THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman:
Well, hello. This is your host, artist Miriam Schulman, and you’re listening to episode number 39 of The Inspiration Place Podcast. I am so thrilled that you’re here. Today, we’re chatting all about how creativity helps you in all areas of your life, and with me as an author and creativity coach. In this episode, you’ll discover why it’s important to not just get creating, but also to share your work even before you feel ready. You’ll also learn how creative play can we store your energy to the part of the brain that controls your willpower. I’m hoping we’re going to learn this will help me lose weight.
We’re also going to talk strategies for a letting go of perfectionist paralysis. But before we get there, I just wanted to tell you that we do have a freebie for today’s show. So we’re going to be talking all about letting go of perfectionism and building creativity. So my guest has given me a poster of the 10 guideposts, and you’re going to find out a little bit about what that’s about during the show.
Although this episode is more about finding inspiration and being creative in your everyday life, rather than business, my specialty is coaching other artists how to take their talent and create a thriving business out of it. I’ve done it and I can show you how to do it too. Working one on one, my clients learn practical strategies that go be on the inspiration shared on this podcast. If you want to profit from your passion, or you want a clear strategy to ramp up your existing creative business. And that’s for creative business owners who are not just painters, but you’re spinning and don’t know what to do next, I can help you.
To schedule a free discovery call, just sign up at schulmanart.com/biz. I would love to talk to you. Also, if you’re not interested in selling your art, but just want to learn how to paint, you should definitely check out some of my free resources for artists. For example, I’m always getting asked how I paint my sunflowers, which is why I’m giving away a free supply list. You can get that right now at schulmanart.com/sunflower-supplies. If you’re not sure of the exact link, don’t worry, we’ll put that for you in the show notes.
And if you’re listening when this podcast goes live in May, I also have a free masterclass. And if that master class isn’t available and you’re listening later on, I’m always running free master classes to teach people how to paint. So if you want to see what’s currently available, go to schulmanart.com/masterclass.
Today’s guest was a full time freelance artist and calligrapher for 15 years and runs Creative Sandbox Solutions, a creative consultancy that helps organizations build thriving creative cultures so they can improve productivity, retain great talent, enhance recruitment, boost profit, increase sales, and deliver exceptional service all through the power of play. Of course, I’m still hoping that it includes weight loss.
She is also the founder of the Creative Sandbox Community, an online community and lab for women’s leadership through creative expression. Today’s guest is the host of The Creative Sandbox Way Podcast. She also runs retreats and has a book by the same name. Please welcome to The Inspiration Place, Melissa Dinwiddie. Hey, Melissa, welcome to the show.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Hey, Miriam, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m so excited to have you here. So I’ve been diving into your book, and I do have questions about that. You want to talk about the willpower thing first, because I feel like I’ve been teasing my guests too much. How does creative play we store energy to that part of your brain in control of willpower, and does it have anything to do with weight loss?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Well, you know what, it actually could have a lot to do with weight loss.
Miriam Schulman:
See? I knew it.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
It could because if the reason why you are struggling with your weight has to do with willpower, then it very well could have to do with weight loss. Now, this is something that I learned from the woman who wrote the book, The Willpower Instinct.
Miriam Schulman:
We’ll include it in the show notes.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
She teaches a course through Stanford Continuing Studies called the Science of Willpower. And the book is basically all of the scientific studies that she shares in that course at the time that she wrote the book. Now, I took the course after I had read the book, and she keeps adding new scientific studies, because they continue to add new scientific studies all the time. When I took the course, there was a new scientific study that was not included in the book. This study looked at what are the best ways to restore willpower to the brain.
Now, why is willpower important? Willpower is basically self control. Now, when most people think about willpower, they think about like gritting your teeth, and like just sort of powering through, and it does not bring up really positive connotations for people.
Miriam Schulman:
I think of the marshmallow test.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Yes, the very sort of famous marshmallow test that they gave to little children.
Miriam Schulman:
I would probably pass the marshmallow test, but I would not pass the chocolate test if that was what they put in front of me.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Right. So the marshmallow test is they brought researchers, and this happened very close to where I live, they brought little children out of the classroom, and they put marshmallows on a table. And they said, here’s a marshmallow, I’m going to leave the room for a few minutes. And you can either have this marshmallow now, or when I come back in a few minutes, you can have two marshmallows. And they did it with marshmallows, they did it with other yummy treats as well.
