by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
Creative Status is a podcast about using creativity as a vehicle for improving your life by deconstructing ego, integrating the shadow self, and designing and manifesting a real life.
Every episode explores how the creative process can help you GROW REAL by moving towards wholeness in yourself by making the unconscious conscious.
In this thought-provoking episode of Creative Status, we dive deep into the essence of creativity and its profound connection to our sense of purpose and wholeness.
Join host Oli Anderson in an enriching dialogue with creativity coach, artist, and strategist Lauren Spangler, as they explore the transformative journey from ego-driven ambition to authentic self-expression.
This episode will help you improve your relationship with your own creativity!
Uncovering Creative Purpose: Lauren imparts her insights on cultivating a healthy relationship with creativity, urging us to move beyond external validation and towards a more fulfilling, purpose-driven practice.
The Art of Being and Growing: Discover how embracing the creative process with intentionality and play can lead to personal growth and a deeper understanding of one’s artistic journey.
Navigating the Practical and the Profound: Lauren and Oli tackle the artist’s conundrum of balancing the existential drive with the practicalities of everyday life, offering wisdom on how to harmonize these often conflicting aspects.
Creative Status: Where Artistry Meets REALNESS
This episode is a call to all creators to reflect on their creative well-being, to align with their true purpose, and to embrace the finite nature of our existence as a catalyst for meaningful work.
Stay real out there,
Oli Anderson
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Episode Links:
Lauren’s Spark or Sputter Test: laurenspangler.com/spark
Lauren on Instagram: instagram.com/laurenspangler
Creative Status Links:
The Creative Performance Transformation Lab: olianderson.co.uk/creativeperformance
Follow me on Instagram: instagram.com/olijanderson
My YouTube channel: youtube.com/olianderson
Get my books on Amazon: amazon.com/author/oli
7-Day Personality Transplant System Shock for Realness and Life Purpose: olianderson.co.uk/systemshock
Free one hour creative workshop to take your creative brand or project to the next level: olianderson.co.uk/creativeworkshop
Free 90-Day Journal Challenge: olianderson.co.uk/journal
The Law of Attraction for Realness (mini-course): olianderson.co.uk/lawofattraction
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Creative Relationships With Life & Death (Show Transcript)
Intro
Oli Anderson: Oh, hi there. Oli Anderson here. You’re listening to Creative Status. If you’re new to the podcast, welcome. This is a place where we talk about how the creative process is actually a process of growing real. Growing real means that we’re becoming more authentic, that we’re unpacking our true values, our true intentions, that we’re stepping away from social programming, from emotional self-hypnosis that keeps us down and keeps us stuck. And ultimately, that we can make the unconscious conscious and move towards wholeness instead of a fragmented and divided state within ourselves.
Today’s interview is with Lauren Spangler. Lauren is a, creativity coach and an artist and a strategist. And I really enjoyed this conversation a lot because we ended up talking about death, which is one of my favourite topics, but also because we took it a little bit deeper than usual in the sense of normally we look at, how creativity can help us become more real, which just means that we improve our relationships with ourselves.
In this episode, we talk about how we can improve our relationship with creativity itself, how we can clear away some of the mental cobwebs, I guess, that keeping us stuck, how we can, be more outcome independent, how we can just use anything that happens in our lives as a kind of springboard for getting where we need to be, and ultimately just having the attitude required to get to that real place that I keep talking about. So, Lauren, that was, an awesome conversation we had – thank you so much.
Everybody else, thank you for listening. If this podcast helps you in any way, shape, or form and, you feel like sharing it with someone or leaving a review, that would be most appreciated. But either way, here we go. Enjoy the conversation. Boom.
Interview
Oli Anderson: Oh, hi there, Lauren. Thank you so much for joining me on today’s episode of Creative Status. We’re going to be kind of exploring the idea of healthy relationships between ourselves and ourselves and ourselves and our creativity so we can move towards wholeness that could lead us in any direction.
Before we, get onto all that, do you feel like introducing yourself, telling people what you’re all about, what you do, and also what you want to get out of this conversation?
Lauren Spangler: Sure. Oli, thank you so much for having me. It’s a treat to be here with you. I’m Lauren Spangler. I’m a creativity coach. I’m also a painter, a musician, a writer, and a wife and a mom of two young boys. So there is never a dull day at my house. And, man, I’m just so excited to talk with you about creative wholeness and healthy relationships with our creativity and how that can help us experience a sense of wholeness. Yeah, just really excited to dig in.
Oli Anderson: I’m getting very excited hearing you use all these words like creativity and wholeness. I like to rant and rave about wholeness every day as part of my self-care routine. So I think this is a good opportunity for me to dive, into that a bit more. Let’s, start right at the beginning.
So there’s all kinds of definitions that people use about creativity, just as a thing, like what it even is. How do you see creativity? I guess as a creative person doing all those things you mentioned, painting and writing, but also helping other people with your coaching business to kind of tap into their, I guess, core essence of creativity, or however you want to describe it, and putting words in your mouth now.
