I would love for your listeners and viewers to think about, because I think we don't often think about this, that when I come to a place of discomfort, that's a very potent place of learning for me. So I think learning happens at these edges, these places where we feel uncomfortable. Madame Curie has said dissymmetry causes phenomena, phenomena. And I think to be thrown off balance is where learning can occur. I think as adults, we don't really look at learning that way. We want it to be nice and tidy. But when you're thrown off balance, that's where you learn. But when we're thrown off balance and when we come to a hot spot or we feel really uncomfortable, the first thing that we do as human beings, and there's no good or bad about this, it's just the first thing we do is we judge so the first thing we judge is ourselves. I'm an idiot. I cannot believe I just said that. How could I have done that? Or we'll judge other people. Oh, my God, she's an idiot. Why did she say that? We'll judge the teacher. That's wrong. That's not how it's done. All that judgment does is shut down learning. So when you come to a place of discomfort and being thrown off balance, if you find yourself in a moment of judgment against yourself or anybody else to take a breath and think, I get to choose right now whether I judge or whether I learn. I can't do both those things at the same time. I have to choose one. And that will take you down two completely different paths. So judgment, again, in parallel to infinite and finite games, is finite. I'm losing. She's losing. And learning is an infinite game. So all these things in my little head, I don't know if they make sense outside my head totally. They're these little parallels that run finite, infinite. And that's one of them that you're picking judgment or learning. That's just a learned behavior. You can also say to yourself, okay, I'm at a place of real discomfort. I gotta choose learning or judgment. Yeah. And either one is fine. Either one is great, as long as you just notice what you notice about what you're doing at the edge. Because that's where the learning is. It's not what you're being asked to do. It's not what you're trying to accomplish in terms of your creativity. It's how you respond to it. This big human experiment. And your job is to be really curious about how you respond.

That's awesome. I love that human experiment. And it's very interesting. It reminds me of. Maybe you've read it. I don't know who it's by, but it's called the Practicing Mind.

I don't know it.

It's so great, because what you're talking about is the. It's the process. Staying with the process. Like, it's just information, you know? And like you said, when I say that, I'm like, oh, yeah, it's just. Just the process. But when you get in those discomfort moments, you're not all. I'm not to the place where I'm all light all the time of like, oh, it's just the process. I just said a really stupid thing.

I don't think any of us are.

But I like that we can learn. We can learn to have that be our actual reaction.

Well, actually, it doesn't matter in the moment when you do that, but it does matter on reflection, you know, because you shut yourself down. It's another diminishment of the judging of ourselves, which is always where we go first. And if I read Richard Powers is my favorite novelist, and he's just a gracious, brilliant, amazing guy. And when I read any of his books, I think to myself, there's just no point for me to write another word ever, ever. And then I have to get beyond that and just say, you know, I could learn from this man. You know, I could learn how is he doing what he's doing? And that would be so interesting for me to do so. Yeah, the comparison block is a killer for many reasons, but one of them is that it just stops you. You don't feel what you feel when you're creating something if you've stopped yourself from that process. And, you know, it's become clear to me recently in the last couple of years that what has taken the place of your work becomes your work. So if self criticism has taken the place of your work, that has become your job. If you're a writer and looking at Amazon page rankings has become. Has taken the place of your work, then that has become your work. You're no longer waiting. So to really pay attention to what is taking the place of what I believe to be my work. And the other fallacy that I would, as I say that I'm thinking to myself, a lot of people say to me, I don't know what my work is. And you will never, ever figure it out by sitting around thinking about it. You just won't. It's not going to come to you in that way, or I don't know what my voice is in writing. I wonder how we might find that out. The only way into that is by writing into it. Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah, totally. The only way is through, Right?

Exactly. And this is where Life is a verb came from as a title, like Life is not. And it's an active verb. It's not a noun. It's not a passive verb. It's an action that we take. And I'm really clear in the last couple of years about how much we need to get out of our heads. I'm a thinking person, you know, that's kind of. Yeah, that's where I sort of live. Yeah. I believe that there's a body part to this that has to be integrated in a way that I have not in the past years. And so I think that's another piece of creativity and writing. And all the things that I teach about are physical acts. They're not just mental. And how can I get my whole body into it?

