Your Fear Is Boring

Kellee 0:00
I don't know what I'm doing. I really don't. And yet I do. I know that the thing that I need to do is to just listen to my instincts, my intuition, my experience over the last decade, and allow that to just well Unfold on the canvas

Kellee 0:23
You're listening to Unfold with Kellee Wynne this is an unpolished, imperfect, and totally honest podcast, and I'm talking to all artists, creatives, visionaries, and changemakers, who want to live a life by design and not by default. If you're ready to have thought provoking eye opening and heart centred conversations, that explore the stories that made us who we are, and break through the boundaries of expectations, then you are in the right place.

Kellee 0:57
Well, hello, hello, all my artists, friends, visionaries, changemakers, whatever we want to call ourselves today. All I know is I'm really grateful that you're here with me on Unfold with Kellee Wynne I'm doing something different today, I am actually recording this podcast on video as well. So this isn't just an audio recording, you can find me on YouTube, Kellee Wynne Studios, of course, it's the same everywhere you go, you'll find whatever it is that you're looking for, that I can share with you at kKellee Wynne Studios. But if you go to YouTube, you're gonna find a recording of this video, maybe with some of my art propped up behind me or whatever it is that I'm talking about. But by having this in more than one place, that means maybe the message can reach more people. And that's my goal. Really, honestly, I want to be able to connect with you. I want to be able to connect with as many people to help them see the world a little differently maybe.

Kellee 1:54
I want them to live a life by design and not by default. And so that means well, that means that we've got to get this message out there and talk to as many people as possible and start getting you to grab life by the reins and do the thing that lights you up and, and keeps you moving forward with beauty and joy. Today, no exception to the rule. We're going to talk about something a little bit tough, rough, maybe enlightening. I hope so. And yet it's not really unique or unusual.

Kellee 2:25
I'm talking to you about your fear. And I want to tell you, your fear is boring. Your fear is so boring. My fear is so boring. And where do I get this title from? this isn't something I made up. It's from one of my very favourite authors here, Elizabeth Gilbert from Big Magic. And if you're a creative or an artist or a writer, any type of soul that wants to move through this world with light and joy, you will have probably read Elizabeth Gilbert's books, especially big magic and it is one of my all time favourites. Well, she approaches this concept of your fear is boring through the lens of her own own life and own experience. Growing up being fearful of so much being fearful of things that she didn't even need to be fearful of. She really used it as a crutch. And fortunately for her, though, she says her parents would not put up with that a single bit, which meant that at some point, she had to realise that her fear was pretty boring. Her fear was not unusual. It was much like everyone else in this world. And if that was the stance she wanted to die on, that was a pretty sad place to be. It's really one of those things, why are you fighting for your limitations? And yeah, she was pretty young to be able to be wise enough to realise this, that she needed to move past fear. But I think it's a really important point to bring up. Because we do this, we allow fear to inhibit us from being able to do the things that we've always dreamed of doing. And guess what fear is not unusual. Everyone has fear. We have fear. And we do the thing anyway. And that's what helps us stand out. It's not that it's not normal. It's just that why will you fight for that limitation?

