Our nervous system is built to protect us from creativity, which is inherently uncertain. Amy talks with Michelle Wolff about a powerful way of retraining our bodies and minds to welcome the creative process.
Michelle Wolff teaches, podcasts, and coaches using story, humor, and some salty language. She holds a Master's degree in Education, has 25 years of experience working with people, and loves to help multi-passionate people stop procrastinating, focus up, and get stuff done. She’s been a therapist specializing in trauma, mental health, and addictions. She’s now an author, trauma-informed coach, Human Design Specialist, and the creator of Forest Reiki™ energy healing. She uses laser-sharp intuition, channeled information, and at times communications from those who’ve crossed over, to guide people from confusion to clarity and from resistance to inspired action.
www.fb.com/michellewolff11
www.instagram.com/michellewolff11
Sovereign Storytellers Podcast
Sovereign Storytellers and can be found on all players and www.thatmichellewolff.com/podcast
Amy Hallberg 0:00
Hi everybody. So you may recall- because I've told you- that I am releasing a book, Tiny Altars: A Midlife Revival. I have said it before and I will say it again, you cannot do something like this alone, which is why I turned to people like Michelle Wolff, and today she's going to be here to talk with me about some of the ways that she has provided support for me as I moved through what is a pretty big deal for me.
You're listening to Courageous Wordsmith. I'm Amy Hallberg, story coach, book writing mentor, and author, and these are conversations with real life creatives, because if you want to be a real life creative, it helps to know what that looks like for you. Welcome to Courageous Wordsmith.
Hi, Michelle.
Michelle Wolff 1:01
Hi, Amy. Nice to see you again- hear you, see you.
Amy Hallberg 1:06
Yeah, it's good to see you. Um, so maybe we could just start by talking about- you've supported me in a lot of ways, but the one that we're working on right now is The One Command, as part of a bigger constellation of some things that you are doing. So do you want to just talk about what that is?
Michelle Wolff 1:26
Yeah. So, The One Command For Wealth was put out by Asara Lovejoy, spelled just like it sounds, and there was a book out, and I don't remember how I ran across it, but I liked it a lot and I took the certification program to be able to use the tool. And at the heart of it, it interrupts thought gridlock. It's giving yourself permission to not know, because our brain wants to know. We've been raised from childhood- you know, as a teacher, having been a student growing up, we're expected to know the answer to things, and then when our brain can't find the answer, it locks up, we can get obsessive about it, and then if that goes on long enough, that can trip into depression because you can't- your brain can't figure it out so it gives up and it doesn't feel very good. And it interrupts an enormous amount of creativity. And The One Command process is saying, I don't know how to do this, and just acknowledging that, and it lets the brain go, oh, yeah, I actually really don't know how to do it. So it just then, in a sense, takes a breath and lets go, and almost immediately it's like, "I can't find my keys, I can't find my keys," and you're like, "Well, I guess I'm not going to the store." As soon as you let go of it, you're like, "Oh, they're in- I left them in the garage," or whatever. When we let go, we can access new buckets of information that we can't when we're in lockdown.
Amy Hallberg 3:13
You know, when you say that too I think about how many people I know who tell me they want to write but then when you say, "Okay, let's write," they will tell me every single reason why they can't. And I think it's helpful, like you said, to remember that our brains are designed to protect us and so when not knowing is a dangerous thing, then creativity itself is actually a dangerous thing.
Michelle Wolff 3:43
Correct. Where we're at as a species, we get to have creativity. Before, we had some creativity, but there's no energy for a lot of creativity if you're in survival mode. Now, there's plenty of evidence that hunter gatherer tribes actually had loads of free time because they weren't hoarding and hoarding and panicking and, you know. Once we figured out we could prepare ahead, it almost was- like, I've had the teachers say that was really the end of humanity when we figured out agriculture. Because we let go of our intuition, we stopped talking to our dad, we stopped paying attention to the seasons other than for farming, because we didn't have to.
Amy Hallberg 4:33
You know, it's fascinating when you say that because when I'm doing my bills, paying my bills, you know, I'll be like, "Okay, I have enough for just now but here's a credit thing that I'd like to pay off. What if I paid off all my credit stuff?" And suddenly, you know, I want to, like, take care of future expenses and I can spin into a scarcity mindset really fast and I have to dial back and go, "It's okay to have things on credit and to just pay for right now." But it's, it's not just a mind thing as you've been talking about, it's, it's physically your body then- I mean, I think you're probably better able to describe this, but our bodies kick in too.
