Welcome to the second inaugural episode of the Follow Your Curiosity podcast!
My second interview is with Dr. Kelly Flanagan, psychologist, blogger, and author of the wonderful book Loveable: Embracing What is Truest About You So You Can Truly Embrace Your Life, which I read a little more than a year ago. It’s an astonishingly moving book that left me feeling like someone had figured out exactly what I needed to hear—or, in some cases, hear again.
Kelly has some great insights into why following our creative passions is even more important than you might have thought, and how doing the things we love can change our lives to a degree we might never have imagined.
The amount of energy that people spend trying to convince their family members that their true self is good, worthy, and acceptable—that’s all energy that’s meant to be going into creativity.
Dr. Kelly Flanagan
Episode breakdown:
00:00 Introduction
03:39 Embrace the mess of being creative, enjoy!
09:38 Practicing passion: revealing true self, finding connection.
12:42 Kids need to create, not just consume.
17:00 Embarrassing, but powerful book offers permission.
17:54 Creativity doesn’t have to equal immediate success.
23:19 Courage and passion essential for difficult challenges.
26:08 Balancing roles with passion for caring communication.
30:33 Blogging journey, viral post inspired by daughter.
33:59 Anxiety before TV appearance, finds grounding in family.
35:58 Connecting with others through personal experiences and ideas.
38:25 Shame leads to false self, blocks creativity.
42:03 Culture changes one person at a time.
48:23 Creating space for rest and mindfulness transformation.
52:01 Recognize and challenge disempowering internal voice.
53:07 Challenge disempowering voice, empower the true self.
Show Links:
More about Kelly Flanagan:
Follow Kelly on Twitter: @drkellyflanagan or on Facebook
The Loveable Podcast (and wherever you get your podcasts)
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Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Hello, and welcome to Follow Your Curiosity, where we explore the ups and downs of the creative process and how to keep it moving. I’m your host, Nancy Norbeck. I am a writer, singer, improv comedy newbie, science fiction geek, and creativity coach who loves helping right brained folks get unstuck. I am so excited to be coming to you with interviews and coaching calls to show you the depth and breadth both of creative pursuits and creative people. To give you some insight into their experiences and to inspire you. My guest today is Dr. Kelly Flanagan, a psychologist whose letters to his daughter have gone viral, and the author of Lovable, Embracing What is Truest About You, So You Can Truly Embrace Your Life. A beautiful book that I read about a year ago, and that surprised me with its emphasis on the importance of following your creative passions. I can’t wait for you to hear what he has to say about his own history with creative work and how creativity reveals our true selves and vice versa.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:04]:
So let’s jump right in. Thank you so much for agreeing to to talk to me today. I am sure just to just for a start that people are gonna see that I’m talking to you and they’re gonna think, oh, she’s gonna talk to a psychologist about how creativity works. Uh-huh. Which isn’t actually why I wanted to talk to you at all. Okay. I, you know, when I read Lovable last year, I was so surprised when I got to the 3rd part, and it was all about going out and finding your creative thing and doing whatever that creative passion is. And, you know, I’m in retrospect I’m not entirely surprised because I always find your writing to be so tender and human in a way that a lot of other people’s isn’t, and it’s clear to me that that’s a passion of yours.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:56]:
But I I listened to one of your episodes, and I will confess that I have been listening to your podcast out of order, which is not how you’re supposed to do it.
Kelly Flanagan [00:02:05]:
It’s totally fine. You’re forgiven.
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:08]:
Good. But, you happen to mention in that episode your experience of discovering your creative self, and and I think you went to a conference that you referred to in that episode. But it made me wonder, you know, what was that like for you?
Kelly Flanagan [00:02:22]:
So, yeah. I guess I had been you know what’s crazy about this is, I wasn’t quite sure what we’d be talking about, but, just this morning it’s my first really my first day off in two and a half weeks, and I gave myself the morning just to spend some time reflecting. And I asked my wife if I could use a new journal. She’d gotten to do some reflecting and she’s like, no. It’s mine. So I I was like, okay. I gotta find a journal. I actually dug up my old journals from my bedside table and, because I knew there was space in some of them.
Kelly Flanagan [00:02:51]:
Anyways, I spent some time this morning reading back through my journals of 7, 8 years ago as I was beginning to discover my passion for writing and, and and so, yeah, I think, like, at first, you know, it was about 2011 when I I finally started to admit to myself, like, wow, you’ve you’ve been trying to write forever. You’ve got half of a novel on a hard drive somewhere from graduate school. You have always enjoyed writing, and so maybe it’s maybe it’s time to start getting a little more serious about that. Don’t just write in your journals. Like, begin to put it out there. And that’s, and that’s where the the idea of blogging came from. That was in late 2011. I think think I’d finally gotten to the point in my life where I I wasn’t I wasn’t too scared of putting my words out there that I knew, like, if people were critical of it, I could handle it for the most part.
Kelly Flanagan [00:03:39]:
And, and so about 2012, I started blogging and I think it was September of that year, of 2012, that I went to the conference that you’re talking about. And I went to that conference expecting, you know, to get all the secrets to being a creative that would make it sort of more efficient and orderly and productive and less scary and more predictable and and all of that. And the one thing I came away from that conference with was the the one thing that differentiates people who’ve identified as creatives from everybody else is that they just totally embrace the mess of being creative, the mess of creating. That when you’re creating, you’re sort of you’re wandering into an interior space within yourself, and you’re rooting around for whatever gifts exist there. And then you’re trying to find a way to bring them back out and give them to the world, and that is a it’s it can be scary and messy like any adventure. Right? And, and so to me, that conference really, really opened me up and gave me permission to let the creative process be as uncertain, messy, scary, fun, exhilarating, adventurous as anything else.
Nancy Norbeck [00:04:49]:
That’s great. So you wrote as a kid too?
Kelly Flanagan [00:04:54]:
So yeah. Like, you know, again, I I credit Susan Jaden at at Waterbrook. I was in a, it was in the middle of pitching Lovable and her publishing house was considering it and we were just talking about it and, she referenced something that she had, started to do in her life and said it was the thing I never knew I always wanted to do. Mhmm. And I loved that phrase. Like, it instantly got in inside of me, and and she’s been gracious enough to let me take that phrase and use it. And, and so, yeah, I think writing was the thing I never knew I always wanted to do. You know, when I look back in hindsight, it’s like, well, duh.
