Bret Shuford 0:00
Hello there, welcome back to another episode of the creative visibility podcast. My goal with this podcast is to help you each week, not only unlock your creativity, but also find a way to profit from that creativity. So each Tuesday we meet, we talk about how to unlock our creativity. And each Thursday we meet to talk about how to take their creativity and put it out into the world and monetize it. So today is another creativity Tuesday, and I'm gonna get kind of serious today, because I'll be honest with you, I've had a pretty traumatic weekend, you know, I've read a book, before I came a father called a gay dads Guide to Becoming a parent. And one of the things they said very early on is that every day as a gay parent is like coming out of the closet over and over again. And I thought, yeah, I mean, maybe for sure when I'm in public, but I didn't think I would actually feel that way in private, right with my family, or with the people closest to me. But honestly, it is exactly the same, it is exactly that. So it's really challenging at 25 years, after coming out of the closet to still be coming out of the closet in regards to people with people who are supposed to love and support who clearly in that 25 years haven't done the work. And that's really what this episode really is about. I want to talk to you if you are someone who is part of a marginalised community, or who's part of the LGBTQ plus community being that it's Pride Month, and talk to you about how imposter syndrome is different as someone who's part of that community, from perhaps other people who are not LGBTQ plus, but how to actually move through it. In my experience, you know, came out at 17, I would have come out sooner, I wanted to come out sooner, but did not have an environment that would support that I had an environment that immediately shut it down and told me all the rings reasons it was wrong. And that's not a normal, right? That's, I think, pretty typical of most young men growing up in the 90s in America. And when I came on at 17, it was not easy, some terrible things were said to me that still to this day, I go to therapy, to work through. And that's really the point here is I have done a lot of work, not just in therapy and recovery work. And I like who I am. And I like the life that I've built. And I like the chosen family that I have who support me without any hesitation. And so it's really challenging. When you're around people who have not made those investments and changing or evolving, you know, and even evolving for you, right are with you but still want to have a quote unquote, relationship with you. So the reason why impostor syndrome affects so many of us differently, who are part of the LGBTQ plus community is because we didn't get support, we didn't get support in the way that we needed it. Right. We didn't get you know, if you're like me, you were sensitive, you're emotional. And instead of people saying, oh, my gosh, Brett is having some emotions here, let's, let's let him have those emotions. Let's talk about those emotions. It was always, Oh, he's so dramatic. He's just right. It's shutting off the emotions, avoiding the emotions. And that's one way of not getting emotional support, right? For some other people. Maybe you're like, I wanted to be a painter. And my family would say to me, you can't make a living doing that you have to be a doctor, right? So you didn't get support. And so that reflects in our lives now a feeling alone, right? It feeling like you're navigating this world alone. There's also this idea that our love being loved was conditional, right? We have a society that tells us that it's okay to be gay, as long as you don't put it on display, as long as it's not public. Or even, you know, you maybe grow up in a religious society that tells you that being gay is wrong, and you're gonna go to hell. So you have to live this double life in order to feel love. And maybe you're never taught how to love yourself.
