553 - Recover Sense of Self & Creative Voice with These 6 Juicy Prompts

0:00I'm guessing most of you have seen the movie The Lion King. There's a moment in that movie where Simba's father, Mufasa, is in the clouds and he says, remember who you are. And in that moment, I think there's probably two types of people that see this movie. One type is just like, this is a pretty cool kids movie. And then the other type is like that lady in Napoleon Dynamite with the ship in the bottle. and turns to her husband and is like, I want that. Like, I want that. I want a being from my past in the clouds to show up and be like, remember who you are, Andy, because I have a sense that I have often forgotten who I am.

0:48I don't know if it's because I'm neurodivergent and I'm ADHD and I feel the need to mask everywhere I go, often to hide weird ways that I am or ways that I feel like I'm going to be judged. And so I do that. I have that mask on so often that I can forget that that's not me and I can lose touch with who I am. And that's a huge problem just in life, but it's an even bigger problem if you're an artist, because what you're trying to do is be yourself on purpose and then repeat it. Like Art is being yourself on purpose. And I feel like that's hard to do if you don't know who you freaking are. And I can look back on myself early on in my creative journey and look at the videos from my first Kickstarter and be like, I don't even know who that guy was.

1:38And he was a person that had spent several years trying to just like get rid of all of this and just smush it down and be normal. And it wasn't working. but it did work enough to where I lost sense of myself. And now I look at these kids' books that I make and this work that I've created, and I feel like this is me. I mean, it's not like it's perfect, but there's something about this that just feels like I have remembered something of who I am, Mufasa. I've done some of the work and I've learned some things. And I want to share six prompts, creative prompts to help you get back in touch with who you are, both for your creative work, but also for your personal life.

2:27We are going to get to that in just a second. But at the end, if you stick around, we're going to do a creative call to adventure, something you can do today that will help you. It's called get an outside perspective on your inner world. And we're going to get to that at the end. But first, I got to tell you, we're going to get to the first prompt. and explain why growing up in the 90s helped me have an insight about how dangerous pretending to be someone else can be. Let's do it.

2:57Andy J. Pizza:On the creative journey, it's easy to get lost, but don't worry, you'll lift off. Sometimes you just need a creative pep talk.

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4:36Hey kids, it's Taco Tuesday again for the 800th week in a row. No! Listen, I hate to admit it, but Sophie and I got into a real rut cooking, and the kids were actively trolling us about it, but then we started getting some HelloFresh meals, and it has really helped us shake things up this year. So many dishes we've never had before or cooked, and all have been super tasty and easy to make. For me, it's all about the sauces. Last night I made the curried chicken and roast sweet potato jumble and the sauce was so simple and so delicious. I love that I'm making something yummy and broadening my cooking skills and experience in general.

5:22A couple nights prior we had the edamame stir fry with this amazing gochujang aioli. It was vegetarian but super flavorful and filling and just I absolutely loved it. Nothing hits like home cooking. Go to hellofresh.com slash peptalk10fm. That's hellofresh.com slash peptalk10fm. Now to get 10 free meals plus a Nutribullet Ultra Plus 2-in-1 compact kitchen system. It's$189.99 value on your third box. Free meals applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. And disclaimer, must order the third box by May 31st, 2026. So a few years back, two years actually, we did a series on this podcast.

6:15This was prior to when we were doing video on YouTube as well. So it's audio only. It's called Right Side Out. And this series was a six episode narrative nonfiction sort of audio memoir series. It's unlike anything we've ever done before. And in it, I tell stories that help explain what being a neurodivergent person is like and what my journey is with that. And part of that was making peace with how much I am like my mom. And my mom's life has been a lot of tragedy and a lot of pain, both with her and then people around her. and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that she's probably neurodivergent and doesn't know it.

7:02And I had been estranged for a few years by the time I was doing this podcast and I went and did an interview with her about all of this stuff. And it was a really powerful, cathartic experience. And that interview is in episode five and the podcast kind of builds towards that. And I'm telling you this because at the heart of this series is what I want to get into today. We're going to go through six prompts. And those six prompts come from that series. We did one prompt at the end of every episode, one call to adventure about how to get back in touch with yourself, how to use art. even if you don't have art skills art is such a powerful tool for externalizing your inner world so that you can get an outside perspective on yourself man it's kind of trippy if you think about it but that's what art is you're taking a part of your inner world and you're putting it on paper or on a page or on a canvas or onto ceramics or whatever you're putting a part of yourself out into the real world so that you can get some distance and get an outside perspective on your inner life.