I like that.

A colleague of mine had a painting block. I say in creative as a verb, plumbers don't have plumber's block. But he had a painting block. And he went to visit a friend in New York and the woman said, here are 100 sheets of paper, ink and a brush. And every night before we go to bed, you and I are both going to do. They each had 100 sheets of paper. We're going to do 100 paintings before we go to bed. And so they would just do these very physical lines on the paper and then push that aside and do another one. And for a couple of nights, they each did a hundred each paintings. And it was the physicality of that that got him back into it. It was the movement of his arm and the paper and the ink. And so when you're stuck or when you feel paralyzed about your own creativity, what's the muscle memory? What is it that needs to happen for you to just. And that's also what that experience was for him. And when I heard about it, what it was for me was this is all about process. There's no product here. It's really about getting your arm moving and not thinking about it so much.

Yeah, that's so amazing. And it sounds very simple, but I know that's, I mean, that's amazing, powerful wisdom of like, just get into the act. Like anytime that I feel resistance, and I'm a big journaler and thinker and creator, but sometimes if I'm stopped over here, I'll just go and journal about my visions over here rather than like sit down and write, like just get back into it. But it's, it's getting in that head. Trip can be tricky.

Yeah, well, you know, and I think we all. I've been having these one on one conversations with writers recently, and I think we all know what our patterns are, even if we don't want to admit, you know, what they are, or if we don't, just to be cognizant of those for a while and to notice what do I do when I'm trying to deflect. Deflection is very powerful. It can be a number of things. Whatever it is, I'm deflecting from doing the work. So what do I do and what are the best ways that I could stop doing that if it's not serving me and it just comes down to a conversation about the reality of your life and the patterns that you see. In Asheville, actually, there was a car that came in front of me. This was in life as a verb, I think, because I was so struck by it. If I hadn't been paying really close attention, I would have hit the side of his car because he just darted right up in front of me. And then I realized where I would have hit him. There was a dent already in his car. I thought, isn't that interesting? This is a pattern for this person. They dash into traffic in that way, and somebody has hit them in that space. So I try and look at that for myself. Okay, I have a book due. What is my pattern? What do I do? What about that is healthy? And what about that is not healthy that I do? And then make plans, you know, to take this out of the very emotional place that we put most art and most creativity in our heads. I'm waiting for passion. I'm waiting for the muse. I'm waiting for whatever. Make it a job. A joyful job, but a job nonetheless.

Yeah. Okay, so I'm curious. You know, you've written so many books and you're so creative. Like, what do you do? What are some of your tips or advice on focus and getting to work and, like, doing it, you know, because it seems like so many people have so many creative ideas and creative dreams and all that, and they're just not doing them. So what. What are your secrets?

Well, it's the starting that'll stop you. You know, it's like buying a journal that's really beautiful Italian leather, and you can't write in it because it's too beautiful. So I work in very simplistic ways. A lot of my work is in a composition book. $0.89 at the CVS book. Because I don't want the object to be the point. I want the getting in there and muddying it up and not being afraid of the beauty of. Of it. Because I've had journals where you have to write really profound things because it's such a beautiful journal. What else could you write? So one of them is to give up the need for nice materials. Just be as messy as possible and have things that you don't mind if you make mistakes in them and just keep going. The other is that there's a quote, and I can never remember who it's by, but it's about, I wait for inspiration, and it shows up every morning at 9am so to train yourself to have a ritual around creativity. So what is my ritual? It could be called habit, but I think ritual just sounds so much more exciting. What is my ritual around creativity? It's very individual to you. So it might be that you have a certain space where you go. It might be that you take a walk before you.

Before you write.

