362: Setting Creative Intentions Instead of Expectations with James McCrae

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One thing I've learned is that the mind only knows so much. I might think that I know what something should be, but that's coming from a place of ego. And I think that sometimes you have to let go of the known to discover the greater unknown. So sometimes the universe or our higher selves have a greater plan for us that we just can't yet see. So I try to just trust the present moment in whatever form that comes in and not take it too personally when things turn out how I had hoped.

What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast. If change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Welcome back, Pivoters. I am so excited to be here Today with James McCrae. James is an author, poet, meme, artist, founder of Sunflower Club, a global school and community dedicated to conscious creativity, and the author of more than a few delightful books, including Shit yout Ego says how to Laugh in Ironic Amusement during your Existential Crisis and his latest, the Art of youf, which is just a beautiful book. So with that, James, welcome to the show.

Hello, Jenny. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to chat with you today.

I think one of the best book titles I've ever heard is how to Laugh in Ironic Amusement during your Existential Crisis. I want to talk about the new book, but can we start there? How did this title come to you?

Well, I thought that whole book is a bit of a trip because that book was created during and sort of because of the pandemic era of like 2020 and 2021. So the whole book is. It's a combination of poetry and memes. It's kind of like the first book of published memes that are, like, integrated into poetry as a form of artistic expression and even, like philosophical and spiritual insight. And I feel like the whole book was created during an existential crisis that not only was I having, but the whole world was having together. I always thought it was funny when certain books had long titles because it's so against convention. You want to have a short title, like two words. So I thought having an excessively long title, I always thought that was funny. So that was just the perfect opportunity to do it.

And it's a message in and of itself. Of course we want people to read the book, but they don't have to. It alone says something. It kind of reminds me of Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius or something like that, where you're like, oh, okay, the title alone is entertaining.

It's a little over the top. And that's. Yeah.

Totally. So this is the Pivot Podcast, and a lot of times, existential crises follow or precede a pivot. I love that the idea you brought in is how to laugh in ironic amusement. How did you get to that point when you were going through your own kind of cycle of death and rebirth and rediscovering yourself and what would be next for your creative process? How did you find the levity in it? Because existential crises can feel so heavy and discouraging and frustrating at moments.

I do love the whole premise of the podcast and the idea of the pivot, because I think it's so important to be able to pivot in your life, no matter who you are or where you are. And I feel like my entire journey as an artist, as a writer has been one of.

Continuous pivoting. And I think that's part of the nature of art and creativity is.

Shape shifting and reinvention and the road of life, it's meandering. It wanders here and there. It's not a straight line. So being willing to pivot and change directions and reinvent yourself is something that I would just recommend to everyone. And for instance, the Existential Crisis book, that was a few things, you know, that was the existential crisis of the world during the 2020 pandemic. But also I was going through my own professional pivot, where I was coming out of working in the advertising industry, where I had worked for over a decade. I was leading a brand strategy team at a New York City ad agency. And in the middle of all of this social upheaval, that company went under, and I lost my job. So I was going through my own personal career existential crisis as well. And what I recommend and what's always worked for me in terms of learning to laugh at the existential crisis is like, for me, whenever I've had to pivot, there's always been an element of surrendering because we all have ideas of where we want to go and where we want to be and what we want our career to look like and what we want our lives to look like. And we hold these ideas in our head. But sometimes our higher self or life or the universe has other plans. And sometimes those plans are better than the plans that we can ourselves see. So whenever I see my life falling apart, I always see it as an opportunity for change, for reinvention. In the Chinese language, the same word for crisis is used for the word opportunity. So I think a breakdown can become a breakthrough when we can surrender to the change and just get our own ego out of the way. And for me, whenever I do that, there's a moment of grace where I find new direction in the chaos. And for me, it was, you know, after working professionally as an advertising professional for so many years, that came in the form of rediscovering poetry, which, you know, I had written poetry a lot as a teenager and I hadn't for many years. And as part of that surrender and pivot, I rediscovered my own inner artist.

And then that directly led to that book of poetry and memes that I created. And then more recently, the Art of you, which really talks about my whole creative journey and all the creative insights that I've learned along the way.

I want to come back to this idea of finding your creative lineage, because I love that exercise that you share in the book. But first to the beautiful comment you made about crisis being even the same word in Chinese as opportunity. You also say in the Art of you to set intentions, not expectations. And you even have a mini framework around how to set intentions. So I would love if you could share what you mean by that. And I mean, I don't want to say a good intention, but give us some of your best practices of when you are setting intentions, what you find helpful.

