S3 Bonus 10: Re-Sourcing Yourself

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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Genius Women Podcast. I'm your host, Yulia Denisyuk, an award-winning travel photographer and writer with work in some incredible publications like National Geographic, Afar Magazine, and more. And this year you see my name in places like Conde Nast Traveler. I'm on a mission to help other women who want to grow their trouble, storytelling, careers, go after their dreams while feeling supported, worthy, and bold. If you're ready to ditch your fear and doubts to the side, step into your brilliance and take action on your dreams. You're in the right place. Let's go.

[00:00:38] This is it's. My friends are bonus serious are wrapping up today with one final episode and we'll be back with fresh season four episodes to you next. Oh, this month, we've been taking a little break from interviewing guests and replenishing our Wells. And the episode I want to share with you today is related to this idea that we can't always create, always be on always hustle for our creativity to thrive.

[00:01:06] We need some. To restore ourselves and replenish the source from which our creativity flourishes. This conversation was part of our monthly focused team in the circle, our membership for women on the creative bath sometime ago, I came up with this concept of resourcing ourselves, finding ways we can restore, replenish and refill our batteries to continue on a long-term thriving path towards more creativity and storytelling in our lives.

[00:01:35] I also talked about the check concept of CHIBE Alaska, which roughly translates as caring of self love of self nurture of self. I can think of no better time than today to talk about ways we can do that. A quick announcement that the circle reopens this Friday, October 1st. And if you join us in the first five days, you'll have a chance to win a free one-on-one session with me.

[00:02:03] So if you've been thinking about joining now would be a really good time. Thanks so much for being with us for this bonus serious. I hope you enjoy that and I'll see you back in season four next week. 

[00:02:17] Welcome everyone to our monthly theme setting workshop. And we're doing it a little bit late this month because of all my crazy travels last week, but hopefully it will still give you enough time to. Think about this theme this month for the remainder of August. And like with all the themes that we cover in the circle.

[00:02:37] So really see how you can, you can bring it forward, as well, at least some of what we're going to talk about. So the theme for this month is resourcing self. How do we find the energy for our creativity from within and resourcing self silence, a bit. Probably clunky. I just came up with that term.

[00:02:57] I don't know. It may be a little bit clunky, but really what I mean here is that I want to encourage us to start looking at how we maintain our creativity and our energy in a little bit of a different angle. Um, and you'll see, you'll see what I mean by that as I go through our content. So they, and as always feel free to ask me any questions, anything that's unclear right away.

[00:03:21] and we'll discuss that as well. But so basically, you know, and I think some of you are already experiencing that, that you're feeling like you're not really coming up with new ideas on a regular basis. You're not for the pitching. you feel like some of that energy is draining. So that's what we're going to talk about today is how do we resource that, right?

[00:03:42] How do we make sure that we maintain that? Because in this career it's really important, right? That we have sort of a source into which we can tap and create and come up with those ideas. On the regular basis. So there is this expression and any of you, by the way, no check, speak, check, check language, any of, you know, so check is a Slavic language, just like Russian.

[00:04:07] So when I heard this term, it made so much sense to me because it's based on sort of the same roots, but in, in Czech language, there's this expression called. Sam bay, Alaska, and I will put it in the chat just so you guys can sort of see it. and that term, that expression, as I was preparing for today's workshop, it's resonated with me so much because Sybil Laska, literal translation is love of self or.

[00:04:38] Care of south or gentle stroking of say. But what it actually means, it's not the self care in the sort of regular, uh, regular term,that we have in the west where, you know, we put a bathtub with bubbles and champagne, or I dunno, something like that. Uh, which by the way, I think that has been really just co-opted that term self-care has been co-opted by, by the wellness industry.

[00:05:02] But symbol Alaska is a term that includes everything from. Healing supporting and nourishing your body, your mind and your soul. And most importantly, which I think, the most important part of this term and that applies to what we're going to be talking about this month is putting yourself and your needs at the center, putting yourself and your needs, particularly as it pertains to the creative career center.

[00:05:30] And I know this may be very difficult for some of us. Right. And we actually discussed this with, I think it was Charlotte who posted that, you know, she prioritizes, the needs, the projects, their requests, the demands of others. Not. Especially, if if you're sort of juggling multiple,projects, or perhaps you're working multiple jobs, or you're doing something else as well.