8:13And that is an incredibly powerful way to figure out who the heck you are. And that series is all about how I developed a more positive sense of myself, a more of an attitude of my ADHD and who I am is ultimately a good thing, even if contextually in this moment, it's making my life harder or in this circumstance we find ourselves in it's making our life harder and i'm not not saying that some of it doesn't have its weaknesses or struggles in some ways it is just a disability i'm not undermining any of that i'm just saying that when i took an attitude that said this is that myself isn't something to run from but something to dig into it changed my life and it changed my art and it helped.

9:07It was the step one in figuring out who I am. Because if you believe that you are a terrible, horrible thing to get away from, you are not going to go in that cave. And so step one to like finding, reacquainting yourself, not finding yourself, but reacquainting yourself with who you are, remembering who you are, is to try to entertain the idea that you might be at your core, at your foundation, a good thing. And that's how you start engaging with this. And I think that this gets at the first step of making work that you love too, because art is self-expression. You're not going to love that self-expression.

9:52You're not going to love that expression if you hate the thing it's an expression of, which is you. and so I really think that having an attitude towards yourself that is curious that is loving that is kind that is interested that is optimistic about your core and foundation is so freaking key and that's what that whole series about is about and we just released it as its own podcast you can go check it out right side out you can find it on apple podcast and spotify but the easiest way to get it is in the show notes of this podcast or go to annijpizza.com slash rso if you want to dive into the stories and the takeaways it's kind of like it i don't want to compare myself and the project to this american life but it's in that sort of style and um we have some special guests including my mother including um lulu miller the co-host of radio lab is one of the people that really set off this project.

10:50And Sophie appears and some also therapists and experts that we talked to along the way. And it was just an unreal experience. We had so many amazing messages and comments that we wanted to put it on its own feed so people could go find it. But that's where these six prompts come from. I want to give you a little shortcut to the action points in case you haven't heard it or you don't remember these things. These things are all things that help me remember who I was, help me find my creative voice and style and my creative sensibility. And they all use creativity to do that. So let's get into them.

11:40number one is the friends and family discount friends and family discount i'll tell you what that means in just a second but first i gotta tell you why growing up in the 90s helped me get a leg up in realizing that you could very easily lose yourself to the masks that you're wearing. And I'm talking about the mask with Jim Carrey in that Ben Stein says, we all wear masks, metaphorically speaking. And we do all wear masks, especially if you're neurodivergent and you're kind of a weirdo because of it. You are probably likely to have invented an extreme or even multiple extreme personas and masks to hide who you really are.

12:23And you probably did that from a really young age. Like when I go into any social setting, I try to keep in mind like this idea of you do you, I'll do me. Like I'm going to go in there. I'm just going to be, just be yourself, Andy. Looking in the mirror, like, come on, buddy. Like just go in there and just show them what you're made of. Don't change who you are to try to be more palatable to them. And I walk in there. I'm like, you do you, I do masking. I'm putting on the mask again, or you do you, I do whatever you need me to do to become more palatable to you. So I don't have to feel the rejection.

12:57So I'm very sensitive to that with my rejection sensitivity dysphoria that so many neurodivergent people struggle with, just very sensitive to rejection. So we create these masks and in the movie, the mask, there's this idea that the more you wear it, the more it's going to fuse to your face, the harder it is to distance yourself from it. And so for me, one of the biggest things that has helped me get in touch with who I am through my art has been including my friends and family in the process a little bit. Now, you don't have to go interview your brother and your mom and put it on the internet for everybody to listen to like I did.

13:36That's pretty extreme. I think it's a very particular case in which I could do that safely and lovingly. But what you can't, like a lot of people's art practice, the things they're doing on Instagram or on YouTube or in books or in movies, whatever, a lot of that is so disconnected from their family and friends that when their family and friends see it, they're like, who the heck is that guy? And sometimes that's because you're finally showing your true self, But often it's because you're still stuck in persona. You're still stuck in trying to be the kind of artist that would succeed on YouTube or Instagram or movies and music and books and whatever.

14:11And so I actually think there is power in doing a creative project that involves friends and family, either indirectly or directly, where you're interviewing them and you're trying to get at what do they know about you? Especially those friends that you've had for your whole life and the family that have known you your whole life. what were you like before you knew you needed a mask? Can you interview them? Can you do an autobiographical project? The music that we use for the Right Side Out series is from the band Y, just like all of our music, probably my favorite band. And the music we use for that project was different than all the other podcast music.

