Podcast 529: The Art of Coming Home to Yourself Through Creativity

(Intro)

JORDAN: And having a moment like that in the day, Even it's for 5 minutes or 5 seconds, that can be really powerful. It can be a really great reset to just take back a little bit of the day for ourselves and get back into our body.

MARTIN: This is Martin Pytela. For Life enthusiast podcast. And today I have with me Jordan Harcourt Hughes, all the way from New Zealand. Jordan, welcome.

JORDAN: Thanks, Martin. Thanks so much for having me. I'm actually in Australia at the moment, so my husband's a Kiwi. So I do spend a lot of time in New Zealand. But today I'm in the New South Wales Central Coast, about an hour north of Sydney, enjoying the beautiful summer weather.

MARTIN: Yeah, I would trade what I have for what you have in a heartbeat. Except, of course, my children and grandchildren decided to be where they are. And so if I want to see my family, quality of life, all of that, I’m where they are, right?

JORDAN: Yeah.

MARTIN: Well, so let's do this. Let's tell the world how you make it richer and better. Who is the person that you want to address, and what are they lacking in their life that you're going to bring with your message? Let's try that.

JORDAN: That's a really interesting question in terms of how can we help people lead richer lives? And for me, that has been a very personal experience. And one of the things I really encourage people to do, and I do this through my mindful creativity courses, my workshops, my books, is to really think about what people value and how they can take ownership of their journey. So I think we live in a pretty challenging time where there's so much coming at us. So we've got there's so much media, there's so much external messaging. It can be really hard to separate our own voice from all of the voices around us. So I really like to take people on a journey of self-discovery, and sometimes that means stepping back and moving into a space of quiet, or of mindfulness, or of creative practice where they can get in touch with their own voice again. And that's a very joyful journey. And I think that can enrich us deeply because it brings us back to our sense of self.

MARTIN: Right. Turning the human doing back into the human being.

JORDAN: Yeah, I love it.

MARTIN: Right? We are so stuck in the ‘gotta do, gotta do.”

JORDAN: Yes.

MARTIN: And we, you're just putting your finger on it. But you have to be before you can do. Or you can be before you can do well.

JORDAN: Yes, that's perfectly said. And I think it gets harder for us as adults as well. So because, when we mature into ourselves as adults, we've got competency in areas. So we know how to do some things very well. We've got our professional life and certain skill sets, and we get comfortable with being an expert. So we have high expectations of ourselves and that can be really hard for us to break out of. So if we want to try something new or be different, we are very judgmental of ourselves. So it's very hard to step into a space of just being, without having these expectations of having to achieve or having to do something beautifully the first time we do it. So I think part of our journey as adults is to step back and be more childlike, be more playful, and stop putting so much on our shoulders in terms of what we should be doing or how we should be being in the world, because it's up to us. We have permission to play. And I love giving that permission to everyone to do things for fun. And not because we want to have an end product at the end of it, or because we want to have a piece of paper that tells us we're certified. Just because it's nourishing for our soul to be playful and to experiment and to try new things.

MARTIN: Yeah. I'm just trying to think what gift is there in this conversation for the listener. What will they know after half an hour with us here? What can we bring them? Do they say, “Oh, I want to connect with Jordan. I want to read her book. I want to connect.” Right.

JORDAN: Yeah. Look, I think everyone knowing that their own journey is something that they can author is, I think, something that's really nice to think about. So, again, as adults, we spend a lot of time looking to other people for experts, rather than listening to ourselves and deciding that we can be the authors of our lives. We can decide what this path looks like.

MARTIN: Isn't this an oxymoron? The expert is telling the receiver that they should be the expert now.

JORDAN: Look, I think it's a matter of connecting back with our intuition. So again, it's something I think we don't get enough time to do because it's easier if we've got someone telling us “You should live your life this way or you should try this thing.” But sometimes it's a little bit of a reset where we just have to close out the noise of the outside world and find a way to, what do we think? What is our intuition telling us? So, my way of being with people is to help them step back from busyness into quiet and calmness, and actually reconnect with that voice inside. Because we all have it. And everyone listening will have a voice that they know is there. But often we lose trust in it, we lose our attention, our attention gets distracted by so many things. So I think at the end of the day, my encouragement to everyone is to take a few moments. What you did just now was really interesting. You closed your eyes and you took a deep breath. And having a moment like that in the day, even if it's for 5 minutes or 5 seconds, that can be really powerful. It can be a really great reset to just take back a little bit of the day for ourselves and get back into our body. 