But how do you define creativity basically based on everything you see?
Lauren Spangler: I think creativity is actually pretty simple. I think we’re all creative. I, think creativity is just the act of making something that wasn’t there before, and that could be as simple as a connection between two things. it could be something we think of as a traditionally creative act, like creating a painting or a song or a poem. It could be baking a cake, putting an outfit together, having.
You and I are creating a conversation right now. We’re creating connections between thoughts, connections between people. All of these things are creative acts to me. And I think different people go about cultivating their creativity in different ways. And people who have decided to devote their life to creativity in some capacity, just have a more intentional and more invested approach in how they’re relating to their creativity and what they’re pulling out of that relationship.
Oli Anderson: Yeah, that’s awesome. So, ultimately, it’s a kind of universal thing that we all have in some capacity, but like, some of us, I guess, take it a little bit more, maybe seriously is not the right word. We treat it with a bit more reverence, let’s say, because of what we think it can do for us.
Where others have maybe a bit more of a passive approach, but it’s still there in all cases, because it’s actually just a very human thing. where does the wholeness come into, just to kind of crack this up? And like, how does creativity align with wholeness as a whole? Which is a weird way of saying that.
Lauren Spangler: No, I know what you mean. I think for some people, creativity is a frame of mind or an, ah, approach that is imbued into everything that they do throughout their day. And don’t it’s not really a conscious act for other people. I think that there’s this urge, this desire to go create something that they feel this pull to go write their book or to go, make their album or whatever it is.
And for that second set of people, I think if they are not engaging with the creativity intentional container in that really intentional way, I think there can be this sense that something’s lacking. there can be this sort of hunger or this feeling like they’re craving this activity and, when they’re not attending to it and they’re not spending time there, sort of like, there’s this piece of themselves that’s not getting daylight.
And I think when they start to act upon that desire to go make something, it can feel like now they’re sort of circulating oxygen through all the different parts of themselves. Right. And their personality, that can be a really gratifying sensation and I think sometimes when we are, when we consider ourselves artists or we consider ourselves creative people, like capital c, capital p, like we are creative, you use this really interesting term earlier.
You said, we take it seriously, and then you kind of cross that out and you’re like, actually not seriously. We’re just more invested. But that’s interesting because this thing happens where deeply creative people start to take it too seriously and actually block themselves into this sort of serious, rigid space, and they lose a lot of the play and a lot of the sort, of light-heartedness and curiosity that I think actually fuels their creativity.
And that’s one of the places where I think they can start to chip away at their own sense of wholeness, because when they get into that space where they’re being creative and they’re wanting to relate to themselves creativity creatively, if they’re doing so with too much seriousness, too much rigidity, it can start to feel frustrating.
And, yeah, so I think wholeness. So back to the topic of wholeness… I think when we’re really clear on what we want out of our relationship with our creativity, and then when we’re taking steps to do that and to bring that into our daily experience each day, it starts to round out the way we’re experiencing ourselves, the way we’re experiencing our life, and it starts to bring a sense of fulfilment and wholeness.
Oli Anderson: Yeah, that’s amazing. I think there’s so many things you’ve just kind of talked about that have kind of opened up some of the deeper themes around creativity as a whole. And it all comes back to the idea that creativity is something that we all have. It’s part of our nature, but that our attitude towards it is going to affect where those creative impulses are going to take us.
And as you were, talking, I kind of broke it down into three different levels, which I’ve kind of seen now quite a bunch of times on the podcast and just in general with people. But it goes basically, there’s one level of creativity where it’s almost like people are trying to prove themselves in some ways.
Like they’re trying to create something in the serious way that you’ve talked about, not the playful way, which is a bit more real, in my opinion. They take their creativity very seriously because they want to prove to the world that a certain image that they carry of themselves is the truth, even though that image may just exist as a kind of, way of compensating for underlying emotional stuff, shame, guilt, and trauma, as I normally say it.
And that first approach, it’s kind of a choice about the creativity that’s causing them to try and cling to the ideas they already have. Let’s say the second approach is that some people just use that creativity as a way of just putting themselves in a place of being. So instead of being a human doing, as people say, they’re just being. And so they’re just creating something, for the sake of it.
Maybe they’re doodling or they’re just painting a picture. And, you know, the unconscious is becoming conscious in that process, but ultimately, they’re just, they’re just being like, they’re not trying to get anywhere, and they’re not trying to prove anything. They’re just being. And then the third level is kind of the one that I normally end up ranting and raving about, which is where we’re using our creativity as a way of consciously growing more real or towards wholeness. And like, these elements, these three elements, we’re either trying to prove it, prove something, sorry. Or just be, or to grow.
I suppose they’re all interconnected, but I think if we make the conscious choice to learn to listen to ourselves and those creative, pulls that you talked about, then 90% of the time, those pulls are some unconscious thing from the shadow self, I believe, calling us to either release something or to integrate something so that we can move towards wholeness. And the creativity in that third sense can be a conscious vehicle for growing, obviously.
