Speaker 1: Everybody has a tribe out there, and all you need
Speaker 1: are two or three or four people and you're unstoppable.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Our guest today is
Speaker 1: Jessica Hagey, an artist and writer best known for her
Speaker 1: award winning blog Indexed, a feature in the creative online space.
Speaker 1: Jessica has been illustrating, consulting, and speaking since two thousand six.
Speaker 1: Her latest book is called How to Be Interesting, and
Speaker 1: she recently produced a series of illustrations for Forbes magazine
Speaker 1: based on the classic art of War. Hi, Eric and Chris,
Speaker 1: thanks for doing this. Sure sure thanks ring me. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and get started. So our podcast is
Speaker 1: based on the old parable where there's a grandfather who
Speaker 1: is talking with his grandson and he says to him,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always battling. One is a good wolf represents kindness
Speaker 1: and love and peace, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents self pity, hatred, greed. Name your poison. And
Speaker 1: the grandson thinks for a second and says to his grandfather, well,
Speaker 1: which one wins, And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So that's the premise of our podcast. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what does that parable
Speaker 1: mean to you and how does it influence both your
Speaker 1: life and your work. As far as sort of a
Speaker 1: life philosophy, I've always whenever I heard Jeremy Bentham's happiness principle,
Speaker 1: which is the greatest good for the greatest number of
Speaker 1: people is what you should do. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: a guiding humanist thought. That's what I always thought of,
Speaker 1: is like that is wouldn't doubt go with that? And
Speaker 1: so sort of thinking of what should I do? What
Speaker 1: should I do here? It's what makes the most people happy,
Speaker 1: and so sort of guiding there is the best answer,
Speaker 1: and usually that ends up being something that's not necessarily greedy,
Speaker 1: but it's greedy in a long term way as opposed
Speaker 1: to like short term, quick quick jobs and things like that.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting We had a we had another author
Speaker 1: and musician on a couple of weeks ago, and when
Speaker 1: we talked about it to him, he his his thing,
Speaker 1: he said, was you know, feeding the good wolf. For
Speaker 1: him was really about how did he find time to
Speaker 1: do the work or the art in this case, And
Speaker 1: we got into a conversation about how, uh, short term
Speaker 1: A lot of times it's easier to to to do
Speaker 1: with the people around you want you to do short
Speaker 1: term because that makes a short term happiness, but the
Speaker 1: long term greater good comes from pursuing that thing that
Speaker 1: is yours. And your book, um, you Know, How to
Speaker 1: be Interesting, really touches on that an awful lot about
Speaker 1: how do you find that thing that is yours? Um,
Speaker 1: how do you pursue it despite what what other people
Speaker 1: around you might be saying, or what the the crowd
Speaker 1: is saying, And how that sort of does leave lead
Speaker 1: to the greatest good. Yeah, a lot of times it's weird.
Speaker 1: The crowd doesn't want other people to be happy. It's
Speaker 1: sort of the bitter voice rises above the really like
Speaker 1: encouraging ones so often. And I don't know why that is.
Speaker 1: I think we hear compliments and we dismiss them, but
Speaker 1: we hear we hear an insult and it can we
Speaker 1: carry it with us for just years and getting getting
Speaker 1: through that and really thinking like what's encouraging and what's
Speaker 1: the good thing. That's really hard sometimes, but if people
Speaker 1: can do that, then it it saves everybody a lot
Speaker 1: of hassle. That's the bad wolf being very powerful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the bad wolf tends to get a lot of press,
Speaker 1: And I don't know why that is, because I think
Speaker 1: people like like that sort of like gossip nastiness, but
Speaker 1: that's that's not as fun even for a minute. I
Speaker 1: guess I think he gets a lot of press because
Speaker 1: he looks like Brad Pitt. I mean, it's just a parable,
Speaker 1: But that's what I've heard. When I pictured the two
Speaker 1: wolves that you guys have, I pictured one is sort
Speaker 1: of like old and sort of like afflicted with scurvy
Speaker 1: and like in rags with a big stick and sort
Speaker 1: of like gray teeth and yellow eyes and just scowling.
