In this transcript, Hollis and Kimmy delve into the experience of creativity. They break down the differences between creativity and artistry and explore how we can access creativity in every single choice we make. They discuss the difficult emotions that can accompany creativity, such as vulnerability and comparison, and share insights on how to invite more imagination into our daily lives and creative processes.

Listen to their conversation.

_______________________

Hollis: Hi, Kimmy.

Kimmy: Hi, Hollis.

‍

Hollis: I'm so happy to be back here talking with you again. It's been a while since we last recorded together.

‍

Kimmy: I know, yeah. We've had a lot going on.

Hollis: Yeah, a lot has changed. There have been many events, activities, and lots of travel—just kind of doing summer stuff, I guess.

Kimmy: Ah, right. Yeah, but happy to be back here. Nice to see you in your closet again.

Hollis: Yeah. For the listeners, when my partner is home, I come upstairs and sit in my closet to record. So that's where I am.

Kimmy: Honestly, I love it because how often do we sit in our closets? It's just another use for this space, right? Yeah. It's good for clothes, good for shoes, and good for recording.

Hollis: It's great for recording!

Kimmy: Yeah, it's great for recording, so I like it as a multi-purpose room.

Hollis: I like it too. Actually, before we signed on, I was sitting in here and thinking, "This is a great room to meditate in." It's so quiet. I have nothing that could really distract me because looking at my clothes is not necessarily inspiring. So it would be great to meditate in here too.

Kimmy: I think so too. Well, I was wondering if when you sit in your closet, you're surrounded by your clothes and you see things where you're like, "Oh, I could pull that out. I could try that again." But if you were just in the zone and not distracted by those things, I'd say pull up your cushion and get zen.

Hollis: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll have to try it, and then I'll let you know how it goes.

Kimmy: Please do.

Hollis: I am really excited about our conversation today because this is a topic that I think you and I both connect to, but I don't think it's necessarily a topic that everybody connects to. My intention going into this conversation is to talk about creativity and make it more accessible for people who don't necessarily find it accessible. Especially you and I, I think, come from stereotypically creative backgrounds. But yeah, I'm just excited to get into what that means, what it has meant for you, what it's meant for me, and what it means for everybody listening, whether they identify as creative or not.

Kimmy: Right. Yeah, I'm excited to talk about it too because I think that my understanding of creativity and my relationship to creativity has shifted and is still shifting right now as I grow to understand it as a more day-to-day activity or practice, a day-to-day mentality—just a way of being as opposed to something that needs to be finalized with a creation. Like I need to prove my creativity with the creation, so I think I'm still sort of coming to terms with that and trying to empower my creativity mindset. I know a lot of people who are artistic in the traditional sense of artistic or would consider themselves artists, and I think that I found myself comparing my creativity a lot to that form of artistry.

Hollis: Absolutely.

Kimmy: The more that I did that, the more I wanted to stifle my creativity because there’s also this fear of it not being good enough or not being accepted, whatever it is. So I think that it’s been really empowering to think about creativity and consider creativity more as an accessible day-to-day practice.

Hollis: I love that. You brought up a few things that I think we can talk a little bit more about. The first being the difference between creativity and artistry because there is, I think, creating art and then just being creative. I think those are two different things. They’re very close to one another, but I think that they’re different. So we can talk about that. And then we can also talk about the emotional experience that goes along with creativity because anything that is made by you or is a creative expression of you is going to have some sort of emotional component or some sort of attachment or some sort of vulnerability also attached to it. So there’s definitely an emotional experience as a creator. Even if it’s, you know, creating a meal for somebody, there can be emotions attached to that experience. So we can talk about that as well. And then also creativity being an energy that you can experience and not necessarily a product or something that has to be manifested as a thing that you can hold, but it can be something instead that you get to enjoy and feel and participate in. And not feel like it has to be proven by a material product in some way, which I would love to talk a lot about because I think that has a lot to do with the societal expectations of being a productive member of society and contributing in these different ways and coming from a materialistic culture as well. So I would love to talk about all of those things.