And the kids, they were like six-year-old children, the kids who were able to restrain themselves used self-control, used willpower, and not eat that marshmallow and waited until the researcher came back. It was like 10 or 15 minutes, it was a long time. The kids who were able to wait, they followed up with them years later, like 20 years later, the kids who were able to restrain themselves were vastly more successful as adults. They made more money, they were more successful with their careers, they achieved higher educational degrees, things like that. So self-control, willpower is hugely, hugely important.
Miriam Schulman:
And just to flesh it out for people who may be not familiar with the marshmallow test. It’s more to do with the idea of not so much of giving up a marshmallow, but delayed gratification. And that’s why the whole test is they still get to have a marshmallow, but it’s whether they have one now or two later.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Exactly.
Miriam Schulman:
So to put things into your own life, why somebody might be more successful, well, you can study now and have more affluent life later, whatever that happens to be. Trying to move it away from the diet metaphors because that’s really not we want to talk about today.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Right. Anyway, so the author of the book, her name is Kelly McGonigal. And there’s so many fabulous things about this book. I can’t recommend it highly enough. The thing that was most exciting to me when I took this course, was this study that was looking at what are the best ways to restore willpower to your brain. Willpower is basically a finite resource. It’s a lot like a muscle. You can strengthen your willpower, but it also gets fatigued just like a muscle. And so when it gets fatigued, when you run out of your willpower, then there’s a plate of chocolate chip cookies on the counter, you’re going to eat all those chocolate chip cookies.
Miriam Schulman:
Right. And that’s why we don’t eat chocolate chip cookies for breakfast, but you pass the plate around at eight o’clock at night, it’s a lot harder.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
It’s a lot harder, right. So I highly recommend this book because it will give you tons of tips for, again, it’s called the willpower instinct, it will give you tons of tips for boosting your willpower so that it becomes easy to leverage this resource so that you can do the things that you know you want to do, but are not necessarily easy to do in the short term. You have short term goals and you have long term goals. Like in short term, that Snickers bar looks really good. Even though in the long term, it’s probably better if you eat that salad without any dressing on it. Right? But the Snickers bar right now sounds really good. Okay, so back to this study.
It was looking at what are the best ways to restore willpower to your brain. And so the researchers were specifically looking at changing your emotional state, like doing something that’s going to be like watching a cheerful video or something like that versus some other possibilities. And so they brought in some subjects. And they had them do something to deplete their willpower, they gave them a task to do to deplete their willpower. And then they had an intermediate condition.
There were a few different intermediate conditions that they were testing things. And then they gave them something else to test how strong their willpower was, like another thing to do that would deplete their willpower, like some kind of a hard puzzle or something. And they would see how long they could stick with this task-
Miriam Schulman:
Before they say I don’t want to play anymore.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Exactly, exactly. And so one of the intermediate conditions was sort of a neutral thing, and one was something that like … I don’t remember what it was, but it was something like watching a video that would boost their emotional state. It was like watching a funny video or something that would make them feel happy or something like that. And one was something that engaged their interest. I don’t remember exactly what it was. But it was something that engaged their interest and essentially put them into something akin to a flow state where they’re losing track of time, and basically the kind of state that we’re in when we do our creative thing.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
The results of the experiment were very clear, the condition that boosted people’s willpower, by far the most, was the thing that engaged people’s interest. Now, that in real life could be rock climbing, or mountain biking, or going on a hike in nature, or it could be doing your painting.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
This to me was huge. Because what it says is the thing that for most of us we have been programmed to believe is frivolous and self-indulgent. And we do not deserve to do it because it is a waste of time.
Miriam Schulman:
And there’s dishes to wash.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
That’s right. There’s a toilet to clean, right?
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
In fact,-
Miriam Schulman:
If only you could see my sink right now. But yeah, okay, go ahead.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Me too. But in fact, that very thing is going to boost your willpower, which is absolutely one of the most important things that you can do for your life, for your work, for every other thing in your life is going to make you have more patience, more ability to focus, more ability to resist and avoid temptations and distractions so you can get all the other important things in your life done.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s so interesting because I’ve always approached it from the point of view that we need focus in order to create.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Which is true.