Kellee 4:15
And so I want to kind of move through this concept, and a few different things that have manifested themselves to me over the course of the last couple of months. Things that I've been thinking about a lot. This really sparked yesterday, when I was doing a live demonstration I was doing on Instagram. It's something that I love to do often. So if you're not already following me on Instagram, you might be missing out on some free art demos. Quite often I show up there and give you a little point of view. And yesterday was kind of challenging for me because I have all these ideas that I want to leap off into, but they're kind of scary, honestly. I've been doing abstract florals and abstract landscape for quite some time now. And there's part of me that just really wants to go bold, wild, crazy and completely non objective meaning no visible, recognisable object in the painting itself. And of course, I have been following new artists, to me at least, and being inspired and yet not taking that bold leap. But for whatever reason, I decided to do it on video yesterday, live in front of you watching. And the thing is, I was having so much fun. But the whole time I kept saying, I have no clue what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing. I really don't. And yet I do. I know that the thing that I need to do is to just listen to my instincts, my intuition, my experience over the last decade, and allow that to just well unfold on the canvas. But the audience still had a moment where, I had one artist pop in and say, how do you artist do that? How do you how do you just make a mark or splash paint or go wild like that with such confidence? And I had to say, Well, honestly, I'm not always confident, but I do it. And it's practice that makes a difference. And it just really got me thinking how often we hold ourselves back from doing that thing that we want to do, because it seems so scary, but you're not gonna die. And that's what I want to talk to you about, you know, our brains are actually designed so that we can keep ourselves safe, whether it's from, you know, dangerous things that we obviously should keep ourselves safe from like jumping off tall buildings or being bit by snakes. But it also keeps us safe from emotional harm as well. And so one of the things that our brains have really worked hard to do is, you know, instil that fear on common everyday things, which would be showing up authentically on social media, or taking the risk and the time to set aside the to do list in order to create something that's bold and powerful. That's maybe a little scary and out of your comfort zone. So maybe you're so comfortable working small and in your art journal. But you've had these dreams of working bigger and, and going bolder, but our brain wants to keep us safe. It really does. It wants to keep us safe, from harm, from criticism, from failure, from all those things that we think are gonna hurt us. But what it does is, it leaves us with a life of always keeping ourselves safe from the scary thing, rather than doing the scary thing, which means we're gonna live our whole life disappointed that we didn't even try, rather than possibly disappointed that we tried and it didn't work out. But what happens when we do the thing, and it works out or it doesn't work out, is that it propels us forward to the next thing. And that's the miracle of pushing past fear, having a bit of courage, and creating or doing the thing that scares you most.

Kellee 8:16
Talk to a little bit about an experience I had a couple of weekends ago, was amazing, amazing experience. So in order to grow as a person and as an entrepreneur, I know that one of the most important things I can do is surround myself with like minded people, people with the same kinds of goals of creating an impactful business, that let's be honest, that's lucrative. I want to be around those people, those smart women, those high minded and, and really spiritually connected type of people and I found my perfect, perfect group. I don't even know what to call it. It's not a mastermind. It's more of a place for change makers and ecosystem for making the best, most remarkable business possible. And that's with April Beach, and her Wave Makers programme. And it's something I've been searching for for a couple of years, something that I actually would love to create for you one day as a place to really be able to, to mingle, network thrive off of other like minded artists and entrepreneurs. Well, I was so thrilled to be able to fly to Boulder to meet these remarkable entrepreneurs and women and friends in person. But it wasn't one of those little sit by and sip champagne and have your nails done kind of a retreat this was a stretch yourself push yourself see what you're capable kind of retreat. And I love it because you know I have big goals. I have big goals to be tracking through different exciting tracks in the world, including this fall with my plan. To track through the Annapurna Circuit, in Nepal. And so I got a good taste to that by hiking straight up 2000 feet elevation climb for an entire day with these women and a really amazing, quite personal experience climbing up that mountain, pushing my body, pushing my mind, pushing my lungs, and my heart to work harder. But also connecting deeper with people and with ideas and with dreams. And with especially and most important, the present because you really have to be mindful of every step, and every breath to get yourself to the top of this very, very steep mountain.

Kellee 10:49
But that wasn't the thing I was afraid of the thing that I was really afraid of was I knew Sunday morning, we were going to have ice bath time. Have you ever heard of this? I know you're gonna laugh about this idea. Or maybe you've heard about it. And you know how beneficial it is? Well, I don't like freezing cold. I don't like hot and I don't like cold. I just want to be a nice 65 degrees year round kind of person. You can ask some of my friends how much I will turn to the Weather Channel and report on whether or not I'm going to be pleasant today or not. Well, that was the old me and in all honesty, now. I'm happy with whatever weather we have. Because Oh thank god, there's weather and there's a planet and we're still breathing. So I do try to put it in that mindset. However, the idea of jumping into a big bathtub full of ice did not sound like something that I was interested in doing at all. In fact, I refused. My mind said no freakin way. Am I going to jump into an ice bath? Why? Why would I do that? And of course, April's so really quite kind, and also tough on us women. And she's like, because you challenge yourself to do the hard thing. And everything after that is so much easier.