An intention, it's about orienting your consciousness in a certain direction. And another way to say this would be just having a purpose and knowing your purpose. Because if we don't have a purpose and we don't have an intention, I think that we become subject to the winds of external change happening all around us, and then we end up reacting to the external world as opposed to showing up with our own internal purpose and intention. For example, like just on social media, that's where most of my work is shared. And these days, that's where most people share their thoughts and art is on social media. I just look at social media as one big conversation that the whole world is having together. I'm continuously asking myself, what is my role in this conversation? How can I provide value? What does the world need from me? With my unique interests and skill sets, I really just try to set an intention for how I show up, and then that just helps me orient and know my role and my purpose. It's really important for me to remember that intentions are not the same thing as expectations, as you said, because an expectation is sort of an external result. Like, I expect this book to be a bestseller. And it's like, expectations are, like, outside of our control. And I think expectations are really the enemy to the creative process, because I think that creativity and any creative project, whether a book or a podcast or anything, it has a life of its own. It's sort of like when you have a child, you can want that child to become X, Y and Z, but ultimately that child has their own path and their own destiny, and you want to create space for them to become whatever they're meant to be. So I try not to force expectations onto the creative process, but with an intention, you can guide it forward and intend to share vulnerably and to provide inspiration or positivity, but then also giving it the freedom to become whatever it wants to be.

I was just writing about the same thing and thinking about that, how creative projects are like kids, and you just cannot force them to be someone they're not. It's not going to work. They don't like it. Your creativity will fly out the window. It will be gone for good. Like, they don't react well to you trying to pigeonhole them with expectations or metrics or put too much pressure. When my second book, Pivot, was coming out, I cried projectile tears when the publisher told me they were delaying the pub date by six months because I really needed it. I wanted to build my business momentum back up. And then I realized I was treating it like it was in a child beauty pageant. Like this budding thing needed to go win the pageant for the family when it was just this new thing in the world. And that moment was, of course, as always, a blessing in disguise. That helped me take the pressure off of what it needed to be and gave me six months to go build that myself without expecting the book to do it all for me.

Yes. And one thing I've learned is that the mind only knows so much. I might think that I know what something should be, but that's coming from a place of ego. And I think that sometimes you have to let go of the known to discover the greater Unknown. So sometimes the universe or our higher selves have a greater plan for us that we just can't yet see. So I try to just trust the present moment in whatever form that comes in, and not take it too personally when things turn out how I had hoped.

Yes. Let's go back to the creative lineage exercise. I love that you offer this to us as almost looking back on our lives and figuring out who was influential on our creative journey. And you described this magical moment of finding Allen Ginsberg's poetry. And so I would love to hear about that experience and also just tell us about this exercise, because I've never really heard it put in these terms before, but it does seem incredibly useful.

Yeah, this is very important for me as an artist and as a writer. People talk about things like, we have ancestors, we have biological ancestors, and we come from a certain lineage. There's also different spiritual traditions. And every spiritual tradition is a lineage that whenever we subscribe to a spiritual tradition, we are in some way carrying the torch of that lineage. I used to practice a lot of yoga. One thing that they would talk about, the teachers, was that there's a golden thread of teachers that in yoga that stretch back thousands of years, literally. Like, if you think about it, every single yoga teacher in the world was taught by another teacher, and they, in turn, were taught by another teacher. And it goes back and back and back into ancient history. And I just find that such a fascinating idea and also a sense of responsibility to what are the torches that we're carrying forward? And are we being good lineage holders for our own traditions? So, for me, personally, as an artist, I think I am a spiritual person to a degree, but I've never really subscribed to a particular spiritual tradition or lineage. My heroes and my teachers and my mentors have always been artists and writers and poets and musicians. So I realized that I do come from a lineage of writers and artists.

And I've been influenced by so many artists and writers. But I did realize as I was thinking about this, that there's a particular lineage. Like you mentioned, I discovered the poetry of Allen Ginsberg when I was, like, 17. And that really changed my life and opened my eyes to a wider world of thinking and writing and even spirituality. And then just by studying Allen Ginsberg, you know, I learned that he had been influenced by other poets, who I would call almost like mystical poets, people like Walt Whitman and William Blake. And he saw himself as a lineage holder for that tradition of, like, these mystic poets. So I take that seriously, and I try to carry on that tradition in our time, which is what does that look like on social media? What does that look like on in the age of the Internet, in the age of podcasting? It's like you try to carry on the essence of that spark, but then you adapt it for the times that you live in. So I just think whether you're an artist or whatever you do, it's useful to know, like what is the traditions like, what are the biggest influences that you've had and how can you innovate on those traditions but also uphold that essence and that spirit that first inspired you?

We'll be right back just after this.