[00:05:54] I know Ashley, you can relate to that as well. Right. And Hannah U2. So putting the needs of others, whether it's your employer, whether it's your clients, Vanessa rights, Before your own is really difficult for most of us, but I will encourage us to start thinking about, and it doesn't have to be an overnight shift, right?

[00:06:16] It doesn't have to be overnight. You're putting your needs first, every single time, a hundred percent of the time, but start transitioning and start thinking about in this, way, because that's far too. right. It's putting your needs first. It's finding ways to heal, to nurture, to support yourself specifically as it pertains to your creative career.

[00:06:36] And why do we want to do that? We want to do that because what we really need to understand is that the cycle of creativity cannot be maintained. If we are always only creating. It cannot be. And you guys are already seeing that, right? You're not coming up with ideas, you're feeling drained. certainly feel this way too.

[00:06:55] It needs that second part, which is restoring. So the cycle is actually create and restore, create and restore. And by the way, restore in a lot of cases needs to be even longer than create. And in our societies, it's all messed up and it's all wrong because we have five days of working and two days of, Weekend.

[00:07:14] We have 9, 10, 11, 12 hours of work and two, three hours to disconnect and to try to relax, it's all completely wrong. But when it comes to creativity that create and restore cycle balance, that's what makes it, a sustainable project longterm. There's just no way around that. And. Putting your self first and putting your needs first.

[00:07:35] That's sort of , where it all starts and the things on the stand here to particularly if you're having conversations with other people in your family, in your work or, you know, in whatever other situations, 

[00:07:48] what's key to on the here is putting yourself first and putting your creative needs.

[00:07:52] First is not selfish. It's not selfish. means that you're taking responsibility for your own creative outputs and for your own creative, faith, even. You're taking responsibility, all of it. Then you're saying, you know what, I'm going to put this first. So what does this mean in practical terms too?

[00:08:09] Right? So again, that conversation would have with Charlotte. Charlotte is working with clients. I think she has some marketing clients or something like that. And I wish she would be here cause she would add us. She would add some color to this conversation, but her and I had a conversation that's she always ends up working on whatever the client needs for the day.

[00:08:29] And by the time she does that, she's drained. Right. And she has nothing left to do a pitch or to do anything like that. 

[00:08:34] what I recommended to her and say mark, or block at a time every single day when you're like the most restored, the most refreshed for most of us, that's the beginning of the day.

[00:08:46] Right? And just commit to that one hour, even 30 minutes to be the time that you put for yourself. That's the time when you were, actively like working on your own stuff, not on your client's stuff, not on anything else and figuring out what that time is for you, right?

[00:09:01] For some of us it's morning for some of us as launch, whatever it is. but that's putting yourself first and that's taking responsibility for your creative faith in your creative work. and that's about resourcing yourself, which is again, the term that I came up with, right. Resourcing, finding resources, having resources to continue, and seeing you with your creativity.

[00:09:24] the other thing I want to talk about, and actually I'm going to stop here. So that's sort of the first thing I wanted to discuss today. This idea of Cibola. Right. And restoring healing, supporting and nourishing ourselves, but also taking responsibility about our creative output and again, on the standing that's if you don't stand up for those needs, nobody else will.

[00:09:46] Right. we all have a lot of demands in our days. Other people demand and expect stuff from us all the time. So when you say. You know, oh, this person needs something from me or this person needs something. You're actually not taking responsibility for your own creative output, energy, creativity, and fate in that scenario.

[00:10:05] So, thought it was interesting way to start thinking about this, which is not something that a way we usually do it. I'm going to stop here because I have a few more things to discuss, but is that resonating so far? What I'm talking about said Belasco just love that service because for me, with the Russian language, it makes a lot of sense.

[00:10:25] Okay. The other part I wanted to talk about is another common misconception that we have, which is. That's when we are, working 24 7, we are, fueling our creativity or like this idea that we always have to hustle, or we always have to pitch hard. And by the way, I'm sort of going against my own word here, because I'm the one who told you guys about 30 days 30 pitches challenge.

[00:10:49] Right. but. That's energy that we get from always writing, always pitching, always creating. Actually that energy is not sustainable. Long-term it's sustainable, shorter rides. You will get some excitement from it. Like, Hey every day I'm competing, completing one pitch. That's great. And that's why like the 30 day three pitches challenge is a one-time challenge, right?