Kellee 12:10
And I do have to give a few props to my husband who said, you gotta go. Or you're gonna regret it. And so even though I had told myself and I told everybody else, I didn't want to go, I woke up Sunday morning, and I'm like, fine, I'm going to do this thing. And I'm going to get over myself. Because that was the only thing that was standing in my way was myself, just get over myself. And all my excuses. And my bullshit, whatever it was that I was trying to tell myself, I don't need this. It's not that important to me. But you know what, in the core of me, it was important to be able to bond with the other people who were there to be able to see if I could do something that was hard and challenging that might enlighten the way I live my life. It was important to me, but I was denying that it was important to me. So I got up Sunday morning put on my swimsuit. Yes, even my winter, two years of COVID body put on that swimsuit, and I marched my ass over there to do the ice bath. And I volunteered I'm like, All right, all of you assholes. It made me show up here today to do this thing. I'm going first. And that was my solution was to just go ahead and go first and get over myself and do the thing that I thought was so hard that turned out to be not nearly as hard as I thought. And now I wish that I had a chance to do it a little bit longer, and with a little more breath awareness. But I am so glad that I just got over that stupid fear. And it made me realise that there's really not a whole lot in this world that we can't do. If we don't just put aside all of those doubts and fears and go for it. What's the worst that's gonna happen? You know, I'm not jumping out of planes. I'm not fighting on the front lines. I am not a doctor in a trauma emergency room. I don't have to do really hard things. And if any one of you who are sitting out there saying, but what if I fail when I put that brush to paint on the canvas? What if I fail? What if I make a mark and it's ugly or someone judges me for it or my family thinks I'm crazy for having this big dream of being an artist. It's not brain surgery. It's not rocket science. It's not flying to the moon in all honesty, it's not a hard thing. It's just your brain limiting you from being able to achieve your dream.

Kellee 14:50
I have a dog. I have a dog that I love very much. We adopted her when she was a puppy and she came with all kinds of fear and anxiety and I relate to my dog, Gretchen so much, because a plastic bag might make her feel fearful. My putting on my coat, makes her jump, she wants to be able to enjoy herself, but her anxiety gets in the way. And I realise that this is kind of a reflection of myself in some ways because I do live on and off, I've lived my whole life with these kinds of fears. Maybe not of a plastic bag or a coat. But there are always things that haunt us in the back of our mind, that stop us from doing the thing that we really want to do. And what I realised when I'm watching her is that she wants joy. She wants to have fun, she wants to play in those few glimpses where she lets her guard down, where she lets her guard down, and lets herself enjoy the moment and be present and play with her toys, and kick the ball around herself and roll over on her back and let me give her love. She's happiest. She's the happiest dog at that moment. And my heart just aches and I keep thinking girl your fear is so boring is keeping you from having fun. And I realise oh my god, I'm talking to myself. I'm talking to you. I'm talking to all of us and saying, why are you letting your fear keep you from doing the thing that you want to do? Why are we like Gretchen? Why are we like Kelly in the ice bath? Why are we like Elizabeth Gilbert who's holding on to her fear as if it's some great personality trait. Fear manifests itself in so many ways to it manifests itself in cleaning the house before we go into make our artwork, it manifests itself in scrolling and scrolling and scrolling on Instagram or the whatever tick tock hellhole we end up down. Fear manifests itself in a very strange way. Procrastination, perfectionism. Oh, perfectionism. Let me just get you started on that one. Perfectionism is the ultimate fear tactic. Because if it's not perfect, when it's not right, we're not able to do it. Why even bother? Why even show up? I'm sorry, you guys. But that's just holding you back from your joy. It's holding you back from being able to accomplish amazing things. And that's what I want for you. That's what I want to be able to do myself. And so what I want to be able to communicate to you today is the power of getting out of your own way of doing the thing. So what is it that you would do, if you had no fear? If you weren't worried about what people were going to say, if you weren't worried about failure? If you weren't worried about making a mistake or wasting time or wasting supplies? Or I don't know, success, some of us are even afraid of success, because success can change you right? Money is bad, it turns you into the root of all evil. What messages are we telling ourselves that are keeping us stuck in this place of fear, that are keeping us from living a life by design and not by default?