Miriam Schulman:
But I feel like from what you’re saying, I got that a little bit backwards. So I do all these things in the morning to increase my focus. I meditate, I work out, when really maybe I should do art before breakfast to have a more focused day.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
You can make an argument both ways. Because meditation and X physical exercise are also huge willpower boosters. All of those things are going to feed your willpower. So I would say whichever things feel like they’re easiest for you to get to do those things that are going to help you to get to the things that are hard for you to get to. On the other hand, whatever thing is hard for you to do, there’s an argument to do that first to get it out of the way.
Miriam Schulman:
Right. Brian Tracy, eat the frog or swallow the frog or choke on the frog, something like that.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Yeah, exactly. I like to do my creative thing early, and it’s not necessarily the very, very first thing I do after I wake up, but I kind of have a cluster of first things that I do.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. Can you share that with us? Because I’m always interested in people’s morning routines.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
I preface this by saying that this is on a good day-
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I always tell my listeners, this is the ideal.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
This is the ideal. Exactly. It doesn’t always happen this way. But when it does, my whole day goes better. It is absolutely the best when it works this way. So my morning routine, I have a series of a few stretches that I do in my bed before I even get out of bed. And I am actually multitasking when I’m doing my stretches because while I’m stretching, I stretch overhead and I do some spinal twists and I’m also doing some tongue stretches at the same time. And I’m doing Kegel’s.
Miriam Schulman:
Good for you.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
I’m triple tasking while I’m doing these stretches. I have scoliosis, so these stretches really helped my back and that takes like five minutes.
Miriam Schulman:
When you said multitasking, I was imagining you with your arm like going across with like Instagram, and then going the other way with Facebook. Okay. So is the phone in your room when you sleep?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
It is because I read some kind of fiction to help me get to sleep, and I read it on my phone on my Kindle app with a black background and white text, and I lie on my side. And that way, I can literally like fall asleep as I’m reading. I don’t have to have a light on in the room. And I know this is like, all the experts will say don’t ever do that, don’t have a screen. It’s what works for me.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
So I literally have the phone in my bed with me, which is like-
Miriam Schulman:
Not on your pillow.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
It’s right next to my pillow. It’s like the worst thing ever. But that’s what I do. I have a tendency to insomnia, so my reading material is right there. So that if I wake up, which happens very frequently, I can just open up my book and read right there, and then I can fall asleep while I’m reading again.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. So when you wake up in the night, because that’s a problem for me, so you use your phone in the middle of the night to read? You turn the phone back on? Okay.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
But I have it on airplane mode and do not disturb.
Miriam Schulman:
Got it. Okay. Yeah, I have to figure out this wake up in the middle of the night issue soon.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
You know what, it’s such a problem. I’m on this prophylactic migraine medication, which I got to say was so magical at first because it almost completely eliminated my insomnia. It was so great, I would just like sleep like the dead. I didn’t wake up. It was so awesome.
Miriam Schulman:
Until you got used to it.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:16:40]. It was such a bummer. Anyway, back to my morning routine. I do my stretches-
Miriam Schulman:
And you pronounce a Kegel. I pronounce it Kegel. Is that wrong? Is it supposed to be Kegel?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
I have no idea.
Miriam Schulman:
It could be East Coast/West Coast thing too.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Could be, yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Or maybe my mother, she pronounces things wrong when she talks like Kegel.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
My mom pronounces things wrong too.
Miriam Schulman:
Which drives us crazy. Mom, it’s not casada. It’s not vegan. We’re vegan. All right. So it probably is Kegel. Okay. Now I know. Now I know the right way to say it. I’ve been doing it wrong for the last 50 years. Okay.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
So are you aware of the guy who does the little ecourse called Tiny Habits? I don’t remember his name. But if you just do a Google search on Tiny Habits, he does his little ecourse. He’s not an online marketing guy. He’s like a professor. But he has this little free thing you can sign up for. It’s very low tech. It’s just like a few emails. And the idea is that you learn three teeny-tiny little habits. And he’s all about building micro habits.
And the reason I bring it up is the very next thing I do is a habit that I have stuck with from this teeny-tiny little ecourse called Tiny Habits from the sky whose name I can’t remember. As soon as my feet hit the floor, I do a stretch, I stretch my hands up in the sky like the touchdown symbol. My husband’s really into football. And I say, “It’s going to be a great day.” And that’s from that Tiny Habits.