Kimmy: Yeah. When I think about the lived experience of creativity, I often think about conversations that I would have with my mom. My mom is an engineer and engineers, I believe, have a very natural link to creativity in their work and creative thinking and being able to engineer new ideas, look at something and think about it in a different way. My mom would always say, "Oh, I’m not creative, I don’t have the creative bone," because she would think of engineering as a very streamlined process and she would think of artists—painters, actors, visual artists I guess—as more creative. And so it felt like creativity was reserved for artists and that form of artistry as opposed to, you know, creativity in science, creativity in all of these other things. And now that’s only talking about, I guess, specific professions. But I mean that’s just as an example for different ways of thinking about it. Did you have a similar experience to that or growing up?  

Hollis: No, I come from a very creative family and creativity is something that I’ve always personally identified with. My mom was a graphic designer and my stepdad was a designer and an artist, a painter. So I always felt like it was very much a part of me. My dad is a mechanic. Even though what he does for work is not necessarily considered creative, he would spend so much time outside of work making things with his hands. He loved making things with wood and just making things for around the house. When I was really little, he made me a Lego table, which was probably my favorite thing that he made me. It was a table that he made, and the legs looked like big Legos that were stacked on top of one another, and then the top of the table was Legos that had been glued down so you could just build things right onto it. I don’t know if he would consider himself creative, but I have always looked at him and what he does as being very creative.

‍

Kimmy: Oh, I love that.

‍

Hollis: Because the way that I think about creativity is using your imagination to create things that didn’t exist before, whether that’s experiences, conversations, products, relationships, businesses—anything. It’s being able to take something that’s in your head and turn it into something that’s real. I think that happens in millions of ways every single day, and it’s just a matter of if you consider it to be creative. That’s whether it’s defined as creativity for you or not. I have always felt that virtually everything is creative. I think as human beings, it’s natural for us because we are just creative beings. We give birth to children, we make things all the time. We’ve made this entire world and these constructs that we’re living in, and all of those things are acts of creation. So I think that more and more people are starting to think of creativity in that sense. When I think about our parents' generation, I think that it was more about putting people in certain boxes where I could totally see how your mom would say, "I’m an engineer, I’m not creative," or my dad would say, "I’m a mechanic, I’m not creative," or somebody saying, "I’m a teacher, I’m not creative," just because it doesn’t fall under the category of artist. Those are our definitions when we think of art versus creativity.  

I would just ask the people who are listening to start asking themselves, what is the difference between being an artist and being creative? And what are the things that you do on a regular basis that are creative in the sense that you’re coming up with ideas and putting them into practice in some shape or form? You know, I think of cooking as a creative act that so many people do every single day because you have to come up with something that you want to make for yourself to nourish yourself. You have to gather the ingredients, you have to organize the ingredients in whatever way that you want to—chopping them up, cooking them, sautéing them, grilling them, whatever it is—and all of that, every single decision you make is a creative decision. You then come to this final meal that you then get to enjoy. I think that is a perfect example. Again, I guess, because everything for me always has to do with food, but I think that’s a perfect example of something that you wouldn’t necessarily think of as creative.

So for those of you who are listening, what similar things do you do in your day-to-day life that you could say are creative? And what changes when you think about them as creative versus just the things that you do? How does your emotional and energetic experience of that shift?

‍

Kimmy: Yeah, something else that I really liked that you said earlier about creativity was how building our relationships can be creative. We're creating something, you know? We're building something. When you think about sending a message to your friend saying, "Hey, do you want to go to the lake today, go swimming? Do you want to come over and watch a movie? Do you want to go get a meal?" and they respond, "Yeah, I can do that. How about we do this as well?"—you're creating something together. You're creating a relationship. I love thinking about different things like that as creative as well because it just, you're really making a choice, and you're really saying, "Yes, this is something that I want to put energy and creation into, and you are someone that I want to build something with." I just love thinking about creativity in that way as well.

‍

Hollis: Yeah, it almost positions you with more agency, I think, when you think of it that way. It's not just something that you're participating in or that you're going along with, but you actually get to choose how you're creating this relationship with this other person. You get to choose if you want to go to the lake with them, or if you want to go to a shopping mall with them, or if you want to go on a trip with them, or if you don't want to talk to them at all. You get to choose how this relationship unfolds and the type of relationship that you two are creating together. I love that you brought this up because what I also always think of and like to really reinforce for myself and for others is that our entire lives are our biggest creative project, right? We're constantly creating and co-creating our experiences in our life and how our story is unfolding. When you start to think about your relationships day-to-day as being something that you're creating with other people, it makes it even easier for you to step into, "Oh, that's right. I am also creating everything in my life, and I get to be the person that makes those choices." I get to say yes or no to these things or take my ideas and turn them into action or things or whatever. If you don't consider yourself a creative person, that can almost feel even more distant, like you can't grasp that for yourself. By saying you're not a creative person, it's difficult for you to recognize that you're the creator of your life. It's like you're cutting off the imaginative aspect of what's possible for your life or for your relationships or for your career or whatever it is that you're focusing on.  