So look at your own patterns and say, this keeps me from writing and this supports me in writing or painting or whatever. So to really pay attention to your own patterns and let that lead you, let that be a support to you in creating it. The Internet is a killer. It's a killer. So do what you need to do in order to be away from the Internet for the period that you're trying to be creative in. And for me, I mean, I don't do this as much as I would like to because, like, for all of us, life intervenes. But to put creativity on my calendar, so, you know, my books are written. I had friends who had written a number of books years ago, and somebody said, how do you write so many books? And they book their time for writing, like they would book a time client. So it's a conversation that you have with yourself about what is the. What's the word priority that this has in my life? And whether or not you're going to create a product. The process of voicing who you are in the world, how that shows up is really important for your own health. It's not just that you want to create something to leave behind or to sell a million copies or to have Sandra Bullock play you in the movie. You know, though, that's wonderful. It's really the process of saying, who am I? In very shadowy moments, who am I inside? What am I thinking about? What are my fears and vulnerabilities? That's really important. Human beings, and I think we don't allow ourselves to do that because we are comparing ourselves or, you know, another block is that we have false expectations of ourselves. Well, if I'm going to spend time writing, it better be a New York Times bestseller. Like, why else would I do it? That's very much a product oriented. It's not paying attention to what will I get out of that, what will I discover about myself? And then the third block, false investments in a story. And that can be, you know, artists are blank. Money is blank. Whatever stories you have created about who you are in the world, what other things are in the world that will stop us from writing as well. That was my. I'm not a real writer. I'm not Herman Melville. Yeah. In My. My future.

Right? So that kind of. I mean, that stops a lot of us, right? Is that diminishment right away that we don't even get started? I know for me, sometimes, I'll have you know, I'm a mom. I'm doing this, I'm doing that. Like, it's. There's so much wisdom out there. Already people are saying what I'm saying. Like, is it really that important that I do it? And those are the moments where I'm like, okay, it's important for my health, like, my well being to get that out. Whether one person watches it or reads it or a hundred, like, it doesn't matter, or millions.

I have to tell you this story because it's so in line with what you're talking about. It may sound like it's not connected, but it is. I was in a writing group, and there was a woman who. It was memoir. And there was a woman who was writing this very hot story about this love. It was like young love. And there was a woman in the class, Virginia. Virginia just turned 92, so she was in her late 80s. And she. And I. And I was menopausal. So we would listen to this woman read her work like this. Like, oh, my God, this is so hot. And our teacher at one point said, sherry to the writer, you have to write the sex scene. And all of us, like, Virginia almost fainted, and the rest of us were like, we could not stand that if she wrote that and read it in class. And of course, Sherry said, oh, I could never do that. I could never. My mother might read it. I could never do that. And what. Sebastian Matthews was the teacher, what he said to her was so brilliant. He said, you don't ever have to do anything with it. You can delete it right after you write it, but you have to write it because you have to write through that to really understand what that story is. And I think the same is true for us. You know, that process of, as Annie Dillard says, of figuring out who I am, you know, by writing through it. And it won't be writing for everybody. It could be embroidery, it could be painting. It could be whatever creative expression they take, woodworking or parenting is a creative expression. Write the sex scene. I love that as advice because it takes you through something to get to a greater understanding. So I think that's some of the best advice I've heard, you know, and then you can eat it. You can eat it, burn it, delete it, whatever you want to with it, but you Know the journey that you've taken to get to a different understanding.

I like that. And I like that too. Of just writing it. You don't have to share it, you know, but it's that process of.

Yeah, and that's the mental health process, isn't it? That's. I need to. I need to express this, if only to myself and sometimes preferably just to yourself in order to really understand it. There's so many times when I start writing a story about X and in the writing of it, I realize this is really about why, you know, So I come to a completely different understanding of what it is that I'm actually writing about. But you can't get there by thinking about it. You can't think your way into that. Yeah.

I also love the creativity is like. Like you said, it's so vital for our health and well being outside of the products and the actual outcomes that you want. Those are cool. And I'm just now getting to this in the last couple years because I used to be very product and just outcome oriented and I've been shifting into that of like, the products are cool, but it's so much cool just to feel that aliveness of creating. Like if we're not doing it and not being intentional about it, I feel. I know I can get like, blah. And just life is not as sparkly and awesome.

