424: How to cultivate, master and express your creativity with Chase Jarvis

Hi, everyone. I'm so happy you've tuned into the show. Whether you have listened before or you're brand new, I'm so grateful for you. You have no idea. And this episode is brought to you by my Become Aligned course. And podcasts are amazing. And I know that you know that because you guys all listen to them, and I do, too. And sometimes they are not necessarily enough because while we're listening, sometimes we're passively listening and we're not actively listening. So the reason that Chris and I. Chris is my husband. The reason we've created this course is because we get asked so many questions outside of the podcast on how we started living the life that we live now. A life of happiness, of abundance, of really understanding that life is always full of problems every single day, but there's always a solution. And how do we shift back into a mindset that's going to keep us happy, keep us together, keep us successful, and keep us in thriving relationships? And that is what our, our Become Aligned course is about. You guys, we cover everything from mindset to the rituals that we do every single day. We talk about different energy sources that's really gonna provide you with lasting energy. We talk about your purpose and what that actually means, what it is and how it's ever changing. We're gonna tap into your beliefs, we're gonna show you how to build a tribe to support where you're going. And we're definitely going to talk about wealth, abundance, money, all of the good things, and how to sustain all of this. Because while, like I said, POD are absolutely awesome, you don't necessarily sit down and actually write out a plan for yourself. Because as much as I can sit here and tell you on the podcast, what we do and how much, how many different people that I can interview, it's important that you actually learn how to apply these things in your own life. So if you've been listening for a while and you are ready to go deeper and you really want to get some direct training and be able to dive into your life and yourself and your mindset, this is the course for you. I don't know about you, but I absolutely have points in my life where I don't know where I'm going. I don't know what I'm doing. Sometimes I hit walls where I don't necessarily feel happy anymore, and I haven't sat with myself long enough. I haven't really let myself think. I haven't written out how I actually feel. And so many people who took this course said that it was completely life changing and they revealed a lot of things about themselves, about them, about their. About their relationships that they weren't really looking at or they were avoiding. And it's about having those tough conversations, not only with other people, but really with yourself and knowing that you have the tools and the access to the tools. And we're going to teach you all of the tools that you need not only to move through things, but to actually thrive on the other side. So, you guys, I would love for you to join the aligned community. It's such a special group of human beings and you get lifetime time access. This is nine different modules where you're going to be working through each area of your life at your own pace. So you might need something on abundance, you might need more on, you know, money, you might need more on your purpose on your tribe. This is where you can really go deep on exactly what you need and make sure that you're not missing any of your blind spots if you are feeling stuck or if you are wondering how everyone is doing it and how they're managing it all. This is a truly honest course about how to have a thriving life and manage and deal with all of the different problems that do come up in your life and understand that not everyone is going to support you and not everyone is for you and you are not for everyone. And that's okay. It's finding your people. It's forgiving yourself. It's creating a life of abundance and choosing your own purpose and your happiness. So, you guys, you can go to becomealigned.com that's becomealigned.com and you guys know that because you're listeners, I'm gonna give you an awesome deal and an awesome discount and I cannot wait to see you in that community. And also let me know if you join because it is such an awesome, awesome community. And also I'm really proud of this course. Chris and I poured our heart and our soul into this. Everything that we've done, everything that we've learned, we've invested so much into ourself that this is everything that we have applied in our lives. And if you want to know how we've done it, we put it all on the table. We've put it all in this course. So if you want to know, go check it out@becealigned.com so let's get into the show.

The more work you do around your health and fitness, the stronger you get. Well, the same is true with creativity. It's Maya Angelou said It's the infinite resource. The more you have, the more you get. The more you use it, the more you have.

Welcome to the Earn your happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, founder of The Bliss Project, 3 Time Fitness World champion, fitness expert and cover model, turned self love junkie, lifestyle entrepreneur and author. Each week I'll bring you a guest or a thought that will help you bust through your fears, connect to your soul and get focused and clear so you can elevate your life, business and relationships. We don't wait until we're ready for someone to tell us we're good enough. We take what we want and we anoint ourselves, get ready to earn, own and unapologetically rock your happiness every single day. Are you with me?

Here we go, foreign.

Welcome back to the Earn your happy podcast. And you guys, I'm so excited for today's episode because it is all about everything that I love, which is creativity and really stepping, your purpose and your calling and everything that comes up around actually doing that. And before we get to it, speaking on that exact note, you guys, if you have not heard, I have created a new event with my amazing co host and partner and collaborator on this journey and that is Lindsay Schwartz and we have created something called Event Love. You can find all about it@eventluv.com eventluv.com and you guys, truly this is another step on my life's path. Like this is that place that I know I'm being called to and I am being called to help teach future teachers, speakers, leaders, event hosts, anyone who wants to truly get their message out there in a mess way. So maybe you have an existing business and you want to run a mastermind and add a mastermind element to it. Maybe you have something that you want to start doing high end weekend retreats, maybe it's something that you just want to start doing large retreats or small workshops. Or you can see something in your life right now. Maybe you work for a company that you could see creating a promotion for yourself through creating a new thing that you could be doing for your company and doing events and doing workshops within your own company and offering this set of skills and helping host events at your own company as is. You guys, we are so incredibly excited about this endeavor because we know we are called to help the future leaders, facilitators and teachers. So if you are already doing events, but you really want to learn how to make them profitable, if you want to step in even bigger, if you want to learn the ins and outs and the secrets to owning, honing your message, to feeling better, to feeling more confident within this work and being able to be supported within it and be profitable. You absolutely need to check this out. It's going to be super intimate. We are capping it at about 60 people. So it's one week long and it is a certification program. So after the week you will feel like you have the skills, you will know the flow, you'll know how to set up your event, you'll know how to create transformational experiences for people. And you'll also be connecting with 60 other like minded people who will help support you on your journey. So if you don't feel supported now, you will later. But first you have to support yourself by creating that accountability, creating that pressure for yourself to show up. And you do it by saying yes before you feel ready. So go to eventlove.com, eventluv.com and we would love to see you there. And on today's podcast you guys is Chase Jarvis. I got to meet this human at the summit of greatness and I immediately felt like I knew him. I share a little bit of a story about the first time I met him on this podcast and also got to learn from him. So spent about two hours getting to just be immersed in everything that he knows. And I'll tell you that his mind is brilliant. He's, and he's worked with some of the most brilliant minds. He's an award winning artist, entrepreneur and one of the most influential, influential photographers of the past decade. He's created campaigns for Apple, Nike, Red Bull and others. He was a contributor for the Pulitzer winning New York Times story Snowfall and earn an Emmy nomination for his documentary Portrait of a City. He also created Best Camera, the first photo app to share images to social networks. And he's the founder of Creative Live. You guys, I don't know if you've gone to that website, but it is awesome. It's where more than 10 million students learn photography, video design, music and business from the world's top creators and entrepreneurs. He has been a keynote speaker forever. He's been an advisor to Fortune 100 brands and has been a guest at the Obama White House, the United nations, the Library of Congress, 10 Downing Street, Buckingham palace and the DIFC in Dubai.