Like, that does sound very serious, but I think if we take that playful attitude as we go down that path and we don’t overthink it, even though I’m clearly overthinking right now, then we can use our creativity, to consciously become more whole, because we have to be more responsive to ourselves, and we have to kind of trust the process of following those creative, poles where they want to take us so we can, I guess, release the things that are making us all.
So I’ve thrown loads and loads of you right there. I apologise for the verbiage, but what do you think about, I guess, that deeper level of kind of using our, creativity to grow? And how does it maybe contrast to the other two levels if you think it does, absolutely.
Lauren Spangler: Yeah, I love that. I love that way of breaking it down into these tiers of prove, be and grow, because, I think as creatives, we’re all sort of fluidly moving through all of those at any given time. I know a lot of creatives who spend a lot of their time up at the top of that sort of evolution where they really are sense making with their art, and they’re very conscious in how they’re impacting the world with what they’re making or themselves what they’re making.
But, they still have days, right, where they wake up and that ego kind of rears its ugly head and they’re like, I gotta go show somebody I know my stuff, right? Like, I’m gonna go make this great thing to be great, right? so I think we all sort of, I would say we oscillate among those three things. And part of building a healthy creative mind-set is being able to be conscious of where you’re falling on that scale in a given moment, in a given point in your career, or a moment within your practice, even, and being able to use that consciousness to then pull yourself up a level or two and sort of move into that most meaningful space where you really are filling your full capacity as a creator to be making sense through your work and to be, bringing true meaning through and forward.
I like to think of it, I always go back to this principle that there’s a relationship between an artist and their own creativity, and that that relationship has various states of health, just like any relationship between two people or entities. Right?
And so if I was going to try to overlay your three tiers with my philosophy of, like, the creative relationship, it totally matches. I think there’s a lot of alignment there, because in the lowest tier, where you’re trying to prove something, I think about that in terms of an artist whose relationship with creativity is oriented around the approval of others, oriented around external validation.
And if you think about, I liken it, to any important relationship in your life, a relationship with a friend or a loved one or a significant other or a business partner. In all of those relationships, we have to be really intentional about, the way we’re treating the other, the energy we’re bringing into that connection and what we’re expecting back out of it, and the clarity we feel on why we’re connected to that person and what service we bring them and what they’re giving back to us.
And all of those things are places where we can either enrich and deepen the relationship and the connection, or where we can sort of undermine ourselves and shoot ourselves in the foot and set our relationship up to fail and be evil and difficult. Right? And so back to these three tiers. An artist who is creating for the sole purpose of proving their skill or their worth, really, in my mind, they’re not relating to their creativity in a whole and fulfilling way.
They’re using their creativity to try to pander and appeal to others. And it’s so tempting and easy to do that. We’ve all fallen into that trap. I know that I will fall into that trap many more times before my career is over. it just, it happens because it feels good to get a gold star and a pat on the back and we want someone else to say, hey, you’re good at this. But if that’s the sole driver for our relationship creativity, I think we’re really building something hollow. And over time, we’re going to start feeling the lack of strong foundation in that relationship.
So if we move up one tier into, you know, you talked about artists using their creativity as a way to be, as a vehicle for presence and, like, being in the moment. I would say for me, probably this is my default at this moment.
Like, if I have my, if I go into my studio and I can just be with my work, that’s pretty good day for me. Like, you know, I would be okay with that. and then I love those days when I’m able to transcend even further and, like, find this meaning. And that’s great when that happens, but, most days I’m happy to just to just be present and be able to let go of the things outside of, outside of being my work in the moment. So in that moment, I would liken that experience to someone who’s really present in a relationship and who is enjoying the company of the other person.
In my relationship with my kids, I strive to be present; to just be with them is great. And that’s sort of, I think, an honourable goal. But then if we can move up one level to that top tier you described, where creativity is a vehicle for meaning making and for, really attaining this sense that we are bringing our deepest gifts to bear and bringing them out into the world and doing something meaningful. In my mind, that’s a relationship where you have a deep and abiding connection with someone.
You both feel a sense of shared vision. You’re not just looking at each other; you’re looking in the same direction. some of us have been lucky enough to have a best friend or a partner who we feel that sense of connection and synergy with, where, like, yes, you’re my spouse and I enjoy spending time with you, and I enjoy being beside you, but also together, shoulder to shoulder, we are pointed in the same direction. We have the same vision, we have the same dreams. We’re building this life together. And I’m looking out 510, 2030, 40 years with you in what reality I want us to create together, and that is the most fulfilling and meaningful type of connection. And I think artists can build that and can have that level of connection with their creativity as well.
Oli Anderson: You’re just given such an amazing breakdown of all these different tiers, as we’re calling them. I think in a way, there’s a theme emerging here around, like, intimacy, if you want to call it that. Like, I think in terms of what we’ve been saying about relationships, I think the healthiest relationships, the most real relationships, are the ones with the least barriers to intimacy. And in relation to, like, these tears that we’ve now brought into the conversation, if we enter a relationship with ourselves or with others or with life at, that first level of just trying to prove ourselves, ultimately, then we come in from a very fragmented place.
