How to Keep Creating When Your Inner Critic Says You're Worthless

Struggling with creative block or self-doubt as an artist? In this episode, Foster breaks open her creative process behind writing and publishing Afternoon Abundance in just 9 months, from blank page to published book. Cesar explores the double-edged sword of being a creative person and the battle between inspiration and self-doubt. They lay out the three pillars every artist needs: time for nothing (unstructured creative time), "this too is honey" (transforming experiences into art), and the create-reflect-recreate cycle. Taking inspiration from Andrea Gibson and Elizabeth Gilbert, they explore how to overcome creative fear, why discomfort is essential for artistic growth, and the audacity required to keep creating when no one's waiting for you to succeed. This conversation is for anyone struggling with perfectionism, imposter syndrome, waiting for permission, or battling their inner critic while trying to bring something new into the world.

In this episode they explore: 

• The three pillars every creative person needs (including "time for nothing")
• What "this too is honey" means for transforming experiences into art
• The habit that made sitting down to a blank page less terrifying
• Why no fuck's left to give is actually the secret to unstoppable creativity

Also referenced: 

• Episode 24: What Depression Really Feels Like
• Episode 9: Finding Laughter in Life & Death with Jennica Schwartzman
• Episode 3: Foster’s Loss (losing her son Wilde)
• The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

You can also watch the episodes on YouTube.

If you enjoyed this episode, take a moment to follow Beauty in the Break on your favorite podcast app and leave a review—it really helps!

Reach out to the show—send an email or voice note to beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com and be sure to follow on Instagram and TikTok. 

Cesar Cardona:

• Receive his newsletter Insights That Matter
• Get guided meditation from Cesar on his website 
• Listen to music from Cesar + The Clew on Apple Music and Spotify

Foster Wilson:

• Buy her poetry book Afternoon Abundance
• Learn about her postpartum services
• Receive her newsletter Foster’s Village

Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson

Executive Producer: Glenn Milley

This episode is brought to you by Arlene Thornton & Associates

Transcript

So the person who is listening to this today who is a creative person, what kind of framework do you have that might help them?

You are the bee. Your mind and your heart, that's the hive. All of your experiences out in the world is pollen.

What is it going to take for you to get to a place where you don't give a fuck about what anyone else thinks? Because then you're unstoppable.

Welcome to Beauty and the Break.

Here we explore stories of how barriers are broken both within ourselves and within the world.

I'm Foster Wilson.

And I'm Cesar Cardona. This is a home for you.

Questioning the rules you inherited and choosing your own path forward.

We are here with you on this messy and courageous one. Let's dive in.

Welcome everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Beauty and the Break.

Thank you all for being here. I am historically very ready and chill about doing these episodes.

Today and in the last few days I have been tired, I have been stressed, I have been grumpy.

Historically that means that I'm going to get about depression as a person who suffers from depression.

There's been so much self-doubt in my thoughts for the last three or four days about everything.

Every single thing that I'm doing. First of all I'm more tired because of all the self-doubt.

I feel more overwhelmed than ever. But I've been doing the same things that I've been doing.

But my thoughts have been just telling me, "See you can't do this. How do you plan on being a public speaker if you want to be at home all the time?"

You can't even balance a budget. How are you going to try to run for office someday?

Spoiler alert, I want to run for president someday.

You can vote now.

I am 36, that's true. You can put my name right in there.

Right of it.

You have trouble managing your own day, Cesar. You're still trying to learn things.

You can't handle any of these things. And then somebody really, really close to us had a life issue that involved police.

And I had to jump in and be very firm and direct with these officers because they were being aggressive, they were being bullies.

And that felt like a part of me that was old, my old self. But it got the most effective results.

So then my brain is questioning my Buddhism.

And then I remember that Buddhism is not, you don't have to be an angel. That's not what it's about.

It's about transcending all the things that you are. It's not the Western religions, it's different.

You are of nature. So you are subject to these things that show up. And these battles just keep happening.

And so today we get to this show, this episode. And my brain is telling me that I am worthless.

I'm not as good as I thought. I actually don't have anything good to say.

And that's what I've been dealing with today.

Do you think you will get a bout of depression?

No, actually. Because usually it would have been here by now. It wouldn't be three days of this grumpiness.

But I think I've set myself on a ground that is strong enough between taking an SSRI, meditation, eating healthy, not drinking,

always being honest and vocalizing things that are coming up for me, leaning on to people instead of thinking I have to hold it all myself.

