004: Your Best Tool for Creating

Do you know what your best tool for creating is? It may not be quite what you think… actually, I think it may surprise you.

Your brain is one of the most powerful tools that you have for getting creative. Think about it. Have you ever struggled to start a creative project? You wanted to try something new but your brain was telling you, “I am not good enough to do XYZ.” Well, that may be because our brains have been conditioned since the beginning of time to use these default settings: seek pleasure, avoid pain, preserve energy.

In this episode, you’ll hear my own experience of how my brain was hindering me from learning how to use a new brush pen. I discuss why you should learn more about your brain and why you should let go of the features of the brain that aren’t serving you anymore. You’ll also hear how you can experience life differently once you learn how your brain operates.

What you’ll find in this episode:

Her disappointment of using a pen she thought would turn her cursive into calligraphy
Why she took a break from attempting to use that brush pen and what made her decide to give it another try
How your brain is the most important tool for creating
How your thoughts and feelings frame your outlook on everything that you go through
Why you should learn more about your brain and let go of features that aren’t serving you

Read the transcript of the episode below:

You know when you're about to start a new hobby and you want to gather all the right tools and supplies before you get started, it makes such a huge difference. Well, today we are talking about the very most important tool that you could have to create anything in your life. This is episode four, your best tool for creating.
Welcome to the committed to create podcast. I'm Lisa Funk, and I am so excited to hang out with you here. As we talk about the power of creating with our hands and our minds. I like to keep it real, remind you that you are not alone and share specific ways that creativity and mindfulness can help us live even more meaningful and joyful lives. I am so glad that you're here.
Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. I am so glad that you're here. I'm so grateful for you. I'm grateful for your ratings and your reviews on iTunes and for your messages and for sharing it. I have to be honest, I am totally new to this. I am learning so much and I hope you'll stick with me because I'm hoping to get better all the time, better at figuring out the sound quality and better at figuring out the outlines and all of it.
So when you're scared to try something new, just know that I am right there with you trying to do podcasting for the first time is a totally new endeavor for me. So here I am, and I am just grateful that you're here with me. And sometimes you might hear my papers russell, and sometimes you might hear a child at the door because that's just life and I hope you will stick with me through my imperfect creating here today. We are talking about tools. There's one major tool in particular. That's called let's call it the number one tool that we're going to talk about. but first. I want to talk about another tool, a tool that I use for lettering, and that is the brush pen.
Okay. When I first started lettering, I did mostly chalk art. I love chalk. I love chalk art. It was really fun. And then I started getting into faux calligraphy, which if you're somewhat familiar with lettering, you know, that that is when you do your lettering and you come back and you thick in the strokes manually on like the second time around, you can do it with any utensil writing utensil that you've got a crayon, a marker, a pencil, anything.
Well, then one day I saw a lettering video on Instagram. And this person was using some type of magical mystical pen that when they used it, it magically created thick and thin lines that looked like calligraphy and it just looked incredible. And I thought, wow, I want a pen that automatically makes my handwriting look like calligraphy.
That's so awesome. So of course I asked what pen is that they told me, and of course I ordered it thinking this is going to be awesome. It's going to turn my regular, you know, whatever cursive or handwriting I was doing into some beautiful calligraphy looking product. Well, I've got to tell you that it did not turn out the way I was hoping the pen did not turn my lettering into that thick and then stroked beautiful calligraphy.
I was extremely disappointed. I was actually really frustrated, really upset, very disappointed. Let's just put it that way. I thought this pen doesn't work. Why did they say that this was the pen that they were using? Clearly they must have been using a different pen that was magical. And the truth is that I just didn't understand it or how it worked. I was using it just on autopilot, the way that I had used any other pen, any other pencil, any other writing instrument, I had pretty much used all of them in the same way before. And so when I got the brush pen, I just tried using it the way I'd used any, every other pen or pencil and it didn't work.