MARTIN: Yeah, I thought in my head, okay, how would I do that? And the thing that came was, all right, centre, drop the worries, drop the concerns. They're only one breath at a time. Life will unfold, right?

JORDAN: Oh, I love that. I love the idea of life unfolding. And again, it can be hard. And this is, I think, a good thing to take away is that we don't have to throw away all of our life concerns forever. We're talking about a minute in the day here, or a few minutes where we can just give ourselves a reprieve. And that's putting aside all of the things that we often think about or get distracted with. And what I find is creativity is a wonderful way to do this, and this is what I offer people in my courses and classes is just a few moments in life to stop thinking so much. We’re in thinking overdrive a lot of the time, but when we do playful creativity, and that could be drawing, or it could be painting or it could be journaling, writing. Any of these things allow us to reconnect with our body, and that tactile engagement with actually using our body as an instrument of creativity. It's actually a reset. It helps us to move out of our logical brain into a more intuitive space. And that can be very restful. It's like having a sleep, really, because it moves us into a different space. And that reignites our sense of self a lot of time.

MARTIN: Yeah. One of my things that I teach people is, of course, how to get control over the autonomic nervous system, the fight flight versus the rest repair. Do you want to be the driver or do you want to be the artist? Do you want to be chiselling at numbers or do you want to go dancing? Right? It's the which side, and you're putting it well. We should be so much more in the parasympathetic, in the creative, expressive, intuitive side of our being.

JORDAN: Yes. And you know, that can be. It can be a little bit intimidating for some people who are not used to doing these things. It's like trying yoga. A lot of people, or meditation, a lot of people say, “Well, I don't know how to do it, so I can't do it.” And we don't do things because we don't think we've got the skills or the capacity, and sometimes we can just step into these things one step at a time. So if we've never meditated before, we can still sit for 60 seconds and take a few deep breaths. And if we've never painted before, we can still throw a bit of paint around and see what happens. It can be a very joyful thing to move out of our comfort zone and try something, and again, remembering that we don't always have to be experts. It doesn't have to be anything that looks great or sounds great, or is beautiful or finished. It's just stepping out and doing one thing that helps us to try something else that resets our system, and as you say, moves us into a different place of being, right?

MARTIN: So how do you go about delivering this sort of thing to people? Do you do that online?

JORDAN: I do it online and in person. So I have an art studio. So I invite people into my space. And I see this very often, it’s this fear of, “I'm not an artist, I shouldn't be here. I don't know how to do this stuff. It's going to be, I'm going to look silly. I'm going to look ridiculous. Therefore I'm very worried and I don't know if I can do it.” So sometimes it's really just coaching people to get inside the door and stop worrying so much. Because again, as adults, we often have a fear of looking silly, of not knowing what to do, and that can be a massive hurdle. But it's a lovely hurdle to overcome because it's very liberating. Once we forget about having to do it the right way, we can just do it anyway. That works for us and people start to have a lot more fun once they get rid of that idea that they have to be a specific kind of person to do a specific kind of thing. I also do community classes in the community. So, adult learning environments, and also online. So there are different ways to facilitate these kinds of creative journeys. And each one is different because obviously you have different kinds of technology. What I actually love the most is being in the room with people, because I think that's a more holistic way of connecting. And we're with each other. People have the ability to be completely focused on what's going on in the room, and it can be very, it can be a very flexible environment where I encourage people to ask questions, observe and be at the moment without having to feel committed to delivering anything. As I said, it's very exploratory.

MARTIN: Yeah, I should book some time to come over your way. Being out on the beach, maybe. And come on over and.