Wow.

Okay. Are you ready?

Yeah.

I, I think that we are on the edge of our seat.

So let's just start this with the.

Holidays and the new year coming. You probably are looking around your house thinking that you would love to upgrade and freshen up your environment. And there is no easier way to do that than with your window treatment sense. Nobody covers windows better than blinds.com blinds.com brings your space to life in your way. They have free design help. Other retailers may claim to have experts, but blinds.com has spent nearly 30 years building an award winning team of over 100 design consultants that are ready to help you create your dream space. Always convenient, always tailored to you. Three ways to shop 1. Perfect fit Whether you want a DIY, have it all done for you or you're somewhere in between, choose what works for you and rest easy knowing the fit is guaranteed. So the holidays come fast you guys, and you can freshen up your window treatments fast as well. And unlike some competitors, the price you see is the price you pay. No hidden fees and there's zero pressure. From blackout in motorized options to classic shutters, blinds.com has window treatments for every room, style and budget, even shades for your outdoor space. The Black Friday deals@blinds.com are going strong all month long, so don't miss your chance to save big. And as always, our listeners still get 50 off when you spend 500 or more. Just use code EARN at checkout, limited time offer rules and restrictions apply. See blinds.com for details. 2026 is the year that you launch your business. It's the year that you've become the boss. You become the leader. That idea that you have that has been eating at you forever that just will not leave you alone is going to come to life. May maybe it's something that someone tells you you should always sell or a store you've already designed in your head. And with Shopify, 2026 is when you finally make it happen. Shopify gives you everything you need to sell online and in person. Millions of entrepreneurs have already made this leap from household name to first time business owners. Just getting started you guys. I use Shopify for glossy and I remember when they sent me my little shopping bag celebrating my 10,000 sales and I literally cried because I was so.

Scared to take the leap.

And I'm so glad that I did.

And that I use Shopify.

It gives you all the tools to easily build your dream store. You can choose from hundreds of beautiful templates that you can customize to match your brand setup is fast with Shopify's built in AI tools that write product descriptions and headlines and help you edit photos. So marketing is built in too. You can create email and social campaigns that reach customers wherever they scroll. So as you grow, Shopify grows with you. You can handle more orders Expand to new market and do it all from the Same dashboard in 2026. Stop waiting and start selling with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com happy. Go to shopify.com happy. That's shopify.com happy. Hear your first cha ching this new year with Shopify by your side.

Chase, I'm so grateful to have you on the show. Thank you so much for coming on.

I am so happy to be here. Thank you so much. Lori.

Oh, my gosh, I'm so excited about this. Number one, because when I met you for the first time, I was like, oh, my Lord. He's one of those people that can. Like, I was literally able to drop in with you, like, after five seconds, and you make people feel like you've almost like you've met them before. Like, I was almost questioning myself, like, am I supposed to know him? Have you ever met someone like that where you're like, wait, does he know me really well? Because he's acting like we're friends, and I'm really digging this, but I don't think I've met him before.

It's the same thing that I had in meeting you. I'm like, I feel like we travel in the same circles. We have a lot of the same friends, and for one reason or another, I felt connected right away. And so maybe that's good. There's kismet there.

Yeah.

I just think there's this certain. With everybody.

Right.

There's this certain energy that you're like, oh, okay, I can be.

Yes.

My people. Exactly.

I found my people. So number two, though, I know that Chris just got to have a conversation with you. So then, of course, like most couples, then we have another conversation about you.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

It was great. It was so good. So I'm really, really excited to talk to you today because you are just in, like, the vortex of a topic that I absolutely love, and that is creativity. And you're literally. You have so much incredible success, from Creative Live to so many other. You have so many other projects going on because you're like a crazy creative or.

What is that?

Just fill me in on a few of your other projects that you have.

Sure. Well, most recently, I had a book that's dropping this week. It's called Creative Calling. I think my day to day, I'm spending a lot of time on Creative Live, where I'm founder and CEO, which I don't know if folks at home are familiar with Creativelive it's the world's largest learning platform for creators and entrepreneurs. It's where more than 10 million people go to learn about creativity, entrepreneurship and pursuing their passions and career, hobby and life. I've built a couple iPhone apps and my sort of the foundation which was my entree into really connecting with my own native creativity was through photography where I had a long career shooting everything from stuff fine art to commercial advertising for the Nikes and the apples of the world. And so it's all just kind of a little mishmash and I find my way to make it work. But the best part about it is I get to go to work with people who, who resonate, who love what they do. And I get to be around folks like you who are pursuing their passions and look at if you can spend. There's so many things in the world that we can't choose and if you can choose how you spend your time and with whom, you got it all. So I feel super, super blessed. I'm really excited about the book and thanks for having me on the show. Seriously grateful.