When you said you liked hearing that you're creating your relationships, your eyes lit up a little bit. It's almost like your imagination kicked in and possibility kicked in. It's that agency, I think, that people get—the feeling of "I have so many opportunities, and there's so many possibilities, and there's so many things that I can choose for myself and this relationship." That's the excitement that gets brought into it when you recognize that you are the creator or the co-creator of whatever it is that you're focusing on.

‍

Kimmy: Yeah. It also makes me think about how comparison will really stifle creativity when we're thinking about creating our own lives and how we have so much ownership over what that will look like. I think that comparison will absolutely squash so many creative instincts. In some ways, you can be inspired by something that someone does, and that's a different feeling. But I've been thinking about this a lot in terms of building my new home and getting acquainted in this new life and—not new life, same life, just in a different place.

‍

Hollis: New chapter, new chapter of your life.

‍

Kimmy: New chapter, yeah. Recently, I moved, and I have been unpacking boxes, moving tables around, and really starting to furnish things little by little, you know, going to different thrift stores. Sometimes I'll have this feeling of, "Oh, God, it just needs to be done. The space needs to be done. It needs to feel organized and done." I have been trying to remind myself as I'm doing this that it is a creative process and that it is a process that will get more beautiful over time. Because when you walk into someone's home, you're seeing little touches of them. You're seeing the little knickknacks, the books that they keep, the dresser that they've had since they were six years old that they've repainted five times. All of these things that sort of make a space feel like a home or an apartment feel like a home or whatever it is. It's almost always eclectic in some way, or it's very exciting when it's eclectic, but the process of that takes a long time.  

Whenever I get into comparison and comparing how long it's taking me to move in and make something feel settled and beautiful, and looking at my space being like, "Oh, that's so cluttered still, and nothing makes sense," it kind of makes me want to just give up on the creative process in general, stop giving it time and energy, and just be done with it. So I guess that kind of speaks to comparison, but also the creative process is...a process that takes time.

‍

Hollis: That's great. It's funny because before starting this podcast years ago, I had another podcast with my very good friend, Cecilia. She and I went to the School of Visual Arts together. She's an illustrator and a writer, and my background is in design, so we both consider ourselves creatives. Our podcast was called "The Process of Progress," and it was all about the creative process being something that is always about finding some sort of progress. It's almost never finished, even if it's just one project. Like a home, you could think you get to a place where everything is complete, and then something else happens, or your perspective shifts, and then you're like, "Well, now I have to do this new thing." It's really kind of this ever-evolving, always continual progress. The experience of progressing and creating and recreating and doing things anew over and over again.  

I love that you talk about it specifically as something that, again, comes back to the emotional experience of it because it is always a journey, and there's never necessarily an end to whatever it is that you're creating. I mean, unless it's a meal, and then you eat it, and it's over. But even then, you could be eating the meal and thinking, "Oh, next time, I'm going to improve it this way," or whatever. There's always something building on top of what was there before, but the emotional experience of that creation process can be all over the place. There can be thoughts of comparison, there can be frustration that it's not going at the speed that you want it to go, there can be frustration that you don't have all the right resources to make the thing that you really want to make. There can be experiences of sadness or grief because it makes you think of something else that maybe you created in the past that you had to let go of, or that you won't be able to share with someone, or whatever. There's so many things that can come into the experience of the journey of creating. I think that it's those moments that I love so much because so much of who we are gets reflected back to ourselves in those moments.  