Speaker 1: And the good wolf seemed really young and quiet and
Speaker 1: sort of hiding behind a tree like a little kid
Speaker 1: instead of an old man. Interesting, you were saying about
Speaker 1: the bad wolf um and those voices somewhere in your book,
Speaker 1: and I don't I was trying to find that. I I
Speaker 1: can't find it exactly. But you talk about um, you know,
Speaker 1: working on improving your thoughts about yourself. And you have
Speaker 1: a quote that's really interesting where you say, uh and caution,
Speaker 1: this could take years. Oh yeah, that's ignoring the people
Speaker 1: who are who are nasty and sort of that old
Speaker 1: wolf sort of tone. And when you hear here nasty,
Speaker 1: where do you almost associate like a holotosis or a
Speaker 1: sickness with it? And when as soon as you get
Speaker 1: that sense of things to sort of mix up your
Speaker 1: senses is when you should run away that that bad
Speaker 1: smell is just it almost makes it a comedic when
Speaker 1: someone is saying something to you like that and you
Speaker 1: think of it like bad breath. That sort of take
Speaker 1: could help take some of the sting away. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: another part where you talk about you know, you've got
Speaker 1: a little one that says, just, you know, basically, do
Speaker 1: something anything. It doesn't really so much matter. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're spending all your time thinking about what you
Speaker 1: should be doing versus just doing something. Um. Sort of
Speaker 1: the old you know, as as being an entrepreneur for years,
Speaker 1: the saying is, um, you know, ready, fire, aim right.
Speaker 1: It's it's just makes something happen, Oh totally. And I
Speaker 1: see that so much with my artist friends who have
Speaker 1: a thousand ideas and a thousand different ways to make
Speaker 1: make beautiful, wonderful, fantallistic objects and things, And if they
Speaker 1: just picked one thing and send an email to ten people,
Speaker 1: they'd be so much better off than making ten things
Speaker 1: and never telling anything anybody about any other things they did.
Speaker 1: It's just sort of like take something and run with it,
Speaker 1: and odds are it will be great because if you
Speaker 1: like it, somebody else will too. So tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit about how you your your creative process. Do
Speaker 1: you make yourself sit down and try and sketch out
Speaker 1: ten index cards and you find one that's good? Do
Speaker 1: the ideas come to you? Can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about how that works for you and maybe how
Speaker 1: it's changed over time. Yeah, when I first started it,
Speaker 1: I was I was going to school at night for
Speaker 1: my MBA because I was working as a copywriter, and
Speaker 1: my brain was going to mush because I was just
Speaker 1: sort of over and over and over again repeating headlines
Speaker 1: and repeating sort of like cliches and wasted lines that
Speaker 1: would get approved. And I knew I needed something else
Speaker 1: because like part of my brain felt like it was
Speaker 1: atrophying in some way. And I was taking a finance
Speaker 1: class and everything was expressed in these charts, and I
Speaker 1: was like, you can tell the whole world's history in
Speaker 1: these weird little charts. So I started jotting them down.
Speaker 1: And I had read around the same time that every
Speaker 1: writer needs a blog, so I put those two things
Speaker 1: together so I wouldn't have to write about what I
Speaker 1: had for breakfast or how my commune went. And it
Speaker 1: just sort of took off, and over time I realized
Speaker 1: that charts and graphs are basically set in structures, and
Speaker 1: they have their own sort of visual grammar. So the
Speaker 1: is symbol, isn't it The equal sign is is the
Speaker 1: verb of being, so equals is the all of that.
Speaker 1: Then diagrams are basically sentences with conjunctions and x y
Speaker 1: x s are a causes be subject predicates. So if
Speaker 1: you can use the English language, you can use a
Speaker 1: lot of graphs. And over time it's gotten easier for
Speaker 1: me to take sentences I hear as sentences in my
Speaker 1: head and turn them into graphs. I will say it
Speaker 1: now and it will be in the show notes. But
Speaker 1: people should definitely be going out and uh and looking
Speaker 1: at your things. And one of your one of the
Speaker 1: favorite ones that you've done that I've got hanging on
Speaker 1: my on my wall in my office is the one
Speaker 1: that's got two circles, and one is a little one
Speaker 1: that's got an arrow going to it saying your comfort zone,
Speaker 1: and the other is the big circle that says where
Speaker 1: the magic happens. And it's that sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: constant reminder that, um, if if we spend all our
Speaker 1: time being comfortable, nothing really special happens. And I think,
Speaker 1: at least for me and a lot of people I know,
Speaker 1: we tend to equate comfort with happiness and they are
Speaker 1: not the same thing. And I love the way you
Speaker 1: sort of diagrammed that here, And a lot of the
Speaker 1: book really seems to sort of be about pushing yourself
Speaker 1: out of your comfort zone and out of sort of
Speaker 1: um the same habitual, repeated patterns, and and finding variety
Speaker 1: in life. Yeah, I think that that diagram itself went
Speaker 1: all over the place. And one of the things I
Speaker 1: actually thought about when I was trying to draw up
Speaker 1: that idea was the idea of inertia, which is when
Speaker 1: you start going in one direction, it's easy to stay
Speaker 1: that way. But if you think about it, when you
Speaker 1: make any one direction, you have out of three D
Speaker 1: and sixty degrees, you're taking one degree, and there are
Speaker 1: three D and fifty nine degrees that you didn't take.