Miriam Schulman:
I like that.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
And then I drink a glass of water-
Miriam Schulman:
Because I said so, it’s a great day.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Yeah, exactly. It’s going to be a great day. And then I drink a glass of water with my two, I have a thyroid med and my migraine med, and go to the bathroom. Okay. So then the very next thing I do usually is my shoulder rehab series of exercises, which can take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes depending on how crunched for time I feel or whatever.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
And then I drink another glass of water and I meditate for 10 minutes. I’m a follower of Susan Piver. She has her Open Heart Project. She sends out a meditation video once a week.
Miriam Schulman:
And is that to your phone?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
It’s email.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
I either use the insight meditation timer app, or I pull up my iPad and I watch her video, depending … Usually I use the app because her video just comes out once a week. I learned how to meditate from her. I was always like, I can’t meditate. I suck at this.
Miriam Schulman:
I want everyone to know I’m taking notes on this podcast and I don’t normally do this. What’s her name, Susan Piver?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Susan Piver, P-I-V-E-R. And she’s the one, you know how they say when the student is ready, the teacher appears?
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Well, she appeared when I was ready to learn that meditation is not about clearing your mind of thought and all that BS. She’s just amazing. It’s about just noticing when you’re getting completely absorbed in thought, just coming back to your breath. That’s all it is. Boom. This is the ideal. This is not how it always goes. I think today I meditated for two minutes. I can’t remember. But anyway,-
Miriam Schulman:
Do you have kids at home Melissa?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
No, I have no kids. I have a cat. After my ideal, 100 days, 10 minutes. Here’s another guy that I recommend. His name is Ming Chew, C-H-E-W, and he has a book. It’s all on healing pain. I used to do his whole series of stretches from him, and now I’ve cut it down to just like the only one I do is one. And it’s this big muscle at the front of your hip that it attaches on the-
Miriam Schulman:
Hip flexor?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Yes, that’s the one, the hip flexor. So I do this hip flexor stretch, it’s like a minute on each side. Then I literally get back in bed, and I sit up in bed and I write in my journal, and then I Doodle for 10 min. And that is when I do my doodling. And sometimes I do a live stream. I call it a doodle cam. And I have this little clip that I clip on … My husband has one of these rolly table thingies on his side of the bed. I clip this gooseneck thing that I can put my phone on, so I can do a live stream as I’m doodling, and I stream that to Instagram.
Miriam Schulman:
Cool.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Sometimes I do that.
Miriam Schulman:
And for our listeners, what’s your Instagram handle?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Yeah, it’s a_creative_life.
Miriam Schulman:
Perfect. Okay.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Okay. So that is basically my morning routine that happens inside like this isolated chamber of my bedroom. And then I go downstairs, and I feed the cat, and I make my breakfast, and I make … I used to be tea but I’m struggling with eczema, so I’m on this really restricted diet right now, so I can’t have tea. So I just heat up water.
Miriam Schulman:
And what is your breakfast? These details are very important to me. What is your breakfast?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Well, right now because I’m on this eczema detox, it’s literally at the moment it’s just oatmeal.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
It’s like super boring. I’m a science experiment at the moment.
Miriam Schulman:
I eat oatmeal every day. I don’t find it boring. I don’t like making decisions in the morning. So to me, it’s-
Melissa Dinwiddie:
I don’t like making decisions either. Like everything is the same in the morning. And that’s a willpower, that’s a conscious decision to not have to make decisions. I wear a uniform, essentially. I mean, it’s not technically a uniform, but it’s essentially a uniform. Like all my decisions are front loaded.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s like the Michael Kors. I think he has a uniform he wears. Is it a black T-shirt? Maybe I’m mixing him up with Steve Jobs uniform, his black turtleneck every day. But I think Michael Kors, it’s the same thing. Every day he wears, I forget if it’s a black turtleneck or black shirt. You can Google Michael Kors, you’ll see what he’s wearing.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Basically, I grab a T-shirt out of my closet, and I have the … Do you know Betabrand’s Dress Pant Yoga Pants?