Kelly Flanagan [00:05:34]:
You were winning young author contests when you were younger or at least getting, you know, getting entered into them. I I always loved doing papers in college because I knew even if I didn’t know what I was talking about, I could pull off an a with my with my writing. And then I had this impulse throughout graduate school, to, to write a novel. In fact, and then when I look back from there, it’s, like, wait, I I was wanting to write a I’ve I’ve always whatever author I was obsessed with at the time, I wanted to write a novel sort of like they they wrote it. I think what shifted for me in 2011 and 2012 was this permission to, like, you don’t have to write like anybody else. You just get to write like you, and that opened up all sorts of freedom to just to start writing and see what came out.
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:19]:
And that’s such a huge thing, I think, for people because, you know, comparison is such a problem, you know, people will say, I have this idea, but so and so did it already or Mhmm. Why should I write this book? I’m not, you know, George RR Martin or whoever. It’s like, well Right. You’re you. So
Kelly Flanagan [00:06:37]:
That’s right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:38]:
You know, your view and your words are just as valid as anybody else’s.
Kelly Flanagan [00:06:42]:
Yeah. I like, it it was also freedom for me to just embrace the possibility that there are no new ideas, but there are new voices to share those ideas, and that my task isn’t to come up with something brilliant and new. My task is to to honor my voice and to express it as authentically as I can and to trust that in doing so, there will be at least a small group of people who couldn’t have heard that idea in someone else’s voice, wouldn’t have resonated with them. But but when heard in my voice, it will make a difference in their life. And so when the ego comes in and says, oh, you gotta be brilliant and come up with something new, I think to myself, no. You just have to come up with something new, and and say it in your own way.
Nancy Norbeck [00:07:27]:
That’s that’s wonderful. I feel like that should be on a bumper sticker. So so it sounds like when you wrote as when when you were younger that, you know, you were pretty well encouraged if you were entering contests and that kind of thing. Does that sound about right?
Kelly Flanagan [00:07:45]:
It’s a great question. In hindsight, I would say, that I think well encouraged is a relative term. I think that if I were to witness, sort of young people in my world with the affinity for writing that I had. I’d be really going out of my way to encourage them. I don’t think I got a lot of that explicit encouragement. The encouragement that I got was less from people and more from, being rated on my performance, whether it was a grade or, you know, getting an honorable mention in the young authors contest or something like that. The first person that I can really remember encouraging my writing with is a high school teacher who I thank in the acknowledgments for lovable. Actually, 2 married English teachers, who I felt really both affirm my writing.
Kelly Flanagan [00:08:35]:
And and and still then I couldn’t quite hear it, but but they are the 2 that stand out. So, yeah, like that’s something that I go out of my way to do now is when I say young people who seem to have an affinity for any form of creativity
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:49]:
Mhmm.
Kelly Flanagan [00:08:50]:
It’s to affirm not their performance of it, but their practice of it. You know?
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:56]:
Yeah.
Kelly Flanagan [00:08:57]:
You you enjoy doing that, don’t you? Yeah. I really do. Keep well, keep doing what you enjoy. And it’s so subjective. Right? Like, my middle guy who’s 11, he has entered a couple of art contests. And, and and, you know, at the at the judgment of the of the exhibits, he’s never won anything. But he’s become aware of how subjective the judging is when it comes to art, and that, that it doesn’t really need to be about getting awards. It just needs to be about, about practicing what you love.
Nancy Norbeck [00:09:27]:
Definitely. So I’m guessing that the the idea of practicing what you love is part of why you devote so much time to this idea in your book and everywhere else.
Kelly Flanagan [00:09:38]:
Yeah. I think, I think practicing your passion, particularly in the creative arena, it’s the it’s the culmination of your true self. You know, in Lovable, we talk about this idea that, we we sort of have to go, Most of us adults have to go on a journey back to remembering and reclaiming our truths, understanding our worthiness, beginning to get a sense of the very unique and worthy person that we are. And then we hopefully go through this process of of finally beginning to reveal that true self to the world and getting connected with our our people who really appreciate who we are. And and then and I think that’s great. And I think people at that point would say, hey. I really I actually like myself, and there are people who like me. But something is missing.
Kelly Flanagan [00:10:24]:
Like I there’s just an unfinished piece to my life that I can’t quite grasp, and one of the things I wanted to do with Lovable was to point out that, you know, that relationship, the finding a place to belong, it isn’t it isn’t the conclusion to life that many of us think that it is. That the culmination of the true self isn’t just showing it to people and having it embraced. It’s living it out in the things that we do with our day to day lives in the form of of practicing the things we’re passionate about.
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:52]:
You have such a a fabulous way of putting ideas like that that makes them accessible and powerful at the same time, which is part of why I wanted to talk to you today.
Kelly Flanagan [00:11:04]:
I often say to I often say to writers, like, it it’s not glorious. Like, your own your job this is the job that not a lot of people wanna do, and you find it fun for some reason. Your job is to sit sit alone in the in a room by yourself with only your internal world, and and put to words things that most people don’t put to words. So that when they hear it, they don’t go, oh, I never knew that. They go, that’s what I’ve been thinking all along. That’s what I’ve been trying to
Nancy Norbeck [00:11:31]:
say all along.
Kelly Flanagan [00:11:33]:
That’s the experience for a reader that is most powerful. New ideas oftentimes are hard to integrate. But an idea that was within me that you finally articulated for me, oh, thank you for that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:11:45]:
Yeah. Right?
Kelly Flanagan [00:11:45]:
So so, yeah, we’re not doing anything too terribly exciting, actually, in the day to day practice of it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:11:51]:
Yeah. It just looks romantic on TV and in movies. That’s true. Yeah. Yeah. So I’m I’m kind of I don’t know. Fascinated isn’t quite the right word. I get easily frustrated might be a better word, but, you know, I I encounter so many people who especially when they hear that I’m a creativity coach or or even just that I’m a writer and I’m gonna bet that you’ve heard this too.
Nancy Norbeck [00:12:18]:
Say, oh, I’m I’m not creative and kind of, you know, they literally do this hand waving thing like, oh, that’s not and it drives me nuts because I I will sit there and think, were you ever a human child? Because if you were, that’s pretty much all you did.