I think it sets me on a ground that I won't go any lower than. But I'm also not pushing any of the stuff away.

That's the biggest note. I will recognize it as is. I am still aware that I am a conscious being experiencing feelings, thoughts.

I am not those thoughts. I am not those feelings. It's like a t-shirt.

Someone just threw this shirt on me and I'm having trouble getting it off at the moment.

So instead I say, "All right, let's just see what life feels like with this shirt on."

And eventually, because as the Buddha teaches us, all compound things are impermanent, it will go away.

My job is to be still and aware while the storm breeze through.

I feel like a lot of me is this way naturally because I'm a creative person.

And I think everybody's creative, but the more you dive into that, the more soaked you get in that ocean of creativity.

The more pruned you get on your fingers from being so creative.

And that creativity for me has been as much of a blessing as it has been a burden.

I wield the sword of creativity that has edges on both sides.

When I cut forward and when I bring it back to myself, I cut myself a little.

But I've been this way my whole life. I've been this way since the very beginning of creating and thinking and imagining

and putting together scenarios in my life and putting together words and phrases and lyrics and songs and melodies

and speaking engagements and meditations and speaking right here, for example.

We may be on this stage at this juncture right now, but this still feels like rehearsal for me because everything feels like rehearsal.

And because I am so unbound to anything, when I feel this level of lost, I'm rudderless because I don't have something to grab onto.

I always think you're at the precipice of breaking through something when you feel that way.

My experience of you and I know times when you have felt and expressed this kind of feeling before,

a feeling like what am I even doing, what am I even doing with my life, what am I even doing with my career?

Is it all a joke? Is it all a waste? Have I wasted my time?

You usually are about to break through into something else, into a more clear, up-leveled way of operating in the world.

Do you remember that? Or do you conveniently forget?

I conveniently forget. I conveniently forget.

That's what I'm here for.

That's right. That's what I'm here for.

Yes, that's what you're here for. Thank you for that.

And that's what we're all here for as well.

This is why The Wizard of Oz is so effective in the storytelling sense.

Why metaphorically it still stands the test of time.

Because I got to walk my own journey, but I have people with me going down that yellow brick road and we're helping each other out along the way.

But I do forget that.

Because it's the shedding, I suppose, and shedding hurts.

I mean, I don't necessarily believe in shedding as an individual, but to speak metaphorically, it hurts to grow.

It hurts to transcend. It hurts to go from one room to the next.

Because you got to understand the newness of it, whatever it is.

The late great poet Andrea Gibson wrote a short poem that says,

"I said to the sun, 'Tell me about the big bang.' The sun said, 'It hurts to become.'"

I think about this poem all the time.

When we are suffering, we are becoming and upleveling and growing as individuals, we get moments like this.

It doesn't feel like, "I'm growing. Everything is wonderful."

It feels heavy. It hurts as we're changing.

Very much. Growing pains, I suppose.

I can feel it thoroughly in my system at this moment.

What's more is that as a creative person, I need, and by the way, this is going to be the first thing I was going to bring up about creativity,

is time for nothing.

As a creative person, my way of breaking through challenges is to make sure I have time for nothing.

And as my mentor, she says, "It's unstructured time. My version is time for nothing."

It's a double-edged sword again.

Because it's what gives me all these great concepts and ideas, but because I have some of it for myself when I'm feeling like this.

All the monsters come on in. They dive in and start eating away at you.

You're saying that when you have unstructured time, you find the negative voices pop up more?

Yes, because I don't have distractions. Not a complaint either.

I think at these times, we need less distractions.

We should not be distracting ourselves from when the thoughts are starting to creep up.

We should be seeing them for what they are, transcending them, managing them, working through them, understanding them like I am today.

As soon as I woke up this morning and said, "I'm not feeling so good," my next thought was, "Great."

Even though it sucks, because I've been waiting on this day for a whole year.

I knew at some point these feelings during this time of day would line up with one of our taping days.

And I wanted to be as vulnerable as possible about it and talk about it.

Somebody out there is feeling the same thing.

And the same manner in which they can help me with theirs if I heard their story, I can help them with mine.

We're all just walking each other home here.

But to go back to the time for nothing, that is my way in to feel, to go through these emotions.

It's my way to grow as well.

You think about every single thing in nature that changes over time.

There's a dormant stage. There's a time where the petals have died on the flower.

There's a time where the ocean is calm as can be before the wave.

Those are all realizations of a reality of the cycles of life.

So the time for nothing is really manageable.

And then if I can branch forward, a ton of people in history have needed that time to do nothing.