Speaker 1: And to ponder some of those every now of them,
Speaker 1: I think is not only healthy, but it's really comforting
Speaker 1: because you don't have to stay on the direction your own.
Speaker 1: You can always pivot around and spin that circle at
Speaker 1: the front way. Do you want to spend a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes and and talk through some of the key
Speaker 1: points in your sort of how to be interesting? What
Speaker 1: are a couple of the the key You've got ten steps,
Speaker 1: you want to maybe share a couple of them with us? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think the most the most important one is probably
Speaker 1: the first one, which is go exploring, and people a
Speaker 1: lot of times think that means I have to quit
Speaker 1: my job and buy a boat and circumnavigate the globe
Speaker 1: and learn five languages and go to ten countries and
Speaker 1: figure out how to fall in love with people of
Speaker 1: ten different races and backgrounds and take up five different jobs.
Speaker 1: And it's so much smaller and more palatable than that.
Speaker 1: It's that if you just sort of go outside and
Speaker 1: listen a little bit more, you'll find out so many
Speaker 1: other things. And a good exploration doesn't mean decades spent
Speaker 1: off doing something else. It could just mean ten minutes
Speaker 1: listening to a station you don't otherwise or talking to
Speaker 1: someone you otherwise wouldn't have spoken with. It's just sort
Speaker 1: of varying from what you're doing just a little bit,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't have to be painful. Okay, so that's
Speaker 1: step one. How about um, how about step seven? Give
Speaker 1: it a shot. Yeah, that is. That is one thing
Speaker 1: I found through the Internet that is the most amazing thing.
Speaker 1: First of all, everybody has an email address. And if
Speaker 1: you can find anybody in the world, anybody you like
Speaker 1: or want to talk to or want to meet, and
Speaker 1: you can find their email address, you can connect with
Speaker 1: them almost immediately. And now you can do that with
Speaker 1: with Twitter and Facebook and all these other things, and
Speaker 1: everyone is literally fingertips away from you, and you can
Speaker 1: find advice, help, anything from anybody in literally seconds. And
Speaker 1: people a lot of times are so afraid to do
Speaker 1: that that they don't. And when the people actually do,
Speaker 1: they get through a lot more than you think they would.
Speaker 1: So just even taking a shot and reaching out the
Speaker 1: first step is huge. It is kind of a amazing
Speaker 1: how how close everybody is. If you you at least
Speaker 1: have a shot to talk to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Although the person I really want to talk to, and
Speaker 1: I don't know that he's got an email address, or
Speaker 1: if he does, he probably doesn't check it very often,
Speaker 1: is Leonard Cohen' So if you come across Leonard Cohen's
Speaker 1: email address, anybody listening to this, send it my way.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can make that happen. Yeah, he's uh.
Speaker 1: When he's not writing songs, he's often on a on
Speaker 1: a mountain somewhere meditating. But we'll track him down sooner
Speaker 1: or later for the show. Even if he just gets
Speaker 1: a note that's like yet urging thanks for that. I mean,
Speaker 1: wouldn't that be a an accomplishment and of itself, Yes,
Speaker 1: it definitely would. Can you tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about how this book came to be? Oh yeah, this
Speaker 1: is kind of a weird story. So I write for Forbes,
Speaker 1: which Forbes is fantastic, saying like, oh yeah, come post
Speaker 1: switch you want to think about and will help share
Speaker 1: it with the world. So at the time, I was
Speaker 1: living in London and I was putting things together and
Speaker 1: one of the things that kept coming up was, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's only so much time in the day, and what
Speaker 1: is the best Where does the biggest business virtue that
Speaker 1: anyone can have at this point in time? And it
Speaker 1: wasn't being nice, and it wasn't being skilled, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't being anything other than being really interesting. So sort
Speaker 1: of a tongue in cheek like, here's how to be interesting,
Speaker 1: And I threw it up on Forbes and it I
Speaker 1: put it up in October of two thousand eleven, and
Speaker 1: around New Year's a lot of people sort of latched
Speaker 1: on to be I'm going to be interesting is the
Speaker 1: New Year's resolution, which sounds bizarre, but it just started
Speaker 1: to go everywhere and people started to forward it around
Speaker 1: and share it and it got all these crazy hits,
Speaker 1: and so then we put it together as a book
Speaker 1: and expanded on the idea and people will really run
Speaker 1: with it. And it's been it's been a lot of
Speaker 1: fun because the more I think about it, it really is.