Kelly Flanagan [00:12:35]:
It’s all you
Nancy Norbeck [00:12:36]:
did. And it’s still there. It’s just that somebody, you know, taught you not to do it.
Kelly Flanagan [00:12:42]:
Although sadly, and I have to get up on my grumpy old man, you know, pulpit for a minute. I think we are actually seeing the 1st generation of kids who don’t have any experience of their own creativity because if all you’re doing is consuming the creativity of others, you’re not having any space to create your own. And sadly, I see that with some young people who, most of their free time is consumed with either watching watching media or playing media or whatever. And, and, actually, the the outcome of that is, is surprisingly it’s there are dire outcomes to it and they’re not they’re not terrible to to look at from the outside but it’s a lack of a sense of self because creativity for kids is often how they come to know to know themselves, it’s through that process of creation. So if you’re not engaging in that, you never get to really know who you are. And so, yeah, when somebody an adult tells me, that they’re not creative, my reaction is, oh, you haven’t met yourself yet, or you forget what you forget what it was like to be you. Let’s get you reconnected with that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:13:49]:
Yeah. I I feel like it’s it’s almost on a cultural level that it’s sort of, like, you know, we’ve created these this sort of class, right? You have the creative people who are writing the books and singing the songs and and, you know, choreographing and whatever, and then you have everybody else and everybody else kind of sits down here and and sort of like what you were just saying, you know, they look at those people and think, wow, that must be great, but that’s not who I am. And I find myself kind of wondering, you know, how do we fix that cultural divide? I don’t know if you have any thoughts about that, but it’s it feels tragic to me that there are so many people Yes. Who think this.
Kelly Flanagan [00:14:31]:
Yeah. Well and I think I think my answer to that is probably in part why we’re talking and and why Lovable resonated with you, actually. So Lovable started out so there’s these three parts to it. Right? The the the the task of of embracing our worthiness, of finding our places of belonging, and then finding a purpose through the practicing of our passions. Actually, that third part was the original. That was the original book. Ah. And then again sitting in a room by myself, I had to ask myself, can what does it take for someone to receive this this message? And I realized that, like you said, telling someone that they’re a creative that they have creative passion sort of embedded within them, if they haven’t done the work of reconnecting with their true self and developing communities who will support their true self, it’s they can’t hear it.
Kelly Flanagan [00:15:26]:
It feels like a different language to them. So that’s part of where the concept of lovable came from is that, we don’t start off by practicing our passions or returning to our passions in adulthood. We first have to start off in adulthood by returning to our true self, cultivating communities of people who are like, I see you. I see that you love doing that. Let’s support you in doing that. And, of course, we do that in return for them as well. And then you really get to become more familiar with your passions again. But, yeah, most people it’ll feel very very foreign to them, and so that’s why I sort of had to lay out lovable that way.
Nancy Norbeck [00:16:01]:
Well, that makes sense. Though though I’ll tell you, I mean, it certainly was not just the last part of the book that made an impression on me. I mean, I may have told you the the story that you tell at the very beginning. I was reading in a doctor’s waiting room, and I started to cry, and I’m going, I didn’t know this was gonna make me cry. Why didn’t I start this at home?
Kelly Flanagan [00:16:28]:
I don’t know too many people who reconnect with their true self without a few tears involved. So that that’s the that’s the hope in Lovable is that it’s not just ideas about reconnecting with your true self and really, being being able to embrace once again how worthy we each of us are, but that there’ll actually be that that’ll actually happen while reading it, that there’ll be a reconnecting with one’s true selves. That that’s as an author, as a creative, that’s very gratifying to hear that happened to you in a doctor’s office.
Nancy Norbeck [00:17:00]:
Yeah. It was a little embarrassing, but oh, well. So it goes. And you know, I mean, I don’t regret that in the slightest. I would have liked to be place where I could have actually really cried instead of trying not to. But, but yeah, I think that you know, there’s there’s something really powerful about reading a book that that first of all, makes that kind of impression right from the very beginning, but, you know, like I said, I was so surprised when I got to the 3rd part, and yet the 3rd part of the book is so it’s it’s kind of like a giant permission slip and, you know, I feel like there are so many times when I know I do this and other people do this, you know, where you feel like, oh, I don’t have permission to do this. So I think the the huge permission slip third of the book is really, really important.
Kelly Flanagan [00:17:54]:
Yeah. And I appreciate you saying that. I mean, I think that is something in that last third of the book too that I I tried to come at from bunch of different angles and in a bunch of different ways that we’ve been we’ve sort of swallowed messages about what it means to be creative or practice your passion, you know. And and one of the big ones and for for folks who are listening, and one that I think probably was a big one for me that kept my my passion for writing sort of trapped for a long time was this idea that it had to immediately also be a paycheck to quickly lead to a career or something like that. And and, you know, the it’s it’s lovely if it does. It’s also dangerous if it leads to a paycheck because then you you start to get confused motives about why you’re doing it. You know? But I think that I think that the message that I want people who are listening to hear is, you don’t have to have a plan. You know? You don’t have to have your 5 year plan of how you’re gonna monetize your your passion.
Kelly Flanagan [00:18:58]:
You know, instead, just start carving out and creating space within your week, to to to practice it and begin to see where it goes goes from there. Take the pressure off yourself. If you set aside for me, it started 3 hours on a Friday morning. I’d wake up at 5 AM. Kids would be getting up around 8 AM. I’d have 3 hours on a Friday. And if I, you know, put my butt in the chair and I got in front of the keyboard for 3 hours, success. That was that was what success was.
Nancy Norbeck [00:19:26]:
Mhmm.
Kelly Flanagan [00:19:26]:
And that’s evolved that’s evolved slowly over time, but don’t try to get too far ahead of ourselves. Right?
Nancy Norbeck [00:19:31]:
Yeah. And I I have the feeling that you’re talking about the the dark side of the paycheck from experience. Are you willing to talk about that a little bit?