Creativity, whatever we're creating, can be something that we do with other people or it can be something that we do by ourselves. But in either sense, when we have an emotional reaction to something while we're creating, there's something being shown to us about who we are, and something that we can then use as a moment of self-reflection. Like you looking at your house right now, looking at your space and being like, "I just want it to be done." You can look at that emotional experience and say, "What is it in me that wants this to be done now? Why am I not experiencing more patience in this journey? What feels like it needs this kind of settling or this sort of finality right now? Is it related to my sense of security?" You can ask yourself different questions that come along with the emotion. It's a really great moment for self-reflection, for self-understanding, potentially for a little bit of growth. And then, yeah, it just allows you to keep continuing to grow as you create. This is where I want to say, you know, those are the moments in whatever we're creating that are kind of... where we get in special circumstances, but then my mind immediately goes to, well, we're always creating all the time. So this this is something that you experienced all the time every day anyways.

‍

Kimmy: Right. But we don't always think about it like that, you know? I think that's because we don't always think, "Oh, I'm in the act of creation. I'm in the process of creation," while I'm doing this really mundane thing, like turning on my car or, you know, going to work. Yeah, yeah, things that feel kind of...

‍

Hollis: Habitual. Mundane. Yeah.

‍

Kimmy: Yeah, right.

‍

Hollis: Which I was going to say, you know, I think those things that we do over and over and over again can definitely be considered not creative because we're not necessarily using our imagination. But in my mind, every time we make a choice to do something, we're creating something. We're making a choice to create in a certain direction. So every time you stick to whatever habit it is, whether it be smoking cigarettes or going for a run in the morning, you're choosing to create a different version of your life or your experience. And again, that's where, when you think about the difference between being an artist versus just being a creator—I mean, I still think, because they're so inextricably connected in my head, I still think that you can bring artistry to your life even if you don't consider yourself like a visual artist or something. But I don't want to get into the weeds too much with that.

‍

Kimmy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What would you say to someone, or how would you recommend that someone remind themselves of their innate creativity?

‍

Hollis: I just want to say that everything you do is an act of creation, but I know it's different when I say that versus people actually understanding it and experiencing it for themselves. I kind of want to talk a little bit about the sacral chakra, which people might, when they hear "chakra," they might automatically tune out, but for those people who don't—that's the creative center point of our body. And the thing about creativity too, in my mind, also because it's this way in the chakra system, it's this way exhibited in astrology as well, is that it's also very much connected to our sexual energy. Because the ultimate act of creation as a human being is to be able to create another human life. They're inextricably connected in my mind, and so if you're the type of person who doesn't feel like you can connect to your creative energy that much, I would say, "Go have sex." That could be great if you have access to that. But also, you can bring your awareness and your attention to this part of your body. It's a space that's just below the base of your spine and your belly button. And kind of breathe into this space and almost imagine—it's usually associated with the color orange—but kind of just imagine warmth or energy being connected to that part of your body. And just notice what you feel when you bring awareness to this part of your body, and if there's anything that kind of awakens in you. Because what I think cuts us off from our creativity is that we're either living only in our heads and our ideas can't become reality, or we live too much in the material world where everything feels really heavy and it starts to feel stagnant and it's too difficult to feel kind of like the lightness of creativity. You need to have both. You need to have the imagination and the ideas and the inspiration, and then you also need the connection to the material world to know how to take those ideas and turn them into something real. So by bringing awareness to this part of your body, I think there becomes this kind of opening between your mind and your physical experience. And also, this specific part of your body is helpful because for thousands of years it's been considered the creative powerhouse of the body in certain lineages. But I think starting to feel that connection between mind and body and feeling more of the energetic pathway between both, even if you're not necessarily “creating something,” it could then lead you into feeling more inspired to explore your creativity. Does that make sense? It's like you're connecting to the seed.

‍

Kimmy: Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like it's a way of it becoming a little more experiential as opposed to just this thing that you're doing on autopilot.

‍

Hollis: Yeah. Well, and I think also, again, so much of the time we live in our minds—or, no, I was going to say we live in our bodies, but I think so much of the time we just live in our minds. And I think by getting a little bit more into our bodies and settling some of those ideas, it makes it easier to—it just makes it easier to start moving the energy in the body and to move the ideas a little bit more. And by doing that, it can just feel easier to take the first step towards the thing that you want to create or the thing that you want to do next instead of being just solely stuck in your head. So, does that answer your question?

‍

Kimmy: I think so. Yeah. I think it also—I wonder if that also allows you to sort of feel moments of creativity, not even just the inspiration to do something, but just the recognition of, "Oh, I'm fully involved in this. I feel the creative process of X, Y, and Z," whatever it is.