Kellee 18:04
You can't do that? Oh, no, only a real artists would sit and paint a still life painting. Why would I ever want to splash black paint across a big canvas. And I just have to say, stop, stop. And I have to say it to myself too. Because what I really want to do is this, this bold, abstract non objective, as much as I've loved this, the florals and the landscapes and the places that I've been before, as I evolve as an artist, I want to push myself to the next level. So I have to stop and say, I might take a risk. No one will be interested in the art that I make. No one will want to buy it, no one will want to learn what it is that I'm doing. They won't take me seriously anymore. My husband might judge me because will you know, a lot of guys really liked representational art. And he sure did love it when I painted Monet's gardens. I love him for it. And yet, I can't listen to that if I really want to make progress towards the next best place for me. And the other thing that I have to stop holding myself back from is being willing to show up as a leader for you, and share with you my honest truth about how I got to where I'm at and how I can help you as well get to where you want to go. The fear keeps holding me back year after year to show up and say hey, I'm here to teach you how to run a more remarkable business. The fear holds me back year after year from saying I really understand marketing, social media content building and communication for artists better than I think I can do probably even painting artwork here. My ability to show up and talk to you live and connect with you is a gift that's been given to me that I didn't ask for but it is somehow something that I you know, can't deny that I'm good at and I love to do and so why would I hold myself back for fear that I'm going to be rejected? Again, to keep myself safe from hurt, conflict, I do the same thing that you do. In all honesty, I'm not in a place to say that I'm perfect, or I have this all figured out at all what I am, though, is in a place to say that I am like you, I understand you, I've been there, I'm there right now refusing to be in the moment, and move past fear and show up as all that I am meant to be. And the decision comes down to not wanting to miss out on this shared experience with you not wanting to miss out on a chance of creating a video for you too, because this was a big hurdle for me how many episodes now into unfold with Kelly, when before I was willing to turn on the camera and do this talking to you and inspiring you and hoping that we have, you know, a little face to face contact instead of just my voice here tickling your ear.

Kellee 21:09
What I would love for you to do at this moment, though, is to spend some time in meditation and journaling in poring over your previous work, or maybe even the work that you've been saving images on Pinterest or Instagram saying one day, I'd love to do this and set yourself a timeline goal now of moving towards that dream. If there's art, you've always wanted to make a brave choice that you've always been dreaming of doing, I'm going to ask you now to stop making excuses. Because your fear is boring, and start working towards the thing that you've always wanted to do. I have a few exercises that I'd like you to try out. This is kind of a fun thing about being both an artist and an entrepreneur, we have a lot of different ways in which we expand into the world. You know, we create, but we also create a whole world around our business and showing up with our artwork. And so sometimes when we're ready to move into that abstract phase, when we want to really go bold and deep and like learn how to listen to our voice and trust ourselves. Sometimes there's a few exercises you can do. So I'm going to give you three that you can do as an artist and three that you can do as an entrepreneur. All right, how about that. So first, as an artist, this is what I'm asking you to do this week, the three things dance with your art book, not all of you have a big space, but at the very least you can put it up in the hallway and I want you to put a big sheet of paper, it can be craft paper, it can be a roll from the kids section. You