Kelly Flanagan [00:19:41]:
Yeah. Sure. Yeah. You’re right about that. I mean, I think I think that the creative process is a constant dance between your your your soul and your ego, your true self and your false self. Know, I write in Lovable that I thought at some point I thought you master the ego and you get rid of it and, you know, you don’t have to worry about it again, but I see it as a constant dance. And and in our world, we use we use, we use paychecks and numbers and money as as a sort of proxies for how well we’re doing and if we’re successful and whether or not we should keep doing something. Right? And the ego wants to the ego wants to say, well, if if what you’re doing isn’t producing a certain amount of money, then, you’re not very good at it.
Kelly Flanagan [00:20:26]:
You should quit doing it. And I certainly continue to experience that that dance. You know, I go through periods where my writing produces a little something extra for our family, and my ego wants to seize on that and say, okay, now now you’re now you’re doing okay. And then it wants to do the opposite, of course, to me when things aren’t going as well. But but I have to remember that I don’t I don’t create because I I have to make money from it. I I create because I have to to be who I am. And and so I’m I I feel like I’m constantly in that dance. And so my encouragement to people who are considering really getting serious about practicing their passion or being creative is actually make sure there’s financial margin for it.
Kelly Flanagan [00:21:10]:
Don’t don’t force yourself to have to depend upon it, for financial gain right away, or you may put an undue pressure on it. Begin to construct your life so that you can practice it a little bit while also doing the things that help pay the bills and and so on.
Nancy Norbeck [00:21:27]:
That that makes a whole lot of sense, especially because, you know, people have this image of, oh, so and so got a book deal, they’re gonna have, you know, this giant check and they can stay at home and do nothing but sit at a desk and write all day or, you know, go to the beach or whatever they wanna do and that’s really not how it works for most people. I mean, if you’re really lucky, but No. Yeah.
Kelly Flanagan [00:21:49]:
No. Exactly. Like, yeah, the idea of getting rich off of selling books, yeah, that’s the the top 10th of 1%, you know, of folks and and in fact, what I would say is that, in my experience, publishing a book and having some success with it, you don’t you don’t have a lot of financial success still even from the book. What it does is it shifts it shifts how you work hard. So I spend less time now in my therapy office. I spend more time out on the road speaking to people, because people are willing to hire me to do that, and I love doing that. And so it’s you don’t I think a lot of us envision that the creative life sort of excuses us from working hard, and I would actually argue that it is the hardest work you can do. And and the idea that it’s gonna help you escape from that is, you could probably let go of that right now.
Nancy Norbeck [00:22:43]:
Yeah. And it’s true. Because I you know, I mean, you kind of said it earlier, you know, you’re whether you’re writing or painting or or whatever your creative pursuit is, you’re still drawing out of yourself into a format that you can show to the rest of the world which is usually a whole lot harder than going in, you know, into work every day and processing whatever you process or, you know, directing whatever you direct because it’s your soul on display, so you have to have a certain degree of courage that most jobs don’t necessarily require just to do what you’re doing.
Kelly Flanagan [00:23:19]:
There’s a lot of courage involved. There’s, the courage that goes with being vulnerable, the courage that goes with really, life becoming much more unpredictable. You know, just spend more and more time on it. And so, yeah, I think I think it takes a lot of courage, a lot of hard work, and, and that’s why, you know, you better be doing something you love, if you’re gonna be doing it because that that really has to be the the the biggest payoff more than anything is that you’re doing something you love. Because it’s not gonna go well. You’re gonna fail and, and you and you might as well fail at doing something that you really enjoy. Just just this morning, my 15 year old texted me, poor guy, and he didn’t he he got cut from it’s a very small theatrical sort of ensemble cast that he was trying out for, and, you know, he expressed all the things that I often feel like I just wanna quit. It’s not worth it.
Kelly Flanagan [00:24:10]:
You know? This feels miserable. And it’s like, yeah. Yep. Like, welcome to the creative life. This is I know you love I know you love that moment up on stage. Right? And when the curtain comes up for the the the crowd to cheer, but, man, this is just as much a part of the creative life as that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:24:29]:
Yeah. I don’t I don’t think you can do anything creative if you’re afraid of failing.
Kelly Flanagan [00:24:34]:
No. I think that’s well said. I think you can pretty much sum it up in that way. Yep.
Nancy Norbeck [00:24:39]:
Yeah. I mean, among other things, if you’re not if you’re not failing, you’re probably not trying hard enough. Though Yes. I hesitate to say trying hard enough because I don’t like the idea of making it feel like this big pressure I have to do all the things, you know, kind of angle to creativity because usually creativity goes better when you take the pressure off. But at the same time, if you’re not experimenting, if you’re not, you know, doing new stuff, if everything that you have comes out perfectly as if, you know, this drawing looks just like the one before it and the one after it, then you, you know, need to go try failing a little bit, I think.
Kelly Flanagan [00:25:15]:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s not an assembly line sort of thing where you keep producing the same thing. Yeah. It’s, yeah. Exactly.
Nancy Norbeck [00:25:21]:
It’s not widgets.
Kelly Flanagan [00:25:23]:
Not widgets. There you go. Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, I even I’m as we’re talking, I’m even aware that, I’m aware so one of the I think one of the most important things that’s emerged since I wrote Lovable and talking about this idea of passion is that sometimes too, we can get so caught up in thinking of our creativity and our passions as something we do, rather than and I think this is much more helpful to most of us, as the way that we do all the things that we do. So for instance, you know, people have said, so, hey. When you if you hit the you hit a best seller list, are you gonna quit your job as a therapist? And my answer for a long time was like, well, no. I wouldn’t do that.
Kelly Flanagan [00:26:08]:
Are you gonna sell your no. I wouldn’t do that. And it started to dawn on me that that being a therapist, building a practice, being a dad, being a husband, being an author, they all actually are part of of a a passion that undergirds all of that and and the passion that undergirds it is, as I’ve been able to identify it to this point or describe it is speaking in the caring voice of a father such that people know they’re worthy. And then I get to do that as a therapist. I get to do it as an author. I get to do it as a husband, as a as a father, and so my encouragement to creatives would be that we’re that we are like, as you said, we’re all creative. And so I’m not just creative when I’m in front of the keyboard. I’m also creating when I’m, putting stamps on it on Christmas cards with my daughter.
Kelly Flanagan [00:26:57]:
Right?
Nancy Norbeck [00:26:57]:
Mhmm.