Well, we want life to be sparkly and awesome.

Yes.

Otherwise, what's the point? Also, I don't know what your time is like, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you this because I think it's in line with what you just said. There's some. I forget what the name of the book is. And I'll send you these books afterwards. There's so many so that you can share them with other people. But there's a book that started talking about this and I took it in a big direction in a lot of my work. And that is there are three kinds of problems in the world. So the first kind of problem is a simple problem. If you want to bake a cake and you have the ingredients and an oven and your apron and the recipe, you can bake a cake. So all of us face simple problems all the time. We need cat food, we go get it right. Simple problems. The second is a complicated problem, which is like a moon launch. So a moon launch is doable. It's solvable if you have experts and spreadsheets and big strategic plans. And it's just more complicated. But it's something that you can say I did then. And then there are complex problems. So complex problems are raising a child. No amount of math is going to help you do this. No amount of expert planning or it's just different. It's not complicated. Anything having to do with human beings is complex. And yet we continue to approach them as if they were merely complicated. So we continue to think, I'll just do a 200 page strategic plan about X, Y and Z raising my child, building community, anything like that. And that is to look at it as a problem that can be solved. And complexities cannot be solved. They can only be walked into. So complexities are addressed with very simple actions. So if I'm trying to raise my child, being present is a simple action. Maybe sometimes not so simple. It's an action that I can take that will help me walk into this complexity of who this human being is. Not a 10 point plan of what I need to do. I think a lot of times what we do is we confuse what is complex with what is complicated. As if it were merely complicated. As if we could solve it as if there were an answer to it. So when I get called in to do diversity work in an organization, for example, almost always they want a diversity strategic plan. It is great to have plans for things, but to believe that that strategic plan could solve as if diversity were a problem. Sense to you?

Yeah, totally.

I think in addition to the finite and infinite games, that that's a core thing that I think about. Am I addressing this issue as if it were merely complicated when it's not? It's a complexity and a complexity is not solvable, which we hate, don't we? Yeah.

You want the answer and you want it to like, you want to get to the end where it's solved.

Exactly.

But like as I'm learning with parenting, there's, you know, it's the day in, day out, like there's. It's always changing.

That's an infinite game.

That's awesome. That's great. I love that. An infinite game. That's what parenting is.

It is, yeah. It's an infinite game because you can't predict. You can't. It doesn't stay. There's no stasis to it.

I like that. Okay, so I'm curious on this. You know, you write about this and just from your writings, you talk about your relationship with your husband and your children and just connection feels like it's a big part of your work and your writing. And I think so many of us are wanting that. Wanting amazing connections with Our husband, with our kids, with our friends and community. But it seems like with all the access that we have cell phones and just. It seems like we're connected, but we're not. You know, there's like, an illusion of connection. But I know that there's so many people and women who just are longing for that authentic, real connection. So can you talk about this and help us?

I think it'll be different for every person. I know when Emma, my oldest daughter, she's gonna be 22 in a couple weeks. But when she was younger, cell phones and texting were such a huge change for our relationship where there might have been for her. As she became a teenager, difficulty talking to me about things, it was much easier for her to text me. And I thought I embraced that because I didn't have a prescription in my head of what that connection should look like. I just followed her lead about that. So I think partially it's to follow the lead of the people around you and see what connection feels right for them. But for her, it was definitely texting. We have great conversations on texting. We do in person, too. So it's not solely a texting relationship. I think following the lead and not having a prescription for how you believe connection takes place, but really noticing. So I notice with Tess, she's 11, she has Asperger's, so there are lots of challenges for her during the day. And the point of connection for us is just this daily ritual of me reading to her for an hour every night at bedtime. And that becomes where everything feels safe for her at the end of the day, even if she's had challenges or questions or a hard time during the day, that's a really special time for her. So I think you feel your way into what those places of connection can be. And I think the other piece is that they change, you know? So when Don and I were first together, I traveled internationally every week. And every week, no matter where I went and what time I showed up in the hotel, he would have somehow convinced the people who work there to have flowers ready for me. And I'll never forget getting to Helsinki, I think it was. And this woman said, oh, she's here. And all these people from the hotel came out, and they hadn't had any access to real flowers because everything was closed. But together, the mite staff had painted a picture of flowers for me. They were so excited to meet me. So that was beautiful at that. And then connection changes, and I think partially it's to be open to different definitions of connection than what you once had. It's hanging on to what. What that once was. That doesn't allow us to see the beauty in the ways that that connection can change.