We’re fragmented in the sense of being disconnected from our fundamental, core being, ultimately, which is what causes us to create the ego, the false image, false version of ourselves that constantly needs validation from the outside world to continue existing because it doesn’t actually have any grounding in anything. And so if we approach relationships as a vehicle for kind of proving to ourselves that we’re who we think we need to be to compensate for all of the underlying emotional stuff, then we’re going to have a fragmented relationship ultimately, that is always going to have barriers to communication and to that intimacy, which is just two people really seeing each other in the realest possible way.
The next level about being like, also, ultimately, like, being is what it’s all about. Like, we want to get to a point where we’re being like, we’re just being ourselves, which ultimately means we’re just enjoying, I suppose, a moment of intimacy, let’s say, between ourselves and life and between ourselves and whatever it is that we’re doing. In this case, creating a piece of art, or something.
But I think being is often misconstrued as being about just stillness. But actually being is about putting ourselves back in the flow, I think. Like, when we’re really present, things are still moving. Like, ultimately, like, you know, the present moment is just motion from one moment to the next. And if we can put ourselves in that flow, so to speak, then we’re going to end up eventually flowing towards wholeness. But if we can get to that third level, then we can flow towards wholeness in a more conscious way, because we are just being. But we also understand that our being needs to bring in the vision ultimately that you kind of you talked about, which is the thing that gives us a direction to be able to use as we navigate those moments of being from one to the next, if that makes sense.
And, the relationship quality as we do that, whether it’s just the relationship with ourselves and life and knowing what our vision is based on, where we’re going, when we’ve kind of transcended the. Transcended, strong word, but stepped back from that need to prove ourselves, which is blocking this natural expression of a vision that’s probably always there. But the quality of the relationship with a vision is it’s gonna be more long lived than a relationship that is just about being, if that makes sense.
And so, yeah, I am rambling a lot, but there’s something here about the healthy relationship with our creativity in relation to, I guess, being present, but also moving at the same time and how we. Yeah, so. But, yeah, sorry, I can tell you’re gonna…
Lauren Spangler: No, no. You call it rambling. I call it digging deep. I’m loving it. Oli. I think this is good stuff.
Oli Anderson: Yeah, I think I’m no longer a rumbler. I’m a dig deeperer, deep digger.
Lauren Spangler: I think that’s great. I think. Wonderful. Yeah. I think I would bring in the word purpose, I would say when we’re being. I, agree with you completely. It’s dropping in flow. It’s allowing. Allowing yourself to be present with what is. And, man, I’ve tried meditation, in the traditional, like sitting on a meditation pillow, eyes closed. I’ve tried that so many times, and I’ve just.
I’ve never been able to get past, like, five or ten minutes. I cannot seem to break into that club of people who can be there, sort of in this peaceful stillness for 20 to 30 minutes. I just can’t do it. But I will tell you, when I do feel a heightened state of mindfulness and awareness and, like, transcendence of, like, the daily whatever is when I’m doing dishes.
Oli Anderson: Wow.
Lauren Spangler: Don’t know what it is about doing dishes. The repetitive motion, the ease of, like, I know what. Like, I’m just scrubbing a plate. Like, this is easy. there’s something about it where if I can get really mindful and I can get really aware and really in my body and in the moment, I can actually experience a deep level of peace when I’m doing these really mundane daily tasks.
And I think it’s the same in the studio where if we can get into this space where sharpening our pencils is an act of creative, enjoyment, and where watching how the paint is spread. I started working with watercolour a while ago, mostly as therapy for my perfectionism, because I could not control the watercolours the way I could control the other mediums I worked in. and, like, watching as soon as I started to just, like, notice, like, what is the doing? How is the pigment spreading?
The water is moving in a way I didn’t totally expect it to. What happens next? There is this same type of allowance and awareness that we can bring into a creative practice where it can become this really peaceful, mindful act. And I think purpose comes in when we can both be in the moment, like, deeply grounded in just what is happening now and simultaneously be able to zoom out and say, okay, I have a finite number of years on this planet. Like, we’re about to go deep, Oli.
Like, if I’ve got 100 years to work with, I’m lucky. And what am I doing with that time? Like, the fact that I’m sitting here watching the watercolour flow across the paper feels meaningful to me. And why is that? And what am I wanting to bring? And what am I wanting to leave? And. And why am I spending my time this way?
Because my time is finite and my time is precious. And when we get to that deep of a level and, we can answer those questions for ourselves and come up with, like, a solid response where we know exactly why we’re painting that painting or exactly why we’re having this conversation right now, I think that the union of this deep, mindful act with this broader, like, large scale alignment.