Kelly Flanagan [00:26:57]:
How am I doing that? How does that become a creative act, and how do I add my own bit of uniqueness to that creative act? So even if you are making widgets, I think there’s I think there’s potential for creativity within that, and you’re getting to know yourself better as you figure out what that creativity looks like in that in that endeavor.
Nancy Norbeck [00:27:16]:
I’m so glad you said that because I feel like there are so many little things that we all do every day that are creative that we don’t even notice, and the fact that we don’t notice them is part of how people fall into this oh no, I’m not creative trap. So, you know, I think somehow we need to start noticing them because they’re everywhere.
Kelly Flanagan [00:27:38]:
They’re everywhere, and and so the question, yeah, the question is how does my true self show up to this moment to be creative in this moment, regardless of of what it is I’m doing? And as you begin to ask that question and answer it, you you become more and more deeply connected with your creative side. And, and then you can think about, okay. And now that I’m more familiar with myself, how do I start carving out space to be really intentional about practicing that in some way?
Nancy Norbeck [00:28:06]:
That’s great.
Kelly Flanagan [00:28:07]:
Yeah. One of the examples I often give, and people don’t think of it this way, is, like, surgeons.
Nancy Norbeck [00:28:12]:
Mhmm.
Kelly Flanagan [00:28:12]:
Right? I I would argue that probably no 2 surgeons have, like, you you think, well, they must have a passion for surgery. I think it’s probably not the case because, you know, it might be that one surgeon has a passion for for the art form that is the, you know, human biology. It might be that another surgeon has a passion for having to think on their feet and everybody looking at them, you know, to to answer the problem, right, in the moment. That’s a creative act. In almost every surgery, something goes wrong. We don’t like to talk about that. Right? Right. But but it happens.
Kelly Flanagan [00:28:46]:
And so there’s a creative moment in every surgery where the the surgeon has to make something up. So there’s there’s there’s endless forms of potential creativity in all endeavors, and how do you begin to discern what is it in this moment that triggers my sense of create creativity and passion the most?
Nancy Norbeck [00:29:05]:
Yeah. You’re you’re reminding me my my dad is an electrical engineer.
Kelly Flanagan [00:29:10]:
There you go.
Nancy Norbeck [00:29:10]:
And, you know, people think that science and tech and all that is not creative because and yet how can it not be? You know, you’re you’re discovering a cure for cancer, you’re writing a new piece of software, you’re designing a new circuit that’s gonna go into this device that’s gonna do this new thing and nobody’s ever done this before, you have no idea how it’s gonna work. You’ve got certain constraints which, you know, provide some structure which creative people tend to flee from and yet structure can actually help you a lot. And, you know, so so we ignore that kind of creativity even though it’s it’s right there. You can’t do that job without it.
Kelly Flanagan [00:29:51]:
Well and I love what you’re doing with the show because you’re sort of helping people to name, something that they are a potential to identify their own creativity that they’d miss otherwise, you know, and I think that’s right on.
Nancy Norbeck [00:30:04]:
Yeah. In fact, I saw this quote on Instagram a couple months ago that said, the creative adult is the child who survived.
Kelly Flanagan [00:30:13]:
I love that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:30:15]:
It it makes me think, you know, in in your book and in your podcast and everywhere else, you spend a lot of time talking about the child that’s still inside us. And, you know, the the way to kind of bring that child back out because I feel like that’s what the I’m not creative people are kind of missing is that kid’s still in there.
Kelly Flanagan [00:30:33]:
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. You know? And I yeah. I’ve told this story elsewhere, but, I’ll I’ll say it again because it was such a a turning point for me. You know, I when I started my blog, I think I had I think 4 people shared my first blog post, and then I had a I had one that was a little more popular a few months later. It was about a year after I started or maybe a little more that I wrote a letter to my daughter about how she’s inherently worthy of interest, and and that blog post went very viral. I hadn’t planned on sharing it on my blog, but my wife had encouraged me to.
Kelly Flanagan [00:31:04]:
And then a year after that, I wrote a second one to her about her how her her most enduring beauty is on the inside of her. Mhmm. That one went really viral, and she and I wound up on the Today Show. And, and I got connected with an agent, and the agent said to me, you know, you should you everyone’s responding to letters to your kids. You should probably write a parenting book. And so I went home to my wife, who’s the child clinical psychologist, by the way, who’s also named Kelly. I said, Kelly, Cathy, my agent wants me to to write a a parenting book, and my wife, like, laughed in my face. It’s like, dude, there’s no no way you should be writing a parenting book.
Kelly Flanagan [00:31:34]:
And she of course, she’s right because everything I’ve learned from parenting is from messing up and watching her over the last, you know, 12 years. And, and so but she and I got talking. We’re, like, well, yeah. If it’s not the parenting element of these letters that is resonating with people, what is it? And one of the things I realized is that when I looked at the thousands of emails I was getting, there was only a small fraction of them from people saying, hey. I’m gonna give this letter to my daughter someday or to my granddaughter someday. It was the vast majority were from people saying, I needed to hear these words still. I needed to be reminded I’m worthy. I needed to be reminded I’m not alone and that I matter, and it sort of that that’s when it sort of clicked for me.
Kelly Flanagan [00:32:12]:
We all still have a little one inside of us that’s waiting on a love letter. And if we can connect with that little one, embrace them, create a safe space for them to come out and play if you will, form that they come out and play in is creativity.
Nancy Norbeck [00:32:27]:
Yeah, definitely. And and I remember, I don’t remember which which of those 2 posts it was, but one of them is how I found you. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Because because it was, it was everywhere. I’m I’m curious how what your daughter thought of going on the Today Show.
Kelly Flanagan [00:32:44]:
She was 3 at the time, and she just has this this delightful, lovely personality where she’s just pretty much game for anything. And, and so, yeah, we we went on the show. She seemed really unfazed by it. I remember, like, I’ve actually only watched the interview one time in the hotel room shortly after that day, and I said to her, hey do you want to see yourself on TV? She’s like no. And I’ve offered it to her several times since and she’s like, no, I don’t really want to see it. Although although just recently, some friends, you know, she’s in 3rd grade now
Nancy Norbeck [00:33:22]:
Mhmm.