I think Pete Holmes on his podcast said that he had his own TV show before Conan O'Brien for a while.

And he had his own show on HBO.

And he said, I'm paraphrasing, people think that my day is so extravagant and fun.

I'm a stand-up comedian. He goes, most of the days I'm just sitting around staring off.

And it made me feel so good.

I realized how comfortable and seen I could feel by listening to one person say that.

Yeah, you need that space to create something out of nothing.

I mean, creativity is an act of faith.

It's really like I am going to sit down on this blank sheet of paper and put words to it that mean something.

It is like you're free falling every damn time.

I don't know that the public, let's say, understands that that's what art feels like.

That's what creating art feels like.

I'll just use the word art very broadly because it can apply to anything from visual arts to film to writing, to creating this show, to literally anyone who's an engineer, someone who's an innovator.

It's all crazy.

Yeah, like trying to solve a problem, starting a business, creative problem solving, it goes all the way down the road.

Really creating something out of nothing is terrifying.

I think that is why so many people say like, don't go into a field of the arts because it's like actually like a scary place to be.

It's incredibly rewarding at the same time.

When you are on the other side of having created something, you feel like, holy shit, how did I do that?

How did we, I, whoever is working, how did we create something?

I said to somebody today, every time I sit down to do this show, I'm anxious because I'm so, I'm not sure what's going to come out of my mouth.

And I don't know if it's going to matter and I don't know if it's going to be heard.

I said, I love doing this show.

Actually, what I love is when the show where we finish the show, I love the feeling of being like, oh, okay, something got created.

You know, and then we do it all over again.

I think everybody has that same sort of feeling in some capacity.

It is a big swelling of emotions and as soon as it's over, you're like, I feel exhilarated.

I feel untouchable.

I could do anything.

I think that's the reason why a lot of us do those things because we know that rewards on the other side of that very strange feeling.

I have a fitness client.

I asked her once after years of saying how much she hates the workouts.

I asked her, you're showing up.

I know, besides from the health benefit, but you're showing up for it.

She goes, I really enjoy walking away knowing that I did something I didn't think I could do.

And I go, girl, you're on it.

And from then I've never questioned that from her, you know.

We had Jennica Schwartzman on the show and she said stepping on stage or do stand up is what makes her feel alive.

Right.

So the person who is listening to this today who is either a creative person who wants more creativity in their life, what kind of framework do you have that might help them?

Yeah.

So there's three points that I lean into.

There's a lot of points, obviously, you can find and creativity, but the ones that have been with me from when I was younger, creating scenes.

One of my best friends, Jesse, and I used to like practice pro wrestling stories in the backyard to being a musician.

Skateboarding actually as well to be a musician when I was in a gang, when I would try to rally stuff together.

Right, because being a leader is also creative work.

Yeah, absolutely.

How are we going to lead this group of people to this protest?

To do X, whatever it is, as an actor, personal trainer, public speaker, meditation guide, and so on and so on and so forth.

The three things that have always showed up for me is one, your time for nothing.

You need some time for nothing.

At least once a day, you need time to have nothing going on because that's where the stuff comes up from.

That's where the magic comes up from.

That's your abiogenesis, which is the study of life form deriving from non-life form.

It's where you get things from nothing.

Two is remembering that this too is honey.

This is one of my mental mantras in growth mindfulness.

It's realizing that you are the bee, your mind and your heart.

That's the hive.

All of your experiences out in the world is pollen.

So you go out to the world, you gather the pollen the same way the bee goes from flower to flower, unharming the flower,

but gathering pollen and nectar to take it back to the hive in your inner self and producing it back out to make honey.

Every experience is that.

I remember when you used to say that to me when I would come back from five days with the kids on my own and be struggling,

be heavy about whatever was going on.

I just want to get back to my creative.

I just want to get back to writing.

I don't want to be in that space.

I want to be writing.

And you would say that's your pollen.

That's all your pollen.

The experiences with the kids, what they're going through.

So much of that came up for you while you were writing your book, your book of poetry,

which happens to be right here behind me.

I think I can grab this really quick.

Let's see what we have here.

Look at this.

Shameless non-self promotion. --Afternoon Abundance

She had no idea I was going to do this, by the way.

I'm just going to point that out there.

So please, available online.

It's available, right?

Just like your short films.

Everything's available.

Everything's available, right?

Okay, cool.

Just making sure I want to promote you because you're great. My momager over there.

So yeah, it was a big time for that.

And that too.