‍

Hollis: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. I think the other thing that I would recommend for people is to just start thinking about all the different choices that they make every single day. Because every—again, I fully believe that every single choice that we make is involved in an act of creativity because we are participating in creating our life. So did you wake up and choose to make coffee or tea this morning? Did you choose to have breakfast? How is that creating your day and creating the experience of your day? What did you—what are the different choices that you made, and what are the areas of your life where you felt like you didn't have a choice, that it was just something that you had to do? And what is the experiential difference? And then also, did you actually have a choice? Did you actually have a choice but did you believe that you didn't have a choice in that?

‍

Kimmy: Yeah, I think that that is such a good point. Thinking about the choices that we make and the creative choices that we make, they're not always going to be the best choices because we have to make choices to learn from choices. So if you're thinking about every choice you make as a creative choice, like, did I make coffee or tea, and the coffee makes you feel a little bit extra zippy that day and you just feel too anxious, you might take that as information to make a more informed choice the next morning. And so it's all just this long-form learning practice of creativity.

‍

Hollis: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, because there will be moments where it is just like simple little choices that are an act of creation. But then also, there are other moments where you bring more awareness to what it is that you're choosing or creating. Perhaps you can bring more imagination to them, and I think that's why people also love when they have a little bit more time and space to do things because there's more imagination and room for possibility. So there's just more space to think, "Oh, well, what if I did this with my time? Or what if I wanted to do this with this person?" Turning on the light bulb of possibility is also turning on the light bulb of creativity. And I think that's just an inherent part of being a human being that makes us come alive. Like, if we're not creating every single moment, if we're not choosing to stay alive and creating ourselves with our breath and creating our lived experience by feeding ourselves and nourishing our body and everything, then we're dying. We're not doing anything. And so I think that it's a very important part of just being a human being that we get to be creative and that we remember that we're creating all the time, whether that be, you know, in the smallest ways where there aren't a lot of options or the bigger ways where we empower ourselves to have—more options and possibilities.

‍

Kimmy: Yeah, I agree.

‍

Hollis: I really want to quickly come back to, because we didn't really talk about it very much, but we touched on it—comparison and the more difficult emotions that come with creating, whether that be, like I said, creating a meal or creating your life or creating a relationship. There's two versions of comparison, and you touched on one: that when you compare yourself to others, sometimes it can be inspiring. Sometimes you can see where it is that you want to change and where you're inspired to change and create something different for yourself. And then there's the other side of it where it can cause self-doubt or confusion or a kind of disassociation from what it is that you know is true for yourself because you see something else that perhaps looks "better" or more appealing. And so you lose sight of what it is that you instinctually, internally want for yourself. And my favorite solution for any of this kind of thinking, which I think also empowers you to feel like there's more possibilities and invites more imagination into your experience—the solution is unity consciousness, which I know we talked about on another episode. It's basically the idea that I am you and you are me, and there's no separation, that everything that we see and every person that we come in contact with is a different expression of this one unified self.  

And so whether you believe that to be literally true or just a possibility or just an idea, a nice concept, what I love about thinking that way is that when you see somebody or something that you are comparing yourself to and perhaps you feel a little bit of self-doubt or envy or jealousy, you can say, "Oh, look at me doing that over there. Isn't that great? Don't I love seeing myself do that?" And by doing that and by self-identifying as that as an extension of you, it exercises empathy because you get to put yourself in the position of the other person and kind of feel what they could potentially be feeling. You imagine yourself in that experience. So then it also broadens your imagination for the possibility of you potentially having that thing or creating that thing for yourself. And then the jealousy kind of drops or the doubt kind of drops because you then have ownership of the same thing that this other person has or has created. It makes it so that the more difficult emotions that inhibit us from feeling creative, like shame or self-doubt or anxiety or fear of vulnerability—whatever—those get softened a little bit. And when they get softened, it just makes it so much easier to then step into creatorship again because you don't have these more difficult emotions holding you back from doing the thing that you want to do, and the energy can keep flowing. You can keep being creative without the doubt and without holding yourself back. So what do you think of that when I share that with you?