It's another infinite game, right?

It is. You see why this book is so important right up there.

That's awesome. Well, it's such a good framework, too, of, you know, and I think that there is the different seasons, especially from if you go from not having children to having children, to be being married to not being married, whatever the. However, the arenas, they're always changing. And it's a dynamic process, and I know we can get locked into it. And I've had that, too, of becoming a new mother in my relationship with my husband. It's a very different relationship than it was before. And, like, being able to navigate that.

Yeah. I think, you know, life is really about fully investing in what's happening right now and completely detaching from outcome. And those two things are an infinite gain because you don't ever get there. Like, you don't reach that place. And so to really be open to the way things evolve. And I put on Facebook the other day, evolution is pretty messy. But I think if we frame things as a finite or infinite game, it has everything to do with how we navigate change and navigate the things that you're talking about. Because, yes, your relationship changes. If you have a child with a disability, your relationship to your own self changes. Your relationship to your husband certainly changes. That's not good or bad. We're back to valuing the idea of learning, judging. There's no good or bad for that. There's just learning from.

It seems like just this framework and this paradigm is there's less stress like there. You know, you're not, like, stressed and you're not striving, and it's just like you're in. Life is a verb. You're like, in. And creative is a verb. You're just in it, you know, and there's no. There's less, like, kind of noise on the line.

I have found that to be true. And it's not to say that I don't get sucked into the noise like everybody else does, but this frame and there are many other pieces to it, so I've just given you the bare bones of it. But this frame of finite and infinite games, this frame of these three kinds of problems, are really core to letting go and learning. And I think where we get caught up is when we expect a certain outcome and that outcome does not happen. What happens when we do that is we can't see what outcome is right in front of us. So we're so in the past with what we had expected to happen that we're not right here. When I was writing this most recent book, Geography of Loss, it came so clear to me, I put it on a post it note up on my bulletin board board, the three sections of that book. And it's really about grief and loss and change. It's about change and transition. So it's exactly what you're mentioning. The three parts of that were, embrace what is. Because we spend a lot of time regretting what didn't happen. Embrace what is. Come to that place as quickly as possible where you can say to yourself, this happened. Not, I wish it happened. I'm going to continue wishing it happened, but this happened. Embrace what is. Honor what was. So think about this in relationship to your point, about couples and how they change when they have kids. Right? It's what is. There is great joy in what is. You created a human being. That's incredible, miraculous. It's unbelievable. I go out to my tomato plants and I can hardly believe it. Oh, my God, there's a tomato. So embrace what is. Honor what is. I love your description of sitting down on your first date and having this conversation about what you're actually doing now. Honor all the juicy bits of what that was, all the energy and everything that you were able to do together and love what will be. So I think in one of these books, I can't remember which one I wrote about this guy who. A number of people have told this story, but it's so beautiful to me. He. His wife has died. He's 90 years old. He has to go to a nursing home. The family is very concerned. How will he do? Like, how is he going to adapt to this? His room is not ready. So he waits for a long time in the lobby, and finally the nurse comes, puts him on the elevator, and she says, let me tell you about your room. And he says, you don't have to. I love it already. And she said, but you haven't seen it, because she's wondering. You haven't seen it yet. And he. He said, I've decided to be happy ahead of time. And I love that totally. People look at me. Somebody wrote me a note and said, you are so naive. And I wrote back and said, thank you. I love that. But this idea of loving what will be. So no matter what happens, no matter what happens, if you're playing an infinite game, you can love what happens. Because you're going to learn from it.