So you can go into the world and say, oh, this too is honey because it's your job to take that information in good or bad or neutral.

The third thing is then you make the honey.

That's creating.

That's create, reflect on what you created.

Then you recreate and then you repeat it.

Don't make it harder than it needs to be.

It's what I've told myself.

Just keep reiterating every time you reiterate, you put it out.

You reiterate, you put it out.

Your job is to create, reflect on that thing a little bit.

How was it?

How could I do better?

What space was I in?

What worked?

What didn't work?

And then recreate with that information in mind, repeat.

While everyone else out in the world is trying to determine and judge it and whatnot, you keep doing that.

Now, the litmus test overall, if you wanted to go somewhere out into the world, is the test.

How is it being received by the world?

And you put that into the reflection and then that goes into the recreation.

But that is a secondary thing.

The primary thing is how can I just carve this away and be better and better and better for myself?

That's the Andy Warhol quote.

While you're create art, while everyone else is determining whether it's good or bad, create more art.

You just keep going.

What gets in people's way, my way, your way, everybody, I think is that fear of judgment.

The fact that the way our world works is that we are given art in our purview, films, television, music, that has been quote unquote successful.

Right?

And given we get to see the stuff that made it, that made it to the big screen, that got the advertising dollars, that was a hit on the number one charts.

We're not seeing everything on the cutting room floor.

So as two artists here who have shit on the cutting room floor and shit that's done well, even if you look back at like Lady Gaga in the early days,

that's just the early days all the time people are creating stuff that doesn't work or that doesn't hit a whole album that doesn't make it.

The movie that there was a surefire for Sundance and totally flopped.

It happens constantly, but we think that we have to be great in what we create in order for it to be worthwhile.

At least I sort of feel that way.

Yeah, I would say the actual greatness is in your reiteration.

There's that line of a thousand hours of practice, which has a ton of benefit for it.

But Naval Ravikant says it might be more important to have a thousand iterations, which are relatively the same as some parallelness there because you're supposed to be carving out each one of those people that you mentioned.

If they did something that doesn't work, they recognize it didn't work and they just keep flying forward.

They go to the next thing and to the next thing and to the next thing.

I mean, I named all those things that I am at this moment that I've done in my life and I forget.

We kind of forget it because we just do the thing, see the barrier, try to find a way to transcend it and or use it to our benefit and then move to the next thing.

You know what? That kind of begs the question for me.

What is the deepest joy for why I create then?

Because by the time I bring it up to an individual, a person, as in a talk or in a meditation, I've already been unwrapped by it.

It's the actual dissecting and the studying and the building and the forming and putting it.

It's plugging in the Frankenstein a little bit. That's what's most important to me.

That's what feels most raptured to me. Finding the thing that wasn't there before.

Finding the thing that wasn't alive in the world that you brought to life.

That is the miracle of existence in this planet.

Is that your thing as well or what is your joy when creating?

It's having a finished product, I think, and knowing that that didn't exist before.

When I was writing, and I'm going to say, I wasn't writing a book when I was writing.

The poetry that ended up in Afternoon Abundance was not intended to be in a book.

And when I was writing, my favorite part of the process was always sitting down at the end of the week after I had written all week

and typing up what I had handwritten because I didn't remember writing it

and I could read and appreciate my work. By far, of everything that I did in that whole cycle, that was the peak for me.

That's really good.

Was just privately getting to enjoy something that came out of me

and be honestly impressed with myself that I went from a blank sheet of paper to this story that means something.

Two things for that that come up for me.

One, to you listening, has there ever been a time in your life where you have gotten so far down the line that you turn around and say,

"Oh my gosh, look how much miles I've done. Look how far I've gotten," but you didn't notice it until you passed it.

It could be with teaching a child something. It could be with learning a skill, a dance, or whatever it is.

I was going to say that's how a lot of people feel I think about raising children,

is that they get to a certain point like, "Oh my gosh, I have a 10-year-old."

Yeah, yeah.

"Whoa, how did I do that? How did I grow this human into a person that could function in the world somewhat?"

Right. I've had clients as a physical trainer and as a growth mindfulness meditation teacher guide as well

that I'll have to remind them where they were three, four, five, six months ago.

Yeah.

They don't even think about it. They go, "Oh yeah, that's right. That's right."

That's right, which again is kind of that selective thinking that we do that I'm feeling today,

forgetting that at some point tomorrow, the day after, whatever, I'm going to be shot out of a cannon and say,

"All right, this is what we're doing. New adjustment, modification, reiteration, whatever it is."