Well, thank you. And I literally cannot wait to read this book because some of my favorite books are about creativity and the resistance around it and what it means, what the habit is and good lord, I have had a insane psychotic relationship with creativity. So it's like a love hate, right? And now it's more of a love because I understand it, but I just didn't understand it before. So I do want to ask you though, because I heard on my walk that you didn't think that you were a creative before and you just rambled off things that people are like, okay, well that has to be like something that you were born with or a talent or something that innate within you. So can you tell me a little bit about that story about how you.

Yeah, well, I think my story is, I think it parallels the story for so many of us and that is we're a, we come into this world and if you ask like just go to any first grade class, right? And you're like, who, you know, who wants to come to the front of the room and draw me a picture? How many hands go up in a first grade class? Every hand goes up because we are like innately creative. And as a young kid I super identified with it. You know, I made films with my spare time with a little crappy Super 8 Cameron and there's my parents little Instamatic camera that had that little flash cube on top of it. And I remember in second grade Ms. Kelly's class specifically. I used to love to have a little stand up comedy routine and I had a comic book strip that I wrote every week. My character's name was Clyde and the details are less important, but I definitely like all of those activities brought me joy. And then one day it was the parent teacher conference and I overheard Miss Kelly tell my mom that I was better at, I was so much better at sports than I was at art. And I didn't, I can't even say it was like traumatic. It was just like a. Oh, well, I had no idea because as a child or a kid, you're not judging the quality of your comic book strip, right? Your magic tricks might suck or your stand up routine or whatever it is that you're doing. My film might have sucked, but what we do is we gravitate to the things where we get rewarded, right? And so it's like, oh, well, okay, great, now I'm going to dive into sports. And to be totally crystal clear, it served me well. I went to college on a soccer scholarship. I played at a high level with soccer and football and went on to be on the Olympic development soccer team. And it served its purpose. But something really interesting happened to me a week before my college graduation. And I'll even say dramatic in that my grandfather dropped dead of a heart attack. No expectation, no, like it was just there and then gone. And he had been a photographer. And my whole childhood, from start at that second grade classroom to that point, like my grandfather and my dad, they were always around taking pictures of me and my friends skateboarding or playing football or soccer. And so I always had a curiosity of photography and I was aware that it was pretty cool to be able to capture a moment that was never going to happen again. But to be fair, again I was doubling down on my identity, had been more as an athlete. And if I was an athlete, then, well, I wasn't creative because those are separate things. So culture tells us. And I think my story is, you know, it's uniquely mine. But the reality is that is a cultural narrative about how we perceive creativity. It's something that you either have and people are either rewarded or steered away from it. And that creativity is. Creativity is a small C, and it means art, it means drawing and painting and writing and. And when in reality none of those things are exclusively true, that creativity is so much bigger than just art and we are all fundamentally creative. Just go back to that first grade classroom. We all want to express ourselves and we all, as young people don't actually care, are we drawing or painting or is it finger paints or is it dance or whatever? And I just, as a person who then came back to creativity when my grandfather, as he died, he willed me his cameras. And so I got to at that moment. And often this happens through trauma or some, you know, it's not always negative. It could be the birth of a child. You start to just like, question everything, like, what am I doing? And what I questioned when my grandfather dropped dead was, wait a minute, this is the universe, like, giving me his cameras. And I'd always been curious of it. And. And so I picked up his cameras and started teaching myself how to take pictures. I, in fact, put all my stuff in a backpack and went on this sort of a vision quest to try and understand a little bit more about myself and the world. And it was weird to come full circle and realize that I had sort of, incidentally, because of the dominant culture narratives that we're all programmed with, denied that part of myself. And. And I felt bad about it. And so I started digging into that. And lo and behold, I realized that that experience of creating something, a, it's supernatural, it's what we were put on this planet to do, and B, the definition of creativity, it's not just photography or design or whatever that we are creating machines as human beings, right? That's like what differentiates us from all the other species. We've just been taught to think in this really narrow definition that creativity is art and it's finger painting and all these other things. And when in reality it's building a family, coding, creating a career, sure, it includes photography and design and all those things, but ultimately all of these little decisions that we make every day, these small daily creative acts, what you're going to have for dinner, what business are you going to build? When you start to look at those as small individual creative acts, it starts to help you understand that, you know what? I actually have agency to create my life. This is creativity at a different scale. So to go back to your original question, yeah, I totally denied my creativity. And I don't think it's all that uncommon. And that's one of the reasons I wrote the book. I ended up just unpacking my own creativity and. And embracing it and have had a life that was so good to me and rich and creative in a lot of the traditional ways, but also into being able to craft that arc of life, the creativity with the capital C. And like, wait a minute, why is nobody talking about this? So that's why I had to write the book and I'm still on the journey.

There are so many challenges to business that I don't want starting to be.

One of them for you.

And when you want more, when you're starting a business, you need Northwest Registered Agent because you get access to thousands of free guides, tools and legal forms to help you launch and protect your business. And it's all in one place. You can build your complete business identity with Northwest today. Northwest Registered Agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow business for nearly 30 years. They're the largest registered agent and LLC LLC service in the US with over 1500 corporate guides. Real people who know your local laws and can help you and your business.

Every step of the way.