JORDAN: Well, absolutely. It's a great lifestyle. One of the reasons that we love New Zealand so much is it's so peaceful and the nature is incredible. And you can really travel around New Zealand in a couple of weeks and see so many diverse types of nature and ecosystems, and it's incredibly beautiful. And if you combine that with a bit of creativity and art making and journaling and reflection, it's a very beautiful, deep, restful, nourishing experience.

MARTIN: Yeah. You're a great advertisement for it.

JORDAN: Yeah.

MARTIN: Well, in New Zealand they should sponsor you here, right?

JORDAN: Yeah, yeah. And Australia, Australia is very different. I find when I'm speaking to people from other parts of the world that they put the two countries together because we are very close. But actually, Australia is quite different. It's a massive landscape. The colors and the heat and the temperatures and the environment are so different. They actually lead to a very different experience, but equally beautiful. You've just got to have a little bit more time with Australia, or be prepared to do a little bit more travelling because things are a little bit further apart, so you need a little bit more time. But both are lovely places. But quite different.

MARTIN: Right. Oh yes. Well, travel. Come in person. All right. And if that's out of reach. What do you do online?

JORDAN: So, a couple of different options. So my ‘Mindful Creativity’ courses are really for people that may be professional women, who just want to find a way to take a break from the pressures of professional life and are not artists, but want to explore creativity. So we really start from the beginning, and we start with a combination of mindful moments, which is just taking a minute to breathe, to step out of our busyness and then to explore just the basics of creativity. And this isn't creativity to create beautiful artworks. This is really just to get in touch with ourselves again, and I'm a professional person as well. I have a 9 to 5 job. I've worked for a long time in communications and leading creative teams, and I know how nourishing it can be to just put all of those expectations that we have from our career aside and do something that's just for us. So that might be doing a little bit of play with a watercolour. It might be, it might be thinking about our own story. So what are the stories that we tell of ourselves and that we tell ourselves to each other? And some of the time we really need to think about, is that an old story? Do I need to let that story go? 

So a lot of the work of that micro creativity is thinking about, what can I release from my energetic ecosystem that isn't serving me anymore? Because sometimes we can walk around for years and years carrying all of these ideas and stories about ourselves without realizing that we've grown so much that those stories are no longer true. So it's time to recalibrate, refresh, reconnect. And that again can be very energizing and healthy. And it doesn't take a lot. It takes just a little bit of time out of the day to be intentional and thoughtful, and try a few different things. And particularly for professional people, I think that also gives us an extra element of not only flexibility but resilience as well, because we're stepping out of that space of stress and pressure and expectations and commitment, and it gives us something nourishing that can turn into a regular practice. 

And this is what I love, is helping people to create a practice that is ongoing. So a practice, really, in terms of creative practice, is really just about turning up and seeing what happens. It's not about setting deadlines for creating 50 amazing artworks or for writing a book, even though you know you can do these things. It's about setting time to allow it to be a joyful experience and to give us time to think and reconnect with ourselves. And that may be five minutes a day or half an hour each week, but that gradual process of turning into a habit, it's like anything, it's like meditation, once it becomes a habit, it starts to become more nourishing. The more habitual you become, the more it helps us balance our lives. So developing those creative habits, I think, is great for adults and creative professionals and all professionals and anyone who's got a lot of things going on in life and needs a little bit of creativity or relaxation, really, for wellbeing.

MARTIN: Yeah. Wise words, really. We should all have more time for this, or if not have, make, right?

JORDAN: Yes.

MARTIN: Priorities. The time is there. We just need to set aside, push aside. And…

JORDAN: Yeah. And that's something I think that is really worth contemplating, is about how intentional we are with our lives. Because we're not talking about big commitments here. We're not talking about things that need to take a long time or take a lot of money or things. It doesn't need to take away from the other things that we do, but when it comes to our own well-being, we really do need to be intentional about it. We need to think about what will nourish us. We need to think about how we can bring that into our lives and make space for it. And sometimes that will require us to make choices. So, for example, when I'm talking to people about how can they start to do creativity regularly, whether it's writing or painting or drawing, they will often say, “Well, I have sport on it each week that I have to be at, or I have to take the kids out, or I've got to do the cleaning or I've got my networking activities.” So sometimes I say, yes, you're probably going to have to choose between creativity and one of those things, but remember, it doesn't have to be a choice forever. You can just make the choice to be creative for half an hour a week for six weeks. See how you go. If it doesn't work for you, then you can go back to your other activities. But yes, being intentional is also about being selective. So sometimes we will have to make choices, but they don't have to be forever. They can just be for a period of time so we can see how we feel. See how they go. Give it time.