Kelly Flanagan [00:33:22]:
And this is where we start to see things like ego start to form and stat status matters and that sort of thing. And, she said just recently, you know, one of my friends said that I’m famous because I was on the Today Show. Oh. And, yeah, and I was like, oh, here we go. Teenage teenage years are just around the corner, but, but, so I suspect sometime soon she’s gonna be like, hey. Can you watch that Today Show video? And, and then we’ll see what she thinks then. But, but it was a blast for all of us, actually.
Nancy Norbeck [00:33:53]:
Yeah. I would imagine so. How did it impact you in the way that you approach your own writing?
Kelly Flanagan [00:33:59]:
You know, that’s a great question that that no one, has ever asked me before, but I actually, have thought about this a bunch, and I was terrified to go on the Today Show. And in order to go up there, get on that orange couch and be coherent, I needed to get into a place, you know, my daughter was on the couch with me, my wife and 2 sons were off off stage, but I could see them. And I needed to get into a place where I remembered that, I was speaking for for them primarily, that they were the only audience I really cared about, and that being able to to connect with that truth, is something that I go back to all the time as a writer. I usually when I’m writing, I’m writing for 1 person, my family and maybe 1 or 2 other people. And if I can remember that when I’m creating, I’m creating for the people that I belong to, not for everybody.
Nancy Norbeck [00:34:58]:
Mhmm.
Kelly Flanagan [00:34:59]:
It gives me all sorts of freedom to just to just be myself and and say what I have to say.
Nancy Norbeck [00:35:05]:
You know, I have the feeling that that’s why the things you write connect with so many people, kind of ironically.
Kelly Flanagan [00:35:12]:
You know,
Nancy Norbeck [00:35:12]:
I think One
Kelly Flanagan [00:35:12]:
of my favorite yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:35:13]:
If you try to please everybody, you know, it doesn’t tend to work as well.
Kelly Flanagan [00:35:18]:
Yeah. One of my favorite, authors, Henry Nouwen, who I actually mentioned in that Today Show interview, he he says that the most personal is also the most universal. Mhmm. And so I yeah. I I guess I when I write, I hope to write about what is most personal to me to the people who are closest to me. And then if that happens to translate into to universal things, then then so be it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:35:44]:
Yeah. And and I imagine, you know, doing your podcast the way you’ve done it on Facebook live where you’re getting input from people who are listening right there in that moment must kind of demonstrate that too.
Kelly Flanagan [00:35:58]:
Yeah. You know, I think I I think one advantage I’ve had is, you know, I have to say, like, a lot of what I write I write about my own personal experiences for the most part, but I’ve had the the good fortune to be a therapist and to get to sort of test out my ideas with lots of people and discover, like, oh, lots of people are like me. They we all we all came into the world with a true self. We all experienced shame. We all started hiding our true self with our ego, and once we reconnect with our true self, we all become creative in some form. It just it it just plays out over and over again, and so, and so then to, yeah, have that continue to be reinforced people like yourself who go, wow, this resonated with me. That’s been awesome. And so it sort of gives me the confidence to to keep saying it to to as many people as I can.
Nancy Norbeck [00:36:44]:
So it sounds like, from what you just said, that you’ve seen people who previously had no creative impulse, and once they get to that moment, it just comes out of nowhere even if you haven’t laid that foundation specifically? Oh.
Kelly Flanagan [00:36:59]:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s the, that’s the, to me, the really exciting thing is that as you reconnect with your true self, the the natural conclusion is that your your your natural creativity, your passions begin to emerge. And, and and at that point, it requires a lot. It’s less about working to to embody those and more just about allowing them to be embodied through you. Right? Like, at that point, you just need to get out of the way and let it happen, which is, of course, is not easy to do either. Right. Right.
Kelly Flanagan [00:37:35]:
It becomes much more naturally, I think.
Nancy Norbeck [00:37:38]:
Yeah. You know, people and I certainly have had people say this to me, and I imagine almost all of us have probably heard the, you know, you need to get out of your own way. What what do you think is if there is a key to getting out of your own way, what do you think it might be? So If you can encapsulate it.
Kelly Flanagan [00:37:59]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So the way I would sort of tweak that statement, and it’s it’s exactly right on. You need to get out of your own way. It would be that your false self needs to get out of the way of your true self. But that’s specifically the job of the false self is to get in the way of the true self hide it away, and and to to to back up a couple of steps. So you come into the world of true self. As a kid, you embodied it for a while, most of us.
Kelly Flanagan [00:38:25]:
We were playful, creative. And then somewhere along the way, we encounter shame, which is this message that your true self isn’t good enough. The way that you are, it won’t earn you the love and belonging that you you so desperately want in the world. And so all of us, every human being, at some point in our childhood begins to develop a self a false self that hides the true self away, protects us from from any more shame, And that false self, as I talk about it in Lovable, I talk about it like a castle that protects our true self. And the false self has 3 components, castle walls that hide our true self away, castle cannons, that get aggressive and attack other people so they can’t hurt us first. And then castle thrones, like, the the the arrogant ways we sort of say, hey, I’ve done this I’ve earned this, you know, and so now you can’t really question if I’m good enough because I’ve proven I am. And and that false self has zero creative potential. It’s driven by ambition not by passion, it’s driven by a desire to achieve not to create, and so that false self if we’re living from it is what gets in the way.
Kelly Flanagan [00:39:35]:
Right? It’s it’s that’s we say we have to get out of our out of our own way. We’re saying we need to begin to lower the drawbridge of that ego castle of all of our protections and ambitions and achievement and all of that. We need to let our true self walk out and just create in the world. And so if there’s a is there a is there a takeaway tip there? I think the main thing, is to begin to I say this to people all the time. First thing in the morning, we all most of us check our phones now. Last last thing at night, most of us check our phones. Right? So instead, first thing in the morning, last thing at night, instead of flicking through your phone, flick through your ego. Ask yourself how did I hide today? How did I protect today? How did I elevate myself today? And as you begin to observe those processes within you, those ways of embodying the false self rather than the true self, the really exciting thing about that is the you that is observing it is your true self.
Kelly Flanagan [00:40:32]:
So by observing your ego protections, observing the ways you try to hide your true self away, you’re actually beginning to inhabit your true self again. And as you stay more and more in that space, you’re gonna get more and more connected with who you actually are and all the creativity that goes along with it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:40:46]:
That sounds like a really, really potent journaling practice.