Michelle Wolff 4:35
It's resources. When we start shifting into thinking about resources, we immediately remember not having resources. I think, you know, necessity is the mother of invention, right? So we're going along as hunter gatherer tribes, and there's some seasons where there is no food or there's not enough water, and that impacts immune system, and people die and you lose babies. So of course that would make us desire a solution to that. On a cosmic scale, I think when that happens, we call out for a solution and over time, thousands of years, we develop that solution. "Okay, now we don't have to worry about having enough corn to get through the winter, we don't have to migrate like the animals do, migrate following the path of food, we don't have to do that anymore." So it's like a whole chain of events. But I don't know that we ever escape the fear of not enoughness.
Amy Hallberg 6:18
Well, we must not, because there are people who are so wealthy that they could never possibly spend all the money that they have, and they could eliminate hunger across the planet, but that's not what they're doing.
Michelle Wolff 6:30
Right.
Amy Hallberg 6:32
And I think about that because, you know, like, when I quit my teaching career, which I write about in Tiny Altars, one of the things I had to deal with was, there's not going to be that monthly paycheck coming. I don't actually know what's going to happen. You know, the fear, I think this is a common- like, a universal fear. I'm going to end up living, you know, Chris Farley, in a van down by the river, right?
Michelle Wolff 7:00
Yeah.
Amy Hallberg 7:02
So, and I mean and there are people who are that destitute too, so that isn't even an imaginary thing, it's a real possibility. That could happen. It does happen.
Michelle Wolff 7:12
It is, yeah. We can't even talk ourselves out of it. But just like you use the example of paying your bills, we're constantly required to stay aware of what we're thinking and what we're doing so that we can make a choice. And just like you said about writers, if you didn't tell someone they were a writer, or if they didn't set out to write, they can write all day long without a problem. But then we put a label on it and it opens up this whole spiderweb of other things. And if you're not aware of where you're at, you can't make a different choice. You can't go, "Wait a minute, it's okay for me to have debt on a credit card. I've got a plan for paying it off. I'm going to quit being a teacher and I'm not going to have a regular paycheck, so what's my plan? And let me get that in place." You know what's interesting about this angle of where we're going is, I wrote "pray without ceasing," that verse "pray without ceasing," and I've just been using it as a contemplation this week, actually, I have it on a sticky note right under my computer, because it's awareness, right? It's mindfulness. For me to pray without ceasing, I have to be aware of what I'm thinking and do I want to think that? Do I need to ask for help? Spiritual guidance to interrupt that cycle? Do I need to use a one command to go, "You know what? I'm trying to know something that I don't know and so let me just back up and ask for help." From (unclear) or, you know, Auntie Google, all the places we can get help. But we have to know where we're at to make that different choice. So I think you must have done that to be able to write that book which went into some intense areas.
Amy Hallberg 9:13
Okay, so the book writing equivalent to, "I got to pay my bills that I haven't even gotten, you know, a year out," or whatever, right? Is I meet people and the first thing they want to ask me about is publishing. And publishing is not the first thing that you need to think about when you're writing a book because at any- like, it drives me crazy. People say, "Oh, I'm an author now because I've been accepted to write something." Oh, wait a minute. Just wait. Just write. Don't worry about calling yourself an author, which is a great thing, but it's its own special trouble. You get there and it brings its own. You actually quoted this to me and I'm going to quote it back to you, "Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day." That's the book of Matthew, right? So, so publishing. "Oh, I'm going to publish a book." Have you written anything?
Michelle Wolff 10:10
(unclear)
Amy Hallberg 10:13
Oh, my gosh. And you know, the book that I'm publishing now, it's coming out because I kept showing up. And like you said, I don't know how this is happening but I keep getting signs that this is the thing to do so I just keep showing up, and the door opens, and another door closes, and I walk through the door that opens. And it really is, "I can do this now because I've done it."
Michelle Wolff 10:41
Now you can reflect back and go, "Exactly how did I do it? How am I still standing and I have this book? How did I do this?
