Episode Transcript
Transcript:
Intro: This is words that move me, the podcast where movers and shakers like you get the information and inspiration you need to navigate your creative career with clarity and confidence. I am your host, master mover, Dana Wilson. And if you're someone that loves to learn, laugh and is looking to rewrite the starving artist story, then sit tight. But don't stop moving because you're in the right place.
Dana: All right. All right. Welcome to the podcast. This is episode 19. Holey Smokes! It's going by so fast. Everything actually seems to be going by so fast and honestly this is getting somewhat easier and I shouldn't be shocked by that because I'm getting better at talking to myself alone in a room, doing a lot of that these days. And that actually is kind of what this episode is about. I'm super stoked about it.
Um, but before we dig into that, of course we have to do our wins. My win this week is actually my mom's. When my mom celebrated a birthday, I'm not going to say the number because the lady never tells. And we had an absolutely awesome virtual birthday party for her. And I was sensitive about that because I believe that certain things cannot be replaced or duplicated. Birthday parties up until this point were one of those sacred special things. And I'm going to be honest, we had a ball, my immediate family, my sister, her husband, her two daughters, um, my brother, his wife and myself and my husband and I all got together for a zoom conference, dinner and cake. And um, my brother also brought a life sized cardboard cutout of him. So there were actually two of my brother, his wife, my sister, her husband, myself, my husband and the nieces and my mom of course, the lady of the hour. And we sat and ate a meal and you know, shot the stuff and had an absolute blast. My sister works in a hospital, um, and she got my mom a bunch of the gifts that you find from the hospital gift store, including a family favorite, Haribo gummy bears, which are absolutely the best if you disagree. I don't, I don't know what to say. Um, and then also my sister and I put out the feelers to friends and family all over the world to send in video, birthday shout outs. Um, I'm telling you we got some video gems from old friends and some really priceless selfie sentiments and I got to throw down my speed editing chops and um, man, it was just so special. I got to watch people really well digitally really show up for a woman that is so, so, so special. A woman that must join me on the podcast one of these days. Mom, do you hear me? I mean it, I'm serious. Oh. And also I made my first loaves of bread from yeast that I grew off of raisins, like crazy advanced stuff here. People, I did it and it was decent, decent enough for me to eat two loaves of bread in two days and now I feel like a mattress. So maybe that's not actually a win after all. But anyways, onto you. What's going well in your world?
Okay, congratulations. Keep crushing it. So proud of you. Okay. This episode is short and sweet and sensitive. You could think of it as time sensitive, but it really isn't. The lessons in this episode are fully applicable regardless of date or time or crisis. Let's dig in to my letter from a friend.
Last week I received a letter in the form of a text actually from a very dear friend, an actor, a director, and one hell of a model American! Name that movie. Um, anyways, after I responded to his message, he and I talked back and forth a little bit and he said that his note was initiated by this thought. “Does everyone else know that this is kind of hard for everyone else?” That shed a light on a very interesting side effect of isolation that I honestly, I hadn't really considered that much even in the pre covid times. I was the star of the film. That is my life and everybody in my life had a supporting role. Now, although I'm possibly more concerned with the public and public issues than I ever have been, I am absolutely thinking more about myself and my survival than I have before either. Right now my movie is way more monologue than dialogue. Basically all day, every day. I sit alone with myself and I and me and we're really getting to know each and between you and me and myself and I, I've run up against some.. Woof, hard truths about myself and some challenging questions, so today I want to share this letter from my friend and I want to share my reply because I know that he's not the only one up against challenging thoughts and feelings and it might be illuminating for you to answer some of his questions for yourself.
My friend writes, “I was thinking at first that our pandemic would be like when you hunker down for a snow storm, since I've realized it is so much more, obviously the realization though is full of confusion and fragmented thoughts. It feels like unless I'm thinking about or doing something specific, tire changing, setting the table, high knees, my mind drifts but it drifts in muddled, confused, fractured bits of thoughts. I'm struggling to plan things or collect my thoughts on things. I don't know. Again, I just don't know. I can't get things straight in my head sometimes and I'm feeling like it's a problem with me. I know it's just a problem for me, but maybe it's normal. Do you have disconnected thoughts? Trouble getting this stuff in your head? Straight planning our lives helps us define who we want to be when we can't plan or get excited about something coming. It feels like we're stuck. I'm just stabbing into the dark here, but I'm not really because someone might read this and think I'm stabbing too. I guess I'm trying to say this is way harder than I thought it would be and at times think that it should be. I get down on myself and that ain't right. Also, dude, the world needs leaders to lead us, but the world also needs more lovers, not sex, to love us back in this world, you are loved, love back”
Beautiful doozy. I want to start here at the end because I couldn't agree more. The world needs leaders to lead us and the world also needs more lovers. Not the sexy type. Get your isolated minds out of the gutter, but the type that cares about us, so think about the movies of our lives, right? They are far more powerful when the stories are about people not at person. They're powerful when they connect. Now, don't get me wrong, I loved Cast Away, but what if every single movie was Cast Away? I digress. So let us love by acting compassionately towards others. Out of sight should not mean out of mind and let us lead by showing that it is possible to live clean, to live gracefully, to live gratefully, even under difficult circumstances.