‍

Kimmy: I love that. I know we've talked about unity consciousness before, but I've never heard it expressed in the way of, "Oh, look at me doing that. Look at how well I'm doing that, how beautiful that is." That's such a sweet way to take what maybe would have been jealousy or a negative comparison and just transform it into something that can really lift other people up while also lifting yourself up. Because sometimes the really negative side of comparison or jealousy, when it's—what's the word I'm looking for?

‍

Hollis: Individualistic? Or...

‍‍

Kimmy: I guess I'm thinking of, like, you know how we talk about jealousy and comparison can sometimes be good emotions, but when they're not good...

‍

Hollis: When, yeah, when we see—it's almost like, I'm wondering if this is it—when you recognize yourself feeling jealous and then it's almost like you get on your case even more that you're feeling jealous because you don't want to be feeling jealous. Is that what you're talking about?

‍

Kimmy: Yeah, yeah. And it's almost like it's just not digesting. Nothing is moving through in a helpful way. It's all just festering and becoming this sort of...nasty green monster. That's where the green monster comes from.

‍

Hollis: Right, right.

‍

Kimmy: But I love thinking about it in that way because I think that's also a really fun way to lift other people up as well. When you sort of take it out of the mentality of, "Oh, I'm not doing this and they're doing that and therefore what I'm doing is wrong, what they're doing is right,"  I think that's a really great way to think about it. Just turn the light on in your head and be like, "Oh, OK, I really like that and I can do that and these are the steps forward."

‍

Hollis: Yeah, yeah. If we're thinking about everything that we do as creative and us as human beings needing to be able to create, those difficult emotions when we don't understand them or don't know how to work with them can inhibit us from creating. It can make us feel really small or dense, like the energy is really dense. Creativity and creating is all about movement. It's all about finding some sort of energetic, cyclical movement forward, where it's like the inhale and the exhale. It's constantly changing, evolving, and shifting. So when we get into those places, either emotionally or physically, where we just feel really heavy and dense, something needs to change. As I'm saying this, I’m thinking, creativity needs to be applied. Something needs to change so that the creative energy can naturally just flow even more. And I know that on our day-to-day basis, we don't necessarily think, "Oh, this difficult emotion is inhibiting me from being able to create freely." But if we think of human beings just as creative beings, that's perhaps a different perspective we can apply to these more challenging emotions. What is the salve? What is the way that I can shift this energy so that I can step more into my role of an easeful creator as a human being, doing my thing every single day?

‍

Kimmy: I just had this thought while you were talking through that. What do you think about asking yourself, "How can I use my imagination to work through this?" Do you think that is too abstract? Because I don't mean that in a way of escapism. So, maybe that's not exactly the framework, but I really like having more access to imagination as adults and thinking about imagination more. When I taught improv to kids, it was so clear to me how in touch with their imagination they were. Creating a scene is nothing. But when you're in an improv class as an adult, or with an improv team, you get into a flow and create a scene together, but it's a lot more awkward. When you're a kid, you almost don't care about the awkwardness because you're like, whatever, I'm just creating.

‍

Hollis: Yeah.

‍

Kimmy: They just had more access to their imagination. I think as we get older, and there are more boundaries put in place for our lives and what our lives need to look like, choices that we need to make, and as things that start to feel more defined, we start to lose touch with our imagination. So I was just thinking about how we could use our imaginations as a tool that we have to access our creativity. Because imagination is such a beautiful thing that we often think is reserved for creating fairy tales and things that aren't real or are just silly.

‍

Hollis: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think the more people embrace their imagination—because we all have imagination—the bigger their lives can become. Everything that we create starts as an idea. If you limit yourself to the ideas that you allow yourself to have, then you're only going to have so many experiences in your life. The more you allow yourself to imagine bigger possibilities or different possibilities for yourself in every part of your life, the more possibilities you'll have access to. That's number one.  

Imagination is a tool for every scenario, especially when you feel really stuck or when you feel those heavy emotions. But for the people who don't feel like they have access to their imagination, like it's just not something they can do or reach right now—because you're absolutely right, as adults, we become so much more self-conscious. We have to deal with the real world, like paying bills and taxes and things like that. Everything becomes so much more about what's in front of you and what you can tangibly touch, and less about ideas and dreams. If you identify as that person, I would say, start asking your younger self what they would do in this situation as a way of getting more in touch with your imagination. Because the way you just said, imagination for kids is always there for them. It's not even something they think about. By getting in touch with your younger self or your inner child, that connection to your imagination becomes a little bit stronger. At the same time, you'll probably be doing some inner child healing work, which is also great. But I think that could be the first thing. Like, what would 7-year-old Kimmy do in this situation? What would 9-year-old Hollis do? Maybe not nine. I feel like nine is when you start to get really self-conscious. Maybe stick to between 5 and 8 or something like that. But yeah, I think that would be the alternative if you feel like imagination isn't a tool you have immediate access to.