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It's interesting you mentioned the yoga teacher lineage. That's such a powerful thing to reflect on. And I remember when I had, well, just moved to New York, so I hadn't just finished yoga teacher training, but in New York I was exposed to such incredible teachers. I mean, a little bit in California too, but I just got into it here and I found myself getting very intimidated because people could go down the street to somebody's class who'd been teaching 30 years or the big names like Elena Brower and just really kind of famous people in the yoga world. And then there I was, 10 classes under my belt, feeling so self conscious. So I was very grateful to my teachers and awed by their classes and how they taught and the wisdom they shared. And I got so self conscious in those early days. And I wonder how you grapple with that, even writing a book on creativity. And you mentioned in the book Rick Rubin. Okay. And he comes out with a book on the creative process. Do you ever feel compare and despair with these teachers? Or have you gotten to a pretty Zen place with it?

There's a great quote by the jazz musician Miles Davis, and he said, sometimes it takes a long time to sound like yourself. Because I think that for anyone, I think there's an element of copying, like from an artist's perspective. I guess this applies to yoga too. But there's a certain element of copying your heroes until you find your own voice. Like, I could look back in some of my early poetry after discovering Ginsburg, and it would probably be very similar to his voice at times. But then life, you stick to it and life experience happens, and then you infuse your own life experiences into the mix, and gradually your own voice emerges. And maybe there's shades. I'm sure there's like, once in a while there's like a sentence that will come out, and I'm like, that sentence is so Ginsburg. But then I love that because it's more of like an accent than it is, like, copying. Another example is one of Ginsburg's close friends was the novelist Jack Kerouac. And Jack Kerouac, before he went on to write his own great novels, like on the Road, he wanted to know how it would feel in his fingers to type out the words of a great novel. So he actually took one of the greatest novels in American history, the Great Gatsby, and he typed it out word for word on his typewriter just so he would know how it would feel to write a great novel. His work sounds nothing like F. Scott Fitzgerald, but there's something about in training yourself to reach that point so you can then find it out on your own. So I think you have to be a student, you have to be a follower before you can be a teacher. And you have to, like, learn the fundamentals and the basics. And then eventually, when you stick with it long enough, whether that's in yoga or that's in writing, you know your own voice will eventually come through, and then you can speak from a place of authority.

You also talk about how to go on an inspiration scavenger hunt, which is finding new sources of inspiration that might not even be on your radar yet. What's one of your favorite ways to do that?

Wow. I mean, I just love to look for inspiration wherever I can find it and stay curious and stay open minded. That could just mean like breaking routine, like doing things out of the ordinary, like going to new places, going to a city you've never been to before and just wandering around and going to art galleries. One of the things I love to do is on YouTube. I love to watch interviews with artists, whether living or dead. I think that YouTube is such a great resource for creative inspiration because it's one thing to like listen to someone's music or read their books, but I think it's so useful to hear them speak about things. So I, I go down YouTube rabbit holes. Like I've watched every YouTube video with David Bowie, with Bob Dylan, with Prince. It's like you get an opportunity to like sit with these masters and learn from them. Even listening to new genres of music. Throughout my life I've been like, never listen to this genre of music or this artist. I'm just going to kind of take a deep dive and just like learn all about it, even if it's not my favorite, just to be curious and just to see a new perspective. So I'm always consuming art and I'm always like looking for new music releases and things like that. Just so I'm always consuming inspiration because whatever comes out of us is a result of what we consume. So I just try to consume inspiring things so hopefully I can create inspiring things.

And it's the best feeling when you find something or someone that you want to binge. Like you said about YouTube or podcasts, you've also said like, a common thread in your creative process is being a meme artist. And some of us are true meme aficionados. I have my husband to thank who sends me his meme roundup every evening after I go to bed. But tell us, like, what do you love about the meme format and what's your process for creating memes? What makes a good James McCrae meme?

Wow. I mean, I could talk about memes all day.

They're the best.

It's funny because, like, I was already a published author and I had a podcast and all of these things. But it wasn't until I started making memes when, like, my social media started to blow up. People mostly know me for my memes. It's a very potent tool of expression and communication. So what I love is how the meaning of memes goes. We talk about memes as these funny Internet pictures, essentially. But the word meme was coined in 1976 by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, and he was Making a comparison to how genes work in biology. So if there's a biological system, there's all these genes, and the role of a gene is to replicate and to spread, and there's certain gene mutations, and if there's an advantageous gene mutation that can go viral in that biological system and become the new norm. And this is how evolution works. This is how survival of the fittest works, is by this replication of advantageous genes. So memes are the same concept in the world of culture and ideas. So a meme is basically a viral idea, and that could be a slogan, a catchphrase, an idea, a song. Memes could come in all different shapes and sizes. And Internet memes are just a very effective way of to spread an idea because there's something with the visual and the caption that it creates more than the sum of its parts. An image says a thousand words, and then the right caption can just really pay it off. So there's just this magical alchemy that happens when you have the right image and the right caption to convey the right message. Most Internet memes, at least historically, have been sort of frivolous and silly, and that's great. But when I went into making memes, I was like, okay, I'm a poet. I'm an armchair philosopher, let's say. So I'm like, how can I apply my poetry, my philosophy, my spiritual insight to the meme? And writing, it's such an art form to write for the meme. It reminds me of the old Japanese style of poetry called a haiku, which is just only 17 syllables that are used to convey a whole scene or environment or feeling. There's a limitation to the format. So it's like, how can I convey a message and spread inspiration, insight through this vehicle of Internet memes? For me, it's fun. You know, I have a background as a designer and as a writer. For me, it's about combining those two into one format. And yeah, I think that memes are such an effective and weirdly modern and native to social media form of art.