Speaker 1: It's true, if you're not interesting, you're gonna be overlooked
Speaker 1: for pretty much everything. For um, do you want to
Speaker 1: go to lunch too? Do you want this job to do?
Speaker 1: You want to be a president of whatever country you
Speaker 1: live in? And it's a fun word, it's a loaded word.
Speaker 1: More and more it does seem that is the noise
Speaker 1: level increases. As everybody can talk to everybody in the
Speaker 1: noise level increases. And this is nothing new. Everybody talks
Speaker 1: about this, just how you do have to find a
Speaker 1: way to stand out and how being yourself is probably
Speaker 1: the best way to do that. Um. But I think
Speaker 1: for a lot of people that still remains very challenging
Speaker 1: and even finding out who were what that is? What is? Uh?
Speaker 1: Is that process a discovery part of what you are
Speaker 1: leading people through in the book a little bit. I
Speaker 1: think the book really sort of pokes that without directly
Speaker 1: stabbing at the idea of vulnerability, which is if you
Speaker 1: can just let what your natural inclinations are lead you,
Speaker 1: you'll be more likely to become an interesting person then
Speaker 1: if you were to sort of go with the flow
Speaker 1: and behaviors, health and sort of mask the things that
Speaker 1: sort of stand out to you while you're rolling along
Speaker 1: in the flow of everything else. And really being yourself
Speaker 1: is a lot harder these days than you think, because
Speaker 1: so many people have this idea of what they're supposed
Speaker 1: to look like and dress like, and talk like and
Speaker 1: sound like and tweet like and everything else, and even
Speaker 1: finding a minute variation and that anymore is becoming incredibly difficult.
Speaker 1: We start off by talking about feeding the good wolf.
Speaker 1: For you was sort of the idea of the greatest
Speaker 1: good for the greatest number of people. And I'm interested
Speaker 1: in how that how you see that tying into a
Speaker 1: lot of um, what you're talking about in the book
Speaker 1: and your work, which is really about finding out who
Speaker 1: you are and not going with sort of the crowd
Speaker 1: and the and the greatest the number of people. How
Speaker 1: does that work its way back around and being the
Speaker 1: greatest good for the greatest number of people. When I
Speaker 1: was writing advertising, I was writing for JP Morgan Chase,
Speaker 1: and I was writing a lot of broch stores about
Speaker 1: home equity lines of credit. I was writing about how
Speaker 1: subprime mortgages are the best thing that ever happened to you,
Speaker 1: how you can get whatever you need right now if
Speaker 1: you just refinance your life, and something about that, even
Speaker 1: before everything crashed just felt kind of weird. And even
Speaker 1: if I was getting a paycheck and doing what I
Speaker 1: was supposed to do work wise, it was still kind
Speaker 1: of sketchy. And I couldn't really articulate why it was
Speaker 1: sketchy because people would just sort of be like, it's
Speaker 1: a bank, what are you doing? And guessing at what's
Speaker 1: more fun? Is just sharing fun ideas and being, if
Speaker 1: nothing else benign as opposed to negative out there, And
Speaker 1: at this point in my career, I get to be positive,
Speaker 1: if not benign, and I count that as a win.
Speaker 1: The one of the things that is we've talked to
Speaker 1: more people about this, it seems to come up about
Speaker 1: feeding your good off is it? It takes it takes
Speaker 1: help that um did a lot of us tend to
Speaker 1: fall into uh sort of habitual patterns or a lot
Speaker 1: of the things that you're even talking about it here.
Speaker 1: Take a lot of bravery, encourage can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the help that you get in your life,
Speaker 1: whether it be in the past or now, for people
Speaker 1: who sort of help you to feed your good wolf. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And the one thing I have to say is more
Speaker 1: than any other venue, the Internet. And as much as
Speaker 1: you can be afraid of the Internet and the bad,
Speaker 1: sketchy folks out there, it's full of good people too.