Kelly Flanagan [00:40:49]:
I that’s a I think that’d be a great way to put it. Yeah. Like, a daily journal in which you’re sort of working through though those levels of protection that you’ve built into your life because you don’t wanna be shamed again, I think I think that alone can be a pathway to to reconnecting with the creative in you.
Nancy Norbeck [00:41:06]:
Yeah. I I feel like shame plays such a huge part in this whole process of, you know, ending ending up where we can’t figure out what we wanna do or how to do it or believe that we can do it, and and maybe it’s the only thing really that that gets us there or the chief thing that gets us there and I I wonder about that too as a cultural thing because I feel like we’re a little bit more enlightened about shame these days, Brene Brown has done a great job of of, you know, making us aware of that and everything, but I don’t know if there’s a way to maybe I think too big because I think of it as a cultural thing because I feel like we Yeah. If we’re not careful we can drown in it because it’s everywhere. I don’t know if if there’s a way to attack that or if it’s really yes. It’s a cultural thing, but we all have to deal with it on our own individual level.
Kelly Flanagan [00:42:03]:
I, yeah, I think culture changes one person at a time, and and I resonate with that, you know, when when you when you realize how much collectively our shame is keeping us small and limiting us and preventing us from living the lives that we want to, you just want to erase it off the face of the planet. I get a blog post once, like, I’m declaring war on shame or something like that, right? But but you know I think that the and I think in a way like if that’s your passion, if that’s your if that’s the thing you feel that you want to do with your creativity is to work at eliminating the collective level of shame on the planet. For instance, Brene Brown. Right? That’s what her passion is. Yeah. And so she’s she’s doing it, but, but if that’s not specifically your passion, then instead, work work at not allowing your shame to dictate your life. Embody your creativity, and the collective level of shame on the planet will be reduced by 1 and that’s that’s about what most of us can do.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:09]:
And that’s not nothing, I think
Kelly Flanagan [00:43:11]:
No. It’s not.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:12]:
We feel like, oh, it’s just me. What can I do on my own? But I think that’s not not insignificant.
Kelly Flanagan [00:43:17]:
There’s a Howard Thurman quote I put in, in Lovable. Don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive and go do it because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:26]:
A lot of
Kelly Flanagan [00:43:27]:
that quote. Yeah. Yeah. And I am only in charge of 1 person coming alive and that’s me.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:32]:
That quote, I mean, the whole idea of coming alive, I think that’s really what happens when you make that connection with your true self and what you, you know, really wanna be doing is it
Kelly Flanagan [00:43:44]:
Yes.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:44]:
You know, I I need to be sculpting, I need to be, you know, teaching little kids to be artists or you know, whatever it is. I think that really and and you can feel it. You can feel it in your body when it happens.
Kelly Flanagan [00:43:56]:
You can feel it in your body.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:57]:
There’s that energy that doesn’t exist the rest of the time.
Kelly Flanagan [00:44:02]:
You know, one of the things that I I there’s a couple things there that you just said. Number 1 is that, the two words that for me are, like, red flags for shame, are should and supposed to. Mhmm. And that when you begin to get a little sense of freedom from your shame, all of a sudden a lot of the things that you thought were rules, they aren’t actually rules. They were just barriers to you getting to do what you want to do. And so when I’m working with clients, whenever they say should or supposed to, I say I’m just gonna pause it for a second. I don’t know if that’s what’s happening here, but there’s a decent chance that shame is telling you something right now, and we need to we need to challenge it a little bit. So so yeah.
Kelly Flanagan [00:44:40]:
So I really appreciate that that there’s an increased sense of freedom, and then something you just said is so important. The the effort that it takes to keep our emotions under wraps, to manage our shame, to, be building an ego castle and maintaining it and using it, when we begin to get free of that process and we’re just living from our true self, we experience an exponential increase in in energy, because now all of our our emotional and our psychic energies are not going to keeping all of our emotion stuffed up, keeping our defenses up. That’s all that energy is freed up to be who we are and to create, and that could be really, really fun.
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:25]:
Yeah. And it’s amazing that, you know, most of us don’t even realize, because it just feels normal, that we’re using all of that energy, and that we don’t have that feeling like Oh my god, I’m alive!
Kelly Flanagan [00:45:38]:
We don’t know it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:40]:
Yeah, we don’t, and yet when you do have that feeling, even if it’s only for 5 minutes the first time, it’s kind of amazing, it’s like, I didn’t know this was possible, how do we not all know that this, you know, how do we forget? And I’m sort of acting that out and sort of asking a question at the same time. It’s amazing to me that we do that.
Kelly Flanagan [00:45:59]:
Well, and I bet and I’ve said this so many times. I bet every parent here will resonate with this. I’ve said it out loud to my kids countless times, how do you have so much energy? Right?
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:10]:
Yeah.
Kelly Flanagan [00:46:10]:
And and we want to write it off too, well, it’s because they’re kids, and so they’re physically they have more energy, but the truth is their soul has more energy, because it’s it’s not so suppressed, and we’re not spending so much of our mental and emotional energy keeping it under wraps. And so there is, like, there is a second childhood that happens as you begin to reconnect with with that true self. The energy that reemerges because you’re not spending it on other things, it’s actually sustainable. Like, it’s not like it’s just a spurt, you know? Mhmm.
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:41]:
Like,
Kelly Flanagan [00:46:42]:
hey, it’s a sustainable energy that you can maintain over time because you’re not you’re not expending that energy on keeping yourself suppressed.
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:49]:
Yeah. You you know, I I love that, you know, we’ve got to this point in the conversation and, you know, hey, we can kind of un uncork this bottle that lets all this energy loose, but I also can imagine that someone might be listening to this and thinking, boy, it must be nice if you can get there, but I’m never gonna make it or, you know, or something along that line. I’m just wondering what you might have to say to that person.
Kelly Flanagan [00:47:16]:
I hear you loud and clear is what I’d say. I’d say, in fact, as I was rereading those journals from
Nancy Norbeck [00:47:25]:
Mhmm.