That’s where we find this purpose and this sense that the tiny little steps we’re taking in the moment are incongruence with this bigger purpose and reason for being. And if we’re not afraid to go there with ourselves and we’re not afraid to sort of fumble through the dark at first and go, gosh, I don’t know why there are all these little gremlins that will come out as soon as you ask yourself that question. Right?
It can be a really challenging experience, but if you walk yourself through sort of those dark woods to find those answers, I think that’s where we can really get in this fun place where, creativity and artistry can move into this deeply personal, purposeful and meaningful, experience.
Oli Anderson: Yeah. First of all, I’m really happy that you kind of brought death into this conversation. I feel like if somebody mentions death, then it’s a successful podcast, because ultimately.
Lauren Spangler: Ring the bell, then death bell. Ring the bell. Yeah.
Oli Anderson: But death is kind of the doorway into all this because like, if you accept death, memento mori, all that stuff, you start to make real choices, and ultimately real choices, as opposed to unreal ones, which I for brevity think are just the choices motivated by ego, rather than the real stuff that’s going on inside of real choices, are, always going to bring you back to your purpose.
And if you have a sense of purpose, like you said, then it’s no longer just about what you do, but it’s also about how you do it, because everything that you’re doing is kind of feeding into that sense of purpose, and it’s allowing you to be present in the way we talked about, but it’s also moving you forward. And I think if we have a sense of what our real purpose is, then it basically brings in like all of the levels we’ve talked about so far, because initially we may set out to prove something to the world or whatever, but as we kind of go down the path towards manifesting our purpose, we’re going to grow more real in the process, because it’s going to challenge us to grow through all of those kind of outdated ideas about ourselves, or the fragmentation that we’ve kind of become attached to and etc.
And as we do move forward, we become more whole, ultimately. And so this idea that you brought into the conversation about creative purpose, I think is kind of a linchpin for understanding a lot of these things. And so I, suppose I’ve got two questions for you now, like, one, in relation to what we were kind of trying to unpack about, like, a healthy relationship with our creativity. Are we saying that it ultimately comes down to being purposeful with our creativity?
But the second thing, which is going to open things up maybe a bit deeper. So bring death in if you can, like 100 million%. But, like, the other thing is, like, how do we find that purpose? And, I’d like to think it has something to do with what you said right at the start of the conversation about feeling the pull. And I think feeling that pull in many cases is about something beneath the surface telling us to get back on track, ultimately with that purpose.
So, again, I’ve thrown words at you, but is it all about creative purpose in terms of having a healthy relationship with our creativity? And then two, how do we start to, become aware of what that is by listening to ourselves in life?
Lauren Spangler: Yeah, I do think purpose is the keystone. I think that it may not be something that has to be a conscious element of every single day, an artist. Like, it’s not something you have to constantly be sort of wrapping yourself around the axel about. But I do think that if you haven’t, if you haven’t visited that topic and found some truths there, then it’s one of those things you’ll miss as you go along, and other things will start to unravel and crumble a little bit. So do I think it’s all about purpose? I think that purpose is a key ingredient. It would be like making a cherry pie without the cherries. Like, you’ve got to have it somewhere in there, or nothing’s going to work.
And when I work artists, this is where I always begin. Like, our first conversation is always about purpose. I sit them down and I say, look, you’re going to die. No, I don’t, I don’t start there. but really, I do think that that’s where most creative, dysfunction stems from, is when we haven’t had that conversation with ourselves around why we’re doing what we’re doing.
So how do we figure that out? Typically, it’s deeper than we think it is. There are several layers on top. We kind of have to dig through a lot of, motivators that we’ve experienced in our lives and that drive our work. And all of those external sort of things are clues, and they sort of lead us down into this core where we can start to uncover what really is driving us, or maybe what is driving us and what we want to be driving us, which may be two different things, and then we reconcile that and we go about sort of mending and, like, recalibrating ourselves around the purpose.
We want to be driven by one, exercise that’s useful that I would recommend if someone was listening, to this conversation and wanting to sort of guide themselves through a process like that would be, you know, through drinking or maybe a long walk or whatever, asking themselves why about five or six times, like a chain of six whys, you know? Okay, why am I doing this? Well, I’m doing this because I want to win such and such. Okay, why do I want to win that award? Well, because, you know, my mother won that award, and it’s important to me that, I wrote rise to that same bar. Okay, why is that important?
Well, because we have this legacy in my family of, you know, we all are artists and we all, you know, okay, well, why is legacy important to you? Why? You can dig down. You can dig deep, deep, deep in. Or, you know, a different artist may ask themselves, why am I doing this? And decide that, well, I really want to write this book because I really want my kids to read it. Well, why do you want your kids to read it? Well, because I want to impart this, you know, gem to them.
Okay, why do you want to impart, like, if we can ask ourselves five or six times in a row, what is really motivating our actions and our desires, a lot of times after about half a dozen rounds of that, we get down to these fundamental core values and, we start to go, oh, I’m driven by play. You know, when I’m in my studio and I’m in a painting, everything else kind of falls away.