Right. What I needed to do was take this tool. And understand how it worked so that I could get the results that I wanted. So the brush pen is a tool it's function is to put on ink on paper and it will put ink on paper, even if you're using it in quote unquote, the wrong way now. I was using it in a way that was not suitable to me. It was not the result that I wanted. And I was very frustrated, but I couldn't understand why I thought it should just work. I came to find out that if I understood how it worked and how to use it, it would work the way I wanted it to. But either way, whether I was using it, quote unquote, correctly or incorrectly, it still would put ink on paper.
It's just that sometimes it looked beautiful to me. Sometimes it looked ugly to me, but it's the pen's function is that it puts ink on paper. The difference is knowing how to use that tool. So let's just say I put that brush pen in a drawer. I was, I almost threw it in the trash. I truly, almost did. I was so frustrated, but I decided not to, I threw it in a drawer and I thought maybe one day I'll try again, but I didn't pick that pen up again for a long time.
When I did, I had to work really hard. I thought there's gotta be a way people are using these pens to create that beautiful calligraphy look, there's gotta be a way to do it. And I spent months figuring out exactly how to use this tool to get the results that I wanted. So today I want to talk about another tool that we need to understand in order to use it to its greatest potential.
And this other tool, this number one tool. It's not only used for other things in our lives, it's used for everything in our life. Okay. My point is, you may not think when I tell you about this tool, you may not think, oh, that's the number one tool for creating, but I promise you that it is. And the tool that I want to talk about is dun dun dun dun... The brain. Our brains are incredible tools. It is the most important tool for creating anything in our lives, art or otherwise. For so long, I was experiencing my brain as a tool on autopilot. The same way that I was trying to use a brush pen in just on autopilot. I didn't even know that my brain was a tool.
I didn't even know that my brain was doing a job. To be honest with you. Once I began to be aware of the brain and understand the brain. Everything changed for me. I understood the brain's job and its function and how it worked. So the function of the brush pen is to put ink on paper. The function of our brains is to think thoughts.
So even when we aren't paying attention to our brain, It's thinking thoughts, it's producing thoughts for us. And when we are paying attention to it, it's also thinking thoughts, right? When we aren't paying attention to what the brain is doing, and we don't know how it works. We are likely to be very unhappy with the results that we're getting in our lives, because the thoughts that we're thinking frame our whole experience, they influence our outlook, our feelings, and everything that we go through. So you can really experience your life differently when you understand how your brain works. Now. As I mentioned in the other episodes, I have struggled with depression and anxiety for so much of my life that. It drove me to want to understand my brain more because I knew that something was going wrong.
Something didn't feel right. Felt very not right, let's just be completely honest. And I wanted to understand it more. So just like with the brush pen, we gain so much power by understanding the tool that we have and the tool that our brain is. We can see what it's doing and why it's doing it. And we can also understand how to use it better so that it can serve us in our lives.
And then we're just so much more likely to be happy with our results, including our creative results, including being happier and enjoying our hobbies more, whether it be lettering or painting or the piano or anything, it could be an artistic hobby or any other endeavor in our lives. So knowing that our brains are our number one tools for creating.
I think it's smart for us to learn more about it. Just like I ended up learning more about the brush pen. They have been around for centuries and have held onto certain features throughout all of that time. So there is a theory by Dr. Douglas Lisle and Dr. Alan Goldhammer called the motivational triad in which we understand that the brain has three main features and motives.
That have kept the humans alive throughout time since caveman, the first is to seek pleasure. The second is to avoid pain and the third is to conserve energy. So when you look back throughout time, you're thinking about cave men. It makes a ton of sense for these to be the goals of the brain. So you're thinking about preserving.
You know, th the human race, it's important to eat food, to procreate, to avoid death and to conserve as much energy as possible so that you can survive. So all of those default goals make a ton of sense for the brain throughout those periods of time. The only problem is that even though they were crucial back, then they have gotten to the point we have gotten to the point where those goals don't serve us anymore. Those goals sometimes look like avoiding creating things that would be really meaningful to us and taking risks that we need to take in order to reach our goals and putting in energy to learn something when it's not super easy at first. So I think that for me, it's very valuable to know that my brain goes to these default goals.