Amy Hallberg 10:51
And it is nothing like what I thought I was going to write. I mean, it's everything exactly what I thought I was going to write and it is nothing like I thought I was going to write. And a lot of the stuff that happened, I was writing it as it happened and then these things happen to me and I was like, "Oh, well, because I've been writing this long, I actually see where this is going to fit into the book." And so as you mentioned, there were some pretty big world events that happened where I was right there and I was like, "Oh, I guess I'm gonna write about this." And I already had been writing so the foundations were there so, you live into what you've set up.
Michelle Wolff 11:28
Yeah, and I love that last thing you just said. You live into it. You live into the process. You stop thinking about the process and you start living the process, which is just start. Start with a Post-it note, an index card. So, two things, showing up every day is critical. Critical. If you're not showing up every day, you close the door to inspiration and those doors to swing open that you didn't even know were there. It's following the breadcrumb trail of the universe. And what I hear that encapsulates the whole thing you just described is, some level of trust in the creative process. That if you keep going, if you keep showing up, if you keep going word by word, some days it's letter by letter, right? Letter by letter, word by word, paragraph by paragraph, you know that you're eventually going to have something that then is that whole other process of shaping it into something that other people can read and comprehend. But you've got to have enough trust to show up.
Amy Hallberg 12:37
And it isn't linear. And it isn't linear. Like, so, some days it feels like you did nothing but it's not like you did nothing, you're actually pondering a thing and you know, it's slower because- You know, I was a language teacher for a really long time and one of the things I know about language acquisition is one day you will be brilliant, and you'll be like- you just are, you're amazed at how fluent you are in whatever language that isn't your mother tongue, right? And the next day you will be like, I can't even say hi. Like, there's no words, you go wordless, and that's not actually backsliding, it's your brain is like resting and consolidating and sort of absorbing and making new connections. You know, so you have this spurt, and then you backslide, you see my little air quotes, but you're not backsliding, you're consolidating information, you're actually getting wiser, not getting stupider.
Michelle Wolff 13:33
Right. Because what makes it out of your hand onto the page is the final product. But what created that final product happened weeks, months, years, invisibly. It happened internally, and then we produce something that then we can share with each other. If we can't trust that, you're gonna have that- What's coming out your hand is a final product and that you're still creating invisibly elsewhere and then that final product will come out and that it does come in spurts and it ebbs and flows, because its nature. Nature doesn't sit down and go ABCD, that's machine, that's our mechanics and we use machines. I love- When I got my first word processor, like in 90 whatever, and the typewriter before that, I was ecstatic. And when WordPerfect or whatever, the first one, was it WordPerfect? Like, so old.
Amy Hallberg 14:33
I remember WordPerfect, yeah.
Michelle Wolff 14:35
That was the first one I had and I was like, I can write and then I can delete and I can write more and I can delete, and I was so delighted by that that it really furthered me writing because I was too impatient to write- use white out.
Amy Hallberg 14:50
Oh my gosh. My grandmother, I used to sit in front of her desk in the city hall, I wrote about this too, and like, and you know, she had all the special correctives, like, oh, look, here's a new thing. Like, all the new ways to fix your-
Michelle Wolff 15:02
You put that little tape and then you type back. I think when we only have one view of the way things are supposed to work, it's not a research paper. It's not a five part essay. You can't write an outline, like on a research paper, you write an outline, and you kind of just fill in the blanks, boom, boom, boom, down.
Amy Hallberg 15:22
And those are not fun to read, by the way. I feel sorry for the teachers who have to read them.
Michelle Wolff 15:27
Nothing about it is good other than sharing information, and that's it. I think in the ranking of things, that's actually the easiest to write because it doesn't involve a lot of creativity, it's data delivery.
Amy Hallberg 15:40
Put the stuff on the page.
Michelle Wolff 15:42
Yeah, just share it to where somebody else can understand it, and you're done, you get your grade, and you go on, or you get your grant and you go on. But then writing a novel is a different kind of digging deep, writing poetry is a different kind of digging deep, and I think on the ranking of difficulty, writing a memoir is the most difficult thing to write.
Amy Hallberg 16:03
Oh, well, yes and no, right? Because I don't get graded on it. Well, I mean, I suppose I will, it's coming out. But-
Michelle Wolff 16:10
The research, it's in your own head, yeah?