Kellee 22:47
know, kids paper can be a big poster board, whatever, or art paper and I want you to dance put on your favourite music, you know, something rhythmic, something that really puts you in the mood to be in tune with yourself and play. And then I want you to get some sort of mark making tool, crayons, water soluble graphite paint if you wish. And I want you to just move your body dance around moving your body making any mark that comes out. I can show you this because I have video clips of it. You'll either see that on YouTube, where you can go direct to my show notes on my website Unfold with Kellee Wynn for this episode. And you can see how I dance when I really want to loosen up and let myself go. Turn your body, close your eyes and see what kind of marks come out. This is part of the joy of painting. So that's exercise one, exercise two to help you get over fear and help you understand that the work that you're doing is not precious, is I'd like you to get an magazine, a catalogue something that you can just mark up and paint use markers use a sharpie, use your paint and just scribble and make marks in ways that are really unexpected. Cut up the magazine when you're done and, and just collage different shapes. The point being is the magazine is cheap, it's not permanent. It's not meant to be finished work. It's not meant to even be shown necessarily but what it does is it frees you up to just feel the motion as you make the paintbrush mark and see where it takes you because each of these exercises are going to push you further and further into understanding yourself, your motivation, your marks and how you like to show up on the page, even on a magazine. And I do I've done this and it's just like so free. What happens is you no longer are thinking about the product, you're thinking about the process and that's the whole point of each and every one of these ideas. Third, in my advice for you as you want to push out into finding your voice and creating authentically and freeing without fear is to do what I call automatic drawing. I want you to limit this project to just like three supplies. Maybe it's a couple of colours of paint, and some charcoal, maybe some pastel, maybe it's watercolour. Just limit to like three supplies and no more than three supplies. And I want you to set a timer. And for no more than one minute on cheap copy paper, I want you to make your marks automatically make your marks, see what comes out intuitively. See what colour combinations come together, what shapes do you create, and I want you to set a timer for one minute. And then as every time that one minute passes, pull another sheet out. And I want you to do this as many times as possible. I've done it where I've, I've done the automatic drawing slash painting project. And don't 100 of them in one day in one sitting, and do the do this. Occasionally, when you really need to get out of your head. Get past your fear. Get past yourself so that you can start feeling what it feels like to just create for the sake of creating all three of these exercises will push you past your boundaries, and help you get to that next place. Have confidence in creating confidence in your own voice and trusting yourself and confidence that you're not going to die by doing something outrageous dancing with the paint, painting and magazines, cutting up magazines, doing this automatic drawing, it's really fine, you're not going to die doing.

Kellee 26:43
I promise, it's going to be so much fun and freeing that you're going to realise that the process of creating is a whole reason that we show up in the first place. And maybe this will be the catalyst to push you to the next level to be able to start creating big create what your heart's been craving, maybe abstract, maybe pushing the boundaries of your ideas. This may be just that push that you need to get past your own fear and start creating confidently. But since I'm talking to all of you creative entrepreneurs out there who are wondering, okay, now I'm being brave with my art, how do I get brave with my art business. And that's a whole nother can of worms, because what you really need to be able to do is show up authentically as yourself. And that's hard because a lot of artists, we're introverts or we're shy or we are again using fear to protect ourselves from rejection. So I'm going to suggest that you show up the same way you do 100 Automatic drawings, in a very short amount of time, I'm going to challenge you to do garbage posting.