These are these default features of this tool that I have. My number one tool for creating it's default is to seek pleasure, avoid pain and conserve energy. So when I'm trying to learn a new skill or hobby. Or create something new in my life. The thoughts that my brain is going to present to me, because remember the function of my brain is to create thoughts, the thoughts that it is going to default to are going to be things like, okay, this seems really scary.
Or what if we're really bad at this? So as we discuss topics on this podcast and other episodes, I'm going to be referring to the brain, this number one tool for creating that we have. And I'll also be referring back to this motivational triad and how to use the brain to create what we want in our lives.
Because we know that our brains job is to create thoughts. And so we can take a step back and objectively look at what the brain is doing. We can see why it might be telling us certain things. So for example, I often hear that people are afraid to start lettering because they might be bad at it. And that might sound silly to some people, and that might sound very close to home for other people. You might be listening to this thinking. Yeah, that's me. Some people say I bought your course or I bought your lettering supplies and I haven't opened them yet. I'm so afraid that I'm going to be terrible at it. And when you look at the Mo motivational triad, You take a step back and you look at your brain, your brain is this amazing tool for good and for bad, it can help you move forward and it can also really hold you back.
You think this thought I'm scared. I might be bad. And at first. It's super helpful to just distance yourself a little bit from what your brain is thinking and realize your brain is just a tool. It's not who you are. Everything that your brain thinks isn't who you are as a person. It's not, it doesn't make you good or bad that you are thinking these thoughts it's because that is the goal of our primitive brains.
Our primitive brains were trained. Again, to seek pleasure, avoid pain and conserve energy. So then we can understand why a tool that was trained to do these things might automatically believe that it would be silly to waste any energy on a hobby that we might not be good at. And we want to avoid any pain, any pain of failure, and that we only want to seek pleasure and things that are easy to find pleasure in.
If there's any sort of resistance, our brain is like, And red alert, danger. I am scanning for danger. I don't want to do anything that could cause any sort of pain, discomfort, embarrassment, or if your brain thinks that might be a waste of energy, but you have to remember that those are. All old features of the brain that are not serving us anymore.
Those are the old goals, the default goals of your brain. So your brain is going to come up with thoughts because remember that's the function of your brain. It comes up with thoughts. It's going to come up with thoughts that support those old goals. And so it's really helpful for us to distance ourselves and to say, oh, hello brain.
I see what you're doing, trying to do over there. I know that you're trying to keep me safe. And you think this might be scary because I might not be good at something or that I could waste time on something that I'm not that I, you know, don't know how to do perfectly yet. And that's okay. It's okay if your brain is scared.
I know that when I really take a step back and look at it, I think, okay. Am I really afraid of a brush pen? But you guys, I really was. It was so maddening for me to think, oh, I don't want to waste time doing this. I don't want to have this not work out. I don't want to be bad at this. It felt. Painful. But now I can look back and see that my brain was just going to those default goals.
It was doing what it had been trained to do for centuries. And I have to tell you that I am not the only one. I have taught thousands of people to use a brush pen. And I know that I had my own brush pens in a drawer because I was scared. And so when I teach new letterers how to use a brush pen. I know that even though it might not seem super rational, when you think about it, it does feel scary to try something new.
So what we need to do is take a step back and just take a look, take a look at our brain and see what is our brain thinking? What are the thoughts that our brain is coming up with for us and just start paying attention to them. And then we can decide are those thoughts that are serving us. That are helping us to feel excited and committed and devoted to learning something new and growing, or are those thoughts that are really holding us back because our brain is afraid, but I want to offer you, is that so many things that we're going to address in this podcast, whether it's fear of starting.
Fear of failing or so many other things. We are going to come back to talking about our brain because when our brain is behind us, we can believe any thing we want. It is a tool that we can learn how to use. And instruct so that it blesses our lives and serves us. We can start thinking things like, even if this is challenging at first, I'm going to keep trying, or I don't need to be perfect at this in order to enjoy it.