Kelly Flanagan [00:47:25]:
Today, the the journal that I had in my hand covered the 3 years from prior to starting my blog, and the the recurring theme in that 3 years, and I often wrote it out in, like, one word sentences, I am so tired. And the irony when I look back is that I was doing about half of what I was doing at that point, that half of what I’m doing now, and yet I was so exhausted by all of it, because none of it was connected to my passion and creativity. So none of it was giving me energy. It was all just sapping me. So number 1, empathy. Like, I get it. I’ve been there for years, for decades of of my own life. And the starting point that we have to remember for for this whole, what sounds like probably a pretty daunting process of reconnecting with your true self, is space, stillness, and rest, actually.
Kelly Flanagan [00:48:23]:
That, the shift began to happen for me around 10 years ago when I started to create space in my life, for for rest, for stillness, and for meditation, for mindfulness of my thoughts and feelings, and for increased capacity to be present to whatever was going on inside of me, whether it was hard or painful or joyful or whatever. And that sometimes it’s years of practice of of rest, stillness, and space. And all of a sudden one day, you hear a still small voice within you, you know, going, you really are lovable. You get to do whatever you want. Don’t set don’t don’t settle for connecting with people who don’t see you for who you are and all of the good things you are. Don’t let them steal your energy that way. You’ll find the people who really see you and you belong to, and then go do it. Just go have fun doing this thing that you wanna do.
Kelly Flanagan [00:49:21]:
And it’s not a initially a, always a mountaintop experience. Sometimes it’s just this very still small quiet experience, but it is joyful.
Nancy Norbeck [00:49:32]:
Mhmm. I I think the the belonging and and actually your comment about not settling for the people that you don’t essentially belong to. It’s not exactly how you said it, but I think that’s so important and so easy to overlook, especially if those people are people we think that, for want of a better way of putting it, we’re stuck with. You know? Yeah. My parents don’t understand. My brother makes fun of me, you know, what whatever it happens to be.
Kelly Flanagan [00:50:01]:
That’s the irony is that your parents and family will probably be the people least likely to understand you oftentimes, and I think that’s a hard the amount of energy that people spend trying to convince their family members that their true self is good, worthy, and acceptable, that’s all energy that’s meant to be going into creativity. And so beginning to just let go of some of those processes of of trying to convince certain people, that we’re worthy and that what we wanna do is is is good can be so essential. I was just speaking this past weekend at a conference for entrepreneurs out in San Diego, and doctor Sean Stephenson spoke there. Some people will know his TED Talk. He was born with a bone disorder, and he’s he’s 3 feet tall, and he’s wheelchair bound, and he wasn’t supposed to live more than 24 hours. And, he’s 40 years old now. Yeah. And, his very first speaking point when he got up to talk was, don’t ever believe a prediction that disempowers you, and and don’t hang around too long with people who give those predictions.
Kelly Flanagan [00:51:00]:
He’s not saying don’t be around people who challenge you, don’t be around people who give you thoughtful feedback and criticism, but don’t don’t spend too much time with people who disempower you. And I know that was a a talking point that really resonated with most people at that conference, and I think it’s it’s sort of what you’re queuing in on there.
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:17]:
Yeah. That that feels like another bumper sticker to me.
Kelly Flanagan [00:51:19]:
Mhmm. Yeah. He’s, yeah, he’s got a good bumper sticker with that one. It’s right on.
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:24]:
Yeah. Either that or tattoo it across your forehead.
Kelly Flanagan [00:51:26]:
Yeah. Right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:27]:
My forehead would be pretty full, and I’d look very stiff. But
Kelly Flanagan [00:51:31]:
Right. If we had bumper sticker foreheads, we’d look like a bumper on the back of a car. You know?
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:35]:
We would. Yeah. The kind that you can’t see the car through. Right. Well, we’re almost out of time, but I’m just wondering if there’s if there’s anything else that’s come to mind or if there’s a piece of advice that you’ve gotten along the way that you think is something that people might need to hear. Anything else that you might like to share?
Kelly Flanagan [00:52:01]:
If I would encourage folks to do a really interesting experiment with this episode, which is that if at any point in the episode you notice yourself having resistance to the ideas, or as you pointed out, oh, well, that that’s just not me. I can’t do that. If there is a disempowering voice already within you and you’ve noticed it pipe up a little bit, during this, this episode. I’d actually encourage you to go back, start the episode over, and listen for that voice inside of you as you’re watching the episode and begin to notice the the the points where you hear that disempowering voice because that’s where your shame is creeping in. That’s where your shame is telling you that you don’t have enough of any you don’t have enough time. You don’t have enough intelligence. You don’t have enough creativity. You don’t have it’s that it’s that shaming, disempowering voice, and beginning to cue in on that voice, and no longer just accepting it as the soundtrack for your life, but actually saying, I’m not going to chew I’m gonna choose to put that voice on trial.
Kelly Flanagan [00:53:07]:
I’m gonna choose to to decide whether or not that voice is giving an accurate testimony about me. And if you can do that, if you can begin to put that voice on trial and give it a guilty verdict, over time that that voice of shame, that disempowering voice within you will begin to die down. And, and and that other voice we talked about, that still small voice will have some space to be heard. So that’s it’s sort of an an odd experiment to suggest, but maybe you go back and you use this very episode as a chance to begin, to relate to to that disempowering voice in a different way.
Nancy Norbeck [00:53:42]:
I think that’s a really, really powerful idea, and I hope people will do it. And I hope that they’ll let me know what happens. If they do, I will be sure to let you know.
Kelly Flanagan [00:53:52]:
That’s So I would love to I’ll look forward to hearing those.
Nancy Norbeck [00:53:55]:
Alrighty. Well, thank you so much again for taking the time to talk to me today. This has been really, really fascinating, and I think that people are gonna get a lot out of it.
Kelly Flanagan [00:54:04]:
It was an honor to be here. Thanks for having me.
Nancy Norbeck [00:54:09]:
That’s our episode. Thanks so much for joining me, and a very special thank you to Dr. Kelly Flanagan. You can find me online and learn more about how you can work with me to follow your curiosity at fycuriosity.com. I’d also love for you to join the conversation on Instagram. You’ll find me at f y curiosity. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends.
Nancy Norbeck [00:54:43]:
It really helps me reach new listeners. Thanks so much. See you next time.