You can sign up for free account to begin managing your business hub with lawyer, drafted operating agreements, bylaws, resolutions, membership certificates, bills of sale and more at no cost. Northwest makes life easy for business owners. They don't just help you, you form your business, they give you the free tools you need after you form it. Like operating agreements, meeting minutes and thousands of how to guides that explain the complicated ins and outs of running a business. And let me tell you, this is life changing because I had no idea how much went into this. So don't wait. Protect your privacy, build your brand and get your complete business Identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit www.northwestregisteredagent.com Earn free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest registered agent at www.northwestregisteredagent.com forward/earnfree Too many people finish their workday feeling frustrated, drained and unfulfilled. I know that. I have experienced that myself. And the good news is it doesn't happen to be this way and you don't need a new job to fix it. Patrick Lencioni, author of the Five Dysfunctions of a Team and more than a dozen other bestsellers, created the Working Genius assessment to help you pinpoint the kind of work that gives you energy, the kind that lights you up, and it also shares the kind that drains it. So over a million people, including me, have taken it and completely changed how I lead and show up every day. If you're a CEO, an entrepreneur or something, someone who just wants to level up in business and in life, Working genius is going to give you the clarity and confidence to operate in your strengths and find greater joy in what you do. Because confidence isn't pretending to be good at everything. It's knowing where you're truly gifted. Take the Working genius Assessment today and get 20% off with code Earn at Working genius. Com. That's working genius.com, you'll be glad you did it.

Okay. So many questions.

That's what you get when you get a four minute opening monologue.

You're talking to someone and you're like, just pick. Because there is literally 20 different ways I could go with this right now, because I'm curious. So what was the point for you? You know, when you went on the journey with the cameras and it was like the universe kind of telling you, is this the direction I'm supposed to go? There are those choices where you're like, you could choose to believe this is the direction you're supposed to go, or was there also something, like, deep in you that was not being satisfied or something that you felt was like. You know, for me, I call it like my inner, like, toddler that's having a temper tantrum when I'm not listening to it, when I don't let it express or, like, create. Was some of that going on for you? That was like, also a nudge to go on this journey. What did that feel like? How was that coming out for you?

Well, the title of the book is Creative Calling. And I think ultimately it can be a calling when we learn to pay attention to it. But the cool thing is, is it first starts out as a whisper, and it is that thing that is inside you. This is a voice. This is an experience that we've all had when we're doing things that make us happy, with people, that bring us joy, and we're spending time on things that bring us fulfillment, what matters. And then we've all had lots of experiences where we're not in that space. And, you know, whether it was the death of my grandfather or having a little space to start to reflect on that, for whatever reason, I was able to pay attention and just to listen to, maybe it was that inner toddler or whatever. But the cool thing is that through deconstructing my own life, the successes and failures that I've had and. And the world's top creators and entrepreneurs, many that I've had on my podcast, the Richard Bransons and the Brene Browns and the Tim Ferrisses and the Gary Vee's, the people that are dear friends of mine, and you start having really long, deep conversations with them and realize that, wait a minute, there's a pattern here. This is a thing that we all were told what we were supposed to be or do or be like this and go to the School and do this thing. And. And it came from people who we love dearly, from our closest peers, our friends, our family, our loved ones. And yet we can still feel off, we can still have chased the thing that my second grade teacher told me to chase, which served me well for a long time. But there was something that I was ignoring and something that I was denying in myself, which was that for me, that was sort of my inner creative mojo. And again, this is a really common paradigm. You start deconstructing the lives of most successful folks and for very few people. Is it just like you just like woke up one day, Yep, oh, I know I'm going to do this. And then you go do it. It's usually this winding, imperfect sort of stumbling path before we figure it out. To me, that's to answer your question directly, that's what was going through my mind. Like, is that thing that I'm hearing, is that real? Is that me? And it just so turns out, just so happens that we all have this little voice and sometimes it's just a whisper and it certainly doesn't give us a map, but it gives us a compass. And the compass, right. If you know the difference between a map and a compass, a map shows you the whole journey. And start here and here. A compass is just a direction. And so, you know, whether through bliss or fear or ignorance or whatever reason, I just started walking toward that part of myself that I had heard. And the strangest thing happened. Life started happening for me instead of to me. I started finding joy in these moments. And of course, photography was the sort of the lens through which I was looking at this double entendremch. But it was also like, oh man, it's not just about photography. This is about life. We have this inner voice and we're largely taught by people who we care about to ignore it. Like, nope, you need to go to school, you need to do this and this and this, and then you're going to get this job and then you're going to have this career and you're going to do that, you're going to have the gold watch and then you're going to retire and live happily ever after. Which I understand why they tell us that. But you know what? Maybe that's not all there is. And I just think that we need to start paying attention. And for me, when I started paying attention, that's when life really started to unfold.

So you explained a little bit about what creativity is and how important it is. But what exactly what is your Relationship with it, what are its traits? If creativity were a person, how can you expect.