Speaker 1: And when you reach out and you say here's me,
Speaker 1: here's what I care about, good people or will reach
Speaker 1: out to you. And so if in if in your
Speaker 1: life you're sort of being bombarded and you're beaten down
Speaker 1: and you're sort of just listening to negative voices, there
Speaker 1: are really good people on the Internet who will encourage
Speaker 1: you and saying no, this is good, this is a
Speaker 1: good idea, this is this, this is useful, keep doing this.
Speaker 1: And at the time I started is just sort of
Speaker 1: living in this sort of miasmic bubbling blood work, work, work,
Speaker 1: go to sleep, go to school, go to work, pile.
Speaker 1: And the Internet really gave me a sort of outlet
Speaker 1: to be like, no, this is bigger than that. You
Speaker 1: can be you can be smarter than that, you can
Speaker 1: be better than that, you can do other things and
Speaker 1: the encouragement you find from strangers can do a lot,
Speaker 1: even if in your day to day life you're sort
Speaker 1: of being beaten down and told to behave and all
Speaker 1: of those nasty things. Did that even answer the question?
Speaker 1: And I talked myself in a circle, No, it sort
Speaker 1: of did. My question following would be, did how has
Speaker 1: that sort of finding people who are supportive virtually? How
Speaker 1: does that translate into finding people in your physical life
Speaker 1: that are that are supportive? Does that so, say, say
Speaker 1: you start from a place where maybe you don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of that, you find that sort of support
Speaker 1: on the internet or virtually? Do you do you find
Speaker 1: that over time starts to translate into your real life
Speaker 1: or your your physical life. Absolutely, There's so many people
Speaker 1: that I knew from the Internet that once I met
Speaker 1: in person, it was just like, Oh, it's you. You're
Speaker 1: one of my best friends in the world, and I've
Speaker 1: never met you, and now I have to hug you
Speaker 1: and we have to do everything together. And they aren't
Speaker 1: just on the Internet. They're real people out there too.
Speaker 1: And you can pick up the phone, you can pick
Speaker 1: up the skype, you can get on a plane, you
Speaker 1: can go to whatever meet up or conference or crazy
Speaker 1: thing where all these people actually are, and when you
Speaker 1: meet them, you will feel so relieved. It's insane because
Speaker 1: everybody really is everybody has a tribe out there, and
Speaker 1: all you need are two or three or four people
Speaker 1: and you're unstoppable. That's one of the things about the
Speaker 1: Internet that just I love. I mean I I I'm
Speaker 1: one of those people often talk about one of the
Speaker 1: things you can do to sort of feed your good
Speaker 1: wolf is to do sort of gratitude or think about gratitude.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I just every time I
Speaker 1: think about gratitude, I think about the Internet, it just
Speaker 1: blows me away how wonderful and amazing it is, and
Speaker 1: and how I sometimes think about what my life would
Speaker 1: have been like, because I'm a little bit older, if
Speaker 1: the Internet had been around when I was a teenager,
Speaker 1: you know, if I could have found and reached out
Speaker 1: broader than sort of the small area that and people
Speaker 1: that we you know, that I was surrounded by. If
Speaker 1: you know, had the whole world been sort of available
Speaker 1: at that point, what that would have been like. And
Speaker 1: I do think it's really exciting, and you hear these
Speaker 1: really touching stories about, you know, people who are somewhat
Speaker 1: isolated in some way, whether they live in a small
Speaker 1: town or and they they are able to connect to
Speaker 1: something bigger themselves outside of that and the Internet it
Speaker 1: is really transforming for them. I think for every story
Speaker 1: of bullying or titty porn or weirdness or like Chris
Speaker 1: Ansen like please sit down, have a cookie story, as
Speaker 1: you find out there there ten hundred of thousand other
Speaker 1: stories of people who were like I met my true
Speaker 1: love online. I met people who made everything happen for
Speaker 1: me online. I found my new job online. I figured
Speaker 1: out how to get my life on track online. And
Speaker 1: it's not just pixels, it's real people behind it. And
Speaker 1: I think that's the power of it. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: one of the in your acknowledgements you have in the book,
Speaker 1: You've got a great chart that sort of again it's
Speaker 1: going to fail trying to describe it, but it's it's
Speaker 1: basically your thanks Internet chart. You know. It shows that
Speaker 1: the more you can do more things and you can
Speaker 1: know more people as a result of the Internet. And
Speaker 1: I think certainly that's uh, you know, that's why we're talking. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean half the time I'll get an email from
Speaker 1: somebody that's like, so, have you heard about this or
Speaker 1: do you know anybody about this? I'll be like, yes,
Speaker 1: I do, and I have nothing to do with that,
Speaker 1: but I know somebody who does, and I can play Matchmaker,
Speaker 1: and if I get to play Matchmaker once a day
Speaker 1: online through my stilly Yahoo email address, I've done all
Speaker 1: sorts of it. What's next for you? So you've you've
Speaker 1: done this book, You've been running the this is indexed
Speaker 1: blog for a long time. What's the next next big project?
