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Daring Forever (Find your Extraordinary)
"My capacity to dream this big" (Liz Mosley bonus episode)
00:10:46
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Transcript9 lines
- [00:01]
A
Hey, welcome to this bonus episode of the Daring Creativity podcast, where I revisit the interview published earlier in the week. It is my opportunity to pick out a few standout moments and zoom in on them for extra value and meaning. I feel there's so much value in our conversations, and I'm thankful to my guests for sharing their most vulnerable moments, full of wisdom and knowledge. Today I look back at my conversation with Liz Mosey. A conversation has been super popular this week with lots of messages being received both by me and Liz from listeners like yourself. So thank you for those. So in today's bonus episode, I want to revisit a few moments from this conversation and first, from being this one.
- [00:47]
B
This is just part of the creative process. It's the same when, when I'm designing branding. I don't know if this happens to you, Radim, but there's loads of memes about it online. But basically there's always a part where I'm like, this is horrible. Like, I call it like the dark night of the soul. And it's almost like part of the process I have to go through. And I when it happens now, I know that means I've nearly got there. Like, I'm nearly there because I'm like, oh, this is. This is feeling hard.
- [01:15]
A
If you've listened to more than one or two episodes of my podcast, you know how often this topic comes up. The things that are gut wrenchingly hard in the creative process, how many times you feel creatively that nothing will ever work. Yet when you think about it from a different way, when it feels horrible, you feel alive, you feel like you're getting somewhere. Because the easy part, and I think I remember I was polarizing on this with the chapter called Headwind is always guaranteed. You can have it easy for yourself and free will down a hill and not get stronger or wiser. Or you can run up the hill in a headwind and it's going to make you stronger, it's going to make you grow. In this instance, hair quote demystifies that terrifying aspect of the creative process, because the inevitable moment when everything feels wrong. She named it the Dark night of the Soul. It gives her the language for an experience that usually feels isolating, personal, horrible. But more importantly, she reframed it, that this crisis is a positive indicator. It's not a sign of a failure, it's a part of a journey. It's like getting lost halfway through on the way to somewhere really good. I believe, you know, what she said is that it represents the master level of understanding of creative cycles that most people never develop. It transforms what could be a career ending moment, let's be honest, at least for a day as we see transformed that career ending moment into a milestone that signals approaching breakthrough. Because I must have mentioned a few times on this podcast I'm a cyclist and especially in my earlier years when I was in this experience of strong I hated cycling up the hills. I wanted to give up so many times. I wanted to realize that the summit is so much closer than you believe. So I hope that this quote from Liz offers hope to anyone who feels in their own creative darkness because we all go through it the same. The second quote I would like to share is this one.
- [03:34]
B
I think for me it always comes back to like what my purpose of my business is and what my so I think there's like purpose, there's goals, and there's values. I think it's those three things that I use to make those decisions. Like I mentioned at the beginning, my purpose with my business is to help small businesses with their branding and marketing.
- [03:57]
A
I believe the power of this quote lies in its honest contradiction. Liz has a clear framework for decision making and this is a question for you, have you got the same? Because I liked it personally for a very long time. But I loved how Liz explained how she uses those three purpose, goals, and values. Because even though she still makes mistakes, it captures the messy reality of running a creative business where even the best systems don't always guarantee perfect outcomes. Ah, here we are again. It's never that easy. I believe it's refreshingly human and it removes the pressure to have everything figured out. Because the trinity of purpose, goals and values provides a practical compass for navigating opportunities, while her admission of continued errors gives permission to learn through doing rather than paralysis through analysis. It's a wisdom paired with humility and rare combination in business advice. The next quote I would like to talk about is this one.
- [05:05]
B
My processing time, like the time it takes me to get over a rejection or get to that good place, is so much shorter now. So in the past maybe it would have taken me a month. Now it might take me a couple of days and then I can see, oh, okay. I can see the positives here. I can see that this wasn't the right opportunity for me or that actually there's something that I need to work on here.
- [05:31]
A
I what's the right word to use? Enjoyed might seem a bit sadistic, but I was pleased to hear how the period of time after rejection for Liz gets shorter and shorter. And just like many things in life, whatever we do as a practice, the more we exercise a particular muscle, the recovery is faster, shorter. And with Liz's rejection, she's verbalized it, she's processed it, she's thought about it so much that you can't stop yourself from being disappointed. You can't stop yourself from having an emotional reaction to a situation, but you can decide how you react to it. You can actually think about it. Because in this instance, she's talking about emotional resilience, a skill that can be developed and, in a way, measured. She's tracking her recovery time and she's healing from setbacks, which is not just about feeling better, but about building systematic emotional efficiency. It suggests how repeated exposure to rejection, when processed healthily, can create genuine psychological strength rather than just callouses. And when you think about it, the evidence in our relationships with failure can fundamentally change giving hope to anyone currently stuck in lengthy recovery cycles from creative disappointments. Her ways and findings can show how we can fundamentally change how we feel about rejection and giving us hope, especially to those who are currently stuck in lengthy recovery cycles from creative disappointments. Again, I've been doing this podcast for the last 73 weeks and I might be repeating myself in certain ways, but you might have heard me talking about the fact that there's no such thing as end of problems. We hope to have everything sorted and then just sail into the sunset unaided, smiling with sunshine and ice cream. But things do f up. And therefore being very logical and pragmatical about rejection and how we deal with setbacks is one of the superpowers. The last quote I would like to share is this one.
- [08:05]
B
Six years ago, I'd just come off my second maternity leave, my confidence was at an all time low, and the Liz of six years ago didn't have the capacity to dream this big. And I think for me, what's been interesting is reflecting back on that Liz of six years ago, seeing how far I've come and acknowledging that I could not have dreamed this stuff. Now I can. Now my dreams are like wild and all over the place. But back then, just because of where I was in my life and what I'd just been through and everything, like I didn't have the capacity to dream.
- [08:43]
A
As you may have heard in the episode, I talked about the fact that I saw Liz's Instagram post when she said, I can't believe I'm here. In a certain way, it's a negative language because we get to the point where we arrive and get there by hard work. And as creative people, we do it a zillion times a day. We worked on a project. We don't always think it's going that easily, that well. We can never be happy about it. Work comes together, we say, I can't believe it worked out well. We just spent months or weeks or days and hours on this project. Of course it worked out because we worked on it. And it can also be relevant to our careers. I can't believe this is my life. I can't believe that this is what I've achieved. We need to celebrate it. Because I loved Liz's response to my nudge suggestion, generosity of thought. When she said, you know what? I couldn't see myself six years ago doing this. It was an honest acknowledgment that creativity per se doesn't exist in a vacuum. And because she removed herself from the feeling that she didn't belong in the industry, that's how she felt when she came back from maternity leave. She realizes that she can build community around herself that will make her feel welcome, like she fits and belongs. So I like that after all these years, now Liz dreams big. She doesn't struggle with any barriers and looks forward. The title of the episode is Dare to Get Rejected because most of the exciting things happen when people say no. First, thank you for joining me on this bonus episode and I'll see you next week.