Miriam Schulman:
No. I’m taking notes again. What’s it called?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
There’s this company is based in San Francisco called Betabrand, B-E-T-A brand.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. I thought beta like, because we all are internet marketers, we’re talking about our beta launches.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
It’s spelled the same way and everything they make, it’s all these different designers and they’re all crowd sourced. And their most popular product is called Dress Pant Yoga Pants. They look like dress pants, but their yoga pants.
Miriam Schulman:
Cool.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
I’m all about comfort. But I like to look put together. I want to feel like I’m wearing pajamas all day long or yoga pants. So everything I wear is super comfortable. I don’t iron, I don’t dry clean. Everything has to be comfortable. So I basically wear some kind of a T-shirt, nice looking T-shirt like a solid color, yoga pants that look really nice and a jean jacket and a scarf. I mean, unless it’s summer, unless it’s warm, because I always have a cold neck. And then you can see I have these wrist warmers which are made out of socks because my hands are always cold. So that’s my uniform.
Miriam Schulman:
Cool. Okay.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
I don’t think about it. I just don’t want to have to make decisions. And I wear the same earrings and then I get to work. That’s it. That’s my morning routine.
Miriam Schulman:
And then regardless of how much of the morning routine happens, do go to work at the same time. Like is it 10 o’clock, 9 o’clock?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
No. I would be nice, it’s a goal. No. I mean, this is the problem with working at home on my own without a rigid, externally imposed schedule. I don’t have like a meeting that happens every day at the same time. So, no.
Miriam Schulman:
I’ll be indulgent for a minute for my listeners. So there is an episode that I did, I don’t remember the number, but it’s about all that my morning routine which is still pretty similar. I meditate just like Melissa does. I actually have oatmeal every day, which I doctor up. I don’t think it’s boring. I like it. So I basically change out of my pajamas into my yoga workout clothing. My assistant, I call it my studio manager, but she’s much more than that, she comes at 10 o’clock, Monday through Thursday. So usually that signals to me, it’s time to put on some real clothes.
She’s actually gotten used to see me now in my workout clothes, but sometimes I don’t always put on real clothes. But yeah, then we kind of go over what has to happen. So that gives a little more structure to my time. So even though I’m not leaving for work, there’s somebody coming here, so that really helps. Okay, let’s bring this back. We talked all about the things that you do in the morning that restores your energy, which included doodling. Let’s talk about why it’s important to not just get creating, like your Doodle, but to share it. To share it and what you like to say even before you feel ready. And by the way, no one ever feels ready. Just saying. But why do you think it’s important to share your work?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
When I first started sharing on Instagram, and we live in this really unique time, where we have the ability to put our work out there in a way that has never happened before, right? This did not exist even 30 years ago. I made sort of an internal policy that I was just going to share whatever I was working on, works in progress. Whatever was going on in my studio, I was going to share it.
Even if it felt to me like utter crap. Didn’t matter. This was just my practice. Make stuff and share whatever I was making. And what I discovered in that process, and this is I don’t remember how many years ago it was now, what I discovered in this process was that … And it was scary. It was very scary to put out this like, oh my frickin god, this is so god awful.
Miriam Schulman:
So not the highlight reel. But like the actual what’s going on? I’m actually looking up your, in case you think I’m multitasking, which I guess I am doing, I’m looking up Melissa’s Instagram handle right now, a_creative_life, right?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Yeah, a_creative_life.
Miriam Schulman:
Got it.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
And at the time, I was … I don’t even remember what I was making at the time. I was probably working on canvas or something and I was doing layers. So I was doing like some layer of something that was really crappy. And then I would paint over it the next day with another layer. I don’t even remember. And I would share things and think, good lord, this is so awful. I can’t wait till I do something, paint all over it tomorrow. And people that I didn’t know from Adam would take the effort to lift their thumbs and tap that like button. I want to make clear that I was not sharing things in an attempt to get validated. I was not putting it out there going like me, like me, like me.
Miriam Schulman:
Is it hard now that people started liking to then still stay in that mode that I’m going to share and it’s not about getting the validation? Because when you first put it out there and you weren’t expecting the likes, you didn’t care. But then once people started liking, did you start caring?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
I find that for me, I have to be aware of what my intentions are. It’s very much a mindfulness practice. And I have to stay very clear about where I am in my sharing. Is this about trying to get validation? If so, it’s not going to work. It is not going to help me. Or is this about putting it out there and letting it go?