Great question. I love it. I'm going to make a note of that one. That's a good one. Creativity, word, person. It is this raw power that again, forget everything you know about creativity. And if you are a person who identifies as a creator or not, let's just park all that sort of lore for a moment and say what it's not. Sometimes saying what it is, it's important to juxtapose it with what it's not, what it's not. It does not require that you get a new set of friends, that you move to Paris, that you smoke these cigarettes, that you buy some paints, that none of those things, these are just toxic myths about what creativity is and what you look like if you practice it. And instead, what I want to do with creativity and what kind of person is it, is the most inclusive thing on the planet. It's like creativity and love, that is, we are creating machines, every single thing. When we're putting new ideas together in a way that only I can, or in a way, Lori, that only you can. Because only you have your DNA. Only you've lived the life that you've lived. Only you have agency over your life at any one moment. And so all these little moments, deciding to make this exercise video or deciding to join that mastermind or to craft your next course, whatever it might be, those are just wildly creative acts that are totally natural. If we start to acknowledge that this is a power, this is like it's our superpower, the person that epitomizes creativity would be Wonder Woman. It's literally the most fundamental things that we do on a day to day basis have creativity as their foundation. And again, this doesn't really fit with the idea of creativity that we were all sold or that we were talked into or out of as a 5, 10, 15 year old. And so the purpose of the book, and this is again based on my realization of like, wait a minute, this is super inclusive. Every person is creative. And if instead of thinking of that old classic thing that you think of when you think of creativity and you hear things like starving artists and all that stuff, if you instead start to think of, wait a minute, just follow me here. One, everyone's creative. We just know that from that first grade class. Two, creativity is not some skill, it is a habit. It is like a behavior, it is a mentality. It's a process, not a product. I liken it to a muscle. This will be good as a fitness person, you can acknowledge that, that the more work you do around your health and fitness, the stronger you get. Well, the same is true with creativity. It's. Maya Angelou said, it's an infinite resource. The more you have, the more you get, the more you use it, the more you have. And so if you believe one is true, everyone's creative, and you believe two, that creativity is like a muscle, the big takeaway is it's in creating small, regular ways every day. So, yes, cooking a meal, building a course, building a business, writing code, designing something, it's in doing those small daily actions that you actually recognize that you also can create. You have agency over creating your life. To me, that was what struck me when I started really identifying as like, yes, I'm creative. And I hear people say, oh, I'm not creative. And I know they mean it casually, but I think words matter. And I think if you recognize that, wait a minute, you're building businesses, you're writing code, you're baking cakes, you're designing your future, you're designing a home, you're building a family, all those things are wildly creative. And if you can start to draw a bigger circle around creativity and actually acknowledge that this is a power that you have, again, life starts to just to unfold in ways that you're like, wait a minute, that this is possible. And all the lives that you see, whether it's your next door neighbor who's full of integrity and you appreciate them and their humility and wisdom, or it's Brene Brown or Tim Ferriss or Lewis or anybody, you start to say, wait a minute, those lives that they're leading, you know what they were designed, they didn't just stumble into that. They had a vision, they designed a path to get there, they executed that vision and now they're sharing it with us. So this is like a repeatable thing in the world. To me, that's the unlock, that's the Trojan horse of the book.

Okay, so here's a question I have around creativity, because I have seen it in my life. The more that I practice it, the more you obviously gain confidence and you realize that it's literally something that kind of opens up for you. But there's a couple of things that I can't necessarily explain to people unless they've also been there. But I would love to see if you could, if you've experienced this, like I found with creativity that it's almost like it's, it's not necessarily outside of you, but the more that you practice it you almost like, kind of tap into a. Like a vortex that doesn't actually. It feels even, like, bigger than you or smarter than you or something. But it is you, but you're tapping into it. And also, I've noticed, you know, that happened throughout my book. I was like, wait, did I just write that? Because that sounds amazing. And I found that the more that I wrote, like, the more this, like, access to this wisdom really opened up. And then also, do you think that there is much more wisdom that we get access to when we are creating with other people, obviously their brains and their perspective, But I feel like something else opens up even more.

I love what you just said because it taps into two really, really key areas that I've learned about through my own process and talking to some of these, some of the world's top performers. And let's take the first point, which is, what is it you're tapping into? So what I believe you're tapping into is your own personal power. We are taught that power exists outside of us, that you have to be more like this or more like that or that. The answers are somewhere out there around the corner for you to go find. We always talk about finding our purpose. I call bs. The answers are in you. You create your purpose, and it's through action, not your intellectual, that you actually discover this. That's why the doing is so important. And the thing that you tap into that is your true, authentic self. When you can start to pay attention to that, it's like being supercharged. I got a line in the book. It's like when Dorothy steps out of her black and white Kansas world. It's like she steps into Technicolor Munchkin land. It's like a completely different universe. And that's exactly what you were describing. If I'm. If I'm taking it as I think you intended, and it really is, it's like a new depth. And to me, that's our internal personal power that we all have. And the cool thing is that this is available to all of us. And if you're not feeling it, hey, no problem. Lives have seasons. We all have felt in flow and out of flow. The cool thing about creativity is that it is a direct access. It has the most direct access to that. And especially when you're sort of tapped into your own authenticity and you can, what I would say, tap into that, your intuition, which is something that, especially in Western cultures, we're taught to largely ignore, right? Like we talk about the brain and cognition and rational thought and hey, I'm not against any of those things. But what we know about the body is that the brain is a, a multimillion year old organ that's designed to keep you alive. Not happy, not fulfilled. That's not its concern. And so if you can start to listen to your heart, your gut, that's why they call it a gut instinct, because it's a total body. And you've felt this before in your life. Everybody who's listening has. You start to look backwards, think about times where you felt that everything was happening effortlessly. When you were around people that you loved, when you felt in line with your purpose and a higher meaning for your life that is available to you at all times and it is found in your intuition. You start trusting that gut and that is, as you said, starts to unfold. So to me, that's the first part of your question. The second part, what is it like to do that with other people? In the book, I go really deep into a thing that I think is wildly misunderstood and that's community. The book is organized in a very simple framework. This is a creative process. And if you just go through this process, whether you're baking a cake or building a business or designing your life, it's four steps. Idea. Idea I is for imagining what's possible. And then there's a whole set of steps on how you sort of break out of conventional thinking in order to create a new vision for either the cake or for your life. D is design. You have to design a set of behaviors that are going to get you there. If you want to be super fit, you're going to design a workout. If you want to be extra, want to tap into your creativity, you're going to design a daily practice around that. Again, nothing really happens on accident. You don't stumble into something to get repeated success, you design it. So E is you're just executing that vision that you designed. And this fourth piece, the piece that I want, I think that you locked into is what I call amplify. And that has everything to do with community. So so many of us and you know, just raise your hand whether where you're jogging down the road right now or sitting in your car or at home listening to this or at work, just raise your hand, it'll be fine. We'll all look around and look at everybody raising our hands. If you've ever felt you've done your best work, you've put it out, you've put everything you had into the thing, whether it was a performance or a Presentation for work or a meal that you worked hard to create for your family, or a dinner party, whatever the circumstance, and you put it out there in the world, you're nervous. And then crickets, tumbleweeds, Nothing. No response. It's humiliating, and you feel horrible. And the thinking is where people go wrong is that they've done something wrong, that it's not their best work, or that they somehow shouldn't have done that. When the reality is the only missing ingredient was you hadn't actually participated in a community or built a community around your work, around a set of people, ears, eyes, hearts and souls for your work to land. And people think that, oh, well, look at his success or her success, and that they just did the work because that's what we're sold. Oh, great work, Bubbles. To the top. Baloney. The hardest working people that I know are the most talented people that I know are also the hardest working. And half of their time, literally half, is spent cultivating community. And that can take many forms. But community is such a huge, like, you're creating a place for your work to land for yourself, to get feedback and to support and to be supportive. And if you take your question at just slightly more than face value, you start to understand that community and creating with others, alongside them, in service of them, to support them, is everything so powerful. And you know that, right? I watch the community that you've built around your work, and it's so inspiring. And when you put the book out, because you've been giving back to people for so long and because you've been, you know, I love to say, be the fan you wish you had. You show up for other people, and in showing up for other people, they in return will show up for you. And not in the transactional way either, as in a supportive, like, these are my people sort of way.