Now you could fully stop listening right here. There's plenty of work to do simply by digging into asking yourself how you can be more compassionate towards others and how you can lead by example. Or you could keep listening to my reply to this dear friend. If you shared any of my friend’s thoughts and feelings about our current circumstances, then you can also pretend that my reply is to you. I wrote after several hours of thinking about a reply.
Dear friend, for the last year or so, I've been really focusing on managing my mind. I got a life coach. I'm doing the daily thought downloads the whole bit. I'm observing and I'm working on my thoughts nearly all day, every day, and if I could boil down what I've learned and what's the most helpful to me, it would be this. Number one, feeling bad about feeling bad or resisting feeling bad is more than twice as uncomfortable as feeling bad all by itself. Being okay with negative emotions is where most of my work is at this time. Thinking about how or why this happened causes confusion. Instead, I choose curiosity and I am learning so much thinking that things should be different, causes suffering. Instead I choose acceptance. Things are this way period. Thinking that things can be better is empowering. I have a bright mind. I'm creative, I'm adaptable, I'm capable. I will figure out how to make the things that I can control better, better. I'll make the things I can make better, better. Yeah, that's right. And number two, our thoughts about the world, not the world itself are what create our experience of the world. We may not be able to change the world, but we can change the way we think about it. I hope this is helpful and I hope you keep writing. I love the way your mind works. There is no problem with your mind. Your mind is not wrong. We are all stabbing right now is just some of us are stabbing ourselves in the chest and wondering why we're in pain. The goal is to be able to watch yourself with compassion and curiosity and to ask yourself kindly to put the knife down. I love you so much we can do this.
It's true. We can do this totally possible to come out of our quarantine winter hibernation better than when we went in. I learned this week. This is an interesting story. I learned that I get really annoyed by questions like what are the three words that best define you? Like come on. I am COMPLEX. Those three words, those are the three words that best define me. But my husband recently said the one word that best describes this pandemic period is de-stabilizing. And yeah, I think he pretty much nailed it de-stabilizing. But if there's one thing that a dancer's good at, it's stabilizing, think about that fight to really hold on to an attitude devant on releve or the mental and physical combat of a pirouette from a grand plie in second position. If it is possible for a human being to promenade in arabesque on point on another human being's head, I'm going to link to that youtube video, by the way, in the show notes, then it is absolutely possible for us to stabilize ourselves in unstable times like these. It's also no shock to me that ballet dancers are crushing it in this time. My favorites at the moment are Tiler Peck , obvi, uh, Skyler Brandt, Isabella Boyslton, James Whiteside and Maria , I'm going to botch the last name. I'm so, so sorry. Kochetkova I believe so, crushing it, but that's, you know, literally part of our jobs as dancers to find and create balance. But beyond that, beyond dancers, I think about architects and the skyscrapers that they designed and think about the people that actually built those buildings. I think about teachers and the balancing act of managing information and actual human beings. I think about bakers and balancing time and temperature and the ingredients required to make like a perfect loaf of bread. Now obviously I can't speak for bakers, but when I'm trying to find myself on my leg, it's really a matter of, well, a couple of things. Number one, micro adjustments, small little changes and number two, trial and error. There will be many trials, there will be many errors, there will even be overcorrection, but eventually there will be correction. We will figure it out. We can figure it out. We get to figure it out and if you find yourself in a place of being unstable on your feet, write a letter to a friend or pull a Tom Hanks and make yourself a Wilson or the podcast can be your Wilson. I can be your Wilson. I am a Wilson. This is perfect.
With that, my friends, I will leave you for the day with love, with soap, and of course with funk. Thank you so much for listening.
Thought you were done? No. Now I'm here to remind you that all of the important people, places and things mentioned in this episode can be found on my website. Third, TheDanawilson.com/podcast finally, and most importantly now you have a way to become a words that move member, so kickball, change over to patreon.com/WTMMpodcast to learn more and join. All right, everybody now I'm really done. Thanks so much for listening. I'll talk to you soon.