MARTIN: I think that once you go into the right-brained activities. You'll realize that it's really refreshing, rejuvenating, and perhaps invigorating in many ways. People who do spend time on the right brain come back saying, oh, I'm just so much more effective in my left brain stuff.

JORDAN: I agree. And we don't often think about how that rest and relaxation then works to help us with our with the other part of our brain. So it really is that balancing approach, isn't it?

MARTIN: Well, so how do we connect people into your world? How do we get them engaged with, you said you wrote a book? Or more than one?

JORDAN: Yes, yes. So I've just finished my first book. Sorry, I've just finished my second novel. So, The True High Country’ is the second.

MARTIN: A novel? 

JORDAN: Yeah. Yes, yes. So I write.

MARTIN: That’s a whole lot of creative thinking because you have to invent the entire world with it.

JORDAN: You do, you do. And I love that. I love being in a space where you can make everything up. It’s incredibly liberating. And it's a way for me to be very free in my work. Because I have a lot of different things on the go. I have a portfolio career. I have a 9 to 5 job, I teach, I have an art studio, I paint. So, a lot of different things. I don't do them all at one time, but they are of a rotating nature. But my writing time is early in the morning over coffee. So this book's been written over coffee for the last number of years. And it's made it a lovely, lovely part of my day. It's something I look forward to every day. I love to dive into it. I'm hoping the next few books don't take as many years, but it can be a long time. But what I think has taught me is creative resilience, and it's okay to take the time with the passion projects that you have. They don't all have to be out the door and make money in a set period of time. We can do these things just because they nourish us.

MARTIN: So you really only do it for half an hour at a time?

JORDAN: No. So my creative time is usually about two hours in the morning before the rest of the day starts. So I like to have those hours because everyone else is still asleep. The world is completely quiet. I've just woken up, so I'm still kind of a little bit in that intuitive dream state. I'm very connected to my imagination, and everything comes very easily. So that's when I do all the ideation, when I connect with my characters and think through what the journey is for them. And sometimes I'm using those characters to play out some of my own life journeys, which is great because you can connect to your personal life. So, for example, in my earlier years, I studied metalwork, so I studied metal sculpture in Scotland. It was one of the earliest parts of my creative journey. After that, I really moved into painting.

MARTIN: So when you say metalwork, do you mean like hammer and flame torch?

JORDAN: Yes. And welding and installations.

MARTIN: Okay. Like serious lengthy stuff?

JORDAN: Yes. And it was so fun because I'd never done anything like it, but I loved it. And the main character in my novels is Meriwak, who is a metalsmith who can tune metal to other world frequencies. So you can see here how I've used my early time in the creative studios to inspire some of my novels. So I've really enjoyed spending time with Meriwak and his world, and I'm really pleased to have just released that second novel. So that's available on my website and on online bookstores. And again, it's just been a passion project. JordanHarcourthughes.com, it's a bit of a long one.

MARTIN: Let's spell it out. You pronounce it in a way that the American ear might have a problem. Jordan, j-o-r-d-a-n, Harcourt, h-a-r-co-u-r-t and Hughes, h-u-g-h-e-s.com

JORDAN: Yes. Well done. All one word.

MARTIN: All right. Awesome. If you're walking, stop and type it into your phone. If you're watching us, enjoy. Right. Okay. So you have it on the website. Great. So for creativity workshops that you teach, people can connect through the website as well?

JORDAN: Yes. Also on the website. So I offer courses through my online learning environment, but you can also find me on places like Insight Timer, which is a meditation app. I do creative meditations on that as well. And Skillshare, which is an online learning environment where you can subscribe to. So there's lots of different places to access my courses. Otherwise, if you're in New Zealand, come to the studio and play. It's lots of fun.