Thank you for that. Just also for that. And that's so true. I can't even tell you guys. You brought me right back to, you know, years ago when I was really just in the fitness world and I started transitioning to personal development. Like, I remember my first few Facebook posts, I was like, they hate it. They don't want me to talk about this. I should just post another picture in the gym. And it was like, don't like. It was. It was me getting in the way of like, no, you have to. You don't have the right people yet. Like, keep talking. So years and years later, you finally, you know, build this amazing community and people really, I think it's hard to remember that or see that transition period.

Can I throw one other thing in there to agree with what you're saying? People, they definitely don't see that transition period. And what they do see is Lori Harder Instagram following X or Twitter following Y, or Mastermind group Z or whatever. And the answer is, it's not about Lori. If you're sitting in Ohio in your underwear listening to this podcast right now, it's about you. And it's not about a thousand Instagram followers or a million Instagram followers. If you're a blacksmith in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, you maybe need a community of 12 restaurateurs for whom you take care of their knives or that plus one ranch and you take care of all the horses on the ranch or whatever. The thing is, community is a really misunderstood word. And it's important to think that it's not just in terms of likes and posts and social media, but in actual sort of online and in actual community. And when you started first talking about things in the larger field of personal development rather than just fitness, even if you had 10 people who loved it, there were 10 people. And you start to be in service of those 10 people. If it's a direction you want to go in. And it's not to say you're ignoring the other thousand people who were following you before 10,000 or 10 million. But as you start to be in service of a community and try to add value to that community again, your tribe grows, you connect. This is like this. Creativity is a huge vehicle for human connection. I think it's going to solve a lot of problems in the next chapter.

Oh, my gosh, this is so vital. Which is why I cannot wait until this is in my hands, is in that people are getting this, listening to this. Because the thing that's in my mind right now that I'm literally. This is a mantra that I'm saying in my head all the time in the morning is to create before I consume. Because if I consume and it's not going towards, like, my inspiration in the morning, I notice I get really, like, depressed and verklempt. So I feel it right away in my system. Like, my body doesn't want to, like, consume other people's ideas or negative things or the news. Like, I really, really. I think we wake up and we want to put out, you know, what's inside of us. So we want to connect with people and talk about things that move us forward. So I think it's so incredibly powerful, but we block it and we get in resistance and we sabotage ourselves. So what do you like? What has pushed you to want to create this to help people get out of the way?

Well, let's be brutally honest and say the thing that is uncomfortable but real. A lot of those things, they never go away. But here's the flip side of the same coin. You get infinitely better at managing them. The shoulds that other people have for you and your work and your feedback for you online when you don't actually want feedback or the social media world that you described, that's not going away. But what can you develop? Becomes the question to be better at maintaining the mindset that is so important for your own personal development and creativity. It's a set of habits, right? Just like anything, it's a set of habits with a foundation of a great mindset that will help you reach your goals. And that's hopefully the refreshing part to all this is I'm not asking you to move to Paris. You do not need to wear a beret. Whether you're building a business or baking a cake or building a life, it really is a practice. And you said it yourself best. When you wake up in the morning, you feel the desire to create and to connect. And I'm just thinking that you lean into that. It doesn't have to. This is not about going to the art store and buying all the supplies on Aisle 6 and moving that stuff into your closet. And then when it comes down to okay, you know, it's not what it's about, it's what gets you excited, what gets you up in the morning. Is it morning pages? Are you trying to just write down something, a vision for yourself and refer to that every day? Whatever it is, it's these small daily habits that when practiced over time, or to use your words, and to quote our friend Marie Forleo, when you're creating with your vision first versus consuming all the other stuff of everybody else, you're infinitely better off. And whatever your own personal habits are. I don't want to, you know, I do go into a lot of behaviors and habits in the book, so it's very actionable on how to tap into that creativity. It's also true that if you're so. And we get sucked into this because we could say, oh, I'm doing research, I want to get inspired. Or I'm a photographer, so Instagram is helpful. Or I'm a, you know, I'm a, you know, a coach, so watching the coaching of other people is helpful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's really happening is you're comparing their highlight reel to your missed car payment dirty sink. You know, the dirty laundry that you've got that's not done. And that's why, you know, again, to go back to your point. Like, creating something, even something small and fleeting, is always a better way to start your day. That's why, you know, habits like not paying attention to email for the first thing, taking care of your. Whether it's the mantra that you were saying to yourself or, you know, a vision board or meditation exercise, whatever, you're sort of just protecting that time is so, so critical.

How do you protect your time for that?

How do you plan it?

How do you protect it? Like, when you know that creativity is important, but perhaps you don't have a specific project or something like that?