14:48It comes from an album that Yoni made called AOK Ohio. And it was a very personal album. There's a lot of like field recordings, found recordings from his past and childhood, I believe. And a lot of like, like his mom and dad are in the music video and it's very, very personal. I'm not saying you have to go that far, but what would it look like for you to just make an autobiographical project? It could be, you know, six posts on Instagram or a newsletter on Substack, one newsletter where you're going to do something. you're going to go interview your parents and your siblings and people that knew you before you invented this version of yourself and just try to ask some questions about who were you before you felt like you had to change.

15:33And for me, I think those answers just become things that I didn't expect, things that are true to my nature that maybe are things that even I'm not, that I've purposefully distanced myself from. Like I probably tried really hard to be clever when, when I was a kid, probably everybody would have described me as silly and sweet mainly. And I don't, and I've learned to discredit that and discount that we discount the friends and family. And this is the reverse of this. So it's actually the reverse family and friends or friends and family discount. And I encourage you to bring them into your creative process a little bit.

16:06Now, if you're estranged from a parent, that might be for a good reason. I'm not telling you to break that only you can know whether that you and your therapist know. I'm not saying that you need to do what I did. It doesn't have to be that extreme, but can you bring somebody in who knew you before you turned seven and started pretending you were somebody else and get a little bit of that energy in your creative process? It was a big deal for me. All right. Number two is get matching tats. Get matching tats. Now, if you have tons and tons of tattoos, this might not apply, but if you don't if you don't have a couple or none uh most people when they approach getting a tattoo they're trying to find something that they could get that would be matching tats with their six year old self and their 90 year old self and their current self something that is timeless there's something about the taste that you're like if i if you get a tattoo that you like and that you think five-year-old you would have thought was dope, you're probably going to like it when you're 90, if you're lucky enough to reach that.

17:10Like this tattoo I have on my arm is a little starling. It's a little bird full of stars. And I really, I like it today because it feels kind of like, I like how starlings, they all flock together and they fly in these murmurations and they look like this giant being and they that feels like a symbol of oneness to me it's like we're all connected we're all part of the same uh galaxy we're all interconnected i like that so current me just really likes that as a reminder that like we we all are part of the same thing whereas six-year-old me would have just thought that bird looks freaking cool that black bird covered in galaxies it looks kind of like captain universe uh i'm into it and then hopefully 90 old me will even have some other richness to it if it ages like i hope that it will and so for you even if you're not a tattoo person could you design a tattoo that you what would it look like even just and maybe you're not a visual artist maybe you're a musician what were the what are the symbols that come up that speak to you now that speak to you then those might be symbols and archetypes that tell you something about who you are why does that matter to you what's behind that what are your associations with that and then you can write a song about that uh this is what helped me find some of my style early on when i was struggling to put more myself into it i had to look back and think about what were the visuals what were the symbols what were the characters that just like spoke to me even like yeah things like fraggle rock and um creatures that are similar to like the moomin things like that i was just like oh this is so good but then stuff like spider-man and i remember liking spider-man and black panther and deadpool and i liked them all because they had this like simplicity to and and uh minimalism to their costume and so and there was like a a curviness to that that really spoke to the kinds of aesthetics that i was drawn to and that was coming through this lens of matching tats with current me five-year-old me 90 year old me so give it a thought.

19:22What are the, what's the through lines? This is something that speaks to a more timeless you that'll help you get a little bit past how trends are currently affecting your aesthetic choices.

19:41Number three is change your life sentence. So for me, one of the things that kind of haunted me my whole life was when I was really little, all of my relatives would constantly tell me that I was just like my mom, which at first I really loved because she's super creative, silly, loud, funny person. And I just thought, oh, they're telling me I'm like the coolest person in the world. And then over time, as my relationship changed with my mom and I didn't see her a lot and I realized those relatives don't actually have the highest opinion of her. I realized that that wasn't the compliment that I took it for.

20:18And being just like her started to feel like, oh, what if it turns into being an addict? Or what if it turns into not being able to follow through with things? And all these different ways that it ended up, that sentence ended up feeling like a life sentence, like a prison sentence. And I started to recognize that there were these phrases and things that people made offhanded comments about that I had let determine my life and that I had the power to adopt and embrace and cultivate other sentences that could become things that were good life sentences, places that I wanted to spend time in and in worlds that I wanted to build.

21:03And so here's my suggestion to you. I would encourage you to find your epigraph for your next piece, Find an epigraph for your next piece. If you're not familiar with that word, it means like a quote that inspires a piece. Like oftentimes in a book, it will start with a quote. One of the books I read recently started with a C.S. Lewis quote and another quote that I can't remember, but oh, Secret Garden quote. And it was Piranesi, the book I was talking about a few episodes ago. And so what is your epigraph for your next piece? Maybe you actually work that lettering into the piece if you like working with lettering or you're a visual artist, or if you're a musician, you could actually work some of that into the lyrics.