‍

Kimmy: Yeah, I like that a lot.

‍

Hollis: I want to do that. I want to just sit here and be like, "Oh yeah, this problem I have in my life, how can I apply more imagination to this?"

‍

Kimmy: I was just thinking, like I'm talking to you and looking out on the yard, which has become a little bit stressful. It's still fun to have a yard, but it's also a little bit stressful.

‍

Hollis: Yeah, it is maintenance.

‍

Kimmy: I'm like, oh, OK, if I was doing this yard maintenance as a kid, well, first of all, I probably would hate it...but if I'm reframing it and just thinking about seeing these flowers for the first time or what it means to create—I don't know, I gotta workshop it a little bit more. But I think that's so fun to think about how to turn a task that maybe feels a little bit mundane or rote or whatever in your day and turn that into kind of an adventure. Because I gotta do it.

‍

Hollis: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Even if you're having a hard time doing it yourself, do it with a friend. Call up a friend or someone you love and just be like, "Can we talk through all the different ways this could go? Like all the different ways I could take care of my lawn?" Because that's the other thing—when you combine two imaginations, you get more possibilities. And if there's one thing I learned in art school, it's that you can have 100 ideas and only one of them is good. So having all the different options laid out for you helps you find the creative solution that makes the most sense for you. You don't have to limit yourself to just thinking of five different possibilities or two different possibilities. You can think of endless possibilities and then eventually come to the solution that really lights you up, that you get really excited to create.

‍

Kimmy: Right, right.

‍

Hollis: So yeah, bring a friend in for fun.

‍

Kimmy: Yeah, phone a friend.

‍

Hollis: Yeah, phone a friend, exactly. Speaking of which, really quickly, is it your lawn or your yard that you're worried about? Because there are ways of turning your lawn into wildflower pollinator gardens instead of just grass. There's a lot of different ways to plant other things besides grass to make it more fun.

‍

Kimmy: Yeah, it's pretty fun already because the woman who lived here before me kept the most beautiful garden. I just don't know what I'm doing.

‍

Hollis: It's a learning curve.

‍

Kimmy: It's a learning curve! She was retired and spent every day or a portion of every day keeping it looking really beautiful and happy. And every time I look out the window, something is dead, and I'm like, "It's getting away from me." I'm trying to have this fluid, beautiful relationship with my garden, and I just feel like we're kind of at odds right now. But we're just getting to know each other.

‍

Hollis: Yeah, exactly. I was just going to say, you're creating a new relationship with one another. They're getting to know you; you're getting to know them. It's going to take some time. They're like, "You're not my old mom."

‍

Kimmy: Exactly, yes. I know, I know. They're like, "Where's my mom? She took really good care of us. Now we're all sick."

‍

Hollis: My partner, Nigel, always says whenever people ask him about his plants—he has like seven fiddle leaf figs all around our house—people are like, "What do you do to take care of them?" And he says, "I just think like them." So maybe just think more like your plants outside, Kimmy, and then you'll know how to take care of them.

‍

Kimmy: That’s such a good answer.

‍

Hollis: I know, right? Well, anyway, I hope this conversation helps people feel a little bit more connected to their inner creator and inner creativity. I feel like we could go on and on—I mean, I had a whole podcast about creativity before, and we could talk about it forever. But is there anything else you feel like we need to touch on before we wrap up this episode, before we finish co-creating this episode?

‍

Kimmy: Yeah, I know. Look at us creating something! No, I don't think so.

‍

Hollis: Awesome. All right, cool. Well, this was so, so fun. Again, I really encourage people to start thinking about all the different things they create on a daily basis, whether it's a conversation, a meal, or a relationship with your garden. Let us know how that feels, how that shift in perspective maybe changes things up for you and changes your energetic relationship to things. We would love to hear from you. Thank you, Kimmy, for another wonderful conversation.

‍

Kimmy: Of course. Thank you.