Well, I like to start with your curiosity. We all have something in our past that connected us to creativity in a really simple, fundamental way. Whether it was picking up a guitar, like I watched you do on Instagram recently. Like, let me just ask you a simple question. Why are you playing the guitar now?

Because I truly need to express that.

Piece of your past. Have you played it before?

Have I played it before?

No.

Great. So there's a piece of you that's calling out to be to express yourself. And you listen to that. It wasn't something that someone said, you must play the guitar. It was like, what do I feel like doing? So when you listen to yourself, you get clues. And a lot of clues are or present in what brought us joy as a kid or two weeks ago. Or we have these moments. I like to follow the curiosity. So to me, that's one way to start. And what's important is it's not really about doing the perfect thing or not wasting time, because what I'm really supposed to be doing is playing the mandolin, not the guitar. You're only gonna figure your way to the mandolin. If you start picking up the guitar and the guitar doesn't do it for you, then you're gonna start. You're like, oh, I want to move to the next thing. And that's the cool part about this. It's an imperfect process that you only get through doing. You cannot intellectualize your way to the mandolin. You, Laurie, had to go through the guitar to get there. And so you had to take action. And when you decided, what am I going to do with my mornings? 15 minutes, I want to fill in the blank. Whatever the answer you come up with is the right answer until it's not. It's really about sort of taking action. And to the point of, what do I do to protect my mornings? This is pretty simple. It is a. You know, of the 150 people that I've had on my podcast, of the thousand people who have taught on the CreativeLife platform, my own experience, the. One of the single biggest patterns is people protecting their morning to establish the day. And whether you do that through any of the methods we talked about, mindfulness meditation, exercise, prayer, morning pages, whatever, there is an intentionality that is very, very popular amongst the highest performers. And right now you might be saying, hey, look, man, I got three kids and I gotta be to work at 5 in the morning and I don't got time. You only don't have time until you endure enough pain to find the time you don't like. Again, this concept of finding things is fiction. You create things. People, you say, oh, you're the founder of CreativeLive. Yeah, yeah, I didn't find anything. I worked my ass off. I created it. So I think, just to be clear, there's this power of intention that whether it's protecting your morning or deciding what some small creative act you can do every day, that's for each their own. But the answers are in you. And starting to learn to trust that the answers are in you. Through experimenting and play and looking a little bit to your past, you're not trying to solve all the universe's problems right now. You're just trying to get your energy moving. That's step one is do something instead of nothing.

So good, because I just love that you create the time. It's true. And I haven't created the time until I was in enough pain of, like, I have to have an outlet. Like, I have to figure this out. And, you know, part of me wants to make the time to create little audio clips of what you're saying and send it to all the people I know who tell me they don't. But I realized that wouldn't be a good use of my creative time. So I have a question for, you know, entrepreneurs who potentially listening right now. Because I know that I said this for a very long time to myself, like in my head I was saying, you know, before I. Chris and I have ballroom dance. Like we ballroom dance for four years and we competed, like very important things for us, like creatively, that a lot of the times we looked at and we kept wanting to give up for more space, for more work. And I. It's like putting the pressure on creativity to have to be productive, like right away or in the beginning. So how did you start to shift your mindset around something that may not feel productive, or you might really need to be making money right now, but realizing the importance, like what was that shift for you?

Life is the best teacher. And I just had. There's this recurring theme that every time I've focused on something, especially around creativity, when I've focused on something's utility, like how much money is it going to make, what's it going to get me? When I've been hyper aware of that, I have a certain set of outcomes and then I'm going to contrast it with a whole different set of experiences, which the biggest, unequivocally, no questions asked, nothing even comes close. The biggest successes, professional successes in my life have all started with something that I deemed at the time completely useless, other than just little sparks of joy, which you could say is very useful. But when I'm putting my productivity lens or my efficiency vision for myself on that thing, didn't stack up at all. And I'll just give you a couple examples. Deciding to take pictures with my iPhone. And actually before then it was The Palm Trio. 0.3 megapixels. And remember my background is as a photographer, so I'm shooting campaigns for Nike and Apple all over the world. Million dollar budget, I have hundreds of thousands of dollars in camera equipment. And I started taking pictures with a 0.3 megapixel camera on my phone. People thought I was crazy. Especially this is going to sound strange given the days that we live in now. And I remember saying, you know what? This brings me a lot of joy. Just to stand here while waiting for my morning coffee to take a cool picture of my donut or I mean, my kale juice. Sorry, sorry, my kale juice. But the reality is it brought me great joy. And I remember saying, oh man, you know, the cool thing is like this is just for me, it's just playful. And I started pulling on the threads, I started taking pictures. And then the next thing, the flip phone came out with the RAZR and that had a little better camera. And then the iPhone one came out. And it was that experience that playing with the mobile camera on my phone that led to me creating the first app that allowed people to take pictures, add cool effects and share it to the Internet. Sounds pretty popular. Years before Instagram, I developed an app called Best Camera, which was the the app of the year in 2009 on the Apple platform. And you know, millions of downloads and at that time you paid for every download. So this thing that was, I Literally developed because it brought me joy and it was whimsy created the, at that time, arguably my biggest success. The same thing could be true for CreativeLive. I just learned a bunch about stuff in making an iPhone app that I was like, oh, wow, I wonder if we can start up this cool little community where I bring on experts and they can teach us about building business and photography. And it started out as my photography buddies. And then I'll tell you, like, reality hit when you're like, oh, my God, that is Richard Branson on this platform. And it was also, it was rooted in play and joy and things that inspired me. So. And the same is true. This is not just true for me. It's a pattern that when we free our mind up to play and to pursue our passions and pursue that sort of creative whimsy, that it leads somewhere. And that's that intuition telling us what we need to be doing. It's always there for us. That's the cool thing. Right now, if you're like, dude, I got no idea. I'm stuck as af, I'm stuck. What am I doing? Do something instead of nothing. Look backwards into your childhood. What has intrigued you that if you spent five minutes a day, ten minutes a day doing, could you get some joy? And my belief, my research says that nothing is going to lead to another thing. That's going to lead to another thing. And right now, if you're sitting there like, I want to be the owner of a cafe and I Yet you work at GoPro and you're in the engineering department there and you're like, I'm not going to do the cafe thing because I don't know anything about food or I don't know about starting a business. I can't get a bank loan. What if you just started baking? What if you just started doing your own pour over coffees for your friends on Sunday mornings and you had a group that got together and did that and then you made scones and then that's how literally everything starts. It's about doing something rather than nothing.