Amy Hallberg 16:13
Right. So like you said, what's interesting is that you discover things about yourself, and you have to build an extra time because that writing is for you. And there are tools, like, you know, I wrote the whole thing on Ulysses, that didn't use to exist. If you do PC, it's Scrivener. Like, there's places to store them in little separate files, and it's just waiting for you. You can go away, and come back. But you have to do your own processing, you have to do your own thinking about it, and things come up. So, this is where, for example, the one command, and there was more, there's more that you do in your work, but the one command is part of it. You press yourself to the limit, things come up. It's the- what is it? It's Gay Hendricks, The Big Leap, right? You could stretch to your outer limits, and your body, your nervous system, your mind, everything in you that's trying to keep you safe will throw all sorts of shit at you. Your brain starts swearing at you and saying mean things and like, there's all this pushback that protects you from looking at this really hard truth that when you finally can be okay with it, it's fascinating. Like, there's things I write about in my book, that I tell people about my book that's like, holy shit, I cannot believe- Like, little 12, 14 year old me would be mortified that I'm saying these things to people publicly, right? So can you talk about what the one command does? How that helps people? And it's not just the one command, there's other things too, but how your work helps people to do the work anyway. Even when our brains are like, throwing shit at us like little monkeys.
Michelle Wolff 18:01
That's the real key. When people can learn to do the work anyway, stop and assess, is this a real fear or not? And it never is. Like, if it's a real fear and you're really in danger, you don't get to stop and contemplate.
Amy Hallberg 18:18
Just the fact that you can contemplate means you're safe?
Michelle Wolff 18:21
If you can stop and think about it, if you have the time to think, "Should I do this or that?" You're not actually in danger. Because if you were in danger, you would be in motion. It's like when you're cooking and you accidentally drop the knife, you don't think, "Should I pull my foot back or not? I wonder what I should do here." Hopefully your body is like- and snatches your foot so you don't cut yourself. In traffic, I shudder to think how many times my body has moved me out of the way of something. I didn't contemplate that, I didn't have- I was truly in danger. My body did what it needed to do to get me out of the danger, and I didn't have time to think about it. That doesn't mean there's not risk in the decision. When you contemplated quitting teaching, there's risk in that decision, there's pros and cons, there's things you have to think about, but you're not truly in danger if you can stop and think about it.
Amy Hallberg 19:16
Well, and I will have to say that I quit teaching because it was bad enough that... it was truly bad and I'm like, my shoulders frozen I can't actually write on the board. I mean, like, it was bad enough that I really thought that if I stayed in teaching, I would die. That's how I quit that job. Like, like, you can treat me badly, you can- I mean, I didn't like it. I complained and bitched and moaned about it, right? You can treat me badly and I'll stay here and I'll be a victim of it and I'll do my very best to make your systems work. And just, I know you understand what I'm saying here. There are systems that people serve, and there are systems that serve people, and when you are in a system where you are serving the system, and the system is not serving people, that's not a place to stay, but a lot of us do it in late stage capitalism because that's how it is set up.
Michelle Wolff 20:14
And the underlying fear of why we stay is that something horrible will happen if we leave.
Amy Hallberg 20:19
Right. And so it has to be bad enough that you're willing to risk that. Like, okay, well, this is going to be bad but staying here is worse.
Michelle Wolff 20:28
We're already in the something bad.
Amy Hallberg 20:30
Right. When I was at the end of my teaching career, I used tapping, EFT tapping on the meridian pulse. Which is, for people just listening, it's just interrupting- What is tapping?
Michelle Wolff 20:43
It's Emotional Freedom Techniques, and it is tapping on the meridians, the same meridians that we use in acupuncture. Pressure. So it's stimulating these different points on your meridian system. And there's more- There's actually some science, some good research studies coming out about it, which is nice to see because until, you know, it's one of those invisible things. But the reason why I think tapping works is it interrupts the mental loop and engages the body. So in The One Command, we're engaging the body through looking up, and doing ancient Tibetan eyeroll. It's nothing new, we somehow figured out that if we look up and hold our eyes up, our brainwaves shift. So in the shifting, we've interrupted the thinking loop, we've engaged our body. And I think The One Command works best when you speak it out loud, because it's further engaging the body and you can't continue to think in that gridlock, and get worse in the gridlock. If you have enough awareness to go, "You know what? I think I'm just gonna take a breath. I'm just gonna look up, just gonna say, 'I don't know how this book gets written, I only know it does now, and I am fulfilled.'" The biggest part of that is stopping the fear response. I used to go to this church where the preacher said, "You set your feet on a path, and then the gates of hell rise up against you." You're right, they do!