Very cool. I love that. Happy ahead of time.

Yeah, I've decided to be happy ahead.

Of time because we, like, wait, like, oh, is the room gonna suck?

Exactly. Here's the thing. You are either driven in your daily life by circumstance or intention. So if you're driven by circumstance, you're gonna wait to see the room and say, I hate it. The curtains are awful. It doesn't look over the garden. Right. So that's circumstance driven. So you give up a lot of your own autonomy by waiting for what the circumstance tells you. Oh, the economy sucks, therefore. So you're circumstance driven. Or you can be intention driven. So if your intention is to be happy and you maintain that intention regardless of circumstance, then you're intention driven. So you get a choice. It's the same as judging or learning. You can decide to be intention driven or circumstance driven. And these are all, you know, you can't do all of this in a very Zen like way every single day of your life, but you can at least have the questions in your head. So if things go wrong with your kids or there's something, something big has happened, you can say to yourself, am I going to allow myself to be circumstance driven in this moment or am I going to remember my intention? And my intention is to create a home that is healthy, calm. Whatever your intention is, you may not be able to accomplish it, but at least you have the question in the back of your mind, am I playing a finite game or an infinite game? Am I circumstance driven in this moment or am I remembering my intention? Is this a simple, complicated or complex question? Those become really good. Like you can put those on an index card.

Totally.

And the truth of the matter is you can say to yourself, I don't have the answer to this, any of these questions. But the questions give you a frame.

Yeah. And then the, the awareness to make a choice, like.

Exactly. Because we often don't think we're making a choice. We think circumstance is deciding something for us. But it's really clear to me that no matter the circumstance, you can always choose how you are in that circumstance.

There's always like an infinite, infinite amount of ways of responding. Right. You know, like, yeah, somebody hits your car. Oh, it's horrible. Horrible. Or who knows, you might go on a grand adventure and meet your husband.

Exactly. It's funny because a couple of years ago I'd written an article and somebody took offense to it because they were identified as the person in the article, even though they weren't really identified as the person in the article. And so they had written me a five or six page, very lawyerly letter about how they were going to sue me. And it was pages and pages of such a. So I. My father always said I would make a really great attorney. So I wrote a five or six page, really lawyerly response. And it was beautiful. It was so well crafted. And I answered every point, and it was fantastic. And I just thought, well, before I send this, I'm going to have my friend Larry, who's an attorney, look at it. And Larry looked at it, and he called the next day. He said, patti, this is beautiful. This is really beautifully done. You should have been an attorney. And of course I was like, I'm all puffed up with pride. He said, I really like the part where you say, dear Mike, and I love the part where you say sincerely patting, and I would take out everything in between. And I was like, I cannot do that. I have to answer. And he said, no, you don't. And it was a really powerful lesson for me of I can choose how to be in this circumstance. And what came from that was the realization that the most powerful person in a tug of war is the person who doesn't pick up their end of the rope. So I didn't need to pick up my end of the rope. And I think that is our choice always. Even though we don't feel like it is like, I have to defend myself. No, you don't. You don't.

I love that. Yeah, it's amazing. It reminds me, I had a voice teacher once, and she's passed, and she was interned like 90s when I met with her. And she was very. You don't have to make excuses. You don't need to argue. Like, she was just very no. Like, you can say no powerfully. You can say yes. And don't get into the bs. Like, don't get into the drama. I know she was a voice coach, but she was like a spiritual teacher in many ways. But it was just that of, what are you gonna choose and what do you want in your life? Do you want them to come back to the drama? Do you want combat or, you know, what's your intention? Right.

It goes back to the thing that has taken the place of your work has become your work. So then your work is defending yourself.

And then you could actually be writing an awesome piece on something amazing. Right?

Exactly. Exactly.

We waste a lot of time. I'm just thinking of all those times that I'm doing something else than Actually creating.

You know, if it's a fight, if it's an infinite game, it's not a waste of time. This is true.

