Create Art Podcast commentary Super Size Me part of the Make Fun a Habit series. Hello, friend. This is Timothy Keem o' Brien, your head instigator for Create Art Podcast, where I bring my over 30 years of experience in the arts and education world to help you tame your inner critic and create more than you consume. So we're continuing on with our Make Fun of Habit series. And that's brought to us by Mike Brennan, who hosts the Creative Chats podcast. And he has a workbook called Make Fun a Habit. Basically, what this workbook IS is a 30 day workbook for you to do what the title says, make fun happen again. And that's really important for us creatives to put that fun back into our creativity each and every day, any way we can. So what I've done is to take each chapter and there's 30 chapters and create an episode and discuss what he's talking about. Now, each chapter starts off with a little story and then it goes into some questions for you to ponder, some tips and some action items for you to do to do what it says make Fun a habit. Now, as I said earlier, Mike Burnon has his own podcast, Creative Chats, and I found that podcast when I was doing my other podcast, Find a podcast about where I review podcasts that I think are binge worthy. You can find it at findapodcastabout xyz. I was really impressed with what he was doing with this, so I went through the book and read through it really quick, and I found that, you know, when you go back through it again and again and again, and right now we're on the 27th chapter, you get a lot of great ideas for what you can do to put that fun right back into your creativity. So today's episode, we're talking about supersizing ourselves. Now, Mike starts off with talking about the documentary Supersize Me, which is a documentary of a person going to McDonald's every day and just eating McDonald's. And if they were offered to supersize their meal, they went ahead and did that. And that's not what we're talking about here. We're not talking about going to McDonald's, although McDonald's is delicious. But if you like me. But what he's talking about is really taking the time to kick ourselves up a couple of notches and to find ways to do that. And a couple of the ways that he was presenting to us here is, you know, take some time for some self reflection for yourself, figure out, you know, what your values are. Next he talks about setting goals and making a plan to achieve them. So if we want to supersize ourselves, we want to kick it up a notch. And I still kick it up a notch from Emeril Lagasse because I used to watch his show all the time. But we got to set those goals, we got to figure out what we want to do. So reflect, then set a plan and then believe in yourself and your abilities, believe that you can actually do this and then take care of yourself too. If we don't take care of ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally, we're not going to be much good, much use or much good to anybody. And then lastly, he talks about surrounding yourself with positive people. And that's really important too, because if you think you're out there all by yourself and there's nobody out there that really understands you, well, you might be right. You know, it's going to be really lonely. It's going to be hard to take care of yourself, it's going to be hard to accomplish your goals and it's going to be hard to be self reflective on that. So just realize you're not out there on your own. I'm here with you. I'm sure you have other people out there with you. So do all these things and that's basically how you're going to supersize yourself. But let's go into the other aspects that he talks about in this chapter. So we're going to start off with the questions. And first question is, where are you tempted to shrink? And I think for me, I know this is going to sound weird, but sitting and talking with people, mingling with others, I kind of, I don't want to say I'm shy. I'm not really shy. It's just I back away from it a little too much and you know, that is a self fulfilling prophecy. So maybe that's something I need to work a little bit more on. And gee, I have the opportunity to do that here. Coming up in September with a podcast conference and I'm going to be going to next thing is what would supersizing look like for you? So for me, what does supersizing look like? Well, I'm, you know, running my own business and doing podcasting, you know, all day every day. That would be great, you know, to get paid oodles and oodles of money so that way I can quit my day job and just do this kind of stuff and you know, get, get paid for my art. You know, whether it be through books or paintings or Music or what have you. So being able to support myself with my art. Third question is, what are you afraid of? And what are you holding yourself back from? So I think success is what I'm afraid of. You know, to actually do that and to actually support myself with my art is something that I'm afraid of. I'll be honest with you. You know, it's. Yeah, I can. I can be honest with you. Can I? I think I can. You seem like nice people. You know, being successful like that and really, you know, making my way through the world, supporting myself through my art, that really scares me. Because then, well, you know, I got wife and kids in a house and a lot of responsibilities. So, you know, it's the whole imposter syndrome. It's the whole, what if I'm not good enough? What if I'm fooling everybody out there in the world and what happens when they find out about it? So that's kind of what I'm afraid of. Next question is, what are you willing to do to supersize yourself, and what are you willing to sacrifice and what are you willing to work hard for? So to supersize myself, I want to be able to, you know, support myself through my art. And what am I willing to do? Well, I think I need to get over myself some days. You know, I need to believe in myself, believe that I can actually do this and make a living at it. And what am I willing to sacrifice for it? Well, I think old ideas, old habits, you know, the stuff that internally blocks me from doing, that kind of stuff. And then what are you willing to work hard for? Well, I want to show my kids that, you know, there is a different way. You don't have to go to college. You don't have to do the military. You don't have to work in corporate America. You can go out there and make something of yourself by just finding the opportunities and keeping your eyes open for those opportunities and to keep your eyes open to have really good situational awareness, look for the opportunities. And then lastly, how will you measure success and how will you know when you have supersized yourself? Well, success for me is this year. I'd like to add another two clients to my client list. I have one, and by the end of this year, I'd like to have two more on that. So that way, you know, all my stuff can be paid for through my clients and through what I'm charging them, and that they're happy about it and they tell other people about it. So for me, that