21:44For me personally, the books that I made, Invisible Things and Mysterious Things, they have kind of a spiritual epigraph that is a life sentence of mine, a sentence that I want to live by. And it comes from the book, The Little Prince, and it says, it is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye. And it speaks to how essential it is that we get in touch with the invisible and that we stay in touch with that. For me personally, that looks like, don't forget that you don't need to escape this reality and fantasy and disassociation to find what you're looking for, to find that stimulation, that excitement, that interest.

22:26You have to go deeper into it, that there are invisible realms in other people that you can't see in their psychology and their psyche and their heart and their mind. There are invisible realms around you all the time that are worth engaging with. And so I made these books partially to help me remember that and encourage other people to engage in that. And so that epigraph became a life sentence for me. Like, remember, there are so many essential invisibles, so many brilliant, amazing, interesting, juicy invisibles that make life worth saying yes to every day. it's just easy to forget it because you don't see all of that richness often you get up and you're seeing the same dreary same thing especially in the winter day after day just like overcast you're like what no i hate this but then i can remember no what is essential is invisible to the eye they're here right now i just have to have eyes to see it and so can you find a quote that has maybe meant something to you throughout your life can you in like what's interesting is that our brains are like very sticky to negative things, to those negative life sentences.

23:38And they're very resistant of the positive ones. And so if you can make art around those things, you can internalize them in a bigger way. You can speak to them. Making those books have reminded me like when I put on my glasses, these are my invisible thing spotting glasses. So I can see those things in my spouse and in my kids and in my day that make life worth living. And so I encourage you go find that life sentence and make creative work about it. As you do, you're going to ruminate on it. You're going to meditate on it. You're going to internalize it and it's going to have an impact on you.

24:12And it's going to help you remember who you are and what you care about because that stuff is so easy to forget.

24:35as a neurodivergent creative i am always trying to strike a better balance between creating versus just consuming that's why dr anna lemke's class dopamine take your brain back on masterclass piqued my interest she is such a compelling communicator and one of the things that really hit me fresh was this idea that you want to embrace more things that make you feel uncomfortable up front but great afterwards versus great instantly but bad afterwards. This insight really inspired me to action because this is exactly why I want to create more than I scroll. I am no creative prodigy or business genius, but lifelong learning has been a game changer for me.

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27:07Number four is psychoanalytic arting. Psychoanalytic arting. What is that about? What does that mean? It means something. Don't worry. We're going to talk about it. So a lot of people don't know this. You know that Whitney Houston song, I'm Every Woman? That's actually a cover song of an old Jungian tune. Carl Jung said it first. I'm Every Woman. It's all in me. All right. That's not true. But here's why I'm saying that. Carl Jung developed this way of thinking about literature and mythology and fairy tales and dreams that are, it's called psychoanalytic reading of the dream or the movie or the myth.

27:53And the idea here is that what if we assumed that every character in Disney movies weren't really about a kid that was orphaned and happened to be a prince? Like these are things that none of us can, most of us can't relate to. Most of us are not orphans. Some of us are. Most of us are not princes and princesses and royalty. Almost none of us are. And so why do we keep telling these stories all the time? Well, Young, who thought he was every woman and every man, he assumed that he was every character in this movie. Now, it's a little bit egotistical, but it can be a very powerful exercise in terms of engaging with art and also making art.

28:37And the idea here is that if you look at a character like Rapunzel, it's not about a princess stuck in a tower. It's about the feminine, royal, regal part of yourself that is locked away by your shadow self, by your mother Gothel, and that you need this other part of you to come climb up and save you and take you out of that secluded, imprisoned part of your psyche and allow it to permeate the rest of it. and so the idea here is that every character mother gothel tangled rapunzel and flynn rider who i don't think was in the original myth or fairy tale they're all different parts of the same person and that's a psychoanalytic reading and the reason i would suggest you doing this isn't just because it's a cool idea or some fancy pants father of modern in psychology like Carl Jung said it, but more because this was where my biggest project, Invisible Things, came from.

29:44When I was starting in, I was trying to figure out how do I put myself into my work? What does that even mean? And I found this prompt from one of my creative heroes, Charles Schultz. And he said that he would get asked all the time if he was Charlie Brown, because there'd be these clever interviewers that'd be like, hold on a second, Charles Schultz, Charlie Brown, is this you? It's kind of the same name. And he'd be like, kind of, yeah, like that's a part of me. That's a part of me that's kind of a loser, you know, sad sack complainer with a heart of gold. And then there's the part of me that is like Linus.