Well, I could talk to you all about this. It's one of my favorite topics. It really is. Because it's just, it's related through everything. It's weaved in to everything. I can trace it back to everything. There are principles, there are common themes. There's like life laws to creativity. And I know your book probably covers so many of the things that we can do to really bring that forth and take the pressure off of always needing it to be Something, but also knowing it will essentially be something amazing for us. So what is. Is there anything, any last words on your heart that you want to share with people?

Well, I think I want to go back to basics and just get everyone to acknowledge, even if it's for a moment that you are wildly creative, that whether you're aware of it or not, you're creating. Every moment of every day, something happens to you and you react. You make the best of it. And that is not accidental. This is what differentiates us from all the other species on the planet, is our ability to create. And it's not really a leap to see that whether you're creating a small thing on a daily basis, playing the guitar as you are or anything, it's literally the same muscles that you use to create your life. The people whose lives you look at and you say, oh, my God, if I could just do that. You know, their view of their life is that they're constantly creating and recreating it. The architects of their life, that they are designing it and executing a plan. That stuff that you look up to and you admire and respect and appreciate, it doesn't just happen. It's created. And those people know that and that they know that through small, daily creative acts that they discover their own agency, and then they start to imagine what's possible for themselves. They design a system to do it, they execute that vision, and then they share it with the people that are in their world and repeat. It's dangerously simple, but it requires work that few people in our culture are attuned to. I do feel that there's this huge growing groundswell. Just look at the explosion of entrepreneurs and that we can all sort of make a business, and we've got tools that are free or cheap or accessible. All that stuff is being democratized, and it's so cool. We're on the cusp of greatness. And I would ask the folks at home, what are you doing in service of that? And taking. Taking agency. Taking your agency seriously is the first thing, the number one thing that I would recommend, because it's all creativity.

Okay, so where can we read more? Where can we find. How can we get this book?

Okay, it's everywhere. Books are sold. When this drops, it will be shipped to your doorstep in a matter of days. And that's at the Amazons, the Apple Books, the Barnes and Nobles, the books. A million. There's a million places to get a book. You know this. And there's a cool. We're doing a couple cool things. If you go to creativecalling.com you can, if you share your receipt with us, we will let you into an exclusive class that we're hosting on Creative Live, which is going to be super cool. Some world class guests that have some of them I've name dropped here in this podcast. And yeah, there's just, there's a thriving community around this. You're not alone. Like, if you're wondering about your own creativity or you're stumbling through it, like, you know, I just want you to know you're not alone. The community around this book and at CreativeLive and around these ideas are everywhere. I just want to see you take action. It's like it's the most important thing is to put some of this stuff to you. So. And I'm just Chase Jarvis. And on the Internet, whether That's Insta or YouTube or whatever. And CreativeLive is the same. But again, the book, the book is called Creative Calling and it would mean the world to me if you check it out.

Thank you, Chase, so much. And you guys know that I am like a book, total book. So we have our copies coming. We are gifting this to people because we think this is so insanely important. So, Chase, I'm so grateful for you. Thank you for doing this work in the world and most of all, just literally thank you for showing up how you do and making people feel that you are so present with them and so seen. And I just so like, so beyond grateful to have people like you in the world who are doing this work.

Who, you know, I know that you.

Have worked with so many people and done such amazing things and yet you still take the time to truly make people feel like you are so present with them. So I'm really grateful for that. And you guys go grab his book. I cannot wait to read it. I'll be posting about it. And Chase, I always end on one last question. Are you ready?

I'm ready for it. I'm terrified, but I'm ready.

I hate that when podcasters do it to me.

I'm like, no, what's the most, the biggest? I'm just like, oh, I got a nail. Like, I got 32 friends that have a book right now. I've got what's your favorite album?

So you just met a stranger in passing, Whether you're stuck in an elevator for 30 seconds or it's on the sidewalk, but literally it's just like a quick moment. It's like 30 seconds long and it's a total stranger and they look at you. And they ask, how can I make myself happy? What do you say?

The answers are inside you. The answers aren't anywhere you've been taught to look. The answers are all in there. It's just. Can you listen and be honest with yourself in the face of doubters and haters and even people who love you deeply, who are going to steer you wrong? The answers are in there.

So beautiful.

And then hopefully you'll hand them a.

Copy of your book.

Hey, by the way, I've got this for you.

Here's your answer.

Bye.

Just hit him off the head with it.

Okay. Thank you so much, Lori. I appreciate you.

Oh, I so appreciate you. Thank you so much. You guys, if you love this episode as much as I did, make sure you share it with a friend. Share it with anybody that you know is struggling or is looking for something creatively. And until next time, earn your happy. Bye, everyone.

Thank you guys so much for spending this time with me on the earn your happy podcast. I am so glad that you stopped by. If you could take one second to share this episode with someone you think would love it, that would be absolutely amazing and we would be forever grateful. Also, please leave us a review if you feel so moved by going to itunes and leaving us an honest thought, an honest comment, tell us what you think, tell us what you want to hear. More of it would really help us out on our journey to helping thousands and thousands of people. Until then, don't forget to earn your happy. Thanks again, guys.

Bye.

Bye.