So there's a lot of self hatred that shows up and criticism and paranoia. And so that imposter can come in and say to you, this isn't good enough, right? That's not good enough. Why are you What do you Who do you think you are? How dare you put that out into the world? It makes people uncomfortable, right? expressing yourself makes people uncomfortable, and we shouldn't make people uncomfortable. We should make people feel good. You know, our responsibility is to make people feel good. And that's that that can be another form of imposter. Another thing is, you know, I find for so many people who came up in theatre or the performing arts is that we found a second home and a safe haven in our theatre community or choir or our band or dance that we couldn't get at home or we couldn't get at school, right that we were not accepted there, but we can be accepted there. I know that was true for Me, I was allowed to express myself without being made fun of or shut down in theatre and I found my my community. But what happens as we transfer and transition from young performer who just gets to do it all the time to professional is that we still put our value and worth and, and fulfilment, at the other end of achieving success in that industry or in what we do, and so many people who found their home, in that when it comes to professional commercial auditioning Theatre, where you don't get to decide like they're making decisions based on casting needs and skill levels and the competition's greater and all of that stuff. It can be very traumatic. I know a lot of people who've left New York licking their wounds because they couldn't get a break. And it's not because they weren't talented, right? It's because we have to learn how to find fulfilment, outside of what we do. And it's really, really difficult if you found fulfilment, doing what you do. So how do we move through those right? How do we move through this imposter syndrome, the first thing we have to do is look at it, I think Brene Brown talks about this, the only way to move through shame is by putting a light on it. And if you're feeling you have to look at your core beliefs, you have to look at your limiting beliefs, I actually have a it's my cheapest mini course if anyone's interested in taking it, but it's called creative life leadership. And it's literally one of the exercises in that is looking at your limiting beliefs. Because once we put a name to those beliefs, we can actually see how they show up on a daily basis. And then we can choose how to move through them or how to create an alternate belief. But if you don't look at them, and you don't know what they are, it's going to be a lot harder to move through them. One way you can do this is you just need to start to notice when you're in a creative process, or if you get an idea, for instance, I have a lot of people who come to me about Instagram reels, I want to make this reels and immediately this, almost they'll have this like ooh, what if I do this, and the second thought enters. And the second thought is Oh, but nobody's going to care. Nobody's like, that's not funny, you're not going to do as good as those people, right? That's all limiting beliefs that are appearing in the moment. So we have to start to observe Whoa, okay, why that was a really good idea. I don't want to do it. Because this, this and this. And instead of letting those beliefs live in our head, we need to write them down, getting things out of our head, and getting them down on paper puts them in a tangible form, so that we can then choose what to do with them next, if those thoughts still only live in our head, then they will always continue to show up and rule the nest. So one of the most powerful things you can do is sit down and look at your limiting beliefs. Once you've written out those limiting beliefs, you can then look at each one and creates this is what one of my favourite exercises to do is to then create an alternate belief based on that. So if one of my limiting beliefs is let's say, I will hurt my friends and family if I'm successful, I will abandon right that was a big one for me in getting recovery work was that I thought I was going to it was like survivor's guilt. Right if I move past the codependency and addiction in my family, they're all gonna hate me and and who am I and there's guilt and all that stuff. Right. So very codependent, let's just be honest. So that in that position I, it tells me right, the negative thought at the core of that is that I do not deserve to be successful. So I can turn that around. And I can say, I deserve success on a daily basis,
I deserve success on a daily basis. Another thought could be this was very early on in my Broadway career, I would have a lot of negative thoughts around. If I don't get this job, if I reach open an audition, if I don't get this job, I'm a loser, I have failed, my family won't love me. The core belief there is that I don't have enough. I'm not enough. So I create would create a mantra and I literally before auditions would write this down over and over in my journal. And I would say I have everything I need. I have everything I need. The power of that message for me was enough to shift the energy to book my first Broadway show. That message I have everything I need takes away this idea that the success of my podcast the success of my Instagram account, the success of my acting career does not lie on the other side of some achievement, right? That I'm successful today. Because I've done everything I need to take care of myself to set boundaries to be healthy. And by creating that mantra, right create those become mantras that we can take with us every day. So that's your Your exercise today I want you to sit down and write out five to 10 negative beliefs that show up for you, whenever you're trying to create, whether it's a social media posts or whether it's your art. And then I want you to come up with a list of alternative core beliefs that are mantras if you want that you can start to use every day. And then I want you to take those mantras and I want you to write them on signs, put them in Time Square, put them on posted notes so that you can see them every day. That is the only way you're going to start to change the way you think. And in doing that, we can actually start to change the way society sees us because you will no longer be afraid to be seen. And you will start to see that success is your birthright. Creativity is your birthright