It's only learning and growth. Yeah. Okay, so I have one more question for you. I'm curious. I read this on your blog, and I just. I'm very curious on. I just want to hear your thoughts on it. You wrote, for the past few months, I have been in a period of great, quiet, deep discernment, refinding the path, clearing the decks, navigating through the oceans to find the shore, understanding the needs of my family at a deeper level, opening space for myself to rediscover my work in the world, recalibrating back to my heart's passions. A work in progress. Still. I just read that, and I was like, that's awesome. I want to hear more about that. Like, what? What is that? And I feel like there's. For so many of us, there is this desire to connect deeper to our heart's passions and recalibrate and reinvent and step back from the busyness of life and hone in on who we are. So can you talk a little bit more about what spurred that? And, yeah, I'm just curious.

I think it's very easy in life to continue doing things that people tell you you're really good at. So when I worked in nonprofit organizations, I was very quickly promoted and promoted and promoted because I was really good at what I did. And I had to, at some point, step back and say, is that enough of a reason? Like, am I. Am I dedicating too much attention to what other people say I'm good at, and am I believing them and having that shape who I am? So in terms of this latest moment of discernment, it really had to do with needing to step back from what you were talking about earlier. This idea of you can be this and you can have that. And I had too much noise in my head about, you should be doing X, Y, and Z, or you should be making this amount of money, or you could be a bigger voice or you could whatever. And so I just needed to step back from it and say, this is not really. I need to go back to the space where I know this is what I want to write. This is what I want to concentrate on. I don't know what the outcome of that is. But, you know, when you become an author as opposed to a writer, then something takes the place of your writing. And so I really wanted to step back from that and say, this. This can be simpler. It's just pen on paper. It's not that complicated, you know, and so to kind of strip stuff out just to be less. I don't know. I've always been interested in the whole style and substance thing, you know, And I think there's so much style that I see that has very little substance. And for me to kind of strip out what I was focusing on, that was taking me off course, it was becoming my writing and instead of the other way around. And so that was the reason for that, just to cut the noise for a little bit. And I think that's really important. There is so much noise as, you know, so, so, so much noise. And I just needed to step back and say, what am I really doing? And it was a beautiful moment of, okay, this is what I really want to do. These are the things that have meaning for me and that I want to express, explore.

Beautiful. I love that. I just love. I love the courage. Maybe you don't have it as courage, but to step back, to be willing to step back and be willing to kind of strip, strip it down. And I think that, you know, I feel like I'm always in a process of stripping, stripping down, finding the authentic, like what's truly authentic. But, you know, just talking with people I know that can be really challenging and can be almost scary. To be willing to give up a great paying job or to give up a relationship or a way of being. And you're like, that's not my heart's calling. And to really step into what is calling exactly.

And it is hard, you know, and there are lots of reasons why people don't do it that are valid, beautiful reasons. And I don't think it's an either or like most things. I think it's a both. And, you know, you can have the time constraints that come with having a job as the best thing possible for your creativity because creativity breeds in moments of great condensation of time. So I think it's a both and equation.

Fantastic. Well, I'm so inspired too. I mean, we've gotten the infinite games, we've gotten learning intention, complex, complicated, so many different distinctions to play with. And it feels. I personally just feel lighter about all of it, which is great and super grateful. So can you have any last thoughts or share where people can find more about you and your work and buy your books and take classes with you and all that stuff?

Yeah, the best place to find me right now, because I'm still in my stripped down mode, is the website for my camp that is held every fall, and that is lifeisaverbcamp.com so that's the best place to catch up with me right now.

Okay. And then are you going to have a new site? Are you working on a new site.

Or at some point?

Yep. Whenever it comes.

Whenever it comes. I have 37 days up, but it's just a show right now. But you can find out how to reach me through that website as well.

Okay, fantastic. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for your grounding presence and your commitment to living an awesome life.

This was a real pleasure.

Oh, thank you. Lots of love. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Mama Goddess. Sending you lots of love and blessings. If you'd like to connect more, go to mamagoddess.com until next time. Keep rocking it and have an awesome day.