Miriam Schulman:
So putting it out in the world as a way of releasing it?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Yes. I mean, Instagram is a lot like a gun. A gun is a tool, right? And it can be used for a lot of different purposes. Ultimately, the purpose is to shoot a hole in something or someone and it’s going to kill somebody. And it’s going to kill a bad person or it’s going to kill a person who’s doing bad things or a person who’s an innocent person. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people, right? So Instagram can be used … It is intentionally designed by the creators of Instagram to hook us. And we have to remember that.
Miriam Schulman:
Right. Showing you all the likes and this post is performing 90% better than your other posts, would you like to pay at some more money so we can get more love?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Absolutely right. That’s right.
Miriam Schulman:
Buy love.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
These social media tools, it is beholden on us to use them extremely carefully, sensitively and mindfully. And I spend very little time on Instagram and Facebook and social media in general, but I do still have a practice of sharing. And the practice for me of putting my work out there, I don’t know how this will land with people on what they will do with this information. But there’s such a difference between putting it out there. Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? Are you going to approve of me? Is this okay? Am I okay? That is a really different energy than, here’s a thing, boom, let it go.
I made a thing, here it is, boom, let it go. And then noticing, oh, my gosh, that thing that I didn’t like that I thought was a piece of crap, isn’t that interesting? Other people are responding to it in ways that I didn’t anticipate. What that did for me, now your mileage may vary, but what that did for me was it allowed me to take off my Gremlin glasses and put on somebody else’s neutral glasses and see my work through their eyes. And that was a profound gift. Because when we can only see our work through our Gremlin glasses, we can’t really see our work.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
But when we can see our work through somebody else’s neutral glasses, it’s a profound gift. And for me, it allowed me to have so much more compassion for my work and for myself as a creator of that work. It enabled me to see my work as if I were looking at somebody else’s work.
Miriam Schulman:
And by the way, these are two of Melissa’s guideposts. Number eight, dismiss all Gremlins. And number 10, treat yourself with compassion. So we were teasing you in the intro how she has the book, The Creative Sandbox Way with the 10 different guideposts and those are two of them. Dismissing the Gremlins, which wasn’t one of the ones that I was planning on diving deep with you. That’s more like your inner critic, the Gremlins?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Yeah. Absolutely. They’re the voices in your head that say all those nasty things to you that you would never say to somebody that you care about.
Miriam Schulman:
And yet-
Melissa Dinwiddie:
And yet-
Miriam Schulman:
You would never say that to somebody you don’t even like, yet.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Yet. Exactly. And yet, we say to ourselves all the time without realizing that we’re doing it.
Miriam Schulman:
Self-assault.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Self-assault. Yes, absolutely.
Miriam Schulman:
If you’re the type of person who practices self-assault, it’s not an inner critic or Gremlins, however you want to phrase it, it bleeds into other aspects of your life. You’re not just criticizing your artwork, you’re probably criticizing your looks, your figure, what you said.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Yes.
Miriam Schulman:
Did you say something stupid? What are other people thinking of you? And it’s not necessarily that it’s going to affect all areas, but it certainly there is a bleed, a spillage over into other areas of your life. That’s important to clean up.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Yes.
Miriam Schulman:
Which is why I feel art is such a good life practice because it teaches us with art how to clean up our thinking in other areas.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
You’re so right. You’re so right on. That’s one of the things, like for me, I have a daily doodle practice, daily, ideally it’s daily-
Miriam Schulman:
#dailydoodle.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
#dailydoodle. Exactly. Yes. And that has been such a huge spiritual practice for me, because the process of doing this improvisational art every day and noticing, just like they say in yoga, you bring a different person to the mat every single day. If you meditate daily, you notice like your breath is different every day, and when I doodle like every day, something different comes up. I don’t always like what I do and that’s okay because think process not product, guidepost number two. It’s not about the outcome. It’s about the experience. I’m playing in the creative sandbox.
It’s not about the outcome. It’s about doing the thing. And because I’m doing it regularly, ideally daily. And if it’s not daily, who cares? I’m doing it regularly. It’s a practice. I’m doing it. I’m in the experience of doing it. And eventually, I’ll come up with something that I like, but I’m not concerned about it right now because I am letting my inner four-year-old inhabit the tip of my pen, and I’m letting her have free rein to do whatever she wants.