[00:11:12] It's not something I recommend you do long term every single day, because again, it's not sustainable. Why is it not sustainable? Because we need that create restore cycle. When we create, we give, we share, we need something to replenish that, right. There's this great quote that I heard or that I saw somewhere, which I don't remember now where it was, but it's like, cannot create from a dry.

[00:11:35] And that's what it is, right. We need to continue to replenish our well, consistently. And I think we forget to do that, we're so focused on, I need to pitch, I need to create, I need to write or whatever it is that we're doing, that we forget about the part of restoring and replenishing. And it's not as important in our cultures as it has to be, especially for creative people.

[00:11:59] For people who want to do this consistently for a long term, I think people don't place nearly as much importance on the restoring parts and sub Alaska parts as we need to. Okay. because the other thing too, is that for those ideas to pop up in your head and for you to be able to come up with good ideas all the time, you need time to.

[00:12:22] Ripe than the fruits is how I call it. Right. You have a lot of seeds in you guys, like all of you have a lot of seeds of different ideas because of things that you get exposed to on a daily basis, something you read here, something you hear over there, something with discussing the circle travel, you made like all of it, right?

[00:12:41] It's all father for your output for your creativity. But those things think of them as seeds over tree, or like, yeah, little, little, what do you call them? Seedlings over tree. They need time. They really need time to ripen and to. to grow, but when we try to like, you know, juice them out and squeeze them out all the time, they have no time to grow into and survive.

[00:13:03] So that's also about that create restore cycle in which the restore part is actually quite long, you know? So, yeah, so that's basically the idea. The idea is that. Work by itself is not going to give us that long-term energy when needs debt, restored Bard. 

[00:13:18] And the other misconception I also want to talk about is that we think, and I, felt this too, by the way, we think that when we're doing something we love.

[00:13:27] Right now. Right? All of you in the circle right now, you're, you're trying to pursue something that you are absolutely passionate about. You want to tell the stories, you know, whether it's travel or whether it's more personal stories, like what you're doing, Ashley, all of you are pursuing your passion, something that's driving you or calling you.

[00:13:43] Right. So I think the misconception is that when we do that, That's work. Isn't work. That work is always restorative. That work is always full of energy. And actually, let me tell you that is absolutely not the case after five years of doing that, I can tell you that you can burn out just as much from doing this work and from pushing yourself and not having that restore cycle or restore part of the cycle as you would with any other job.

[00:14:08] So that's a misconception that we just need to debunk right away, no matter what type of work you do. you need that to restore part to it. So let's not forget that. 

[00:14:17] so then that brings me to the third part of the conversation, right? So we talked about say, Belasco that amazing term that I like, uh, we talked about why, just working all the time is not going to give you that longterm energy.

[00:14:32] So then the question now is how do we get it right? Where do we get it? And there are two things I want to say here. Number one is that if you don't get it for yourself, no one is going to give it to you again. That's about taking responsibility for your creativity, for your creative faith, for your creative output.

[00:14:51] And number two, I don't know you guys, that's the answer. I actually don't know how you get that energy because the real answer is every single one of them. Has a different answer for how you get that energy. And that comes from knowing how you get restored. Right? How do you heal yourself? How do you nurture yourself?

[00:15:11] How do you nurture your mind? How do you nurture your body? How do you nurture your soul? I don't know that because for each of us, it's very unique and it's a very, very individual thing. So I can't tell you what that way is for you. What I can sell you is that this August in the circle, we're going to do the work or finding out if you don't already know what that is for you, I'm going to do the work of finding out what that is.

[00:15:34] Thanks again for listening to today's bonus episode, I hope it resonated with you. And if it did do let me know by leaving a review for our podcast, it helps us out so much to get in front of more women who might find it. Yes. And if you're looking for supports oppurtunities and community in the travel media space, consider joining us in the circle.

[00:15:57] The circle reopens this Friday, October 1st. And if you join us in the first five days, you'll have a chance to win a free one-on-one session with me. So you've been thinking about joining. Now it would be a really good time. This October in the circle, we're also exploring the theme of nailing the story, which includes topics like finding an angle and understanding how your story fits with a publication visit geniuswomxn.co, come October 1st to join us.

[00:16:28] Thanks again for listening during this bonus, period, this September, and I'll see you very, very soon in season.