When I can get in that flow zone and I can start to escape the, like, administrative of my life or like, whatever conflicts are distracted, like, I can forget all of that and I can just be in the zone, escape. Okay, well, why want to escape? Oh, because, you know, and then we get deeper and deeper. So it might be play. It might be catharsis. It might be. It might be that we have something we deeply want to express. It might be that we have something we’re trying to, shine light on to bring others awareness.
You know, everyone is going to have a different reason for why they do what they do. But if you can ask yourself over and over and over again until you get to, like, a one word answer, a, one or two word answer, that’s when you start to know that you’re really circling in on the core motivators that can guide your creative life and can sort of become your north star. Because when you peel away a lot of that external, stuff, you peel away the award, you peel away whatever revenue goal that you might have for this year.
When you peel all that external stuff away and you get down to what actually matters to you, then when you layer the external pieces back on, you can do so with intentionality and you can say, okay, if what I’m really trying to experience is play, I always go back to that one a lot because I find that most of the clients I work with at the end of the day really enjoy the playful pieces of their work.
But if it’s play, right, then you can still go after that award, you can still hit that revenue goal. But if you’re doing it with a spirit of playfulness and wanting to spread that sense of play to others and wanting to share and make that playful spirit in your work a contagious thing and allow people into that sensation, you can still reach those external markers, but from a totally different angle than this. Sort of like, egocentric, scarcity based, like, I better get that award or else, right? Or else I’ll be. I’m not going to feel good enough. I don’t know.
You put a lot into your question. I put a lot into my answer. I hope this feels like I’m actually answering what you asked, but I think it’s possible for any artist to drill down to what that is. And if they’re willing to do it alone, this is where a trusted friend or a creativity coach can help, because they can ask you those questions and help you sort of shine the light on the spaces you may not have seen or considered before.
Oli Anderson: Yeah, I think, what you just shared is so important because ultimately, a lot of the time, unless we, unless we do some of that work of raising awareness, ultimately by digging into our assumptions, then we’re just running around on autopilot, not realizing that the assumptions that are driving us are either going to be real or unreal, to sound like a broken record. And this comes back to what we were saying about choices.
Like, ultimately, the only way to have a healthy relationship with your creativity and with life itself is to be acting intentionally, because you know that the choices you’re making are coming from that realist part of you. And I think if we look at that three, pronged kind of tier system that we were talking about earlier, if you’re at that earlier stage or you’re just trying to prove yourself to the world.
Ultimately, then you’re… You kind of lost, like you had been driven by the right thing deep down. But because you don’t know what it is, you end up in this trap that many people fall into you where you’re looking for the right thing, which is wholeness in fragmented places, let’s say. And if you do do some work, either consciously or, because that system that you’ve built for yourself of kind of chasing these things, eventually just runs out of steam and you have to confront yourself to some degree.
If you do that work, then you’re always going to end up back in the same place, which is you’re going to be reunited with your creative purpose in the language you’ve been using, but also your being. Like, deep down, when you do that five, six wise exercise, it can only really lead to the things that give you that feeling of being the things that make you feel most alive. And, only if you consciously bring more of that stuff to the surface are you going to be able to kind of move in the direction that you want to move in. So it’s super, super important, I suppose, what I’m seeing here.
Lauren Spangler: Absolutely. And this is where. Oh, nope, go ahead.
Oli Anderson: No, sorry. It’s okay. Please go ahead.
Lauren Spangler: What? This is where I’m gonna throw a monkey wrench in. Are you ready for a monkey wrench?
Oli Anderson: I’m always ready for a monkey wrench. Let’s go.
Lauren Spangler: So artists have this interesting conundrum because we are answering all of these beautiful existential questions, and we have to be driven by these existential things, but within the constraints of our, very real life. And so artists, especially professional artists, walk this line where they have to be driven by their deepest purpose, and they also have to be driven by needs and demands of their lifestyle. What do they require to support themselves?
What are they? You know, they’re going to have to pay the mortgage next month. Right? And so I think one place we get tripped up is many of us love to live in this sort of abstract, esoteric, nebulous space where we can talk for days about why we do what we do and why it’s important, and then at some point, we got to go pay the bills. And I think that’s one place that can be really challenging for artists to navigate, because they feel like these two things are at odds with one another. And so the other thing.
I love people. why do you do what you do? Is, why do you do what you do? And how can you support yourself to do that in a way that will give you the space and time that you need to reach those highest levels with your creativity, find that fulfilment and that experience that you want out of it. And so that’s the other piece, because in this relationship we have with our creativity, one of the biggest strains can be money.
It can be the financial reality that’s pulling us in different directions, and, you know, causing us to fixate on some of those external markers. Because, yeah, you know, as an artist, we never want to be driven by what someone else thinks, but as soon as that someone is a collector who’s either going to pay you for your work or not, dang. It’s hard not to be driven by what that person thinks.
So this is the other piece where I think it’s critical for artists to sit down and get clear on what is the big picture for them, what is their purpose, what are the tangible ways in they can support their creative spirit and give themselves the financial stability that they need over the long run. And that’s a hard question to answer, but I think it’s a critical one.