Amy Hallberg 22:33
That's horrible.
Michelle Wolff 22:35
It's this shit between you and it. You set a goal, all the reasons why you're not there already come up. I mean, it's a gift, right? Oh, oh, you want to go over here? Well, here's all the reasons why you're not already over there, let me throw them up in front of your face, so that you can do something about it. Only when you don't know that's what's happening, you think, "Oh, I'm gonna write a book," and then you start doing all this stuff and then all the wounds come up, and the memories, and the creative process starts to happen and if you don't know that's normal, then you just stop writing.
Amy Hallberg 23:13
And I think when you start to recognize that this is part of the process, you understand that your body is going to feel like- There have been several times of late, where I just want to crawl right on out of my skin, but here I am, so I keep showing up. So as I was doing this One Command with you- this group, and I think you're gonna run it again, so it was supposed to be just focusing on money and just sort of, like, you know, playing with our comfort or willingness to be engaged with money in a more, what? Conscious way, and aware of how we want to interact with money as opposed to just being sort of tossed about. And then the other part was daily celebration, right? And the daily celebrations of abundance, and just what you focus on, you become aware, you start to see it. So focusing on the abundance. And what I found was I don't want to talk about money, I want to talk about that cool thing that showed up for my book, or that cool thing. So then, I was hanging out with some friends who are going through some health things and I was like, "Well, hey, I'm doing this thing about abundance in money," and they would like abundance in their health, and so we were kind of doing that together and they were like, "Oh, like, I don't know how we're going to find the root of my illness, I only know that it is so now, and I am fulfilled." And it's programming your mind like you said, while also as you said, tending to the nervous system.
Michelle Wolff 24:40
To me, it feels like a prayer because when we say, "I don't know," there's an energy of surrender in that, but we know that there's an answer somewhere, we just don't know what it is. But when we say, "I don't know how I'm going to find the root cause of my disease, I only know that I will, I only know that I do, actually, it's as if you've already done it, I already know that I am, and I am fulfilled." So, if we go to everything you ask for, you have, ask and it is given, that is absolutely true, but it's given first invisibly. "I'm gonna write a book," gives you a book, energetically, and then you have to go through the meat grinder of getting that energy into a form that I can then purchase and enjoy reading for everybody else, and go purchase it.
Amy Hallberg 25:39
You know, it's funny you say that too, because I meet a lot of people, we talk a lot about their potential books, and there are people- You know, when I was writing with people, "Oh, but are you sure you're gonna-" Oh, no, I am going to publish it. I am going to write it, I am going to publish it. By the way, I'm not going and asking agents to approve of my book, I'm not going and asking the big, big, big, big, huge conglomerate that nobody gets into. Like, I'm not waiting for them. I am getting good support. So I'm not just sending this out and being like, "Oh, here it is," it's being edited. It's been edited, right? But I knew I was going to because I was doing it, and because I kept doing it, and so therefore I did. And I can see this in people that I'm working with, there are people where it's like, yeah, this person is going to write a book. And this person, yeah, maybe, but right now what they're doing is getting ready to be allowing themselves to have permission to. So it's really helpful to just go, "But can you picture that there's a book out there?"
Michelle Wolff 26:40
Right.
Amy Hallberg 26:40
There is a book out there, does it exist? Do you know this? And they'll just be like, "Well, yeah." Okay.
Michelle Wolff 26:46
Yeah.
Amy Hallberg 26:47
Then take the next step.
Michelle Wolff 26:51
Right, right.
Amy Hallberg 26:54
Thanks for listening to Courageous Wordsmith. Today's episode featured Michelle Wolff. You can read about her and check out her links in the show notes. Backstage at Courageous Wordsmith, my editor is the talented Will Quie, and my producer is the wonderful Zoe Wood. If you enjoyed this podcast, you can help it thrive and grow. Please tell your friends and sign up for my email so that you'll hear about future episodes. And if you're feeling the call to write, join us in our free community for real life writers. You'll find these links right on this page. You can learn more about me, and my books, and my work with book writers at amyhallberg.com. I am Amy Hallberg and until we meet again, travel safely.