And they say so much. There's political memes, there's societal memes, late stage capitalism, middle class, fancy, healing from healing. Like, they can say so much. And one of my favorite ones from the art of you from your book is the Creative Journey. And it's this tangle, like as if a string was tangled up. This is gonna be awesome. This is harder than I expected. I think I'm getting the hang of it. Who am I kidding? I'm an Imposter. This is. Will never work. Let me try something different. Hey, not bad. It's like, that is how it is. That is the creative journey. And I think that memes are fun because you feel so seen. And they can be very specific, too. I think that's also what makes a good meme. Like, I loved the other one you did. That was a person, like, with a talk bubble, and it just said, how are you today? And the talk bubble says, fine. But then in the creative or the artist's head is just like chaos again, you know, of how they're really doing, what's really going on. And I feel that so often.

So the thing is, like, memes hit you in the gut rather than the head. That's the thing. And there's a certain element of humor that's conveyed with the image. It's received differently. I could give a lecture on a topic, or I could write an essay on a topic, and it's going to be boring, and you're either going to be predisposed to agreeing with me or disagreeing with me. But there's something with a meme because there's that unexpected element to it. You're encoding the meme with more meaning than are in the actual words. It happens in a fraction of a second, but the receiver unpacks that in their own mind, and it cuts through the intellectual barriers with that element of humor, it's able to cut through the clutter in a way that other forms of writing can't.

Absolutely. And I love what you said, that they hit you in the gut through the humor. I think a good meme really conveys something true. And, I mean, that's good comedy in general. They say comedy is like truth and pain, and that that's the stuff that makes us laugh.

Absolutely.

So if you could give pivot listeners maybe one tiny experiment toward boosting their own creativity or their creative process in the next week, what would it be?

Well, I mean, the book is filled with so many different exercises and rituals, but if I had to highlight one to practice, because I think that the Art of you, it outlines all these different stages of the creative process, from setting an intention to cultivating your intuition, to finding your own voice and style, launching projects, even going pro with your creativity. So there are so many parts that are covered. But I think that the most important stage of being an artist and being creative is to cultivate your own intuition, which is about feeling rather than thinking, getting out of your head and getting into your body. So I start every morning with just 10 minutes of meditation. I would recommend everyone just to cultivate a mindfulness practice. Don't work and write from the head, but work and write from your body and from your feelings and your emotions. When you're meditating, try to just feel how your body feels in that moment and just focus on how your body feels, how your emotions feel, how your energy feels, and just sit with that. Don't think about anything. Just sit with your own feelings. And if you sit with your own feelings long enough, I promise that an idea will start to come through. Ideas have a whole life cycle, and I think ideas start in our feelings before it pops into our minds. So I think that having a stronger relationship with your own emotions and feelings will give you better ideas than if you're always thinking.

Absolutely. I love that. And I find that ideas are so willing to come, too. You just have to get quiet enough and even ask. Like, it's okay to ask. Or say, I'm inviting ideas now, or I'd really love some inspiration today. And I just love how you're framing it up of getting out of only our mind. And intuition is definitely a recurring theme here on the pivot pod, because I think that is so much of the change process is when your usual mind tricks are no longer working and we can tap into something deeper.

Yes. And I love what you said. I think you can ask a question, like, if you're trying to solve a specific thing or you're trying to write a specific thing, one thing you could do is just ask the universe a question and then just sit there and again, feel your body and feel your emotions and just wait for the answer to come. And don't rush it, don't force it, but just really become a vessel for that voice of the muse. So just asking a question and sitting there in silence and being a willing receiver for an answer, that can go a long way.

Well, you've done a beautiful job demonstrating that and living the process and showing it in the art of you. So listeners, grab your copy wherever books are sold. I'll put the links to Sunflower Club as well in the chat. Is there anywhere else you want to send people, James, to learn more or keep in touch?

Yeah, you can go to my Instagram at Words are Vibrations and the link in my bio there will have all the relevant links. You can order my books and check out my podcast and go to my website and all that stuff.

Awesome. What a great handle. Words are vibrations.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, James. Big thanks to everybody for being here, listening.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivot pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.