I have to remind those people so much and that's a joy for me as well.

That's a deep joy for me because I don't have to convince them of it. It's all on them.

I'm just reminding them, which I enjoy a lot.

That Andy Grammar song, "Remind You," I love that song.

First off, that guy is dope. I met him once. I should tell a story about that at some point.

Beautiful person, but the song is saying when you're questioning your worth,

the way that we always do and the version of amnesia starts to seep on through.

You know that you're great, but you can't remember why. I'll be at your side. I'll remind you.

And that's fantastic. I love that.

My second part was I want you to share how you went from, "This is a writing just for me," to, "This should be a book."

How did you go through that threshold? How did you go through that barrier?

Yeah, well, the reason I started writing in the first place was entirely personal.

I needed an outlet just for my own thoughts. I would never have classified myself as a writer at the time.

I had a dynamic previously that the other person was a writer, and so I took a backseat and was like,

"All right, you write, and I will not write."

I didn't really believe that writing was something that I was good at.

Poetry started coming out because to me it was the freest form of expression.

There's no form. There's no end goal. I didn't want to write a book.

I just wanted to express whatever was going on in my system.

I wrote whenever I felt like it. I kind of wrote when I had a big feeling going on that I wanted to get out in a way that,

in poetry, I could say something so extreme, and the goal was to say bigger and bigger words,

more and more words to describe one tiny thing. So it was like this big playground of expression.

That's pretty cool. I just got the thought in my head of you looking for the tree in the acorn.

You're trying to say bigger things about this tiny thing. That's what came up for me just now in my thoughts.

Does that feel something like that?

Maybe so. I mean, they say poetry is this one little moment and you're trying to elongate it into something more.

It was kind of safe for me. I would have an experience and have deep, dark feelings about it.

If I knew that I could write and I could write safely, no one was going to read it.

I could be really, really honest with myself and my feelings, and I could use the biggest words I could to describe it.

And I didn't have to say to a friend over coffee, "Oh yeah, I know. I had a really hard day. It was really heavy."

I could be like the power thundered through my chest as I heaved into the doorway.

You know, like I could make a mountain out of something.

And because I knew that no one was going to read it, I was really, really fucking honest.

And it felt really good. It felt so good to do that.

Before I met you, I wrote poetry only when I felt like it. Only when I felt something big.

I didn't write about little mundane things, and I didn't write when I wasn't in the right space for it.

So maybe in a year's time, I wrote about 40 poems.

When I met you, you were writing lyrics, music, and you were getting up every morning and you were practicing piano.

I would be like sleeping 6am, 5am, and I could hear you practicing the piano.

And you told me that it's just a habit. I want to make a habit out of this.

I want to make a creative habit for myself so I do it every morning. And that was very inspiring to me.

So I decided that every morning, the clearest, cleanest part of my day before all of the thoughts start getting muddied in there

was right when I wake up and I have my coffee in the morning.

And I started doing that. I started sitting down with my journal, blank piece of paper, and a pen,

and putting my pen to paper, and whatever would come out.

That's where that free fall, terrifying feeling is when you go to sit down.

And I did not know what I was going to write about because previously I would write when I had a big emotion.

Now I was writing with nothing like happening really in that moment.

So of course you're going to get a wide range of things.

You're going to get total shit and you're going to get stuff that doesn't make sense.

And you're going to get some, I'm going to say the word brilliance.

I'm not using that to describe myself. I'm using it to describe what I felt was coming through me,

that I was just a vessel for these words and ideas.

That is what Elizabeth Gilbert talks about in the book Big Magic.

These words were coming from something that was beyond me and I was just giving it space on the paper.

It never stopped being terrifying though.

It never felt comfortable, never once.

And I did that every morning for about five months.

And in five months I had written 350 poems, whereas the year before I had written 40.

And so that meant that everything got better.

I'm not better, but it just, there was more room for great stuff to come through.

And after I wrote all of that, I realized, oh, there could be a book in here.

I could go through the process of trying to publish a book.

You know, last episode I asked you about directing and I only have a fantasy about you as director.

Just like this hot, sexy director, just brilliant and in charge.

And if I was the actor on set, I'd be like, yes, whatever you want, girl.

But this is the person that I know.

And I know you just before that as well.

So I got a version of you before you like tapped into that space.

So I just love seeing that level of blossoming that came from you.

I got to see every bit of it.

I got to see you charged to write, charged up to do it.

I got to see you completely broken because you were exhausted and didn't know what or how to do everything.

You cried in my arms multiple times about it.