Kellee 27:53
Now this is not an original idea of my own. This is Simone Souls practice for her Joyful Marketing course that I ventured into in January of this year where you just post 100 posts, whatever it is that you want to pour out your soul, whatever artwork that you have, whatever vision that you have, whatever it is that you want to say that's authentically you. And I'm going to say this seems maybe a little bit counter intuitive to well planned out thought out business plan. But what it actually does is help you connect with your customer on a much deeper level, they would much rather you show up as yourself. Your customer wants you to be you. They don't need some corporate version of yourself. They don't need you to be perfect. They don't need you to have yourself always hair coiffed and romantic, dreamy coffee, making in the morning and walking through fields of wheat, you don't need to be that person you need to be you and show up as who you are. But if you're really stuck with being able to show up in your full self show up and do it 100 times and you're going to break past that fear that says I'm gonna die, they're gonna hate me, someone's gonna judge me but what you're going to actually do is attract the people who are attracted to you to the art that you make to the voice that you speak to the way that you want to show up online. So that's number one. Number two, I'm going to challenge you to something that's even harder. And that's to show up on video. Look, it shifts everything when you're willing to show up and talk live to your audience. Now, if you aren't ready to do this live on Instagram, I understand. Maybe you create a little Facebook group and a small collection of people who are interested in being around you look, whether you're selling artwork or you're selling a course or you're selling coaching programmes or you have some beautiful creative programme that you want to show up and be able to talk about, the very best thing you can do is to turn that camera on and get comfortable talking to the people that are out there in this world, talking about why you make what you make, why it's important to you how you want to be able to connect with them. This is your story. And when you tell your story to the world, people are going to find a much deeper connection with you. And that's really important in this day and age. Really, I know you think that you're not a brand. But guess what, if you're in business, the most important thing you can do is create a personal brand around yourself, that your reputation, you want to become known for something. So showing up on video showing up on social media, this is really a great way to get going, marketing your work and building your business in the most authentic way possible, just being you. And my third advice for those of you who are listening here who are trying to build a business, I want you to start writing love letters to your customers. And when I say love letters to your customers, what I really mean is, is create that frequent email list already. If you don't have an email list, how are you going to be able to stay in contact when I don't know Instagram shuts down or everybody's moved to Tik Tok, and you're not ready to show up on video and do tick tock yet. And what you really need is to create an email list where people are signing up so that they can hear little sweet love letters from you tell them what's in your mind and your heart on your soul. Share with them behind the scenes. And even if all you do is send one newsletter out a month, you're already moving in the right direction to be able to get over your fear and connect more deeply with your customer. So there you go three ways in which you can be more bold with your art and get over fear with your art and three ways in which you can get over your fear of building your business. So I know that you all have some really big hopes and dreams that you want to be able to fulfil whether it's just to create a large painting for yourself one day, or to travel around the world and teach art to people in far reaching corners of the globe. I know you have big dreams, I know you want to do magnificent things, I have big dreams too. And the only way that we're going to be able to move to that next phase is to get over ourselves, get over this idea that anybody really cares that much about what you're doing. Because they don't. And just put yourself out there one little bit at a time and you're going to find out that you simply just will not die I promise you will survive it and you will grow stronger, and then you will be able to do the next thing.

Kellee 32:35
Okay, before I wrap this up, what I really want to be able to ask you is why haven't you joined the Virtual Art summit yet? We only do this once a year. The Virtual Art summit lasts the entire month of May, with interviews with our guest artists, lessons, online prizes to give away and in the end, we create 20 scholarships for those who have fallen on hard times so that they can also learn how to create art. At a high level, you know, not just what you find on YouTube, but maybe some of our premium classes. If this resonates with you, if you are learning at or you've been an artist your whole life, and you're like I'm stuck with my voice, I'm stuck with where to go next, I want to connect more deeply with my style. And to be able to show up more authentically, as me I'm telling you, the guest artists we have this year are phenomenal. And they're really going to help you get a clearer vision of what you want to do. So even if you don't follow along with my fun little three tips and ways in which you can break through fear, you can just join the Virtual Art summit and find yourself breaking through fear really fast. Because the lessons the exercises, I've been watching them all and I'm just blown away at how deep and marvellous that our guest artists have been able to share with you. It's just It's phenomenal. And guess what you can pay what you can for 30 days access, which means zero 1016 $25 Whatever, whatever you feel you would like to donate for 30 days access to the content, or we have a deluxe package which is $95 and it includes a bonus of a snippet of all of my courses is my studio sampler that in and of itself is worth $300 So I'm telling you for 95 keep forever all this amazing content, it's totally worth it just go to virtual art summit.com/go. And you're in but you only have till the end of May so don't wait to sign up because otherwise you have to wait a whole year before the Virtual Art summit comes back again. This is a really good kick in the pants you guys to get you off your seat, give you a little courage and start making the art that you've always wanted to make.

Kellee 34:57
Thank you so much for joining me And you know, come find me on YouTube. Now that I'm creating these videos for you. You can find a whole lot of new content from Kellee Wynne Studios. Who would have ever thought I could jump past that fear and move on to my next thing. All right. I'll talk to you later. Thank you for joining me and Unfold with Kellee Wynne.

If you'd like to listen to or learn more about the podcast visit https://www.maderemarkable.com/blog for our show notes and links to the main players.