Oli Anderson: Yeah, I think this is where it comes down to understanding that, I guess two things. Like, first of all, creativity applies to everything, as we’ve kind of been saying. And so, it’s not just about creating our work. Like, on the deepest level, what we’re actually doing is creating ourselves. And so everything that happens is actually fuel for creating this next version of ourselves, this next level of ourselves. I’d say that’s taken a step or two closer towards wholeness.
And it doesn’t need to be a massive step, but it needs to be some kind of a step. And we’ve always been invited, ultimately, to take the next step. Like, in every moment. Like, I seem to say this all the time recently, but, like, literally every moment, there’s a choice between wholeness and fragmentation, between a connection to ourselves or, to just go back to the old ways of kind of thinking and doing things that are kind of outdated software, let’s say.
So I think that’s one important part of this, because even if we find ourselves as an artist or something, painting something, just to make money, well, we can still use that challenge in some way to look at, what we actually want in the long run and all that kind of thing, and to just even just become more solidified in our commitment to our purpose overall, because we say, right, well, you know, right now I’ve got to take this commission or whatever so I can pay the mortgage, but ultimately, my creative purpose and vision is going to lead me to a place where I’m not going to have to do this, because, you know, I’m just going to have artistic integrity all the time, or, whatever it is.
But the other thing as well is nothing exists in isolation, does it? So it’s. It’s kind of what you said, like, it’s about understanding the bigger picture. And I think this is so vital and important not just to creating, like, art in the traditional sense, but to, again, creating ourselves and, like, the real lives that we want to live.
Like, life is just one big process. And I think we’re all on this. We’re all on this journey from fragmentation to wholeness. We can always go deeper into wholeness, as throughout the course of our lives. And then we die, of course, and we just become one with everything, finally. But this journey of fragmentation to wholeness is always taking place.
And so, if we just look at things in isolation, like individual projects or individual, scenarios and situations that pop up throughout the course of the day, then we kind of taken ourselves out of that flow. And I think we can get to this state where no matter what is going on, ultimately, and maybe it sounds a bit idealistic, but I really think we can live in this space. Like, no matter what’s going on, we’re just taking everything as fuel for that journey towards more wholeness. So even if something bad happens or something that goes, something that deviates from our plan or vision, there’s always going to be an opportunity. There’s always going to be a lesson. At the very least, that’s going to give us fuel for this wider journey towards our vision and purpose and all that stuff. That’s how I see it.
Lauren Spangler: So I don’t think that’s too idealistic. I think that’s the goal. I think that’s attainable. And I think the artists who I’ve worked with, who are the happiest and who are able to maintain their inspiration and their consistency and their momentum over a long career have done that. I think that’s the key.
And I think a lot of times the fragmentation we’re experiencing is, like, self-imposed because we have all of these preconceived notions around the value around what we’re doing. Like, is it worthy money if we’re not making it with our art? Is it, you know, does it make us less of an artist if we have an income stream that doesn’t directly tie back to our core, like, passion? and I think if we can deconstruct a lot of the value charges we’ve placed on the various activities in our life, we can start to pull these things together and start to remove the polarities and go, you know what?
Yeah. Like, the fact that I’m taking that commission is allowing me the space that, you know, I can spend most of the day working on that commission, and then I can spend the last part of the day working on my passion project. And the two things are in harmony with each other. they are supporting and feeding each other. And, like you said, we’re on this continuum. We’re, like, on this path to ultimately, like, fulfilling this beautiful, creative act of living our life. And if we can start to see these things as, you know. I would argue that if you have like, I had. I was a, I served coffee for a while, and for a long time, it was just, like, this never ending source of frustration for me that I was, like, serving coffee.
Like, oh, my gosh, I should be making music. I should be painting paintings. Like, why am I serving coffee? This seems completely perpendicular to everything that I say I want to do. And if I remove that value charge and go, you know what? Yeah.
Of my entire set of knowledge and expertise and skills and opportunities in that moment in time, I had the opportunity to be playing music and releasing an album and building, you know, a collector base for my art. I also had the opportunity to be making delicious mochas and serving them to people who like to come back to my coffee shop because we liked to connect with each other and, like, that’s beautiful and valid also. And that day job was an ally.
That day job was giving me. It was affording me the stability, the creative freedom, the time and space to become the artist that I was becoming. And when I began to treat that day job with gratitude, like, it’s part of my origin story. Right? Like, I cannot do. I can’t afford, a keyboard without it. Like, I’ve got to have it. And as soon as I began to see it not as a threat to my creative identity, but as a tool that supported the development of my creative identity, then all the resistance sort of falls away, and you go, yeah, okay, I’m gonna go serve coffee for a few hours, and then I’m gonna go make some music.
Oli Anderson: Yeah.