Your version of the next day being completely ready for the world the day before you cry.

And you like break down.

I haven't told you this, but when you have breakdowns, I've been putting them on my calendar.

Really?

Yep.

And I've been making notes of them and what the subject matter is so I can start seeing the patterns.

And I know that when the time comes, if we're going to get there at a certain pattern, I'll be there.

And I know exactly what's going to occur and I can just be right there to be there for you.

And because you run in cycles, everybody runs in cycles, but your cycles because you're my partner is very vivid to me.

And I saw all of that in the book.

And I saw in the best part to go to what's most important for you.

I got to see the exhilaration the first day that those books came in.

I took all the photos of you, by the way, with those with those books and the joy of it and the joy of people buying it.

And one of my friends the other day went to lunch and she goes, I need to buy Foster's book.

What can I buy?

As a matter of fact, it's in the Barnes and Noble down the street.

She goes, all right, I'm going to go and she went.

She sent me a photo of her with the book. She bought it.

I had saw it a couple of days before that because I was in that book and I actually put it on the display.

I do that sometimes too.

Nobody told me to do it and whoever was there instead, sorry, Sam Kercheval

I moved your book out of the way.

It's definitely not Sam Kercheval.

He died.

He was a friend of Thomas Jefferson's.

So it wasn't that.

And he wasn't a poet.

I liked that you got to experience all of that and I got to see you go through that experience.

You said, I see it as a, the brilliance is something that was coming through me.

I don't know if you know this, but I would sometimes watch you while you're writing.

You thought I was playing piano.

I was just pressing the keys and I was watching you because if I stopped playing, you'll stop writing and you're like, what's going on?

But I just kept playing whatever I was while watching you and you would do this.

You would all of a sudden pop your head straight to the sky and look upward as if you're trying to read something in the clouds.

As if you were trying to focus your hearing on something.

So you looked at it a little closer.

Like you're trying to read its lips and I could see that in you.

Where do you think that stuff comes from?

It's not from me.

I don't, I really don't believe that it is.

It's from, like it's my truth, but it comes from the greater consciousness.

The book, Big Magic really spoke to me because she talks in that book about how ideas drop into people who are open and available.

And if they aren't open and available or they aren't able to see a project, a creative idea come to fruition.

It drops into somebody else.

Big believer in that.

She has some really crazy stories about that actually happening with specific storytelling books that she didn't get to finish.

I never heard of that until you said it to me and I had already believed in it.

It's just like a frequency like we're all radios and you tune to that frequency and grab it.

If you don't, it'll get caught by some other radio.

And you, you hear people all the time be like, I had that idea and then someone did it, right?

And you're like, ah, they stole my idea.

No, no, the idea kind of, I feel like belongs to the greater consciousness.

I also think that then what's really cool about artists and why I love artists and so many of my friends are artists is that when we get together, you got your own vessel.

They've got their own vessel.

They've got their own vessel and you're pulling all of these things together to create something entirely new.

And sometimes my greatest work as a director was putting people together, was bringing together a team that could have that magic.

It could work really well, listen to each other and create a team vessel that could put forth something really, really magical.

When that happens, those like ceremony of souls that come together to create, that's where the deepest magic comes up.

Because the individual can create that magic.

But when you have this cosmic symphony of all these little parts doing this large one sound, it's the closest thing that I have seen to being able to step just ahead of the present moment.

Because what you're going to put out is going to change the direction of the present moment.

So you are just a little bit ahead of the present moment.

You are at some level determining the future or predicting the future in a sense.

I thought this way, I can't say that any clearer.

It sounds very heady and I can see you're like, "What the hell did you just say?"

But I've always thought of it that way.

Because you're taking something that wasn't and putting it into the world, you have now put something into the future.

Like time travel.

There's just some small sliver of it and it's not ten years, not even two minutes.

It's a sliver of futuristic time travel you're having.

Because you're creating something here that is going to change your world and the world of somebody who inevitably finds the work.

Also, you mentioned something about being uncomfortable.

Oh my God.

Yes.

How do you, and I want to know this and I want to share my side also.

How do you make amends of being uncomfortable?

I know you by the way.

You don't like being uncomfortable.

I do not like being uncomfortable.

And you do not like being, and if I may say, kindly, not in control.

That's true.

This however, you just gave.

You surrendered, if I may use an appropriate word for you.

You surrendered into that mystery.

Habit helps.

And I say this from someone who, I was writing every single day, every single morning.

I am not doing that now and I haven't for a long time.

