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Welcome to five Minute Magic from the Mindful Creative Podcast, a short bonus episode sharing tips and insights from the pages of the book of the same title. Every week, I'll be sharing one or two ideas that can give you an actionable takeaway for your creative process, your work, your business, or just food for thought for the weekend ahead. These episodes share content from the audiobook and you can find the link to the full version in the show notes below. Below in the second part from section Define we'll look at slightly darker topics, but necessary ones to observe, explore and define. So today we'll be talking about defining your denial, defining your fears, defining your addictions, defining your future self, and defining your support. And the reason why we're looking at these things is is to make sure that the negative stuff that we often pretend we can't see or doesn't exist often holds us back. So let's look into these and see what we can find.

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Define your denial. We humans are very good at finding ways around obstacles. For creative humans, it's definitely one of our superpowers. We either deal directly with the thing that's in our path or we find a creative way around it. And denying the existence of a problem is a very good way of getting around it at first. We do this all the time. The creative human mind excels at reasoning why we need to drink that extra glass of wine, order that takeaway, skip yoga this week, have a day off, or pull an all nighter to finish just this one bit of work. We can perform flawless mental gymnastics to convince ourselves that that even though we've done the same thing for weeks on end, it's not a habit. We'll simply do better tomorrow when things are different. But denying our way around obstacles doesn't work. It's like making the minimum payment on a credit card. Month after month, the same issue simply reappears further up the path, a little bigger every time, until eventually it blocks our way and has to be dealt with, often far more painfully than if we'd sorted it out earlier. What's worse? Getting a checkup at the dentist for a little niggle or waiting until you've got an abscess. One of the most important parts of being honest with yourself is being honest about what you're not being honest with yourself about. It's easier to step over a pebble than it is a boulder. Define your fears. It's fair to say that denial is essentially a form of fear. Fear. Fear of facing up to the facts about yourself. So while you're under the hood, having a look around and defining your denial. It's also worthwhile listing down things you're afraid of. Specifically keep it to things that pertain to your creative process and business. Unless a spider walks across your computer screen, your arachnophobia is unlikely to hinder the running of your business. Are you afraid of failure? Work not good enough, won't be able to pay the bills, won't get enough clients, etc. Afraid of rejection, getting negative feedback, rejection letters, no replies, no interaction on your social media channels, etc. Afraid of being vulnerable, putting yourself and your creative work out there, asking people for work and or money, etc. Afraid to stop, can't turn work down, can't take a day off, can't say enough because if you do, it will all come crashing down and you'll never get any work again. If you can tune in and recognize those fears in yourself, then acknowledging them can put you on the path to challenging them. Any fears you face over your creativity and your business have already been felt by untold numbers of creatives before you, and there are plenty of specific resources out there that can help you to solve manage them, even if they've become overwhelming. Define your addictions. Certain memories are impossible to escape. They can't be wiped off the register just because we now have a different view of our past. When I was staying with my great grandparents on the outskirts of my town as a small child, there wasn't much happening beyond the gigantic pear tree and rows of planted fruit and vegetables in their front garden. I guess the sole exciting feature was the barrel of fermenting plums that my great granddad stored for his homemade brandy production. He wasn't exactly running a speakeasy, although it's much funnier to think of it like that now, and not something I appreciated at 5 years old. The stillness in time of that reality living away from the town is something I find nearly unthinkable in my current life in the world that's always on. Yet I have fond memories of it. I helped to bake cakes, chop wood and move coal in the basement. It all feels like a black and white movie compared to the hyper vivid technical a life I lead now. And that's kind of the problem. We have become scared of stillness in time. At least I feel that way more often than not. I still vividly remember the sound of the wind up clock in their living room. The inescapable tic tac sound that pierced the silence every second, every swing of the pendulum made itself the most important part of the room. Thinking about it, I bet this experience is shared by many of my generation. Having sat through hours of this experience could have easily made the first line of a horror script of how boredom could turn into a violent thought in the digital age. But I didn't know any better. Whilst I was busy eating pears from my great gran's enormous tree, Steve Jobs was living a diet of apples and busily putting together his first fruit company product. On the other side of the world, our pockets are hiding our windows to the most processed dopamine on steroids mixed with cocaine. Parallel reality. One that we could never have imagined even 20 years ago. There could be any number of reasons that we start reaching for our phone every minute. Boredom. Intrigue. Novelty value. But it can quickly become a difficult habit to break. Especially when it's all so easy. Simply point a camera at yourself, press the red button, and the ideas and thoughts that were mere seconds ago a private situation are now out in the open for the world to see. Define your future self. For all of its benefits, a creative career can be a choppy one. It's certainly not for the faint of heart. It can challenge, frustrate, and overwhelm you. But it can simultaneously be the making of you, bringing out your very best attributes and pushing you to achieve things you never thought possible. The best way to navigate it, therefore, is to take the time to reflect and honestly define yourself in all of the ways described in this section. By both looking back and taking account of where you are right now, you can best begin to plot a course towards the future. You can better define the kind of mindset you'll need and the best actions to take. So the final definition to make is what you want your future self to look like. This sounds like the dreaded where do you see yourself in 5 years time? Interview question but it's so much more than that. Your definition of your future self, when built on the foundations of how you've defined parts of your past and present, can be the line that you hold onto when crosswinds try to blow you off course. If you know where you're going and how you're going to get there, then it can be surprisingly easy to adapt when things don't go to plan. Consider some of the following as when working out the who, where, why, and how of your future self, who do you envy? We use envy and jealousy interchangeably, but jealousy is based on fear, whereas envy can be energizing and motivating. If we're jealous of someone, then we want to snatch what they've got and have it for ourselves. If we're envious, then we want to have what they have too, but without taking it from them. In this context, defining whose creative career you're healthily envious of can point the way forward. What motivates you to self start? No one's going to hand you a creative career. You have to go out and build it for yourself. This means showing up and making it happen. You're only going to keep doing that through the inevitable tough times if you're genuinely motivated by what you're trying to achieve. So define what makes you want to show up even when you don't have to? What risks are you prepared to take? Are you a gambler or do you prefer to stick with the tried and tested? How open are you to collaboration? Are you a one man band who has a very set vision of how things should be? Or do you find working with others brings out the best in you? Define your support finally, for this section, it's crucial to define your support network. The people who can offer practical advice, encouragement, and who will also be there to listen and advise when things aren't going so well. Just like raising a child, growing a creative career takes a village. Even if you're a solo freelancer, no one, not even the most gifted of people, can manage every area of their personal and professional lives effectively without any kind of help or support. It's also important to have the right kind of people you can turn to. For example, if you're struggling with a creative commission, then is turning to a friend or family member with no experience or interest in that area going to be the best port of call? If you're feeling overwhelmed by your work, then is a fellow professional in the same field who believes in shutting up and just getting on with it going to give you the healthiest advice? Sometimes your network might benefit from being expanded to include professional help in the form of therapy. This is something that the next section looks at in more detail. Rowing harder doesn't help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction. Kenichi Omega.