MARTIN: There are so many interesting places on the internet. Skillshare. 

JORDAN: Yeah. 

MARTIN: Never heard of it, but who would have thought? Right.

JORDAN: Yeah. It's one of those places where you can subscribe. You have a year long subscription, and it gives you access to a lot of different creative courses. So if you're dipping your toe in the water in terms of creativity. You can try everything. So it's very nice to be able to experiment. So once you've found the things that you love the most, then you can do more of those. But if you're a beginner, it's great to be able to have such a big option library to choose from.

MARTIN: Yeah. Good. It sounds enticing. 

JORDAN: Yeah

MARTIN: Yeah. I would like to take a half an hour or an hour out of my life. 

JORDAN: Yeah.

MARTIN: Say, you know what? I'm going to do some stuff like that.

JORDAN: Why not? Take a holiday from your brain and just have fun. But as I said, it doesn't have to. It doesn't have to be a big amount of time. You can start with five minutes. I encourage people to just doodle for a minute a day and then see what happens. You know, it's just a way to start tapping into the creative DNA that we all have. We're all creative. It's just a matter of how we access it. What gives us the most sense of pleasure and nourishment. And it's different for everyone. But there's a lot of different options out there. Everyone can play.

MARTIN: Indeed. Yeah. All of a sudden, I'm transported back into my being, I don't know, 14, 15 years old and picking up charcoal and drawing things that were actually quite pretty good. 

JORDAN: Yeah.

MARTIN: Relative to whatever. Right? But then the life takes us elsewhere.

JORDAN: Yes, exactly. Yes. Yeah. But play creative play can be a lot of different things. It doesn't necessarily have to be artistic. So any time that you're learning a new skill, there's the chance to play and the chance to just relax into it. So an example that I can give is that recently my husband and I bought a stand up paddle board so we could go out on the water and learn how to stand up and really, again, going back to my example of adults having very high expectations of themselves. 

So I thought I'd be standing up in a matter of 2 or 3 sessions and paddling like an expert. And it took me a lot longer. And I had to remind myself just to have fun with it and not to worry too much. So then I actually went and sprained my ankle, and so I couldn't, it wasn't very stable. So I ended up just sitting on the paddleboard and paddling like you would in a kayak. And then had a wonderful time just mucking around in the water and ended up catching these incredible waves that I didn't know was going to happen. And they ended up taking me 50m into shore. And it was like being on a ride. I screamed with pleasure because it was so unexpected. I didn't realize I was going to get picked up by the ocean and carried. But I think if we embrace this sense of playfulness, the world is our oyster, really. Play can happen in many different ways, and as long as we're open to it and we shut down all those expectations, life can be a lot of fun.

MARTIN: So it's such a good reminder of the fun part of life.  All right. Is there more that we should share?

JORDAN: No. My main encouragement is for everyone to have fun. Think about how they can reconnect with their own sense of self and creativity. Try new things. Keep exploring. Keep experimenting and enjoy life. Be creative and have fun.

MARTIN: Right. Yeah. So go to the website JordanHarcourtHughes. Take a look around. See what calls you.

JORDAN: Love it.

MARTIN: Yeah. Thank you.

JORDAN: Okay. Well, thanks, Martin for having me.

MARTIN: Yeah. It's a pleasure to introduce yet another aspect of life. We keep talking about our health and worries and problems and how to fix this broken diet and whatever. And here, well, here we're talking about, listen, switch it up. Find a way to engage. I mean, from my perspective, what you're describing is engaging the healing side of our body, which absolutely, it's important. It's more important than most of us really count on. Yeah.

JORDAN: Agreed.

MARTIN: Thank you so very much. It's been a delight to introduce what you're bringing to the world. And people can find us at Life-enthusiast.com. My name is Martin Pytela, and I thank you, Jordan.

JORDAN: Thank you so much for having me, Martin.

MARTIN: Thank you. Bye-bye.

JORDAN: Bye-bye.