Lauren Spangler: Like, this is great. This is my life. This is my day today. And, you know, even today, ten years later, there are still parts of my life where I make choices based around my values, based on my desire for stability, based on my financial commitments to my family, and instead of villainizing those choices to be able to say, yeah, I’m one 3d person with a bunch of facets to my life and a bunch of different things that are driving me, and all of those things are valid, and all of those things are living within this ecosystem that is harmonious, and I can allow it to be harmonious.
That’s where I find even less resistant. Like then when I’m doing the things that I really, really do care about, when I’m working with a coaching client that’s just lighting me up, or when I’m making a painting that I’m just so proud of in those moments, then I’m available to enjoy, the reward and joy and excitement and happiness of that, because I’m no longer burdened by resentment or a sensation of failure or whatever else it was that I was layering on top of myself the entire time. You know what I mean?
Oli Anderson: Yeah. I think the lesson is that everything that happens can be a springboard into what we want to have happen next. Like, it’s really that simple. Like, it’s all fuel for moving in the direction that we want to move in. And, the only thing that stops us is the ego stuff we were talking about.
Like, when we feel we have to prove ourselves to the world and when we become outcome dependent, basically, instead of outcome independent. For me, outcome independent means that we are investing our self-worth in some external thing happening.
So, for example, maybe you’re an artist or an author or something, you want your art to be received in a certain way, and you’ve decided, purely because of arbitrary emotional reasons, really, you’ve decided that you’re not going to feel good about yourself until that happens. And then that just distorts you, that distorts the view of everything that happens instead. And then you become resentful and judgmental, and you’re not grateful for what you’ve got. And then that takes you out of the flow and it stops you spring-boarding with what you’ve got into where you actually need to be. And so it’s all about that, in my opinion, just the choices we make to kind of stay present and to keep growing towards that vision. Something like that.
Lauren Spangler: So, well said.
Oli Anderson: Well, thank you. But now I’m going to challenge you to sum up everything we’ve talked about, if that’s even possible. Have you got, like, how would you sum all this up? What’s the main theme of this conversation? Have you any final words of wisdom? Can you let people know where they can find your website as well, please. And anything else you want to share.
Lauren Spangler: Absolutely. Let’s see. I think if I was going to sum up the last 45 minutes here, it might take me 45 more minutes to sum up everything we covered.
Oli Anderson: Well, we can die soon, so we don’t have 45 minutes.
Lauren Spangler: We don’t have 45 minutes. Let’s go. I, think it would come back to the fact that we’re, working with a finite amount of time. We’re working within our very personal realities. And the more honest we can be about what we want to make of that and why we want to make what we want to make, the more clearly we can begin to align ourselves to the things that are really the most important and the easier that will make it for us to create the work that we feel called to create.
And that deep digging conversations like this one, might be the medicine if we’re feeling frustrated or stuck or blocked, because sometimes, the deeper challenges we face have to have deeper answers to resolve them. And so if I was going to encourage, if I was going to encourage a listener to take a step out of this, because it’s nice to take these big, abstract things and make it something that’s, like, concrete and doable, I would encourage someone to sit down and really take stock of their relationship with their creativity.
And, you know, not in a self-judgmental way, we’re not giving ourselves a grade or a score, but to sit down and just really honestly ask, how am I doing? How am I relating to my creativity? Am I going in the direction that I want to go? is it feeling the way I want it to feel? And to just let that answer come honestly and to just receive wherever they are in the moment and meet themselves where they are and move from there and start to more intentionally build the relationship that they want to have with their creativity.
This is really my favourite stuff. I’m so passionate about this, and I just feel like any artist can benefit from having that honest checkpoint with themselves. And so I actually made a tool that folks can use. It’s completely free. You don’t even need an email to download it. It’s totally just a free gift but I made a self-assessment tool that helps people take a pulse on their creative wellbeing. And it’s ten questions long, takes about ten minutes to complete.
And it gives you a holistic picture of where you might be really strong in your creative relationship, or where there might be places that you could make some changes to set yourself up for more fulfilment over the long run. So I call it my spark or sputter test. It’s, again, totally free. It’s at laurenspangler.com spark. So that’s one place people get introduced to me in my work. It’s a good place to start. And if you go down, I hope it helps you shine light on some things that’ll improve your creative wellbeing over time. The other place to connect with me. If you want to see what’s happening in my studio this week, I do hang out on Instagram. I’m Laurenspangler, and I would love to connect there too.
Oli Anderson: Awesome. So I’m going to share both of those links in the show notes. But, Lauren, this has been a really good one. I feel like it’s just flowed really well. So thank you for bringing that energy to allow us to do that. And, I feel like I should write this up somehow in a humorous way. I’ll say something about death.
Lauren Spangler: Ring the death bell again. Yeah, yeah. No, no.
Oli Anderson: There we go. We’re all going to die. Thank you so much.
Lauren Spangler: Thank you so much. Oli, this has been a total blast. It’s been the highlight of my day. I appreciate you taking the time, and I hope this conversation helps people.
Oli Anderson: Thank you so much once again. Lauren, that was awesome.
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