She doesn’t care about the outcome. She’s four. Have you ever watched a four-year-old make art? They don’t care about the outcome. They don’t even make the piece and then they’re going to run off and play on the swings or something. That’s the space that we want to be in.
Miriam Schulman:
Right. They’re not drawing worrying about monetizing it.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Exactly. Commerce has no place in the creative sandbox. It’s not about making money. It’s not about winning awards. It’s not about impressing anybody, even yourself. It’s about exploring, experimenting, and playing. It’s pure play. It’s pure play.
Miriam Schulman:
Which brings me to one of the guideposts that really spoke to me. Guidepost number two is think process, not product. The one that I really love, though, that I’d love to dig into deeper, is you talk about quantity, not quality.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
So let’s talk about that.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
That was such a concept for me to wrap my head around, because I grew up as such a perfectionist. I mean, I couldn’t have been a perfectionist when I was really, really little but that really dug its teeth into me pretty early. When you’re a perfectionist, it’s paralyzing. For me, it felt like everything I made had to be amazing. And when everything you make has to be amazing, then it becomes hard to make anything because nothing’s going to be good enough. So how can you even start, right?
Miriam Schulman:
And I also tell my students that if you expect everything to be a masterpiece, you’re trying to hold yourself to a higher standard than Monet or van Gogh because not everything they made was a masterpiece, either. We only see the masterpieces because they destroyed or painted over the other ones.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
That’s right. Mozart had, I think it was a 40% success rate, 60% failure rate. I might have those swapped, but still, even if you-
Miriam Schulman:
Let’s round it 50/50. Right.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
50/50. Right.
Miriam Schulman:
So let’s take that to our world, do the math for people. Okay. That means if you make 10 paintings, we’re going to go with the 60% success rate. Okay? That means four of them suck.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Right.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s 40% fail. 40% suck. So you throw out four out of those 10 paintings. Roz Chast was talking about her work. So she’s a New Yorker cartoonist. I think she’s still only gets one in 10 published. It’s like a really crazy competitive world.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
She’s amazing.
Miriam Schulman:
Exactly. She’s amazing. And she said she doesn’t get in every single week to the New Yorker. Yeah. That’s what she puts out the books. Here’s all the other great stuff I would do and nobody … I don’t need approval.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
That’s why I think quantity not quality, you have to just crank it out and crank it out and crank it out. The place where I found it easiest to wrap my head around this concept was photography. If you ever you know had a wedding or you had headshots taken or something and you had a photographer, then they probably gave you a whole crap ton of photos. And you looked through that huge pile of hundreds and hundreds of photos. And out of those, you found a handful that you liked-
Miriam Schulman:
If you’re lucky.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
If they gave you all those proofs. If they gave you all the proofs, you found a handful that you liked.
Miriam Schulman:
And the rest you Photoshop.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
The photographer had to take hundreds of photos to get a few good ones, right?
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
That’s where we can really understand this concept of think quantity, not quality. Why we find that hard to understand in other media, in other forms, I don’t know. But that’s the reality. If you want to write a good essay or blog post or something, you have to write a ton of essays or blog posts, or novels, or screenplays, or whatever. If you want one good, really good podcast episode, you’re going to have to do a bunch of them in order to get good at it. If you want to paint a good painting, if you want to get good at painting, you’re going to have to paint hundreds of paintings.
Miriam Schulman:
And you have to be willing to be a bad painter if you want to be a good painter. Even once you get good, you still have to be willing to, sometimes things are not going to come out.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
That is right. Exactly. You have to let yourself be okay with sucking.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
And it’s really hard as adults for us to do that, because we have worked so hard to adult. We’ve worked really hard at adulting.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Looking competent and confident and like, we know what we’re doing, and we learned how to walk, and it’s really hard to fall on our butts all over again.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I like to say, could you imagine if like that one-year-old said, mom, I tried it a few times, and walking is just not for me.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
And that’s what we do.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s right. We try it a few times and we’re like, nope, not doing that again.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
I didn’t write for 15 years. Somehow I had it in my head that if I were meant to be a writer that brilliant writing would just magically flow from my fingertips. And so I quit. I don’t know where I got this idea that people are just born amazing writers. I mean, that’s ridiculous.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. And you get that a lot in art, the I’m not talented or not creative, or I can’t draw. It’s like, yeah, I wasn’t born knowing how to play tennis and I didn’t figure it out on my own either, by the way. So write they’re skills, and they can be taught, and the harder you work at it, the better you get.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Right.