would be success. How am I going to know when I supersize myself, when I get the first paychecks from those clients? That's when I know that it's not just a one off kind of thing. It's people are seeing my skills, my art, my dedication to the craft, and I'm able to produce for them. Okay, we're going to move on to some action items. And this first action item is to go ahead and take a personality test to help you better understand your strengths and weaknesses as well as your values and interests. Now there's a lot of, you know, personality tests that you can go out there and take the migs, Myers Briggs type indicator test or the phonogram and the disc assessment, whatever it is for you. I've done the MIGs, Breyer, Myers Briggs. I'm sorry. I've done that test before in a leadership class when I was working for the army and it was okay. I think part of the issue is I didn't like the class that I was in and I didn't like the instructors. So maybe revisiting that and figuring out, you know, what my values are, what my interests are. Now, after you take that personality test, it should help you understand yourself better. You know, finding out what you're good at and what you're not good at and you know, know what your values are and your interests are. After that, you're going to set your goals. You can use smart goals, you can use whatever kind of goals you, you know, whatever format of goals you need to use. But I think it's important to set those goals. Taking action is next so you know what your strengths and weaknesses are, you know what your interests are, you know what your goals are. Now you got to do something with it. And that's where a lot of people fall flat on their face. I know, I'm one of those people. Just do it, all right? It's a Nike slogan. I know, I get it. It's very cliche, honestly. Just do it. What's the worst is going to happen? Okay, I'm not saying to go quit your 9 to 5 tomorrow to do your art, but set the goals so that way you can eventually set yourself up for success and then build relationships is the last action item he has there for us. And realize you're not going to be able to do this all by yourself. You're going to need to have people out there that you can rely on that can help you get to your goals, whether it be your doctor, your therapist, your family, your friends. Whatever. Have people around you that can help support you when you need it. All right, the last section is the tips. And first thing he gives for us is to challenge yourself. You know, a lot of times we have these ideas about herself. I'm guilty of it, too, that, you know, you're not worthy. You're not going to ever do it. Challenge yourself. You know, turn it back around on itself and go, you know what? I'm going to at least try. So I'm going to go ahead and do it. The next thing is to take risks. Hey, if it doesn't work out, at least you tried. That's a big thing. You know, there's a lot of people out there that are not doing podcasts, and they're like, oh, yeah, one day I'd like to do a podcast, and then they never do. Well, I'm doing a podcast. I've been doing it since 2006. I've changed the format here and there and everywhere. Heck, I've even changed the name of this podcast. It used to be known as KDOI Podcasting, and that stood for Chemo's Den of Iniquity. Now you hear that and you go, well, what does that have to do with art? I don't know. I just thought it was cool at the time. It didn't work out. So I took a risk and I said, you know what? I'm just going to change that to create art podcast. And. And here you are. Be persistent. So he's not saying, you know, go full bore 24 7, you know, forget everything else, but kind of what I do is I'm here with you every other week. You know, that's something that I can do. Or every. You know, sometimes I'm here every week. Some months I'm here every day, just depending on, you know, if it's a national poetry writing month or National Novel writing month. But just keep going, keep going at it. Eventually something will break through for you. And last but not least is celebrate your successes. I've had a lot of successes here in podcasting. I've met some awesome people I've got to talk to people that I never would have thought would want to talk to me. You know, little old me, you know, just the guy, you know, from Rockford, Illinois, that, you know, it's, you know, he's a blue collar kind of guy who's gonna talk to me, who's gonna want to talk to me. But there's been a lot of people that have wanted to talk to me, and I've had to kind of put a hold on it at this point right now because I'm like, oh, it's starting to stray from where I want it to be. So, you know, just keep on going at it and eventually you are going to supersize yourself. At least I hope you do. And you know, just keep working at it. Now if you'd like to, you know, tell me how you're going to supersize yourself, you can always email me timothyreateartpodcast.com I want to hear from you. I want to know what you're doing to supersize yourself. Very interested in that. You can email me to be a guest on the show or if you have ideas or topics you want me to discuss, be more than happy to take a look at that and see what we have going on there. Another thing I'd like you to do, if you would please, is to go ahead and, you know, recommend this to your friends. You know, maybe you have a friend who's an artist who's struggling, have them take a listen to a couple of episodes and if it's done something for you, it's going to do something for them. And that's a great gift to give somebody. So definitely feel free to go ahead and do that. Now as I mentioned earlier, I do have another podcast. It's called Find a Podcast About. You can find it at findapodcastabout xyz and that's where I help you find your next binge worthy podcast and outsmart the algorithm. Now I also run my own business, it's called TKB Podcast Studio. And that's where I help my clients lead through the noise, through quiet professionalism. I help people start up their podcast. And whether just, you know, with the idea creation, with the technology, with the recording, the producing, the posting, what have you, I do it from soup to nuts, from, you know, nose to tail. I'm willing to help you out with that. So definitely check me out. TKBpodcaststudio.com you can see my portfolio there, see all the other podcasts that I work on, check it out for yourself, email me from there and let's make that conversation happen. All right, that's all I got for you this week. I want to thank you so much for listening and joining in. I hope you can go out there and find ways to supersize yourself because you are definitely worth it. I'm worth it for sure. But you're worth it too. That's why you're here sitting and listening to me. So thank you for joining in on that. Now go out there, tame that inner critic, because it's a son of a. Sometimes create more than you consume. And go out there and make some art for somebody you love. Yourself. Remember, Love yourself. That's taking care of yourself. I'll talk to you next time.