But I also get into a groove of one project.

I have so many different kinds of arts and pursuits and projects in my life that I will get hyper focused on one thing and do that for however, whatever period of time I need to.

And then I will pivot and be in doing something else.

So at this point, I am not writing every day, but it is kind of like the healthiest version of myself when I am writing every day.

And just kind of like, if you're familiar with The Artist's Way, a book by Julia Cameron, Morning Pages is an act of just sitting down with a timer, 10 minutes, 15 minutes.

I can't remember what she says, but, and just putting your thoughts to paper, free unfiltered writing that helps kind of dust the cobwebs out of your brain so that you can be more creative during your day.

The pages aren't for anything. They are not for publishing. They're just to get that out.

So the habit of doing something that is uncomfortable, it was easier for me to get on board with the uncomfortable thing.

When I knew I had a habit of it, where if I broke it, if I didn't write that morning, the next day would be even harder.

Yeah, because you have something that's familiar.

I got the image in my head of like somebody working under the ground of the ship.

You can't see where the ship's going, but you got work to do.

So you just get in the habit of doing your job, what needs to be done, knowing that you're helping the momentum and the direction of that ship, even though you can't see where it's going, which is the unknown.

And everything in art, I believe we are our own worst enemies. There is nothing that is taking us down as artists more than our own thoughts.

Right.

My side for being uncomfortable is be uncomfortable. Okay, uncomfortable. This is a part of it. This too is honey.

Yeah.

Like go with that. Be uncomfortable with who you are and whatever you're feeling in that moment, as is.

It is only going to breathe whatever you're doing into more life.

I also fundamentally agree that it's coming from some larger source that's in the time that needs to show itself in this current day and age.

Good or bad, by the way, side note, whatever we have in this society, it's needed to be shown.

It has to come to the surface eventually. Good or bad, because it needs to be understood, consciously absorbed, transcended into the next step for whatever it is.

And it works in an individual scale.

So whatever occurs to me from source, I allow it. I put it in there. I put it in its place. If I'm giving a talk, for example, that's usually when the best things come from me.

That's how I know that I'm a public speaker before I'm anything else in the sense of living a career life.

Say why?

Because that tapped into-ness comes to me. I have a direct line to it. Direct line. Direct line. I can ask and it'll show up. And if I don't say anything, it shows up.

So do you think that it's really helpful to believe that it comes from without rather than within?

Well, I don't think it's one- I don't think it's a dichotomy. I don't think it's helpful one way or the other. I think that you are that without. You are it. It is the same thing as you.

You have to find your version of how it is by the makeup of who you are as an individual.

But in the largest, biggest picture, in more of a truth sense about nature, i.e. planet Earth and universe, you are it. You are that source as well.

So your job is to tap into who you are. Your job is to become that version of yourself. You'll find your creative power. You'll find it iterating itself out in the world.

That could be assuming that I make it all up. That could be assuming that I get it from nature. Fine. Whatever. How many, which way, which way will the flower bloom today?

Right. Well, I think what I'm saying is that a lot of what I have felt as an artist is that it's all up to me. I have to create something out of nothing.

And that then creates this pressure on myself to be a good artist, be a good writer, do a make a piece of content that like goes viral or whatever.

If that's your thing, that it's all up to me. And when I have pressure under myself, I'm like a pressure cooker. I don't work very well. It's not, it doesn't have the space that you're talking about.

It doesn't have the, the lightness, the like openness. I want to be the best vessel that I can be for the ideas to come from somewhere else.

When I remember that it's not all up to me and that there's another, there's a bigger force at play as well.

And that part gets to be included in the creation and therefore, and probably far more powerful, greater than just me alone, even if that power is in the collective,

even if that power is in the buzz of the coffee shop. It's more than just me. That then releases the pressure.

And then I, I mean, this is literally what I was dealing with today, feeling the pressure of coming into tape a show and wanting to be good at it, wanting to make a difference, wanting to express myself.

Well, if I can let the power that is greater than me into the room, I then can just be me and therefore the best vessel and therefore we went back to what we were saying about being unique.

That's how some people like rise to fame because they're just like, they're so themselves. They're just what nobody else has.

And so therefore they're unique and therefore people want them.

I think your way to finding that is by finding your specific hangups, which is I have to give up a little bit of who I am and what I am and whatnot.

And some people who works in reverse, I think I might work in reverse because I'm getting just stuff constantly drop, drop, drop, drop, drop.