Our brains want to tell us that if we aren't perfect at it, we should give up right away.  Want to know why? Because our brain is trying to conserve energy avoid pain and seek pleasure. So remember that next time it feels hard and you want to give up, you can say, oh my gosh, that's right. This is what the brain does.
So when you look at it that way you might think. Oh my gosh, my brain, isn't my greatest tool. My brain is holding me back. But the truth is, is that once we learn how to harness our brain for positivity and growth, it truly is our number one tool. When we use our brain to think thoughts intentionally about being committed to create.
Yes, that is the name of the podcast for a reason, we can find so much power, so much enjoyment and relaxation and what we're doing, because we can just distance ourselves a little bit from that pressure and that stress of needing to create perfectly. We just know it's our cute little brain that's really worried about all of those three things from the motivational triad.
So I hope this is helpful for you today. We're going to talk so much more about this, but for today, I just want you to think about your brain and how it really is your number one tool. And once we understand it more, we can use it to serve us and our lives just like that brush pen. Once they learned how to hold it.
That it's really important to hold it at a 45 degree angle so that it doesn't get frayed on the top. And that it's really important to use it with smooth paper so that the pen doesn't fray and that it was really important to support it with my fingers and my hand, and that I needed to really learn how to do use the right kind of pressure to do heavy pressure coming down and then pressure coming up.
Now I love. Brush pens. And I use them as tools to create lettering that makes me really happy. And that creates a lot of calm and Zen. And it's like my therapy and my life. I love it so much. And I know that when we can learn more about our brains and what their motives are and how to use them better in our lives to create thoughts that serve us, it makes all the difference.
We're going to talk so much more about this in future episodes. I hope that this will help you to have compassion for yourself when you come up against those thoughts of this is scary Barry, or I'm afraid I'm going to be bad at it, or whatever it might be. Just give yourself a little bit of distance and know that it's just your brain, this tool it's creating bots, and that you get to take a look at those thoughts and see if they're serving you or not.
And how you wanna use this brain, how you want to use this tool and just know it's trying its best. You're trying your best and it's all. Okay. And once you start learning about this stuff, For me, it was life-changing honestly, so life changing and I can't wait to share more, but don't be hard on yourself.
Don't think, oh wait, just because I understand this now, I shouldn't struggle with that anymore. Have tons of compassion for yourself as you're learning and figuring out. This number one tool, your very best tool for creating. I'm so glad that you joined me. If you are enjoying the podcast, I would love it.
If you would go and leave a rating and a review on iTunes and share it with a friend. Text a friend who might enjoy learning more about creativity and mindfulness, and who wants to know that they're not alone in how they're feeling, being a human. I'm so glad that you're here. If you're interested in more, in a really amazing activity, I have created for you head to committed to create.com.
And you can get a free guide that I've created for you. It's called five creative steps to less stress and more joy. And you can get that again at committedtocreate.com or committed to create.com/less stress. I hope that you will join me again next week for another conversation about mindfulness and creativity.
And in the meantime, you can find me on Instagram. At hand lettered design. And I also created an Instagram pet committed to create as well. But I am mostly right now at hand lettered design and I would love to see you there. So thanks for being here and I will talk to you next week. .

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I hope that my podcast has left you feeling inspired and excited to create the life that you want. If you’ve enjoyed listening to this podcast, I’d love for you to subscribe so you can continue to hear more. Want to get to know me better? Connect with me on my website or on Instagram to keep up with everything that is going on with me and my business.

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Jennifer L. IN LOVE!! What a perfect idea! I am a plant mama too, like Lisa. I also manage a great deal of anxiety. I got into lettering a couple years ago as a creative outlet and discovered a multitude of treasures in the lettering community! This book that Lisa created with her daughter is just perfection! It's all the feels for me! Thank you both!!!
Cinthanie C. EXCELLENT BOOK! I really enjoy taking a minute each day to slow down and apply my hand to something that is not only emotionally supportive but relaxing and fun to do!! The mantras for everyday are very helpful for me. Thank you for your work and bringing such a high quality product into my life!

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004: Your Best Tool for Creating

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