Miriam Schulman:
It’s like everything.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
There are a few people out there who are naturally they have some innate understanding of things, and they figure it out quickly. There are a few people out there in the world and they are held up.
Miriam Schulman:
I would argue that they may have better ideas that put it forward. I don’t know.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
I don’t know. There are some prodigies out there, there are a few. And they are held up and lauded as these amazing miracles or whatever.
Miriam Schulman:
Right. And also there’s the child prodigy that everyone likes-
Melissa Dinwiddie:
There’s the child … Everybody loves child prodigies. I would like to see more people who are lauded as the old adult-
Miriam Schulman:
The Grandma Moses.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
The Grandma Moses or the person in their 80s, who put a ton of effort into something, I want to see them getting the awards and the accolades. Those are the people that I want to see lauded rather than the 7-year-old or the 10-year-old, who’s some amazing prodigy. Personally. Because, hey, none of us is going to get any younger and suddenly be able to mimic the child prodigy, but we’re all getting older.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. My kids, it’s very nerdy, will listen to classical music in my house. And there was this program that my kids used to call the bad hour, because that was when they trotted out all the child prodigies. So they’re in college now and they’re over it. But back then, they just did not like these 13-year-olds playing things that they couldn’t do. So they’re like, “Could you turn that off, Mom? This is not helping.”
Melissa Dinwiddie:
I don’t blame them.
Miriam Schulman:
No. I don’t blame them either. It doesn’t mean we don’t get envious of people who have more success than we do. So now that you have overcome perfectionism, are you perfect?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Well, first of all, I would not say that I’ve overcome it. I call myself an intentional imperfectionist and a recovering perfectionist.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. So your guideposts are like your 12-step program for perfectionist. Is that right?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Yeah. You know what, I like that. That’s a pretty good analogy.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Melissa Dinwiddie:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Very good. All right, Melissa, this has been very inspirational. I think we’ve covered everything we promised and then some. But do you have any last words for my listeners before we call this podcast episode complete?
Melissa Dinwiddie:
I would love to share something that I started to say earlier and I didn’t I didn’t get a chance to. My golden formula is self-awareness plus self-compassion equals the key to everything good.
Miriam Schulman:
I love that. Make it into an Insta quote and see how many likes you get. Actually, I want to challenge our listeners, if you like Melissa’s idea of doodling, do your own morning doodle and share it either on Instagram, through your Instagram feed or your Instagram stories. And tag Melissa @a_creative_life. Hey, you can tag me too if you want me to see it, but tag us. So I’m @schulmanart, so we can see your morning doodles. All right. Thanks again for joining us today Melissa.
Don’t forget you can grab the poster of the 10 guideposts. Melissa has generously provided that for us. You can get it on the show notes. Also, listen to Melissa’s podcast, The Creative sandbox Way. I was listening to it earlier. She talks about COMO instead of FOMO, which is certainty of missing out. I thought that was a great episode and there are a lot of gems there. We’ve included a link to that, a link to her website, as well as her book Playing in the Creative Sandbox. So you can find all those things in the show notes. The show notes are at schulmanart.com/39.
Finally, to wrap this all up, I just want to remind you to subscribe to my podcast. I have some really amazing guests coming on. Lisa Compton is coming out with a new book. I have some really amazing guests. I don’t want you to miss a thing. So make sure you subscribe. Thanks so much for being with me here today. I will see you same time, same place next week and make it a great one. Bye for now.
Thank you for listening to The Inspiration Place Podcast. Connect with us on Facebook at facebook.com/schulmanart, on Instagram @schulmanart, and of course, on schulmanart.com.
Miriam Schulman:
Once again, this episode was sponsored by the Six-Figure Artist. If you’re interested in hearing how you can earn more for your passion with concrete marketing and business strategies that work, head on over to schulmanart.com/biz. That’s schulmanart.com/biz.
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