And I have to discipline myself and say, okay, how do I funnel this here? How do I funnel it there? How do I not let it weigh me so down so much that I just lay down for the rest of the day?

Because you're getting so many downloads.

Constantly at all times. You sent this to me a couple of weeks ago, you were texting or we're sending voice messages and you were like, I understand that person.

I got them clocked and I go, okay, what am I then? And then you explained to me, you were like, you see all of the options quickly and then you have to find out what's the best way to dish this out to the person that's listening.

How can I speak on their level? How can I say it on their level? All of that.

And you got me to a T. That's exactly what it is at every given moment. I'm thinking of every which way things happen from a scientific to a nature to a mystic from a cynic side to an optimistic side, all of them and they all just wash through me.

The calmer I am, the better I can find the best way to get out. What I feel is the most appropriate way.

But that means I got to add more of me. In your case, you're adding less of you.

Yeah.

And I think that that goes back to every individual having to find out what their version is.

That's the reflecting side on the create, reflect, recreate and rinse and repeat.

I saw a video today about Doechii, the artist.

Yeah, she's dope, by the way.

She's great.

She's fantastic.

Before she became famous talking about the artist way.

Her word was audacity and she said, I've gotten to the point where I don't have any fucks left to give.

Damn right.

I don't care what anyone thinks of me. I just don't give a shit.

She was talking about reiterating herself, reiterating herself, but the audacity to keep creating period is vital.

The audacity to do what no one else is doing. Do something completely original to do something.

We all want to be original as artists, right?

But when you're doing something that no one else is doing, it just feels weird.

It feels like absolutely this is going to be terrible because no one else is doing it.

That is something that we don't have enough time to talk about because there's a whole weird thing about that.

Because you got to speak the language of the time while smuggling in your uniqueness as well, which is funky, but continue.

I understand that feeling of like no fucks given.

What is it going to take for you to get to a place where you don't give anything?

You don't give a fuck about what anyone else thinks because then you're unstoppable.

When I started directing, it was because I had no fucks left because Wilde had died and I was at a rock bottom and I didn't give a shit if I was good at it or not.

Right, right.

I finished a book that was on 50 Cent's life.

The author keeps talking about how after he got shot is when he was like, "All right, I got to figure this thing out.

I got to make these adjustments. I got to do whatever I need to do, blah, blah, blah, because of that no fucks."

I think about my assault is there was my ground zero.

And I was like, "All right, I'm just going to go. I'm going to go."

And every single time I get to a point where I'm doing that same worry something, I just go back into and say, "Wait a minute, homie."

You started from this no fucks given. Keep going. Keep going.

Even in this state that I'm in right now, in this meditative, reflective, darker state that I am in today, I'm sitting here having this conversation.

There's a part of me that is untouched by my current darkness.

This vessel sustains me, but it cannot contain me.

And I know that every single day.

I love that she said that, that no fucks given.

Mine is a little different. It is, I just don't wait anymore.

Stop waiting. Just stop waiting. What's the issue?

Okay, this is the problem. Okay, I'm just going to go around.

I'm going to go through this. You can't do this.

Okay, I'm going to go through and then I'm going to hold that door open for you so you can walk through as well.

I'm just not waiting.

And that is why I published "Afternoon Abundance" independently.

Right.

I was just writing by May. The book came out in September.

Because I knew that if I went a traditional route and tried to get a publisher and all that, it was, it may or may not happen and it was going to take time.

I knew that if I did it myself, I would A, figure it out and it would get done quicker and it would definitely get out.

And that's how I've approached everything in my life pretty much.

I'll just do it myself. For better or worse, I'll just do it myself.

This is an independently produced podcast right here. The three of us, we just do it ourselves.

Just churn this thing out week by week.

We could have gone around and tried to sell the idea of the show to different production companies.

We could have, we would have been maybe still shopping.

We don't wait for anybody.

So if you're waiting right now for someone to give you permission to create whatever it is you want to create, here's your permission slip right now.

Heard that. Soulja Slim (rest in peace) says, "Ain't nobody going to arrive for me like I arrive for me." That's the note.

Thank you very much for listening today.

And as always, please don't wait on anybody. Just kidding. Please be kind to yourself.

That too.

If this episode spoke to you, take a moment and send it to someone else who might need it.

That's the best way to spread these conversations to the people who need them the most.

And if you want to keep exploring with us, make sure to follow Beauty and the Break wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll see you next time.

Beauty and the Break is created and hosted by Foster Wilson and Cesar Cardona.

Our executive producer is Glenn Milley. Original music by Cesar + the Clew