Speaker 1: Right now, I'm illustrating Sun's use art of war, which
Speaker 1: sounds very antagonistic and weird, but when you really read it,
Speaker 1: the whole idea behind it is the more you think,
Speaker 1: the less you fight, And so taking that entirely old
Speaker 1: really I am an MBA. Watched me destroy title and
Speaker 1: turning it into something a lot more thoughtful and a
Speaker 1: lot more useful is really fun for me. So that
Speaker 1: is up on Forbes two. Less crankiness, more marveling. Right,
Speaker 1: that's your line? Yeah, I think I think there's a
Speaker 1: the whole idea of what is it bark less per
Speaker 1: more or something like that. I've seen it on bumper
Speaker 1: stickers where it's just sort of stop complaining and really
Speaker 1: think about what's going on, and you know, and it's
Speaker 1: not so bad anyway. And the more you get on that,
Speaker 1: the better the better you feel, because I can my
Speaker 1: husband calls it my worst case scenario brain, where I
Speaker 1: can take something that's minorly irritating or awful and just
Speaker 1: spin it into Okay, this is the worst case scenario.
Speaker 1: Our house is going to implode, I'm going to die,
Speaker 1: tumor is going to spring out of my brain, everything's
Speaker 1: going to go to hell, we're all going to get arrested.
Speaker 1: And really you can just step back and say, no, actually,
Speaker 1: it's it's going to be fine. And getting to that
Speaker 1: point is hard, but it's healthier. And so how do
Speaker 1: you do that? Because that is the that does seem
Speaker 1: to be for you know, as we've talked to people,
Speaker 1: we've sort of explored this theme that is, you know,
Speaker 1: the bad wolves big is job is that sort of
Speaker 1: internal negative self talk, whether it's impending doom or you're
Speaker 1: not good enough or all those different things. So how
Speaker 1: how do you battle that sort of day to day? Um?
Speaker 1: Did you have you found it? Over time it just
Speaker 1: sort of goes away because you've you've sort of trained it.
Speaker 1: What's been your experience with that. I am battling imposter
Speaker 1: syndrome every step of everything. It's always sort of you're
Speaker 1: just a fraud, and you just got away with this,
Speaker 1: and you're just lucky because somebody lint to it, and
Speaker 1: you just you just sort of got away with this,
Speaker 1: and you're just sort of this dumb person who throwing
Speaker 1: things on the internet and you're not really smart at all,
Speaker 1: and lah, and I can talk to myself into that
Speaker 1: corner until I'm just like, and even when you stack up,
Speaker 1: I did this, and I did that, and I accomplished this,
Speaker 1: and I moved over here, and I did this and
Speaker 1: this and this and this and this. No matter how
Speaker 1: big the stack is, there's still that voice in the
Speaker 1: back of your head and saying, yeah, you're just a fraud.
Speaker 1: You just got away with it. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if that will ever go away, but you really have
Speaker 1: to keep eroding it every day. It's sort of a
Speaker 1: title thing, like the sand comes up and the sand
Speaker 1: comes out, and you just have to sort of keep
Speaker 1: plowing ahead. I don't think I'll ever be really confident
Speaker 1: in what I'm doing. I just have to keep trying
Speaker 1: to earn what I where I am. I think we
Speaker 1: all suffer from that to one degree or the other.
Speaker 1: But in my book, you deserve all the success that
Speaker 1: you've had. So with that, we are out of time.
Speaker 1: So Jessica, I want to thank you for being on
Speaker 1: the podcast. It's been a real pleasure to have you.
Speaker 1: I encourage people to check out your work online and
Speaker 1: thank you very much, and we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Nate. You can find out more about Jessica
Speaker 1: and her great illustrations and our show notes at one
Speaker 1: you feed net slashed Jessica